Health Care Reform and Two Freedoms
The health care reform bill has recently been the subject of a ridiculous show called a “health care summit.” The proposed reform is mostly garbage. It does next to nothing to stem the rising costs of health care imposed by the private health insurance system. Even worse, it imposes penalties for not having health insurance; this is the Massachusetts model that is currently failing after only a few years of operation. The reason we supposedly have this wretched bill is because Americans won’t accept “government health care,” despite numerous polls consistently showing large majorities over decades showing that we would, and that we would pay higher taxes for it. Keep reading >>
Why the Golden Rule is Not Enough (and Why You Can’t Follow It Anyway)
“Do not that to another which thou wouldest not have done to thyself.” –Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
There was recently a big TED talk on the Golden Rule. Interestingly, the Golden Rule isn’t taken too seriously by most moral philosophers. So I thought I would let you in on some well-known problems with the Golden Rule–problems that have been recognized by moral philosophers for over a hundred years. Here is a traditional statement of the Golden Rule:
“Do unto others as you would have done unto you.”
You might think that you believe in this rule, but it’s an illusion. If you think you believe in this rule, you probably really believe something like “be nice to people who have not harmed you,” which is eminently reasonable. Or maybe you believe “Live and let live,” which also makes sense. You might even believe in the Harm Principle.» The reason that I doubt you believe in the Golden Rule is that it yields serious contradictions in fairly mundane circumstances and morally questionable results otherwise. Surprising? Keep reading >>
What is Democracy?
Democracy isn’t what it used to be. Our contemporary nations are considered ‘democratic’ pretty much by changing the meaning of the word. For most of human history, those who thought about such things identified a democracy as a state in which the majority of the people ruled, in all the political institutions of that state. The common example, which persisted from the ancient world until the last decades of the eighteenth century, is the Athens of ancient Greece. The contemporary definition of democracy is very different. For example, some so-called democracies are content with deviations from democracy (like hereditary monarchy, as in Great Britain), acceptable as long as the undemocratic elements (like the British queen) are kept in the background. And never mind the social conditions that make democratic institutions a sham (like various social inequalities). The shift in meaning of democracy occurred sometime in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. In the United States and Great Britain at least, the term ‘democracy’ was appropriated by populist and liberal reformers as the right to vote slowly expanded to include all white men and abolished the requirement of owning a certain amount of property to qualify for voting. However, institutions designed for oligarchy, or rule by the few, in the United States and Europe, remained; for example, the Senate of the United States. Political mechanisms once recognized as oligarchic became democratic merely through wordplay. Keep reading >>
Why It’s So Important to Know That You Don’t Know
“No one is wiser than Socrates,” it was said. Why was Socrates so wise? According to the story, it was because Socrates didn’t claim to know what he truly didn’t know. Furthermore, Socrates was always willing to admit that he might not understand what he was being told, even if he was in a very heated conversation. Socratic wisdom (avoiding false claims to knowledge and admission of one’s lack of understanding) may not sound like much of an accomplishment. But, let’s consider the advantages of this kind of wisdom.
1. The better you are at pinpointing what you don’t understand, the faster you can learn:
My favorite technique for pinpointing what I don’t understand is to ask myself, ‘What problem is X supposed to help me solve?’ Keep reading >>
Does it Matter if It’s Unnatural?
In conversations about different lifestyles it’s common for people to make the claim that something shouldn’t be done because it’s not natural. They say that homosexuality is unnatural, though many other species engage in same-sex coupling. They say that certain dietary practices are unnatural, like drinking milk, because we are the only species that does it. Of course, it’s false that humans are the only animals that drink the milk of other species. Cats readily drink cow’s milk when we give it to them. But all of this is totally beside the point. “Is it natural?” is a dead end question. Keep reading >>
How to Do Philosophy
Philosopher literally means ‘lover of wisdom’. For thousands of years, the word could be applied to anyone working in science, mathematics, or theology. With the rise of universities and the formation of different departments, disciplines such as physics, biology and psychology budded off of philosophy and came to be identified as separate fields of inquiry. You might expect a modern philosopher to spend time riffing on strange theories about the nature of the universe. Maybe you think of a philosopher as a kind of intellectual vagabond, a minimalist who attempts to live deliberately. Or maybe you identify philosophers with professors of philosophy.
If a philosopher is a lover of wisdom, then a successful philosopher is presumably wise. What’s wisdom, then?
In his book, The Examined Life, Robert Nozick» argued that wisdom has two necessary features:
1. Wisdom is an understanding of what is most important in life, and
2. Wisdom is an understanding that actually guides your life
Advanced theoretical knowledge of how the world works is not enough to make you a philosopher. Nor can you be a philosopher without embracing theory. You have to both embrace theoretical knowledge of what is most important in life and have the practical knowledge (including the will) to lead that good life.
Of course, there is no reason to believe that leading a satisfying life depends on having a sophisticated understanding of the world. The only point that seems to follow from Nozick’s analysis of wisdom is that philosophers must be concerned with having practical knowledge of the good life, grounded in theoretical knowledge about good living.
Other philosophers echo Nozick’s ideas. And, of course, Nozick has his predecessors. Henry David Thoreau seems to have expected philosophers not only to know how to lead a good life, but also how to lead a life of minimalism. Keep reading >>
Pursuit of Truth: Top 10 Strategies
Life involves a long series of wagers. In various areas of your life, you’ll find that the odds are not all the same. Many of the most important choices we make are hard bets. For example, it might be more challenging to place a winning bet on a healthy diet, a winning bet on who you date, a winning bet on a career path. I won’t go into these specific issues in this post. Instead, we are going to focus on general principles for deciding how to temper your beliefs, to improve your odds in the pursuit of a fulfilling life.
Research scientists, engineers, philosophers and logicians regularly apply a number of critical thinking strategies to help them place their bets on what to believe. Here are some of my favorites: Keep reading >>
