When I criticize someone for doing something that I would do myself, I am a hypocrite because my criticism typically implies the pretense that I wouldn't. The same glass house logic applies to hypocrisy itself. Unless I have absolute certainty that I would never be hypocritical, which I practically cannot have, I cannot judge anyone of being hypocritical because this would make me meta-hypocritical, that is, hypocritical about my own hypocrisy. … [Read more...]

The distinction between statistics and the individual is among the most far-reaching concepts of the modern world. We can view everything from science and its philosophy to politics, ethics, and economics in the light of that distinction. Recall that statistics is about averages, trends, and patterns that emerge from large numbers (effects of scale), whereas the individual, though it may appear in a statistic as a data point, escapes most typical methods of quantification. This has … [Read more...]

Is criticizing capitalism and campaigning for redistributive justice with an oppressor/oppressed narrative equivalent to endorsing the revival of ethnic cleansing, forced deportations to Gulags, political purges, and terror-starvations for the sake of a classless, communist society? Is preserving one's ethnicity and not wanting increasingly more tax money to be spent on social benefits for immigrants equivalent to wanting to expand the Third Reich by invading neighboring countries while … [Read more...]

Why do we use moral language? Hello, I'm Dom and I am a human. Like other humans, I play the language-game of morality. I say things like, "Lying is bad," "You ought not to steal," "Rape is immoral," "Sadistic psychopaths are evil," "Abortion is ethical," "Euthanasia is morally right," and "A government should express the will of the people." But why do I talk like that? What am I trying to communicate with such statements? More generally, what's the use of moral words? Let's look at six … [Read more...]