Monthly Archives: July 2010

Are All Genuine Values Ultimately Reconcilable?

Posted on July 30, 2010 by

The results of last post’s poll show a majority picking the answer “the question as it stands is ill-defined”. Indeed it is! So let’s define a bit. Values What are ‘all genuine values’? In what ways might they conflict? Here’s … Continue reading →

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Dissecting Utopia: Soluble and Insoluble Problems

Posted on July 28, 2010 by

What is meant in calling a prediction of the future, or a political theory making such predictions, ‘utopian’? Of course it means that it’s unrealistic and optimistic, but can this be made at least moderately precise – the sort of … Continue reading →

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Utopian Common Sense

Posted on July 26, 2010 by

I’ve just finished reading “Envisioning Real Utopias“, part of the “Real Utopias Project” (a good book which I recommend), and felt like posting a few quotes from it. I post them not because I think they’re dazzling insights or brilliant … Continue reading →

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Ideology, Projection, and Racial Rape

Posted on July 23, 2010 by

An arab man in Israel has been convicted of rape for telling a partner he was Jewish. I don’t actually want to talk too much about this one case and the intricacies of rape by deception, but about the larger … Continue reading →

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How to Help

Posted on July 21, 2010 by

Economies are built out of helping: one person does something, not because they have independent reason to want it, but because someone else wants it. Often these are exchanges, ie. two people reciprocally helping each other, but not always. So … Continue reading →

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Alienation and Alienability

Posted on July 17, 2010 by

Marxists and such folk are always talking about ‘alienation’, and are usually against it. There’s also an idea you sometimes encounter that rights can be either ‘alienable’ or ‘inalienable’. But I’ve never come across the two themes being combined (though … Continue reading →

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I am Not Luke Roelofs

Posted on July 14, 2010 by

Yesterday I argued that human beings have no real individuality – we can treat them, approximately, as individuals but questions about their identity over time will sometimes have no determinate answer. But this feels deeply wrong, and I think that … Continue reading →

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Luke Roelofs is Not a Real Individual

Posted on July 13, 2010 by

Yesterday I argued that human beings are not substances or ‘things’ but rather complex actions performed by matter or by ‘the universe’. This might not seem like a big deal. After all, if might sound strange to say “the universe … Continue reading →

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You Are a Mode: Spinoza on Individuals

Posted on July 12, 2010 by

One of the most famous claims of Spinoza’s metaphysics is that there is only one substance – only one real ‘thing’ – and everything else is a ‘mode’ of that. ‘Mode’ here means something like a property, an action, a … Continue reading →

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Friendship and Political Disagreement

Posted on July 10, 2010 by

On facebook today a friend posted a link to this (pseudo-)story: discussing last weekend’s protests is “causing rifts in relationships”. It’s certainly not journalism (in the sense that it’s a two or three anecdotes strung together) but it’s probably true … Continue reading →

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