Today is July 4th, Independence Day in the USA. That is some forty-one days distant from another Independence Day, August 15th, which will be celebrated in India. I have not ‘celebrated’ August 15th for many years. It meant there was a political speech being telecast live; prime ministers spoke of national achievement and sacrifice; IContinue reading “A Tale of Two Independence Days”
Category Archives: Philosophy
Bill Keller and Some Elementary Confusions About Technology and Privacy
Bill Keller argues for a national identification card, urging Americans to ‘get over’ their fears about its abuse: You might start with the Social Security card. You would issue a plastic version, and in it you would embed a chip containing biometric information: a fingerprint, an eye scan or a digital photo. The employer wouldContinue reading “Bill Keller and Some Elementary Confusions About Technology and Privacy”
Ursula Le Guin and Philosophy of Feminism Reading Lists
Ursula Le Guin‘s appearance in a recent conversation I had with some friends about favorite science fiction novels brought back memories of the time I used The Left Hand of Darkness in a class. In the fall semester of 2007, I asked to teach Philosophy of Feminism. I had long wanted to do so, andContinue reading “Ursula Le Guin and Philosophy of Feminism Reading Lists”
Justice Roberts is Playing a Long Game
Time now to tabulate the damage done by yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling in National Federation of Independent Business et al. vs Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services et al. While Justice Roberts has made himself look extremely distinguished, statesmanlike, non-partisan, and touchingly concerned about his place in posterity, an appraisal that I’m sure he was soakingContinue reading “Justice Roberts is Playing a Long Game”
The End is Nigh: The ACA Is Upheld (Sort Of)
Today’s blog post writing hasn’t gone so well. I thought of writing a post on the correspondence between Voltaire and Rousseau, as a way of reminding ourselves of the 300th birth anniversary of the latter, then, perhaps commenting on the connections between Frankenstein and Romanticism, and then finally, noting Aquinas’ resolution of the theological problemsContinue reading “The End is Nigh: The ACA Is Upheld (Sort Of)”
Posner, Apple v. Motorola, James Watt, and the Steam Engine That Couldn’t
Having brought up ‘intellectual property’ yesterday, I figured it might be a good idea to follow-up with a couple of related notes today. First, some interesting news: Judge Richard Posner has ruled that the Apple v. Motorola patent infringement case be dismissed in its entirety. Apple had accused Motorola of violating four of its patents; Motorola hadContinue reading “Posner, Apple v. Motorola, James Watt, and the Steam Engine That Couldn’t”
Nietzsche’s ‘Robber-Genius,’ the Public Domain, and Intellectual Property
‘Intellectual property‘–and its rather ludicrous understanding of it by our modern legal and political regimes–is often a concern of mine on this blog. To this end, I have, for instance, noted David Mitchell’s recounting of the provenance of his novel Cloud Atlas and Schopenhauer’s caustic remarks on the influence of copyright on writing. My choiceContinue reading “Nietzsche’s ‘Robber-Genius,’ the Public Domain, and Intellectual Property”
The Pleasures of Etymology Lessons
A persistent reaction of mine while reading is to react with little starts of pleasure when I encounter a little etymology lesson tucked away in the pages of my read. Recently, for instance, I found out that ‘hornbook‘–referring to treatises that aim to provide balanced summaries of a particular area of legal study–originated in EnglandContinue reading “The Pleasures of Etymology Lessons”
Environmental ‘Luddism’ and Feenberg Contra Technological Determinism
My post yesterday on the debate on the Factories Act of 1844 was written to remind ourselves of the perennial dismissal–in the all-too-familiar language of economic efficiency–of attempts to introduce values pertinent to worker-side regulation in industrial workplaces. As noted, I had borrowed the example from Andrew Feenberg’s Reason and Modernity, his latest book in aContinue reading “Environmental ‘Luddism’ and Feenberg Contra Technological Determinism”
The Factory Act of 1844 and the Economic Inefficiency of Banning Child Labor
One of the dominant threads–sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit–in any modern conversation about employer-side regulation of the workplace (health and safety standards, worker unions etc) is that such constraints are invariably economically inefficient, a burden on the profit-making potential of the enterprise. The parameters for this conversation are drawn from a sparse set consisting of technocraticContinue reading “The Factory Act of 1844 and the Economic Inefficiency of Banning Child Labor”
Samir Chopra 