“Titanic Malice” Revisited

Posted on by under ethics, MTSP Discussion: George Sher's Desert

In a post I wrote here back on July 18, 2023, I argued that the Titan submersible accident was “diagnostic of the delusions of our society.” Here’s the first paragraph of the post, emphasis added:

The response to the Titan submersible event has, in my view, been both remarkable and bizarre. Some people have found it an occasion for gallows humor; others have tried to suggest that the crew/passengers felt no suffering as they died. Still others tell us that we should celebrate the heroism of people who take risks to explore the unknown, and point out that civilization itself depends on its bold risk takers. I find all three of these reactions delusional, and diagnostic of the delusions of our society.

It turns out that I was wrong (or likely wrong) about the italicized clause, and that David Potts, who commented on the post, was right. Continue reading →

No One is to Advocate Anything Until I Blow This Whistle

Posted on by under cancel culture, Fatwas, moralism, Palestine

The New York Times has a click-baitish headline about Hamas on the front page, except that unlike most click-bait headlines, this one happens both to be click-bait and true.

“Pro-Palestinian Group at Columbia Now Backs ‘Armed Resistance’ by Hamas”

It’s true. They do. Of course, at this point, a headline like that is a bit like one ca. 1943 that said:

“Pro-Jewish Group at Columbia Now Backs ‘Armed Resistance’ by Stalin’s Red Army”

Or, how about, ca. 1944: Continue reading →

“Sick of the Bullshit”

Posted on by under cancel culture, ethics, Fatwas, moralism, Palestine

It’s ordinarily a violation of the ethics of discourse to use the question-and-answer period of a talk to make a speech rather than ask a bona fide question. A question is a request for information. A request can, as a condition of its intelligibility, require a brief clarification or bit of context-setting, but there’s a difference between that and a speech. 

However, most norms, no matter how stringent, have exceptions. What if, day after day–hundreds or thousands of times across a solid year–the spokesperson for a person in authority engages questioners in egregious, obvious bad faith? What if, day after day, he tells smirking lies about life and death matters, makes up random bullshit at will, and evades the meaning of obvious questions in order to serve up whole stinking, decaying schools of red herrings? What if his bosses are concealing complicity in mass murder, and are about to lead the country into an insane, ill-conceived war (the second one in the last few years), not just on behalf of their own country, but on behalf of a foreign country? Continue reading →

Vote Like It Matters

Posted on by under Election 2024

It’s become a cliché of philosophical commentary on the ethics of voting that voting is prima facie irrational. If you vote as an individual, your vote represents a mere 1/n of the totality of the election, where n represents the total number of voters in the election. If we consider, say, national elections in the United States, then n will be a very large number. Since it is, 1/n represents a tiny number. The tiny number represents a given individual’s contribution to the overall electoral result, the implication being that each individual’s contribution is, qua individual, de minimis. It’s so small that it seems irrational to bother with it. The effort you put in is not worth the result that comes out. Continue reading →

Arrested Princeton Students’ Statement on Court Appearance

Posted on by under cancel culture, General announcements, Palestine

Princeton, New Jersey 
5 months ago, 15 of us were arrested for protesting the University’s complicity in the ongoing genocide against the people of Gaza. 2 of us—both graduate students—were arrested on the 25th of April minutes after the launch of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. 13 of us—Princeton students, researchers, and affiliates—were arrested on the 29th of April for participating in a peaceful protest in a University administrative building. At the time of our arrests, the university barred us from campus and evicted us from university housing, all without formal disciplinary charges. Weeks later, the university conducted a “disciplinary investigation” and sanctioned us with four years of disciplinary probation. One of us, postdoctoral researcher Sam Nastaste, remains barred from campus. These measures are far harsher than Princeton’s response to previous campus protests. 
Continue reading →

Gaza Medical Evacuation Initiative

Posted on by under General announcements, Health Care Series, Palestine

Fajr Scientific, a Texas-based volunteer medical group specializing in surgical procedures, is organizing a series of medical evacuations for Gazan children with complex war injuries. The plan is to evacuate these children from Gaza to the United States and place them in U.S. hospitals “willing to provide essential treatment and support.” I don’t know how many hospital executives read this blog, but if you know any, or know anyone who does, please send this post along to anyone willing to have their hospital participate. Continue reading →

Philip Pettit’s Republicanism: A Series (5/6)

Posted on by under book review, Health Care Series, libertarianism, MTSP Discussion: Philip Pettit's Republicanism, political philosophy

4200 words, 25 minutes’ reading time

For part 1, go here. For part 2, go here. For part 3, go here. For part 4, go here.

5. Pettit on employment-at-will
I said above that I agree in a broad way with Pettit’s critique of employment-at will. Let me put it this way: I agree that employment-at-will, at least as currently practiced in the American labor market, is a highly problematic institution, one that frequently exemplifies domination for just the reasons Pettit gives. But while this may sound like substantial-enough agreement, I think it conceals some subtle but significant disagreement. In this post, I want to work through some of the agreement and the disagreement.

Though Pettit doesn’t put things quite this way, I think we can probably agree that two things make employment-at-will problematic. One is its asymmetric character. The other are the stakes involved when it’s invoked and exercised. Continue reading →

Defiance and Compliance in Princeton (2)

Posted on by under activism, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

Back on September 3, I posted a letter here that I’d sent to Town Topics, a local paper in my hometown of Princeton, New Jersey, asking why the paper hadn’t covered the legal proceedings against the activists who’d been arrested this past April at a Gaza Solidarity event at Princeton University. A staff writer from the paper responded, promising coverage in the future. In the three weeks since then, three issues of Town Topics have come out–September 4th, 11th, and 18th. How well has it delivered? Continue reading →

Philip Pettit’s Republicanism: A Series (4/6)

Posted on by under book review, MTSP Discussion: Philip Pettit's Republicanism

2800 words, 15 minutes’ reading time.
For part 1 of this series, go here. For part 2, go here. For part 3, go here.

4. Pettit on domination
I started out by saying that I have a conflicted–with any luck, instructively conflicted–view of Pettit’s republicanism, and of its application to employment-at-will. I wish I had a single snappy way of describing my conflict, but I don’t. At one level, I agree in principle with Pettit; at another level, I don’t. At one level, I agree with Pettit’s critique of employment-at-will; at another level, I don’t. Let me work through some of this out loud in the hopes that my tangles are instructive to others. Continue reading →