Science is the pursuit of knowledge according to the scientific method: hypotheses must be testable, and results must be verifiable by replication. Obviously, the more quantifiable something is, the more accurate and precise its measurement can be, and the more accurate and precise something is, the more testable and verifiable it is – it’s hard to test and then verify an uncertain or vague something-or-other.
Could someone without a business degree become a marketing consultant? Then how is it that people without philosophy degrees are becoming ethics consultants? [1] Is it that people don’t know that Ethics is a branch of Philosophy just as Marketing is a branch of Business? Doubtful. Is it just the typical male overstatement of one’s expertise? [2] Perhaps. Is it that people think they already know right from wrong, they learned it as children, there’s really no need for any formal training in ethics? Possible…
Thanks to genetic research, we may soon see people with the money to do so making sure their kids are born-to-succeed – parents paying to guarantee their kids have the right stuff. I’m not talking about a straightened spine or a functional optic nerve. I’m talking about designer kids: those made with healthy bodies, intelligent minds, and perhaps a certain specific ability to boot.
Could someone without a business degree become a marketing consultant? No? Then how is it that people without philosophy degrees are becoming ethics consultants? [1] Is it that people don’t know that Ethics is a branch of Philosophy just as Marketing is a branch of Business? Doubtful.
Transgendered people are often seen as courageous; they have the guts to take radical steps to become the people they really are. But I don’t see them as any different from people, mostly women, who get nip-and-tuck surgeries, botox, and breast enlargements. After all, they too take radical steps to become the people they feel they really are – youthful and sexually attractive.
My guess is that it started well enough, as sensitivity: people realized that terms such as ‘crippled’ and ‘retarded’ had gathered too many negative connotations, had become insults; so they replaced them with new words such as ‘physically challenged’ and ‘mentally challenged’ – words that, because new, would be free of such slant.
What exactly is cultural identity? Is there something fundamentally absurd about claiming as your identity aspects of your self that are mere accidents of birth? Is defining cultural identity as group history irrational because it lacks recognition of the individual?
The proposal to license parents – that is, to require people to obtain a license, by demonstrating certain attributes and/or abilities, before they produce and possibly rear children – is usually rejected, usually quickly and loudly. I contend that this rejection reveals inconsistent thinking, to the extent that certain other regulations already in place are accepted.
The question I’m trying to answer in this paper is ‘What is the humanist view of animal rights?’ I am taking to be ‘the humanist view’ that which is expressed in pamphlets issued by the Humanist Association of Canada.[1] I include in ‘animal rights’ both positive rights, such as the right to pursue interests, and negative rights, such as the right not to be tortured.
I think philosophy is one of the most misunderstood subjects. That it took so long to become a high school course, I think, attests to this. Even within academia, however, there seems to be confusion.
What does it mean to say you’re offended? If it means merely that you disagree with what I have said, then surely we have a right to offend. Surely the freedom of speech allows the expression of dissent.
Thanks to genetic research, we may soon see people with the money to do so making sure their kids are born-to-succeed – parents paying to guarantee their kids have the right stuff. I’m not talking about a straightened spine or a functional optic nerve. I’m talking about designer kids: those made with healthy bodies, intelligent minds, and perhaps a certain specific ability to boot.
I think abortion should be allowed. And I think prenatal harm (especially that caused by ingesting various legal and illegal substances while pregnant) should not be allowed. Some accuse me of hypocrisy or, more accurately, maintaining a contradictory position: either women have the right to control what happens to their bodies or they don’t. No problem. Women, and men, have that right except when it causes harm to someone else: I can move my arms any way I want except straight into your face.
I’m in this world, okay, and the people identify each other by sex. All the time. No kidding. It’s like ‘Female Person Jenkins ‘ and ‘Male Person Ellis’ or ‘Person-with-Uterus Jenkins’ and ‘Person-with-Penis Ellis’, I don’t know the exact translation. But sex-identity is a mandatory prefix. They distinguish males from females. Before they do anything else.
Transgendered people are often seen as courageous; they have the guts to take radical steps to become the people they really are. But I don’t see them as any different from people, mostly women, who get nip-and-tuck surgeries, botox, and breast enlargements. After all, they too take radical steps to become the people they feel they really are – youthful and sexually attractive.
One of the most common – and most serious – weaknesses of codes of ethics, and indeed, most ethical theories, is that they don’t prioritize values. They’re fine for many of the simpler ethical questions, but when goods and interests conflict, when virtues and rights collide, they don’t provide a way to determine which interest, which right, is stronger. For example, it’s all very nice to say that both customers and shareholders are valued, but which is valued more?
What do I see on the horizon, for women? I am not a prophetess - a “Cassandra” - but as a lifelong member of the XX gender, I’m deeply curious, invested, and opinionated about this topic. When Hank Pellissier (IEET managing director) sent me questions that he and James Hughes (executive director) compiled asking for predictions on the future of females, I couldn’t resist. Here are their questions and my responses:
It’s come to my attention that the Superbowl is around the corner. I understand that that’s one bunch of men playing a game with another bunch of men in order to see who wins. The bunch that wins gets a bowl. This is, to me, both intriguing and, paradoxically, boring.
Could someone without a business degree become a marketing consultant? No? Then how is it that people without philosophy degrees are becoming ethics consultants? [1] Is it that people don’t know that Ethics is a branch of Philosophy just as Marketing is a branch of Business? Doubtful.
Discussions about whether or not to legalize assisted suicide often fail to take into account the fact that unassisted suicide is already legal. (Although once considered a crime, it’s now legal in the United Kingdom and in all fifty United States.) Failure to consider this fact means that unless there is a significant difference between assisted suicide and unassisted suicide that justifies prohibiting the former while permitting the latter, one must either accept inconsistency or reconsider.
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