Philosophy & Ethics

The other day I went to a talk about the fall and revival of metaphysics, given by Sebastian Kolodziejczyk at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Metaphysics these days has a bad reputation, even among philosophers, so I was aware of its 'fall' but I was rather curious about the possibility of a 'revival'. I came out of the lecture without much conviction that the 21st century is going to see anything like a resurrection of metaphysics. Metaphysics, of course, is that classical branch of philosophy that deals with the fundamental nature of the world. Or is it? That was…

Some of Hezbollah’s social institutions are functionally better than similar US institutions, and they function better because of science and our information age’s role in enhancing social, economic, and political domains on our Earth.  Thomas Rid and Marc Hecker’s recently published War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the Information Age. Their book argues how the information age initially benefits insurgencies first, before counterinsurgencies. Amidst proving how information benefits Hezbollah, the authors talk about three main ideas which have made tremendous, institutional impact on…

It is obvious that life is filled with choices and we often go to great lengths to explore different possible outcomes or scenarios when attempting to make decisions.  However what is choice and how does it relate to free will? It would seem that choices may be divided up into several categories, but in particular we have those that are: 1.  Direct choices, or command decisions where we intentionally make a determination about a particular outcome, perhaps after weighing options. 2.  Indirect choices occur when we simply respond to a situation without necessarily thinking…

Being a skeptic is a rather lonely art. People often confuse you for a cynic, and I’m not using either term in the classical philosophical sense, of course. In ancient Greece, the cynics were people who wished to live in harmony with nature, rejecting material goods (the root of the word means “dog-like,” and there are various interpretations as to its origin). The Western equivalent of Buddhist monks, if you will. The skeptics, on the other hand, were philosophers who claimed that since nothing can be known for certain the only rational thing to do is to suspend judgment on everything.…

Years back, conversing with a now long-retired dean, I happened to let slip the words “common sense.” He replied, “It’s been a long time since I heard that phrase uttered on this campus, much less seen it practiced.” He had a point. Nonetheless, when in later years I was in charge of the university’s Institutional Review Board, overseeing inter alia our researchers’ ethical treatment of human subjects, I urged a light touch tempered by common sense. (I’m a management researcher who groks that subjects are unlikely to be traumatized by being asked what…

    In December of 2006, two coinciding events occurred.  Saddam Hussein's death was youtubed and Bill Gates published an article in Scientific American called "A Robot in Every Home".  It was a telling time in that two public 'medias' unexpectedly created a new perspective on technology and war: Robots would eventually live alongside humans, and humans, if not physically, would live technologically closer to war.    In one instance, a cellphone captured Hussein's hanging.  This exemplified a new role of technology in the public view of wartime. …

Informed consent is tricky business because there are disagreements about what informed consent can mean outside the country of the company conducting the trial and people will grant a lot of consent if they believe a treatment can help them, which can lead to exploitation. One item that is not a topic of heavy debate is financial interest disclosures.  Everyone seems to agree they are important but there are no comprehensive guidelines governing it.  In an age of increased demand for transparency, conflict of interest information is regarded as vital, including relevant financial…

Scientists are often assumed to be obsessed by definitions. After all, if you cannot precisely define a concept, say what a planet is, or what a biological species is, you literally don’t know what you are talking about, and how can you then possibly do science using that very same concept? And yet, the practice of science is very different, and to a surprising extent does not seem to depend on definitions of its objects of study. Take the recent brouhaha concerning whether Pluto should be considered a planet or a different kind of celestial object (a captured asteroid perhaps, or a…

Sometimes people are attracted to strange things. I still have trouble figuring out how people procreated in the 1970s and 80s - the hair, the moustaches, boys wearing those teeny short shorts - yuck. Apparently, butterflies are no different. Or so says a retired zoologist in a surprising PNAS article. There's a lot going on in that first paragraph, so I'll walk you through it slowly. First: moustaches, feathered hair, boy short shorts. Disgusting. How the human race didn't dress itself out of existence is beyond me. Second: butterflies. I've always wanted to use "freaky-deaky" in an article…

If you have a Facebook page (we do) or any social media account, you may post varying amounts of personal information you want to share online with family, friends and colleagues - but a new study presented recently in Barcelona at the Workshop on Online Social Networks, part of the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Data Communications, has found that the practices of many popular social networking sites typically make that personal information available to companies that track Web users' browsing habits and allow them to link anonymous…