“We are all players in the game of life, with divergent aims and aspirations that make conflict inevitable. In a healthy society, a balance between all these differing aims and aspirations is achieved so that the benefits of cooperation are not entirely lost in internecine strife. Game theorists call such Read more…
Libertarianism – in a coarse telling – is political philosophy that places primacy on individual freedom over all other values. As such, it’s often placed in contrast to traditional political notions that advocate some limits to freedom, such as liberalism (economic regulation, but personal freedom) and conservatism (personal regulation, but Read more…
The history of the fusion of evolution and politics isn’t one to be terribly proud of, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an exciting future. And I happen to think it does have an exciting future, hence my concern not to be lumped in with efforts from the past. Read more…
America (and, I’d venture to suggest, the rest of the world) is imperilled by growing scientific illiteracy. So says science journalist Chris Mooney and marine biologist Sheril Kirshenbaum in their new book, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future. (An interesting review and commentary on the book can be Read more…
For when you combine Haidt’s research with another intriguing finding that our political views are largely influenced by genes, it raises a big fat question: why does our psychology – and biology – vary in the way it does?
What is it with the cripplingly short memories of commentators when it comes to US politics? Here we have just a couple of the many wailings that the Republican party is down for the count, a party in ruins possibly never to arise again. What claptrap. Harken back, oh, five Read more…
This is the End of the Beginning of the New Synthesis, the path hacked through the jungle of confusion to a new destination, and the Beginning of the Middle of the actual hard work of mapping the complex terrain of our moral faculty.
I look on at the tragedy unfolding in Gaza with a mixture of deep sorrow and outrage – as I imagine many others do as well. Sorrow that violence and suffering appear to have become not the exception, but the expected norm on both sides, although clearly the suffering disproportionately Read more…