Suggested readings, 3 January 2021

Here are some interesting articles I've read over the past week I think are worth checking out.

Michael Clifford, “Irish laws on drugs need to grow up.” 26 Dec, Irish Examiner.

"Criminalising possession of a small amount of cannabis in today’s world serves no purpose other than to take a sledgehammer to the cornerstone of the drug war."

W. D. Budinger, “'Nuclear' Shouldn't Frighten You.” 29 Dec, Persuasion.

"Some environmental campaigners still insist on a decades-old horror of reactors that traces back to a justified hatred of nuclear bombs. But that has never been warranted for energy plants. If they -- and all of us -- are to find a way out of our climate crisis, we must recognize that we already have a large part of the solution."

Julia Hollingsworth, “Coronavirus has been with us for a year. Here's what we still don't know.” 29 Dec, CNN.

Good overview of what we know (and don't know) about Covid-19.

Zeynep Tufekci, “The Mutated Virus Is a Ticking Time Bomb.” 31 Dec, The Atlantic.

"[A] more transmissible variant is in some ways much more dangerous than a more severe variant. That’s because higher transmissibility subjects us to a more contagious virus spreading with exponential growth, whereas the risk from increased severity would have increased in a linear manner, affecting only those infected."

Johan Norberg, “Why 2020 was the fourth best year in history.” 27 Dec, The Spectator.

"Despite a pandemic and a global lockdown, the share in chronic hunger right now is a quarter less than it was in 2000, child mortality has declined by 40 per cent and extreme poverty by two thirds."

Michael Huemer, “Ideology Isn’t About Ideas.” 2 Jan, Fake Nous.

Philosopher Michael Huemer argues that ideology isn't about ideas, but about personality, genes and tribalism.

Comments

Should We Use Neuroenhancement Drugs to Improve Relationships?

A version of this article was printed in Humanism Ireland , July-August, Vol. 147 (2014) L ove, it is fair to say, is probably the strongest emotion we can experience. It can come in many different forms: love of one’s parent, sibling, or child. Though most people consider romantic relationships—which include companionship, sexual passion, intimacy, warmth, procreation and child-rearing—as the most significant component of one’s life; and it is probably the thing we find discussed more than anything else in novels, films and music. Committed romantic relationships tend to occur within the institution of marriage—something that is ubiquitous to most, if not all, cultures. Indeed, relationships today, which are primarily love-driven, are not just confined to marriages, as many couples sustain relationships outside of wedlock. Being in a love-driven relationship is considered important for most people, as it contributes to happiness—something we a...

Is Adult Incest Wrong?

An version of this article was printed in Humanism Ireland , March-April, Vol. 151 (2015) Incest is something most people find morally objectionable and it's one of the most common of all cultural taboos. The British Medical Association’s Complete Family Health Encyclopaedia (1990) defines incest as “ intercourse between close relatives,” that usually includes “intercourse with a parent, a son or daughter, a brother or sister, an uncle or aunt, a nephew or niece, a grandparent or grandchild.” The Oxford English Dictionary ’s definition is a little broader: it doesn’t confine incest to just intercourse, but to “sexual relations between people classified as being too closely related to marry each other.” Most countries have some kind of law against incest—though consensual adult incest is not a crime in France, Spain, Russia the Netherlands, and a host of countries in South America. In England and Wales, however, t he Sexual Offences Act 2003 ...

Intuitions and Ethics

A version of this article was printed in Humanism Ireland , May-June, Vol. 146 (2014) The notion that our moral intuitions possess epistemic authority has been associated with a number of philosophers within the canon of Western thought. Roughly speaking, these thinkers have argued that our intuitions have recourse to a unique authority of perception that yields special access to a sphere of moral legitimacy. Others, however, have claimed that our intuitions are incredibly diverse and often conflict with each other—for example, your intuition says assisted suicide is morally permissible and my intuition says it’s wrong. But it seems the two contrasting intuitions cannot both be right. At the same time, most of us think our own moral intuitions are right : they do not seem inconsistent to us, and we have a strong sense to believe them. Accordingly, they strike us as correct. Undoubtedly, moral intuitions can be shaped by our particular culture, environment or co...

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