tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59324778207158368492012-01-06T12:11:47.760+13:00Ethics, philosophy, and other treasures.Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.comBlogger361100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-55940649299072729102012-01-06T12:07:00.000+13:002012-01-06T12:11:47.771+13:00

Having been introduced to the philosophical interest of classical economics through Robert Paul Wolff's Understanding Marx and his tutorial on Ricardo, I was prompted me to think a little deeper about Ricardo's results, in particular a very striking one about how rent paid for land plays no part in determining the price of agricultural goods. I've been trying to determine whether the result

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-45472192413286391112011-12-14T12:31:00.001+13:002011-12-14T12:31:54.731+13:00

Anne Russell is a personal friend of mine. She has recently published an opinion piece where she has admitted being confused and maddened by how stridently LBGT people argue for equal recognition of gay marriage, an institution she believes everybody would be better off without. I found her case to be deeply unconvincing, and here is my piece in response. Anne Russell has recently argued 

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-92045901790571208082011-10-25T18:45:00.000+13:002011-10-25T18:50:13.935+13:00

Today I received sad news about the passing of Peter Goldie, a philosopher who specialised in the emotions, personality and aesthetics. I quote the short announcement by some of his colleagues that they sent out: Peter Goldie 1946-2011 We are very sad to report that Peter Goldie died of cancer last night after a brief illness. Philosophy was Peter Goldie’s second career. Before training as a

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-26876613399052698102011-09-25T19:43:00.002+13:002011-09-25T19:43:49.892+13:00

Very often in philosophy getting clear on what the question is is one of the hardest parts of answering it. I set out to write something on the way I do philosophy, because the question of how we should approach it is one of the most difficult and bitterly fought of all philosophic debates. So, it should have been no surprise to find that I got stuck doing so. In the spirit of better blogging

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-15294054631131684872011-08-20T14:33:00.000+12:002011-08-20T14:33:16.080+12:00

On Wednesday 17/8 Scoop Independent News ran a piece I wrote about the dramatic but uninformative coverage of the riots in London and elsewhere in England earlier this month. Since it has now gone to pasture in their archives, I'm posting the piece here as well, making use of the occasion to embed a bunch of links to stories where appropriate, and make a small correction. In the aftermath of the

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-70869947473306090602011-07-26T02:33:00.000+12:002011-07-26T02:33:29.288+12:00

For the past few years I've had an on-going research project of trying to use the framework David Lewis developed for analysing conventions in the interesting meta-ethical case where whatever basic principles we might have (for this purpose it doesn't matter what they are - one problem at a time!) don't give us enough guidance and we end up with equally attractive but mutually exclusive options

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-55992320195474778802011-04-20T17:21:00.000+12:002011-04-20T17:21:58.264+12:00

A couple of days ago I posted a criticism of Robert Paul Wolff's dismissal of the prisoner's dilemma . Wolff has now posted a reply on his blog (quoting the version of my post I had emailed to him). He is pressing the fact that game theory is only properly-speaking a study of decision under certainty, while the problem I identify (which is hardly original on my part!) is to do with decision

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-8051416409008293432011-04-18T22:37:00.003+12:002011-10-25T21:04:37.512+13:00

About a year ago, when I was making my first serious inroads into the technical underbelly of my field, following my utilitarian opponents into a futurist landscape of backwards Es and upside-down As, Robert Paul Wolff (who seems to be entirely incapable of stopping writing, bless his soul) ran a tutorial on formal methods in political philosophy which I found very useful, especially its

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-86263743770350560732011-04-07T19:30:00.002+12:002011-04-07T19:43:42.514+12:00

I received the following sardonic comment on one of the philosophic mailing lists I'm subscribed to which caters to the academic community: List members, Tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of one of my papers being submitted to the Journal of Global Ethics. As I have not received any feedback on the content of my paper as yet, I have been prompted to mark the occasion with a lunchtime

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-42574913664519600802011-03-20T00:55:00.000+13:002011-03-20T00:55:30.448+13:00

As I occasionally do, I'll use this blog as a place to keep a store something I wrote for a conversation somewhere else: in this case (as with the Swanton piece I did last year) it's a summary of a favourite paper of mine: Rae Langton - 'Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts'. Langton sets out to to defend a claim by MacKinnon's that pornography constitutes a harm to women, in particular that it

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-72416242966175572982011-02-09T12:58:00.000+13:002011-02-09T12:58:48.417+13:00

Today we move onto the meaty part of this project, where I lay out my case against what I have called the communicative challenge. That interpretation of what the difference democratic complaint is claims that the problem with deliberative democracy is that it neglects the different ways different cultures advance and discuss claims. Because the deliberative process is the product of one culture

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-13454446721967593632011-02-08T17:18:00.000+13:002011-02-08T17:18:13.464+13:00

What follows is one of the more significant pieces of research I did in the past year, as part of my MA in applied ethics. I'm revisiting it currently, and in the process of doing so will post it up (in edited form) over three blog posts (three for reasons of length). It was an attempt to make sense of one of the more prominent challenges to the delibrative model of democracy, that of the

