Author Archives: Gary Herstein

“Specialization Is For Insects”

20 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by in Academia, General Philosophy

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James Ladyman recently published an essay in The Philosophers’ Magazine arguing (as the title of the essay would indicate) in praise of specialization within the discipline of philosophy. (Attentive purists will notice that I use American spellings, and not the British forms used in Ladyman’s article.) Colleague (and occasional commentor) Brian Burtt brought Ladyman’s essay to my attention, with a gentle prod for my thoughts on Ladyman’s argument. As a general rule, I’m quite happy to do “requests,” and so what follows are my not-quite initial reactions to the article. (Not quite initial, as they are colored by a degree of considered thought.)Praying Mantis One can safely hazard a guess as to the top layer of my remarks, from the Heinlein quote that titles this blog post. However, there are a few subtleties I hope to add, beyond just and only the Notebooks of Lararus Long. Continue reading →

Higher (priced) Education

04 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by in Education, Ethics

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I see that the Board of Regents for the University of Iowa have acted (as such boards seem to universally act these days) in complete disregard of the faculty and students at the university, and appointed a businessman with no real background in education as the President of the university.Dunce

You can be confident — if, indeed, not absolutely certain — of two things. First, the new University President Bruce Harreld, who was previously senior vice president at IBM, will be drawing an enormous salary. The second is that he will treat the university as a business, faculty as employees, students as customers, and education as a commodity. In other words (and I would be delighted to be proven wrong in this) he will be ideologically committed to the ongoing degradation and destruction of higher ed.

Oh Ashley …

30 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Ethics, Objective Morality

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Schadenfreude – the pleasure one takes at hearing about or seeing other people’s troubles – is not a viable standard for ethical evaluations, even when the people whose troubles we are rejoicing in are the absolute scum of the earth and deserve all the things, and even worse, that are happening to them. Feeling good about other people’s troubles, quite aside from indicating a rather profound flaw in one’s character (a flaw a great many of us suffer from), is logically – and therefore morally – vacuous; it is a form of the argumentum ad misericordiam, and therefore patently fallacious.Rabbit Hole But more than just the logical issues involved, I want to spend some time considering the ethical dimensions attached to schadenfreude, specifically as these relate to the recent Ashley Madison hack. Continue reading →

I Chose My Data “Carefully” …

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in Cherry Picking, Critical Thinking, Logic

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Cherry-picking data is often times (and somewhat inexplicably) not even classified as a fallacy. Thus for example, my favorite “go to” source on all things fallacious, the Fallacy Files, does not list it anywhere in its otherwise quite comprehensive encyclopedia. Cherry picking (Gary Curtis, over at Fallacy Files, and I exchanged some cheerful emails, and the simple answer as of this writing is that it simply hadn’t occurred to Gary to add an entry on the subject. He hopes to post something on his weblog in the not too distant future, and once it is up I’ll link to it HERE. [UPDATE: Gary Curtis has now posted his comments at Fallacy FIles.]) Continue reading →

Socialism, Social Solidarity and Race

31 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by in Logic

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Dwight Welch, a UCC minister in Norman, OK, has some interesting thoughts on race and justice that I thought merited sharing. I might add my own remarks on socialism as supplementary material: https://garyherstein.com/2014/07/07/30/

servetus's avatar

may                           The poster says in Danish, we are stronger together.

The National Review has a new piece on socialism in Scandinavia. And it notes the continual history of the US left in appealing to the Nordic welfare state model. They don’t appear to be arguing against the system directly, but they raise the question of the whiteness of Scandinavia. And why is it that the left appeals to such a racially not diverse area as a model and never to third world contexts when comparing the US. Is there something white about socialism that is not being acknowledged?

Yes and no and in some ways NR fails to acknowledge the racial components to the argument they are raising. Because whenever you point to 5 weeks paid vacation, free tuition, single payer health care, 80% unionization rates in comparison to the US we are told we cannot have such things. That…

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Transitional Moments

27 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by in Personal History

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See, here’s the thing: BEING dead does not scare me at all. The day I die will be the first time in my adult life I actually make it through the night without waking up because of a bad dream, or I had to pee, or because I’ve been cursed by five generations of sin, or because I didn’t pull a perfect trifecta on the genetics game, or because it was a day that ended in “Y”. That, as Hamlet once observed, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.deathchessoriginal

Continue reading →

Privilege … *MY* privilege

21 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Logic, Personal History, Race, Racism

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Usually I take more time to compose my thoughts, but there are times when that is exactly the wrong thing to do. I’ve been trying not to think about white privilege too much of late, precisely because it has been overwhelming my thoughts. foolBless me, **ther, for I have sinned

My first genuine experience of my white privilege was when I was 18, and in Basic Training in the Army. Continue reading →

The Iran Nuclear Agreement vs. Conservative Falsehoods

20 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by in argument, Iran, Nuclear Deal

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Kaveh Mousavi (the pseudonym of an atheist ex-Muslim living in Iran) has an excellent piece at patheos.com, “Lies of the Opponents of the Iran Nuclear Deal: Debunked.” Kaveh is justifiably proud of this piece, and asked that it be shared as widely as possible. The histrionics of those opposed to this deal are quite extraordinary, and, frankly despicable. It is also worth remembering that these are (generically) the same people who manufactured the lies that led to the catastrophic Iraq invasion.Slim-pickens_riding-the-bomb_enh-lores 

Because Kaveh did such an excellent job both in documenting his arguments, analyzing the appropriate texts, and then logically reasoning from these data to his conclusions, his article is the sort of thing that I like promoting here at Quantum. Rather than repeating his argument wholesale, I will merely highlight Kaveh’s major themes and then encourage everyone to read Kaveh’s article at the links given above. (For purposes of brevity in what follows, will often refer to the new Iran Nuclear Treaty simply as the “Deal.”) Continue reading →