November 2011
2 posts
“Perhaps the best illustration of the current misconceptions of the individualism...”
– Hayek in Individualism and Economic Order
August 2011
2 posts
Antioxidants Don't Work →
old news but a good reminder
July 2011
14 posts
Why Austrians Should Fear Deflation and not... →
An excellent primer on a number of issues. Highly recommended reading. [pdf]
Vijay Boyapati, “Why Credit Deflation Is More Likely than Mass Inflation: An Austrian Overview of the Inflation Versus Deflation Debate,” Libertarian Papers 2, 43 (2010).
“Adherents of Mises (sometimes peculiarly closer to Rothbard and anarchism than...”
– Another gem from Hayek as Ordo-Liberal [pdf].
“Just sayin’, the people he killed were probably cultural marxist pieces of...”
– Ryan Faulk aka FringeElements, seemingly expressing sympathy for the Oslo shooter. Here’s the whole thread. As if to displace an extreme statement with an insane one, he goes on to say “if i had to choose between 100 random humans and 100 random dogs dying, I’d choose to kill the...
“While it would be an exaggeration, it would not be altogether untrue to say that...”
– F.A. Hayek, “Free” Enterprise and Competitive Order (Presentation in April 1947 at the founding meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society), reprinted in: Individualism and Economic Order, Chicago, pp. 107-118. Found in the superb paper Hayek as Ordo-Liberal by Stefan Kolev [pdf]. Yes, it is one sentence.
Why Does Al Qaeda Have a Problem with Norway? →
(potentially relevant article from last year. Massive explosion in Oslo, Norway earlier today)
1984 - Anticlerical Masterpiece
“A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.”
-The Prevention of Literature,...
“All that Hume holds is that our passions are part of whatever mental state is...”
– Blackburn defends Hume in his review of Derek Parfit’s On What Matters. Blackburn defended his expressivism against Parfit before, here: “Parfit’s iterated ‘should’s do not get him so far. Their ‘direction of fit’ remains, in his eyes, entirely representational, and he can provide no...
“Who is the ultimate entity, that he himself, may judge as to whether or not a...”
– from a guy on my Facebook who completely by accident discovered Pragmatism
“Patricia S. Churchland, the philosopher and neuroscientist, is sitting at a cafe...”
– from The Chronicle of Higher Education review. I absolutely agree that Moral Philosophy needs its baring in hard psychology, but that doesn’t make philosophy obsolete. A little knowledge isn’t as dangerous as a little philosophy, because without philosophy we wouldn’t know how to...
“In condemning monetary easing, right-wing opponents claim to be following the...”
– from David Glasner’s promising new blog on monetary economics, Uneasy Money
“Can moral judgments be true or false? Or is ethics, at bottom, a purely...”
– From Peter Singers review. I haven’t read a single page of the book yet, however based on what I’ve read of it, it sounds less like Parfit has really found a meta-ethical foundation for right and wrong so much as he takes certain moral premises as self-evident and writes normative ethics...
“I have a daughter who will one day take drugs. Of course, I will do everything...”
– from Sam Harris’ essay on using drugs to find new meaning in life.
June 2011
9 posts
Non-cognitivism elaborated
I define Non-cognitivism as the meta-ethical position that morality begins with projections of innate attitudes or dispositions, as opposed to an identification of some kind of real property or standard created by god or derived from reason.
We have an innate sense of right and wrong designed by evolution via natural selection for living harmoniously in a social context with scarce resources. I...
“When Mother Teresa - another denizen of that unworldly India of redemption by...”
– From Hitchens’ review of the new Joseph Lelyveld biography of Mr. Mohandas Gandhi. For the uninformed reader, Hitchens’ is directly echoing George Orwell’s famous critical essay Reflections of Ghandi. Hitchens’ book on Mother Teresa was also an emulation of Orwell’s...
“In my time at Oxford, there still persisted a quaint survival from the Victorian...”
– Christopher Hitchens on the Rep Weiner scandal.
