Tag: status
-
Race, Income, and Elections: The
White(Male?) Working ClassIn my last post before the election, I quibbled with Peter Levine’s strategic argument that Trump’s supporters might be momentarily richer than average, but only because they were older, maler, and whiter. I worried that it was…
-
The View From Nowhere
·
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="373"] This happens a lot in philosophy.[/caption] Update: As Scu points out, sharing this opens me up to the scrollover text (which doesn’t show on hotlink): “‘But you’re using that same tactic to…
-
Resetting the Moral Baseline to Resist Status Quo Bias
·
While to many people the reformer and the abolitionist are indistinguishably radical, there is a disheartening tendency for reformers and abolitionists to fight rhetorical battles about the strategies and ends of the movement. Thus we…
-
Is the US an Oligarchy?
[caption id="attachment_4024" align="alignright" width="300"] “Get Money Out of Politics” by Flickr user Light Brigading[/caption] Some things live forever in social media. In my circles, one article that comes up all the time is the Gilens…
-
Prison Abolition, Reform, and End-State Anxieties
Recently I’ve been thinking about a book by Erin McKenna which I read as an undergraduate: The Task of Utopia: A Pragmatist and Feminist Perspective . I read it then because it promised to bridge…
-
Varieties of Inequality
I can think of at least six kinds of inequality: [caption id="attachment_3117" align="alignright" width="300"] Hefei, Anhui province in China (Photo by Jianan Lu.)[/caption] Inequality of income: different people receive different wages, either for different jobs…
-
Naturalism and the Truth of Human Values
Peter Levine has been blogging on various aspects of truth recently: democracy in a “post-truth era ,” issues in prediction , and now a piece on scientism : if all truths were scientific truths, we would be…
-
What is the belief you hold that is most likely to be wrong?
Another way of putting this question is: how does your ideology and social setting blind you? One way to answer is to look at those beliefs that you have the most incentive to deceive yourself about.…
-
Status Emotions and Punishment
I haven’t written much about status emotions , recently, but I came across one of my favorite Facebook memes and remembered again how central it seems. I don’t endorse the misogyny here, but it perfectly…
-
What is “Public Philosophy”?
My department invited Sharon Meagher to do a seminar last Friday on how to redirect our energies towards “public philosophy.” Meagher has a great textbook for introducing philosophy through an exploration of urban issues that…