Philosophers Get the Inane List Treatment *

Jul 5th, 2005 | Filed by

‘Ideas play only a limited role in our social life.’ Gosh, really?!… Read the rest



David Rieff on Live 8 and Dangerous Pity *

Jul 5th, 2005 | Filed by

There is no necessary connection between raising money for a good cause and spending the money well.… Read the rest



Bush Admin Moves to Normalize Relations With Sudan *

Jul 5th, 2005 | Filed by

So the declaration of genocide is old news?… Read the rest



Time to Admit: Religion is Dangerous *

Jul 5th, 2005 | Filed by

Sam Harris says what many people think but hesitate to say.… Read the rest



Religious Myths Gotta Go

Jul 5th, 2005 1:06 am | By

Time to say it in polite company.

Harris’s explosive book, as more than one reviewer has noted, articulates fiercely and fearlessly what more and more people are thinking but few are willing to say in polite company: religious faith is not only blind, but deaf, mute, absurd, irrational, and threatens our very existence…He calls his book “an argument for intellectual honesty. It’s only on matters of religion that we allow people to pretend to be certain of things they are not certain about.”

That’s just it – it’s this special dispensation thing. On everything else people over the age of about four are expected to justify their assertions, especially if they’re a tad far-fetched – but ‘devout’ people can … Read the rest



A Word from Mill

Jul 4th, 2005 11:58 pm | By

Good, The Subjection of Women is online after all, just not at Project Gutenberg. So I’ll quote a passage from section one.

All causes, social and natural, combine to make it unlikely that women should be collectively rebellious to the power of men. They are so far in a position different from all other subject classes, that their masters require something more from them than actual service. Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to

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Indians Have Always Asked Difficult Questions *

Jul 4th, 2005 | Filed by

A fundamental western mistake to see India as in an eternal mystical fog.… Read the rest



Amartya Sen Returns to Santiniketan Every Year *

Jul 4th, 2005 | Filed by

‘In this superb collection of essays, Sen smashes quite a few stereotypes.’… Read the rest



Science Needs Fantasy *

Jul 4th, 2005 | Filed by

Thought experiments and what if scenarios are part of the process.… Read the rest



Design Flaws *

Jul 4th, 2005 | Filed by

An engineer who designed such a system from scratch would be summarily fired.… Read the rest



Statement on Rights and Freedoms Criticized *

Jul 4th, 2005 | Filed by

Gives too much legitimacy to David Horowitz and proposed academic bill of rights.… Read the rest



Karl Miller Reviews Christopher Hitchens *

Jul 4th, 2005 | Filed by

Regards himself as a patriot, whose patriotism is universal rather than local.… Read the rest



Attitude

Jul 4th, 2005 2:06 am | By

Julian’s been on the radio again – in fact he seems to have been on aproximately every other time I listen, lately. That one’s Night Waves and it’s only good until tomorrow, because it’s last Monday’s show and I didn’t know about it until yesterday when I happened to browse the Night Waves page to see what I’d been missing – otherwise I would have told you sooner.

I transcribed one bit because it sort of fits with various things we talk about here from time to time. The interviewer asked how useful philosophy can be, does it change people’s thinking, and so on.

I think it’s possible to read a hell of a lot of philosophy, it’s possible to

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Is That Right?

Jul 3rd, 2005 8:12 pm | By

Here’s something I find quite funny. It’s from The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism from the entry for ‘Speech Acts’.

This issue of parasitic language became one of the turning points of the Searle-Derrida debate. In the late 1970s Searle wrote a “reply” to Derrida’s deconstruction of Austin, assuming that Derrida was attacking Austin and rushing to the master’s defense. Derrida then wrote a hundred-page deconstruction of Searle’s reply, more or less savaging Searle and demonstrating both that philosophically Searle is way out of his league and that methodologically Searle and Derrida are not so very far apart. Both Searle and Derrida are analytical philosophers who believe in rational, logical thought; Derrida is merely better at

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Salil Tripathi on Religious Censorship *

Jul 3rd, 2005 | Filed by

The intolerant will dictate what the rest of us should read and watch.… Read the rest



‘Equality is not Sexy’? *

Jul 3rd, 2005 | Filed by

There’s more than one kind of female genital mutilation.… Read the rest



Just a Light Trim, Please

Jul 3rd, 2005 2:47 am | By

I’d never heard of Sheila Jeffreys before reading this article. Okay so I’m a dreary boring sexless humourless old-timey feminist, but I think she’s right. It depresses me to see the things women do to themselves and how it’s gotten not better but worse since second-wave feminism started.

I’ll tell you something else I hadn’t heard of, and that’s ‘trimmed labia.’ Trimmed what? Trimmed? Trimmed? You trim fingernails and hair, apples and carrots, not pieces of your body! Okay so I’m clueless, but I don’t spend a lot of time keeping up with the ‘sex industry,’ therefore I was unaware there was such a thing as ‘labiaplasty.’ What was that we were saying last year about female … Read the rest



They Say Anything They Want to Now

Jul 2nd, 2005 8:50 pm | By

The trouble is, there is no answer. It’s no good trying to argue the question with the thought that there is an answer if only everyone can be convinced of it – there isn’t. It’s hopeless. There are only two competing goods, or goals, or desires or needs; there’s no way to grant both at once; there’s no way to do the right thing in both directions. At least not that I can ever see.

Three French intellectuals and the publisher of the nation’s premier newspaper, Le Monde, were ordered by a French court in May to pay 1 euro each to Attorneys Without Borders, which Mr. Goldnadel leads, for defaming Jews in an op-ed article three years ago…The case

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The Boundaries of Reasonable Debate *

Jul 2nd, 2005 | Filed by

Tension between prevention of hate-mongering and free speech.… Read the rest



Secular Summer Camp *

Jul 2nd, 2005 | Filed by

Yes but it’s still summer camp.… Read the rest