Review: Bertrand Russell’s ‘In Praise of Idleness’

In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays by Bertrand Russell My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews To some, or perhaps to many, it may seem a radical idea: idleness. But for the great British logician, mathematician, and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell, idleness is seen as a historically rooted concept which ties …

‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’: Epistemology, Feedback Loops and the Science of Bias and Human Irrationality

R.C. Smith If we take as a stated assumption, based off the growing body of science, that prejudice is pervasive - that human irrationality is, to put it philosophically, a central theme in the human struggle toward a rational society - I think one of the lessons is epistemological in form. Its basic reduction is …

Social Pathology, Philosophy of Reason and Bloom’s “Against Empathy” – On Science, Ethics, and Knowledge

R.C. Smith To think of ethics is likely today to evoke the idea of empathy. Similarly, in the context of many mainstream discourses within social theory, to think of empathy is often to evoke philosophical consideration in the field of radical ethics. The same is true with the order of terms reversed. It is not …