Response to FringeElements response
Here’s why the social/cultural solution to the defense free-rider problem doesn’t work. That’s the one where not free riding on the defence agency is a matter of culture or avoiding social ostracism. The biggest problem with this argument is that it amounts to ignoring the free-rider problem from the start… the whole point is that there are strong rational incentives in favour of free-riding...
“Among the evidence that should exist is a relationship between the environmental...”
– Respectful Insolence on the WHO Cell-phone press release, over at scienceblogs.com. The WHO is really discreditting itself with this change in classification, ignoring a huge amount of good data that’s already put any connection to rest. This is so much stupider than the EU health officials...
May 2011
17 posts
Polycentric Law is Not Libertarian
Preserving the freedom to believe and behave non-violently requires something like a universally enforced constitution prohibiting violations of life, liberty and property. In these so-called polycentric common law societies that FringeElements envisions there’s no theoretical reason the policing of thought and free expression wouldn’t become dominant, and he admits it, saying that both...
Government Fundamentalism
In his latest video Ryan rebukes those who use the label free market fundamentalism by making the case that, as an analogy to religion, statists are much more aptly labelled the fundamentalists. I actually would completely agree with that.
A market fundamentalist, as I understand the use of the term, is anyone who jumps to privatization, deregulation, spending or tax cuts, and decentralization in...
Why Non-cognitivism is Correct
Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical position that moral statements aren’t truth appropriate. That is, an ethical claim like “lying is wrong” is not saying anything objectively true or false about lying, but rather “wrong” is just the attitude we carry with respect to lying and people who lie.
I got interested in Non-cognitivism (and eventually came to accept it) after reading A.J. Ayer’s,...
“The media is often blamed for these disconnects. Sensational reports of gruesome...”
– From an excellent article by the Walrus’ editor John MacFarlane.
“Chomsky still enjoys some reputation both as a scholar and a public...”
– Christopher Hitchens on Chomsky’s Osama reaction. It’s not hard to argue that Chomsky hasn’t learn much in the last decade. His increasingly mechanical analysis is doing a lot to reveal the superficiality of his criticisms.
“I know you were all waiting with baited breath to see when America’s...”
– Mark Hemingway proves again that sadomasochists tell the best jokes.
“Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound,...”
– Noam Chomsky on the Osama raid
“The difference between pure Muslims and Americans, he said, was that Americans...”
– The Economists’ Obituary to Osama bin Laden.
Chomsky as a litmus test for ideologues
A common complaint from lay observers of controversies in science and politics is “I just don’t know who to believe!” This has been my consistent position on the moral and academic credibility of Noam Chomsky for a long time. He’s a very divisive character, with opposing sides suggesting (depending on your politics) that he’s either a moral prophet and truthsayer or...
Top Ten Myths about Bin Laden's Death | Juan Cole... →
think4yourself:
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf held that Bin Laden had long been dead.
Former President George W. Bush ‘spent much of his presidency looking for Bin Laden.’
The intelligence that allowed the identification of Bin Laden’s courier, which led the CIA to the safe house in Abbottabad, was gained through waterboarding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Bin Laden died with a gun in...
The Liberals were the only hope and the...
What’s bigger news? Osama’s death or Canadian federal elections? On economics? Well if you watch CNBC you’ll think Osama’s lack of brain activity has a lot to do with the oil price, and not, say, an election that could determine whether one of the largest oil deposits in the world becomes under the control of an oil friendly environmental skeptic.
I agree with the recent...
April 2011
1 post
“Iranians and Libyans are not fools, and they have increasing access to non-state...”
– Christopher Hitchens, December 2003
March 2011
1 post
“I’ll wager that months from now, we’ll learn that some 18,000 Japanese were...”
– from Jim in MR comments
January 2011
2 posts
December 2010
2 posts
WatchI agree with every one of this mans positions.
“An academic friend of mine who worked in the state department under Condoleezza...”
– The Guardian’s Timothy Garton Ash on how even the potential for small leaks can compromise back-room sincerity.
Fortunately for Wikileaks, it’s costs to democracy will be a diplomatic form Bastiat’s ‘that which is not seen’.