By Daniel A. Kaufman ___ In The Naked Sun (1957), Isaac Asimov imagines Solaria, a low-population world in which residents live on estates so large that one never encounters one’s neighbors in person. As robots are employed in virtually all manner of labor, the only human inhabitants of these estates are their owners. This contrasts... Continue Reading →
by Kevin Currie-Knight ____ Imagine that you are in charge of some workplace. You look around and notice that while you are located in an area chock full of diversity of all kinds – racial, religious, and the like – your staff and customers are quite homogenous. Suppose that in your case, you are concerned... Continue Reading →
by Miroslav Imbrišević ____ Recently I read a definition of ‘Terf’: they are “cis women who deny the womanhood of transwomen.” [https://www.zeit.de/zett/queeres-leben/2022-04/phenix-kuehnert-weiblichkeit-trans-frau]. That made me think about the question of group membership. How do you acquire it? Strangely, it is never through self-ID. Traditionally there are two routes: [1] via the current members; or [2]... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
by David L. Duffy Energy, matter and mind, after Szekely & Rizzo 2017 I have been reading some papers from the philosophy of biology on “causal selection”. That is, the identification of those entities or variables that are the most important explanation of the behaviour of some feature of a complex biological system, which might... Continue Reading →
by Kevin Currie-Knight ___ People differ in all sorts of ways. Most of our differences generally go unnoticed when we interact. For example, with regard to a store clerk yesterday, I didn’t notice what her eye color or dominant hand is. But other differences, as the saying goes, make a difference. Historically and into the... Continue Reading →
by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ Kathleen Stock (Sussex) and I discuss Kathleen's new book, "Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism." Among other things, we talk the implications of switching our focus from Sex to Gender Identity, why Sex remains essential, and the impact of gender identity politics on the gay and lesbian community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2YZwK6TOaw&ab_channel=ElectricAgora... Continue Reading →
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:... Continue Reading →
by Bev Jackson ___ The word 'sex' is having a bit of a moment. Not in the bedroom sense, but in its sense of biological sex, male or female. When J.K. Rowling tweeted “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased,” she ignited... Continue Reading →
