Tag: identity

  • Categories: Limited; Inevitable; Necessary

    By Kevin Currie-Knight ___ “I wonder if we will ever stop putting people into these categories. Could we ever just allow people to be individuals?” The student said this as we were talking after class. What started off as a conversation about class, where we were discussing the politics of banning books in schools, became…

  • ‘Identify’

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Until about five minutes ago, if you’d asked me what some customary uses of ‘identify’ are, I would have given three: [A] Where one expresses sympathy for and solidarity with a group to which one does not belong, as in, “I identify with the plight of Afghan women, in the…

  • Helen Joyce on her NEW book: Trans — When Ideology Meets Reality

    by Daniel A. Kaufman _____ I talk with Helen Joyce, British editor of The Economist, about her new book: Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (Simon & Schuster). https://youtu.be/YW9aPRyKnZk 5:00 The overall aim of Helen’s new book. 11:20 The history and evolution of our conception of being transgender. 27:30 The current conception of being transgender, and…

  • Two Kinds of Diversity: Identity and Ideological

    by Robert Gressis ___ Libertarians, like Robert Nozick, care most of all about negative freedom, i.e., freedom from interference. If you have little money, but the appropriate agency protects you from force and fraud, then you have negative freedom, even if you find yourself unable to do much of what you want to do. Consequently,…

  • Caring and Catering

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Recently, I was involved in an exchange between several philosophers, on the subject of conversations between ethical vegans and meat eaters about the rightness or wrongness of eating meat. The following remarks by one of the participants caught my attention: “…it definitely seems gauche to defend eating meat while eating…

  • THREE NEW BOOKS: tWO — jULIA GALEF’S “THE SCOUT MINDSET”

    By Kevin Currie-Knight ____ Early in her book, The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t (Portfolio, 2021), Julia Galef comes right out and says: “Motivated reasoning is so fundamental to the way our minds work that it’s almost strange to have a special name for it; perhaps it should just…

  • Twenty-Five Things Everyone Used to Understand

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ What strikes me more than anything about our current moment is how utterly alien the dominant zeitgeist is from that of just a few decades ago. Increasingly, I find myself unable even to comprehend people’s reactions to social, political, and cultural developments, let alone identify with them. This rather abrupt…

  • The Power of words

    by Miroslav Imbrišević ____ In the Old Testament, we read: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” God could make things happen by saying the appropriate words. We also read in the Bible: “In the beginning was the Word.” The idea that words have power is still with us. Take superstition:…

  • On Sex and Gender Identity: Perspectives from Biology, Neuroscience and Philosophy

    by Laeti Harris, Louise Moody, and Pam Thompson ____ Introduction This essay will explore the material qualities and political significance of the sexed human body, which has evolved in the service of sexual reproduction, although is not limited to that purpose. Our exploration is motivated by the relatively recent emergence in western cultures of campaigns…

  • Some Things to Keep in Mind When Engaging with the Gender Identity Debate

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ The political battle over sex and gender continues to escalate, with increasingly consequential results. Adolescents and pre-teens are finding themselves confronted with opposite-sexed bodies in changing rooms, toilets, and other places where they undress.[1] Female athletes are watching their potential fortunes dim in competition. [2] Homosexuals are being criticized and…