Philosophy – Page 2 – Blogs Don't Burn

October 30, 2019January 9, 2021

“Let the Mad Dog Bark!” – On the Social Media Ban of Alex Jones and InfoWars

Backlog: this article was written August 23rd 2018

An issue which has been doing the rounds recently online, but which has so far failed to attract much mainstream media attention in the UK, is the decision by three major tech companies – YouTube, Apple and Facebook, to ban the controversial content of Alex Jones and his site InfoWars. Those unfamiliar with Alex Jones and his work should probably take a few moments to count themselves lucky.

InfoWars is an online hotbed of frenzied political rhetoric and elaborate conspiracy theories, which in the past have included claims such as that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, that Barack Obama is the global head of Al-Qaeda, that the U.S. Government is using juice boxes to “make children gay”, and that the U.S. Air Force has in the past created weaponized tornadoes in the Midwest as part of an enduring geo-war against the American people. Come to think of it there may just be a H.G. Wells-style short story in that last one…

October 27, 2019January 9, 2021

“Winning the War of Ideas”: Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris and Douglas Murray in Conversation at the O2 Arena

Backlog: this review was written shortly after the live event on 16th July 2018 at the London 02 Arena, which I attended.

A couple of years ago, it would have been unthinkable that the O2 would host an event bearing more similarity to a lecture than a rock concert. It would be a further leap of implausibility, then, to imagine such an event drawing in almost eight thousand people, with a queue of not-just-university types stretching all the way out of the door. The event consisted of three men, on stage, simply talking – a format which is bound to have raised a few eyebrows at the O2 planning department! As Sam Harris joked, “It is especially flattering to us that Justin Bieber isn’t coming out to perform in the middle of this.”

Jordan Peterson has expressed a similar amazement at his own meteoric rise to fame. Going from a largely unknown Canadian Psychology Professor at the University of Toronto two years ago, he has since become one of the most well-known and sought after public intellectuals on the planet. Peterson can be seen everywhere; on national television, podcasts, public debates, YouTube channels, radio shows and more. His biggest UK feature so far has been the (now infamous) Channel 4 interview with Cathy Newman, which went viral after their heated exchange led to much online ridicule for Channel 4.

October 20, 2019January 9, 2021

The Science of Morality

A review of The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris (2010).

This provocative book written by neuroscientist, philosopher and public intellectual Sam Harris makes the ambitious argument that Science can (and should) be used as a tool to determine human values. It’s a controversial thesis, one that has unsurprisingly stepped on quite a few intellectual toes since the books publication!

Harris’ claim that scientific enquiry can discover objective moral truths is grounded in a position of ‘consequentialist morality’ (meaning the consequences of moral ideas to human well-being is viewed as the only measure for whether something is good or bad). This type of calculation-based morality is familiar to most people in the form of ‘Utilitarianism’, a narrower (and somewhat nastier) version of consequentialism.