Notes

I remember my original intuitions after I had argued with the hypocrites . I was at that time very persuaded by Peter Singer's theory of utilitarianism. The theory was both very much in the mainstream of modern ethical reasoning, and highly consonant with the intuitions of students. However--and this is very important--if that's morality, then few if any people would take it seriously. We may pay lip-service to it, even with righteous anger. But don't expect us to obey it, at least not to the extent that it would involve any significant self-sacrifice. That depressed me no end. As a practical person, I did not see the point in studying ethics if I was not going to follow through with its practical consequences. I did not want to be a hypocrite. It seemed to me that it would have to be more rational for me to study something that would be more practical. Back then, I remembered thinking in terms of morality and permissibility--in the way that abortion could be moral but perm...

It somehow seems important simply to keep up entries here. Let this be the direction, if any, that my thought takes. I have finished reading Jennifer Government and have lent it to a friend. Rotten Guatemalan from Alabama USofA on Amazon.com says "Read it and lend it to a friend. They'll appreciate it." so I guess I've done the right thing. =P I liked it so much that I also bought and have started reading Syrup , his one other novel. It's gooood. In some ways, I like it better than Government , just because he seems wittier when not engaging in fantastic speculation. The focus goes more on his satire then, which is his strong point. He has a keen sense of the absurd, and is full of witty and inventive digs at his subject matter of expertise, marketing. In some ways, I would like to be an author of fiction. At least, I always thought that, if only I could do it, it would be such an easy way for me to make a living. I'm always writing. But I have no int...

I have been getting sick of writing about philosophy lately. I just don't find that I have anything to say. I've lost interest in what I've already said, to be able to collate it into some paper or series of papers. Part of the problem is definitely that I tend to think that truth is simply uncontentious in the first place. If something is true, it generally isn't very interesting, and if it is interesting, then it tends simply not to be true. Over the past few months I wrote much about ethics that interested me, but I fear that to that extent it simply has not been true. The notion that a real moral is a more and a real ethics is an ethos is interesting, but I don't see how it could be true. The analogies between social progress and Kuhnian science were also interesting. But at the end of the day, they just didn't seem to be independently plausible. I can't believe what I'm hearing. What about the free will problem, or deontology versus consequentia...

I have finally finished Terror and Liberalism . It only took me ten days from the time that I bought it, and it was well worth it. I now know quite a lot more about the philosophy of Al Qaeda, although it is a fairly banal form of totalitarianism. But at least I understand our enemy more now than I did before I started reading the book. Or do I? Paul Berman describes Al Qaeda as simply a pathological mass movement, which cannot be given a rational explanation. This leads one to the question of whether evil itself can be given a rational explanation. This question, however, only occurs to me because I know of a book that addresses it directly. I have seen it in the bookstore now many times, Evil in Modern Thought , by Susan Neiman. This, then, has become my book for this week, and I am currently reading it with avid interest. I am already intrigued by her argument in the introduction. She begins by discussing the theist version of the problem of evil, which we all learned in fir...

So why not make the permanent members of the security council the G8: France; the United States; the United Kingdom; Russia; Germany; Japan; Italy; and Canada? These members would all have the right of veto. You could also have sixteen other members of the Council elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms. These members would not have the right of veto. This would increase the total number of positions in the Security Council from fifteen to twenty-four. I can see one major difficulty with that idea immediately. China is not a member of the G8, but it is a permanent member of the Security Council. It will only ever veto any amendment to the UN Charter that removes the permanency of its membership. I do not therefore see any legal way that the G8 could become the next set of permanent members.

It won't make sense for the UN to pass a resolution if a great power will not obey it. Logically, the UN must only make resolutions that it can enforce. If a great power simply chooses to disobey a resolution, then the UN cannot force that power to obey it. This obviously undermines the legitimacy of the UN as an institution. It seems reasonable that that legitimacy be preserved. It therefore seems reasonable that the UN provide a mechanism to avoid passing resolutions that great powers will not obey. This mechanism, of course, is the right of veto. Currently, the right of veto is held by the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Those members are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. There are ten other members on the Security Council, who are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms. They have no right of veto. Any resolution passed by the Security Council is enforceable by the UN. Consequently, non-permanent members (and non-membe...

