Here you go. 20 minutes long. Transcript included if you prefer to read.
I love the crackle of old recordings.
Bertrand Russell v. F.C. Copelston on the existence of God
– May 7, 2012
Philosophy Archive
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Interesting Deaths
– April 16, 2012
I’m reading a book called “The Book of Dead Philosophers,” which, as the name suggests, describes the deaths of philosophers. I’m not going to go into any more detail than that, other than to cop to the fact that I am a nerd, but I would like to highlight the demise of Chrysippus, if you would be so kind:
There are two stories of his death, both involving alcohol. In the first, he took a draught of sweet wine unmixed with water, was seized with dizziness and died five days later. But the second is even better: after an ass (presumably not his old teacher, Cleanthes) had eaten his figs he cried out to an old woman, “Now give the ass a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs.” Thereupon, he laughed so heartily that he died.
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So what’s the solution?
– March 25, 2012
Ben posted this on Facebook.
I’m at something of a loss as to how to explain the very basic solution to this, but I think the key lies in virtue ethics (which is, I might add, the only sort of ethical code I’ve ever been able to get behind). To wit, do the best you can. The trolley problem never arises in virtue ethics, because it’s silly and irrelevant. Similarly, the problem of absolving yourself from the inevitable guilt that goes along with being a consumer never arises, because you have to consume in order to live. There’s no utilitarian calculus or deontological imperative to guide you. You don’t make decisions in a vacuum, you make them on the fly, and as long as you’re acting without malice you’re pretty much in the clear, regardless of outcome and regardless of overriding motive. People do good things for selfish reasons all of the time. As long as no one gets hurt, who gives a flying fuck?
Ninja edit: I don’t mean for this to sound crass, or to excuse the bad behavior of millions of people who’ve done horrible things in the name of following orders or some such. In fact, I very much encourage people to “Question Authority.” But, I don’t think that people who don’t “Question Authority” are inherently “bad” people, and I don’t think it’s helpful to lump ignorance together with malice.
Riposte by Ben: The point isn’t how to characterize people morally. Regardless of how individuals are characterized or characterize themselves, the “disease” functions. People do get hurt. And I think you’re misinterpreting the use, in the video, of the word “consumerist.” I think he’s talking about the particular kind of particularly destructive and undifferentiating consumerism that structures our social relationships in the going format of global capitalism.
Reply from Tom: I was kinda drunk when I wrote the above. FWIW.
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Zizek talks the Wire
– March 2, 2012
So obviously I’m posting it. In the process of listening to it now. May have some comment to add after. Woot!
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Provocation: Can what distinguishes human beings from other beings be defined “scientifically”? If so, how?
– December 16, 2011
I don’t think that it can be, which really pissed off the folks over at r/psychology. One person proposed that human beings could be distinguished via DNA. Problem is that that would mean that a severed hand would be defined as a human being, no? Or a hair on a hairbrush? A foetus? But I’d like to hear some better arguments…
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The Philosophy of Debt
– November 16, 2011
Mike Konczal has a great post up at Rortybomb about the ways in which progressives should dominate the debate viz. freedom in politics. It centers around the idea that a system in which debt and credit are so highly valued, where a subtle form of coercion is the grease that keeps the gears of society going, should be rejected by people who ostensibly believe in positive rights, like the right to an education. Anyhow, you should really read the whole thing, but I thought this comparison between the effects of debt within the context of a boardroom vs. the context of a person or household was pretty fascinating:
Let’s get the theoretical corporate finance going. Let’s go to Jean Tirole’s masterpiece, A Theory of Corporate Finance. From the summary on debt as a mechanism of governance and incentives for an abstract “firm” (p. 51), debt does the following:
- By taking cash out of the firm, it prevents managers from “consuming” it. That it reduces their ability to turn their “free cash flows” into lavish perks or futile negative net present value investments.
- Debt incentivizes the company’s executives. Manager must contemplate their future obligation to repay creditors on time…this threat of illiquidity has a positive disciplining effect on management. At the extreme…bankruptcy…termination of employment, frustration and stigma…
- Under financial distress, but in the absence of liquidation, the nonrepayment of debt puts the creditors in the driver’s seat. Roughly speaking, creditors acquire control rights over the firm. They need not formally acquire such rights. But they hold another crucial right: that of forcing the firm into bankruptcy. This threat indirectly gives them some control over the firm’s policies…
- Finally, when the managers hold a substantial amount of claims over the firm’s cash flow, debtholding by investors has the benefit of making manager by and large residual claimants for their performance…Put differently, the entrepreneur fully internalizes the increase in profit brought about by her actions.
Very preliminary, but how do these corporate finance incentives change the behavior of citizens who use debt to negotiate their ability to access merit goods? There’s three dimensions on which choices are constrained under debt that we’ll mention from most to least backgrounded. The first is that it limits consumption of a merit good, specifically it limits it to the ability to repay in the long run. A second would be the threat of illiquidity. Instead of the government borrowing and paying over its long time horizon, citizens need to make each monthly payment over a much shorter timeframe. This limits non-work options and further directs labor towards certain types of projects, as Alex mentions in his piece. This goes to the ability to repay in the short-term – a crucial problem for people at the edges of the formal economy.
And last is that when things start to go wrong, coercion becomes foregrounded. Creditors get in the driver’s seat, as they get to dictate terms on which repayment functions. Even if they don’t exercise these rights directly, they can do it by virtue of how miserable they can make life for the “managers.” Which in this case are citizens.
I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered A Theory of Corporate Finance in my many, many months of scouring through books and National Geographics and encyclopedias and Bibles and dictionaries and ( just this week!) my very first Playboy magazine, but it’s now on my radar.
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Slavoj Žižek Occupies Wall Street
– October 11, 2011
Part 2 after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
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The problem in a sentence with the God fight
– August 12, 2011
James Wood on existential questions:
Religion assumes that they are not valid questions because it has already answered them; atheism assumes that they are not valid questions because it cannot answer them.
(h/t EH)
