Category
Society & culture
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An outsider can understand a culture, and sometimes better than its own members do
I guide visitors around the Mezquita-Catedral in Córdoba and the old Jewish quarter, in the city where both Ibn Rushd and Maimonides were born. Tourists want a story of three faiths living in harmony, the famous convivencia. I try to tell them…
Started by Rafael Moreno Gálvez7 replies265 views -
Hountondji was right: a people’s worldview is not yet philosophy
I teach philosophy in a Dakar lycée, and every year a student asks why we study Descartes and not ‘African philosophy’. I owe them a serious answer, and the most serious one I know is Paulin Hountondji's. In African Philosophy: Myth and…
Started by Khady Faye7 replies209 views -
Searle’s “X counts as Y in C” leaves out the power that makes people accept it
My fieldwork is in job centres. A person walks in and, after one interview, counts as a jobseeker. The status comes with obligations (attend, apply, report), sanctions if they fail, and a set of things the officer may now do to them.…
Started by Johanna Reinhardt6 replies294 views -
Secular humanism needs no metaphysics, and that is its strength
I teach physics and spend weekends with a rationalist association, exposing tricks presented as miracles in villages around Mangaluru. I'm an atheist, and I call myself a humanist in the modern sense: ethics and meaning without religion. I keep being told that…
Started by Arvind Poojary5 replies266 views -
Critical theory diagnoses domination brilliantly but cannot say why it is wrong
I lecture in economics in Valencia, and Marx, Rawls, Hobbes and Ibn Khaldun share a shelf in my office. I'd like to press an old objection to critical theory and see whether it still bites. Critical theory asks what a set of…
Started by Javier Morales5 replies158 views -
There can be no laws of human behaviour, only useful regularities
I lecture in economics in Valencia, and every year I tell students that the "law" of demand is not a law in the sense the law of gravitation is. Here is the thesis in full. Social science finds regularities. Some are robust:…
Started by Javier Morales5 replies219 views