The calculus of harm is the topic of this recent Interchange on “On Climate Change and Non-Human Animals” with philosopher and ethicist Jeff Sebo. Beasts’ Burdens But the history of human thinking is simply full…
Posts tagged utilitarianism
Building the Insanity In: Ex Machina
This is not a movie review. This is me thinking about empathy. Last night, lonely little ol’ me sat in a hotel room in Laramie, Wyomig (inauspiciously named for Jacques LaRamie, a French or French-Canadian…
The Wages of Progress…
People get interested and involved in issues and dilemmas that primarily affect them personally, physically, specifically. I get that. Me too. Yo tambien. However, it seems to me that a particular injustice or unfairness normally…
Our Whimpering World
Listen, recently we have discovered that the Obama Administration is negotiating in secret with other nations to create a “trade” agreement that will circumvent, override, trump, all other types of “agreements.” This means any and…
What Advance in Happiness?
The following is from Chapter 18 of Melville’s Typee. The character Marnoo is a “tabu” person who can travel relatively freely among all the tribes without eliciting historical animosities due to his “exceptional” qualities (one…
Learning Bathroom Discipline: Let Freedom Aggregate
One of the abiding memories of school for many of us is the fact that you have to ask permission to use the bathroom and that that request can be denied you.* We are taught…
Diagnosing Ownership, or Why Would You Believe Them?
This piece by Michael Lind in Salon, “Why do Republicans nominate blue bloods,” asks why Republicans pose as the party of the “Self-Made Man” when they are nearly wholly (in the upper register) “rentiers” or…
An Idle Curriculum as Salvific
Update (in the body of the text) “What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?” Vonnegut’s fictional holy man Bokonon asks in the “14th Book…