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-32497938117218627622011-01-31T23:54:00.001+13:002011-01-31T23:56:07.567+13:00

One project that I have been pottering away at recently is an attempt to cash out what could be meant with something like Phillip Pettit's theory of 'freedom as non-domination' (meaning that we are free to the extent in that we can do what we go about our affairs without the arbitrary intervention of another party). To do so I develop a framework for highlighting some important modal

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-34094237622627999782011-01-19T00:42:00.001+13:002011-01-19T15:43:41.496+13:00

My purpose here is to present a formal framework for the relationship between intuitions and concrete particular judgements in moral cases and the general theories which are supposed to capture them. This framework is to give that relationship a suitable interpretation in intuitionistic (or constructivist) logic, with which I hope to give an interesting way to articulate the difference between

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-5506380089605007012010-08-02T14:36:00.003+12:002010-08-02T22:54:53.604+12:00

I'm participating in a debate on the goodness of markets for the trade of organs on the Practical Ethics blog hosted by the University of Oxford. Nicholas Shackel has made a case that such a market would only be a benefit. Simon Rippon has objected that such a market would give rise to social obligations to make use of the market even when doing so would harm you. Shackel has responded that

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-56027993860443386552010-06-30T16:41:00.000+12:002010-06-30T16:41:05.373+12:00

On the off-chance that there is somebody reading this who doesn't already know about it: the political philosopher Robert Wolff is running a very detailed serialised introduction to game theory and related fields here. Wolff is very much a skeptic about most of the uses that people try to make of formal methods in political philosophy, especially about the simplifying assumptions that are made

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-85329052376469979862010-05-09T11:43:00.002+12:002010-05-10T23:16:06.895+12:00

In the New York Times magazine a psychology researcher, Paul Bloom, has published a report of research into some signs that very young children show some inklings of a moral sense, distinguishing between mean and nice actions and preferring the latter to the former. I'm afraid I can't agree with Bloom's conclusions. The article gestures at psychological research which shows that babies sometimes

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-86997330798893812142010-04-04T11:04:00.005+12:002010-04-04T12:54:07.486+12:00

Keep an eye on South Africa for the near future, because racial tensions are on the rise. Today saw the murder of Eugéne Terre'blance, the leader of the AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging - Afrikaner Resistance Movement), the largest political and paramilitary organisation of the far-right, white-supramecist fringe of SA politics (recently re-activated). I won't be shedding any tears for him –

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-70135812756768958462010-03-24T12:33:00.000+13:002010-03-24T12:33:54.479+13:00

Which is the cause, that the doctrine of Right and Wrong, is perpetually disputed, both by the Pen and the Sword: whereas the doctrine of Lines, and Figures, is not so; because men care not, in that subject what be truth, as a thing that crosses no mans ambition, profit, or lust. For I doubt not, but if it had been a thing contrary to any mans right of dominion, or to the interest of men that

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-52109224941081986522010-02-20T03:38:00.002+13:002010-02-20T03:47:14.932+13:00

Bolt Thrower has given the world many great things: a succesful marriage of Napalm Death-esque grind and heaviness and head-bopping riffage; unabashed, even triumphant, links with hobby wargaming and other ostensive displays of geekery; albums like Mercenary (listening to which gave birth to this post) showing that they are much more than a novelty band as it thrashes all and sundry without

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-47398258684971590012010-01-22T07:31:00.000+13:002010-01-22T07:31:57.602+13:00

There's too little philosophy on here at the moment, despite the fact that what keeps me from updating this blog is all the philosophy I'm doing out there in meat space. Here's a small something I did in the course of the programme I'm in: a summary of one of my favourite ethical articles, Christine Swanton's 'A Virtue Theoretical Account of Right Action' (Ethics 112 (October 2001): 32–52, http:/

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-80257053464913933192009-12-30T13:33:00.006+13:002009-12-30T15:52:45.921+13:00

A film-buff friend of mine encouraged me to watch the new Clint Eastwood movie Invictus, largely to see my reaction to it. Well, here it is. I made a log of the various states of outrage I reached as I watched the movie, which I now post here . -- Dear god, this is hammy. For heaven's sake, they take almost ten minutes in the first scene where the black and white bodyguards rub each other up

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-57641426287414775812009-12-30T13:33:00.005+13:002009-12-30T14:16:35.266+13:00

Yeah, so Invictus is a piece of shit. It likes to have lots of side-stories showing the different South African races growing into camaraderie, each more predictable and contentless than the last. Each of these act as support for the main theme of racial reconciliation, which is itself suitably shallow, signfying nothing. There's nothing here to engage with the story that's supposed to be told,

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-11363801095908617132009-12-02T02:30:00.002+13:002009-12-30T13:39:10.834+13:00

Even the most casual reader of this blog will have noticed that new posts have ground to a halt. It's due to the pretty demanding schedule of readings and assignments that my current course presses on me, added to the soul-sucking uncertainty and tedium of applying to graduate programmes. Since most of my philosophical attention is currently being given to my academic commitments and chewing on

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-20378203876512367512009-09-21T05:40:00.001+12:002009-09-21T05:41:20.256+12:00

