A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Social and ethical issues

  • Collier on Singer

    Paul Collier, who wrote the book The Bottom Billion about global poverty, reviews Singer’s The Life You Can Save and has some interesting criticisms. Though, I think our obligations to the world’s poorest people aren’t simply a matter of altruism; it can be well argued, I think, that we owe them, given some of our Read more

  • Sen. Jim Webb tackles prison reform

    Good for him. I hope something substantive comes of this. Read more

  • Singer and Cowen on poverty

    Interesting “diavlog” between Peter Singer and libertarian economist Tyler Cowen, focusing mostly on Singer’s new book The Life You Can Save. (I mentioned the book here; I still haven’t read it, though I do have a request in at the library.) more about "Singer Cowen", posted with vodpod I think at one point Cowen gets Read more

  • Sexuality, status confessionis, and the ELCA

    I see that Carl Braaten has issued yet another jeremiad against the ELCA. This one is in response to the recently-issued draft social statement on sexuality and the accompanying recommendations. There’s not much new there, with one important exception. Braaten has now decided that the controversy over the full inclusion of LGBT people in the Read more

  • What (if anything) is wrong with ESCR?

    Even if you don’t think (as I don’t) that a just-fertilized embryo is a human person with full moral standing, it’s not unreasonable to feel a bit queasy about embryonic stem cell research. I think philosopher Bonnie Steinbock, in several articles and books, provides one helpful way of thinking about this. Even if embryos don’t Read more

  • Singer on the lives we can save

    Beside his writings on animal liberation and bioethics, Peter Singer is probably best known for his views on the obligations people in the affluent parts of the world have to those living in absolute poverty. His article “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” is a classic in applied ethics; in it, Singer argues that those of us Read more

  • Chew the right thing

    I’m surprised I never came across this before, but philosophers David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton have a terrific series of podcasts called Philosophy Bites, which consist of relatively short interviews with philosophers on various topics of interest. The site is here; it’s also available as a free download on iTunes. So far I’ve listened to Read more

  • Of liberals, libertarians, and utilitarians

    I don’t recall exactly how I came across it, but this is interesting: from a 1975 issue of the New York Review of Books, Peter Singer reviews philosopher Robert Nozick’s libertarian classic Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Surprisingly, Singer suggests that many of Nozick’s criticisms of John Rawls’ redistributionist liberalism hit their mark. In fact, Singer Read more

  • Does the environment need God?

    A lifelong atheist learns to jettison his simplistic views of religion (God as “an old guy sitting in a chair”) when he realizes that something very much like a religious zeal will be required to address the climate crisis. The worry I have here is of Christians being enlisted into providing a religious imprimatur on Read more

  • Is marriage sacred?

    In arguments about gay marriage you sometimes hear suggestions that we should have a strictly civil version of marriage (or union) for the public realm that applies to gay and straight people alike, while leaving “sacred” marriage to religious bodies. This may or may not be a good idea, but what I wonder is whether Read more