When words no longer have specific meanings

Actual comment by a right-winger on Facebook: “Fascism is a liberal ideology. Being used currently by liberals.” Showing that in some circles words no longer have any actual meaning, but should simply be thrown around based on connotation. For example, “fascism” is simply something that describes “that which we should hate” rather than an actual political ideology with a specific history....

Conspiracy Theories

I don’t have much use for conspiracy theories. Most of what happens in the world can be explained with basic sociology and economic analysis. Positing that some secret group is pulling the strings and always getting exactly what they want is a kind of intellectual short-cut that serves to make sense of the world without doing all the work of mastering the detail of how things actually function. This is not to say that...

Are there Evil Virtures? Slavery, virtue, and prac...

Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of “practice” is a comprehensive one and transcendent of any particular culture. It is precisely in his distinction between the “codes of practices” (193) and the “core virtues” that are expressed within these codes that allows virtue to be independent of particular actions. While MacIntyre uses the morality of lying in different cultures as an example of...

The epistemological problem of pure of discourse a...

Epistemologically, if you spend all of your time analyzing a discourse without reference to the original subject of the discourse, you run the risk of remaining so highly abstracted from the subject of study that you get not closer to the truth, not closer to reality, but further away from it. This of course presupposes that you believe in such a thing as “reality”. An alternative point of view denies that there...

More thoughts on Said’s Orientalism

Said’s claim essentially that the Orient as anybody in the West knows it doesn’t exist is an interesting one epistemologically. "I have begun with the assumption that the Orient is not an inert fact of nature." (71) The way this is phrased is certainly quite defensible. He elaborates "There were-and are-cultures and nations whose locations is in the East, and their lives, histories, and customs...

Thoughts on Edward Said’s Orientalism

I find Said’s application of Foucault’s concept of Discourse to be closely related to Thomas Kuhn’s concept of Paradigms. Both refer to unconscious mental structures that both assist and limit human thinking. They it assist in that they create mental shortcuts, categories for rapidly understanding the whirling chaos of perceptions and impressions that constitute realities direct approach on our senses....

Thoughts on Nancy Fraser’s essay “From...

Thoughts on Nancy Fraser’s essay "From Redistribution to Recognition": I Why is it that for academics, the solution to any problem is “a new critical theory” (69)? II It is an interesting starting point that requires the assumption that “both redistribution and recognition” (69) are necessary in a theory of Justice. This may well be the case, but I would like to see on what grounds she...

Should individuals be required to sacrifice for th...

Should individuals be required to sacrifice for the greater good? Sacrificing for the greater good is an interesting paradox. I would see that as one of the highest goals of morality, but never an obligation. That is, if anyone choose to sacrifice for the greater good than that is to be applauded to the highest degree. But should someone choose to sacrifice someone else for the greater good then it may be necessary, but...

Is the “Right to Exit” sufficient to p...

The "right of exit" that Kwame Anthony Appiah mentions in The Ethics of Individualism is the escape valve for any abuse identified as being caused by a group. It is a "workhorse" because it is trotted out frequently as the primary protection individuals have against abusive groups in moral schemes where groups are given wide privileges over their members. If the group asks you to do something you not...

Minority Languages redux

Following up on my previous post (How engaged should the government be in preserving minority languages?) I should note that Charles Taylor in his essay Multiculturalism spent a good deal of time on the question of minority languages from an ethical point of view. His primary example involved the implications of a law mandating French in Québec. Taylor identified a conflict between two principles, on the one hand...

How engaged should the government be in preserving...

Should the state preserver minority languages? This is a question that ethical philosophers have been discussing a lot over the last twenty years. Those who are for government involvement focus on the communal aspects of identity and the role language plays in maintaining it. They argue that each sub-group’s language should be preserved, and even promoted. The argument from the other side focuses on the inhibitions to...

Richard Rorty and the problem of hyptheticals in m...

In "Justice as a Larger Loyalty" Richard Rorty argues that Justice is simply a sub-category of loyalty. Skipping his main argument, I started thinking about his examples and how he went about discussing the issue. The problem with hypothetical examples for moral dilemmas is that they invariably oversimplify the situation. It trying to highlight the dilemma, they posit a few facts, and then ask the reader to...