This is the first of a planned series of posts wherein I try to place attacks on utilitarianism within a more general framework I'm developing, the wrong order problem: properties that could work to aggregate all our morally relevant concerns, like happiness or desire satisfaction, are too high an order of property to count as good-making features, and can instead only indicate goodness. There

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-16363769383456078262009-09-19T01:28:00.001+12:002009-09-19T01:28:29.482+12:00

I made my last post from Hong Kong, and this comes from Frankfurt, as I keep coming ever closer to Utrecht and the start of my study in Europe. My arrival at the Erasmus Mundus Masters of Applied Ethics programme has already been delayed by almost three weeks, as I have been subject to a number of delays. I even had a last round of drama at Auckland airport as I tried to depart. But all of that

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-45426705603941224622009-09-17T15:45:00.002+12:002009-10-06T02:50:38.879+13:00

Lately I have given a lot of thought to and become tremendously impressed by the Euthyphro problem, presented by Plato in the dialogue of that name, which makes life distinctly uncomfortable for a particular kind of moral view. The Euthyphro problem drives us to distinguish what makes something good from how we know that it is good. I want to suggest that this points to a general problem, to do

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-30663486317080643872009-09-08T01:54:00.000+12:002009-09-08T01:54:47.682+12:00

Frans Brom asks us to consider the expressive-communicative function of legislation, where what some law does is to give voice and legal standing to some commonly held moral value, in contrast to two other ostentive roles for legislation, as a way to codify the dominant morality of a society, and as a way to modify behaviour in certain ways the legislators deem necessary. I will respond that I'm

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-20279898282585620702009-09-07T22:47:00.002+12:002009-09-07T22:47:55.662+12:00

As is usual in this introductory collection, this entry by Marcel Verweij is very compressed and yet covers a lot of ground, so I'll do what I've done mostly and offer a comment on a particular aspect of the discussion I think can do with some expansion. Verweij concerns himself with laying out some reasons to believe that general principles can't do all the work that needs to be done in applied

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-58063783431129870642009-09-07T16:22:00.001+12:002009-09-17T15:09:27.568+12:00

May Thorseth's contribution to the collection is a piece on ethical pluralism, which she presents as a more substantive alternative to relativism. I agree that distinguishing the two positions is a very worthwhile thing to do, but here I will quickly argue that teasing pluralism apart from relativism is probably harder than Thorseth's piece makes out. Like the other pieces in the collection, this

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-32887600571976149072009-09-05T01:39:00.000+12:002009-09-05T01:39:43.810+12:00

As I said a few posts ago, I'm currently using this blog as a place to comment on the articles I should be discussing with my peers in Linköping, Sweden, as I start the course of study I've been invited on. I'm not in Sweden, or the Netherlands, or anywhere connected to that study, because I do not have a visa to enter Europe. I've spent the past few days wrestling with the various authorities as

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-19008663532865283642009-09-05T01:30:00.000+12:002009-09-05T01:30:52.367+12:00

Thinking back on my previous post, a comment on Collste's introduction to applied ethics, I've decided my treatment suffers from the same problem I see in Collste's piece. The discussion is too short to clearly distinguish two different uses of reflective equillibrium, one where RE serves as a structure for argument, the other where it acts as justification. So let me try that again. First, RE

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-68848331192961516612009-09-02T00:05:00.001+12:002009-09-02T00:10:54.752+12:00

Göran Collste contributes to the MAE handbook with a bit of an overview off the field of applied ethics. There is a point about reflective equillibrium I am a little uncertain about, which I'll discuss here. In discussing RE, Collste remarks that it can be used either as a structure for debate, or a form of justification, but not both. As I understand it, this is because if it is used as an

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-14206422611615327912009-08-31T14:46:00.004+12:002009-08-31T14:55:16.394+12:00

To start off proceedings, we have a little piece of meta-ethics: Paul van Tongeren writing on the birth of ethics in ancient Greece with Socrates, looking in particular to the first book of Plato's Republic, and Bo Pettersson trying to come to grips with what van Tongeren is saying. Pettersson's article is the important one (that is, it's the one that the course administrators took the trouble to

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-81061655003144825642009-08-31T09:45:00.004+12:002009-08-31T12:14:04.815+12:00

I say in the sidebar that I'm currently studying in Europe, but I'm getting slightly ahead of myself. I should be in Europe, attending the Erasmus Mundus Masters in Applied Ethics (MAE) introduction in Linköping, Sweden. Instead, I'm stuck in Auckland, New Zealand, for another week, sorting out visa trouble. You see, I've been invited to this course of study by nobody less than the European

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932477820715836849.post-25853796044896298552009-08-30T23:18:00.001+12:002009-08-31T00:34:12.980+12:00

I'm Marinus, a South African who is a graduate student in philosophy and has lived and studied in New Zealand for a number of years. I've created this blog at the start of my study in Europe in pursuit of a scholarship in applied ethics, largely to have a place to record various things relevant to my year of study there. The name comes from a type of artefact made by the Māori, where waka is a

Marinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.com0