Law & Society Blog

There have been a gross number of critiques of Wikipedia, the encyclopedic source online that anyone can edit. Most of them have been sourly negative, because the Wiki system has certain disadvantages. A common (and correct) complaint is that experts are not given incentives to participate in the process of making great articles, and are […]

There are a couple of different ways to look at power.
Sociology is supposedly divided into two camps: “conflict” theorists and “consensus” theorists. As far as I can tell, this means that some people enjoy describing society at large as an eternal struggle for egoistic benefits, and others enjoy describing it in terms of voluntary […]

Matt posted a mini-essay recently in the comments section of the “10 Worst Books” thread which I think itself deserves discussion. After musing over a particularily apt headline on “The Onion”, he writes:
The central premise of American government is that all legitimate power flows from the Constitution. And yet the Constitution is not a self-executing […]

/// What follows is the final installment of a series of examinations of utilitarianism from Harwood’s seminal essay, “Eleven Objections to Utilitarianism”, along with my demonstrations of how these objections are unsound. Previous installments address such topics as integrity, justice, promise-keeping, supererogation, average and total utilitarianisms, rule utilitarianism, and hedonism. ///
10. Utilitarianism makes interpersonal comparisons […]

/// What follows is a piece which presents a series of examinations of utilitarianism from Harwood’s seminal essay, “Eleven Objections to Utilitarianism”, along with my demonstrations of how these objections are unsound. Previous installments address such topics as integrity, justice, promise-keeping, supererogation, average and total utilitarianisms, and rule utilitarianism. As the objections get more and […]

The outcome of a stronger analysis, I think, is that while total utilitarianism cannot be soundly accused of absurdity, it may be lacking in other ways.

Over at X-Philosophy, posts are centered around the Knobe effect like tornados around Kansas. The Knobe effect is essentially the idea that moral intuitions muddle with peoples’s attributions of intention to the acts of others. (I’ve offered some philosophical objections there previously. Rise from your grave, Kohlberg.) For various reasons, the effect is quite puzzling.
Recently, […]

/// What follows is a peice which presents a series of examinations of utilitarianism from Harwood’s seminal essay, “Eleven Objections to Utilitarianism”, along with my demonstrations of how these objections are unsound. It is continued from here. ///
2. The hero objection. The second objection is that utilitarianism removes the possibility of supererogation — that is, […]

Beyond the fulfillment of basic needs, what we know about human happiness is limited to those with whom we are most intimately familiar. It should not be a surprise that a scenario which effectively postulates omniscience will produce unintuitive results. On this view, we do have options. They arise out of uncertainty about the best means of achieving the utiliarian goal. Strike out the uncertainty, and one’s duties become clear.

Courtesy of Eszter Hargittai from Crooker Timber.
The brainy brains at gapminder have produced an incredible flash tool which allows one to appreciate the surface gloss of relevant statistics on human development worldwide. My utilitarian modernist heart clicks with dull satisfaction at the progress that’s evident. Somebody clearly put a lot of work into this tool, […]