Autodidact novelist shunned academics but became academic subject.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Dogs
Nov 23rd, 2004 10:18 pm | By Ophelia BensonBy way of contrast, here is Richard Chappel at Philosophy Etcetera actually thinking about the subject instead of just issuing dictats. Makes a change. He takes empirical evidence into account, linking to the New Scientist, and he looks at some feeble arguments. It’s good stuff. He also takes on a rather unpleasant analogy of Keith Burgess-Jackson’s. I was especially interested in that because a couple of readers have recommended KB-J to me, thinking that he and B&W have a lot in common. But I don’t think so. I haven’t bothered reading him much, but that’s because what I did read struck me as pure boilerplate. Uninspired, familiar, and peevish. The post Richard discusses is (in my view) somewhat worse than … Read the rest
Jeremy Bentham and Marvin Olasky
Nov 23rd, 2004 9:52 pm | By Ophelia BensonSome more thought for the day. Because some days need more than one thought. And because Bentham is out of copyright, and because this is funny stuff. I haven’t been used to think of Bentham as a funny guy, but that just shows how much I know.
… Read the restIn looking over the catalogue of human actions (says a partizan of this principle) in order to determine which of them are to be marked with the seal of disapprobation, you need but to take counsel of your own feelings: whatever you find in yourself a propensity to condemn, is wrong for that very reason…In that same proportion also is it meet for punishment: if you hate much, punish much: if you hate
J S Mill
Nov 23rd, 2004 7:46 pm | By Ophelia BensonThought for the day. From John Stuart Mill’s ‘Whewell on Moral Philosophy’:
… Read the restThe person who has to think more of what an opinion leads to, than of what is the evidence of it, cannot be a philosopher, or a teacher of philosophers. Of what value is the opinion on any subject, of a man of whom everyone knows that by his profession he must hold that opinion?…Whoever thinks that persons thus tied are fitting depositaries of the trust of educating a people, must think that the proper object of intellectual education is not to strengthen and cultivate the intellect, but to make sure of its adopting certain conclusions: that, in short, in the exercise of the thinking faculty, there is
Studies on Politcal Affiliation in US Universities
Nov 23rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDems outnumber Reps 9 to 1 at Stanford & Berkeley even in professional schools.… Read the rest
Life on Planet Charles
Nov 23rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonLecturing cancer doctors on Gerson therapy, struggling to live on £11.9m, scolding uppity proles.… Read the rest
‘Biblical Values’ Guy Interviews Peter Singer
Nov 23rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonEw, ick, gross, sex with corpses, how wicked.… Read the rest
20,000 Against Violence in the Name of Islam
Nov 23rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThey carried banners proclaiming ‘we are against terror in all its forms.’ … Read the rest
The Pre-Established Harmony – Not
Nov 23rd, 2004 | By H. E. BaberThe New York Times: Living for Today, Locked in a Paralyzed Body
When Attorney General John Ashcroft attacked an Oregon law allowing doctor-assisted suicide in 2001 – a case that is still working its ways through the legal system – patients with the disease were among those who supported the law in court. But while the legal case and much of the national attention has focused on the issue of the right to die, less is known about those patients who want to live, and, like Dr. Lodish, will go to extraordinary lengths to do so.
Debates between Liberals and Conservatives on some “lifestyle” issues are usually represented as disputes between those who believe that people should get what they … Read the rest
Dear Adelaide
Nov 23rd, 2004 1:53 am | By Ophelia BensonAw, that’s nice. A reader alerted me to this blog post which is a favourable review of the dictionary. And it’s by someone I don’t even know, too. Someone in Adelaide. He likes that article by Andrew Weeks on Gibson and God, as well. Good guy, this Adelaide fella. If I’m ever in Adelaide I’ll look him up, see if he’d like to show me around, buy me dinner, laugh at my jokes.… Read the rest
Another Embattled Minority Heard From
Nov 22nd, 2004 9:10 pm | By Ophelia BensonPeter Beinart in The New Republic points out that conservatives, long in the habit of sniggering at political correctness and group whining, have found a disrespected minority of their very own: evangelicals. Yeah they have, haven’t they.
Mind you, in the usual obligatory ritual, Beinart hands a little ground back, which he shouldn’t have.
… Read the restTo be fair, occasionally liberals do treat evangelical Christians with condescension and scorn. Conservatives frequently, and justifiably, expressed outrage at a Washington Post news story that called followers of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”…On November 4, in The New York Times, Garry Wills suggested that America now resembles the theocracies of the Muslim world more than it resembles Western
Honour Killings
Nov 22nd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe Met is reviewing 117 murder cases from the last decade.… Read the rest
Raymond Gaita Defends Liberal Education
Nov 22nd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNicholas Negroponte suggests ‘Get over it.’… Read the rest
Michael Shermer on Prayer Research
Nov 22nd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonLack of controls, outcome differences, operational definitions.… Read the rest
Alex Callinicos on Derrida
Nov 22nd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDerrida hoped to open a space in which the marginalised and excluded could speak for themselves.… Read the rest
David Aaronovitch on Loony Conspiracy Theories
Nov 22nd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTriple, quadruple, quintuple bluffs – no explanation too tortured to believe.… Read the rest
Philosophy Less Messy Than Chemistry
Nov 22nd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSteven Poole reviews Wittgenstein’s Beetle and Morality Matters. … Read the rest
Symbols of Purity
Nov 21st, 2004 8:23 pm | By Ophelia BensonCheck out this interview with Jane Kramer in the New Yorker. She says some things that it would be good to see said more often, by more people, more forthrightly.
… Read the restBut in France, with all its freedoms, so many young women seem to be capitulating to Islamist pressure. It usually starts with the young men who are recruited, and the symbols of successful recruitment are the women in the family. In other words, the women are the symbol of the new identity of the man. When you see a twelve-year-old girl coming to school in a chador, where for two or three generations no one had worn one, you have to look at this as the expression of an enormous
The Paris Review Interviews Online
Nov 21st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe DNA of literature: 300+ Writers-at-Work interviews.… Read the rest
BHL Moults Philosophic and Literary Fluff
Nov 21st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFrom the mills of theory to the virtue of facts and the danger of ideology.… Read the rest