I have been reading The President of Good and Evil all week. Last night I read the chapter on "Pax Americana". In many ways, it is the most interesting of the chapters that I have read. This is partly because Michael Lind's criticism of Singer from the New Statesman still rings in my ears: Most of Bush's critics, including me, have thought that the alternative to a Pax Americana is a concert of the leading great powers, including the US, acting within or outside of the UN system. But according to Singer: "After the end of the cold war, there were only two plausible candidates for the role of global peacekeeper in international affairs: the United Nations, or the sole remaining superpower, the United States." He appears not to recognise that there is no UN, at least in the security realm, without US military power. Absurdly, he cites the fact that the US ranks 18th out of 21 countries in contributions to United Nations peacekeeping to suggest that the U...

I have wanted to talk more about my hobby interests lately. I think that this is because my interests are moving from philosophy to politics. I have long since gotten used to the fact that in philosophy, I can't talk about what’s on my mind with most people. But it is much easier to talk to more people about politics. Certainly people must be out there that share your interests with whom you could discuss many of these issues, such as on political blogs. Why did you not simply visit more philosophy blogs when your blog was still about philosophy? You could have performed a Google search on “ethics blog”, for example. Back then, I was more interested in sociobiology. But I gave up pursuing the philosophical implications of sociobiology, on the grounds that it was uncontentious. At that time, I thought that the only thing that I really wanted to do was simply speak out against people who annoyed me. People like that were people who I thought were saying things that were stupi...

I am currently reading Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman. I was very impressed by Berman’s article “ The Philosopher of Islamic Terror ”. It made me very eager to see what he had to offer by way of a philosophy of liberalism. I have so far been very impressed by the second chapter, about Armageddon and its modern forms. He puts the case very well that the War on Terror is very much a war about tolerance versus intolerance, monism versus pluralism. I finished the second chapter of Terror and Liberalism early this morning. Consequently, I had time to read the fifth chapter of The President of Good and Evil as well. So far this weekend I have had time to read two chapters each from both books. I notice that you are moving more in a political direction these days. Your last two books have both been about politics. One is American and the other international—though it primarily concerns America. The first book was research into the way that Peter Singer accuses George W. B...

People out there seem pretty interested in the philosophy of Al Qaeda. Three of my most recent hits have involved searches on those words. Mine is the top-ranked page when "Al-Qaeda" is spelled with a hyphen, and the second-ranked page when it is not. And my page was only referring to someone else's blog page in the first place! So let's talk about the philosophy of Al Qaeda. Paul Berman wrote an excellent article about it. He identifies Sayyid Qutb as the most important philosopher behind the movement. Qutb is Qaeda's intellectual hero, its "Karl Marx". In this respect, Qutb's best known work is Milestones , his Das Kapital . Berman, however, calls attention to Qutb's deeper work, the enormous In the Shade of the Koran . It is full of literary beauty and deep ideas. Just because ideas are deep, however, does not mean that they are true, and many of Qutb's ideas, Berman argues, are indeed false. Qutb opposes the separation of church and s...

Do you see any conflict between your spending considerable money on the care of your mother and your principle of spreading out wealth to help the most people? Yes. In a sense, my spending money on my mother's care is in conflict with that principle. But so is the fact that I flew back to Australia to visit my daughters at Christmas. That money could also be better spent elsewhere. I've never claimed that I live my life perfectly in accordance with those principles of sharing my money as much as I should. Interview with Peter Singer by Princeton Alumni Weekly , January 26, 2000. Is Peter Singer a hypocrite? Lonnie Lee Best, from his excellent web page on " The Psychology of Hypocrisy ", defines a hypocrite as 'a person whose actions contradict his or her stated or internal beliefs. (Or vice versa.)' From the sections on " Singer's Mother " and " Singer's Donations ", it seems clear enough that Singer falls into this cat...

I think the point of espousing a theory is to say, "Look, if you're really going to be serious about ethics, well, here's a proposal as to how far you ought to go. Now, tell me why that's wrong," ... And if someone answers, "Well, nobody's going to do it," I don't think that's an answer at all. Peter Singer, interviewed by Michael Specter (1999) in " The Dangerous Philosopher ", The New Yorker , September 6, 1999, p.53. [A]n ethical judgment that is no good in practice must suffer from a theoretical defect as well, for the whole point of ethical judgments is to guide practice. Peter Singer, (1993) Practical Ethics , Cambridge University Press, p.2. Consider Peter Singer's simple solution to famine relief. The poorest people in the world are those who are in the Third World. Our interests are no more important than theirs are, and they need most of our money more than we do. Therefore, as Michael Specter notes, ...