Suchergebnisse

This book offers a model introduction to political philosophy, addressing philosophers from Plato to Rawls and Nozick, with each thinker treated as exploring perennial problems. These include ethical truth, free will, the common good, whether God exists, whether America could become a Hobbesian world sovereign, appeals to nature, free speech, the nature of rights, how one can argue with Nietzsche, whether history is predictable, whether the market can be humanized, and assumed genetic differences between races and genders.When a thinker poses a problem not resolvable at that time, (such as racial equality) modern social science and economics are used to provide answers. There are two persistent themes in this book: namely, that a futile search for ethical truth has drained the original image of the good society (Plato and Aristotle) of its rich content, and that the market has replaced justice as the ordering principle of human society leaving philosophers helpless unless they learn economics.

Millions of educated people all over the world feel powerless in the face of climate change and its consequences, partially because the literature on the environment is so vast it is difficult to know where to begin. This short book is intended to make their search for truth manageable. It allows the reader to isolate the crucial issues and form his or her own opinion, and while it addresses a world audience it has a special reference to New Zealand. Its strongest claim is that there are really two kinds of sceptics we must rebut: not just climate change deniers but also climate engineering deniers. The latter acknowledge the problem of climate change but argue that politicians will never accept large-scale engineering intervention in Earth's climatic system. In No Place to Hide, Professor Flynn argues, however, that we must face the fact that climate engineering is necessary to buy the time to achieve carbon-free energy, and unless this is implemented soon, we will pass a point of no return. We need proposals that governments around the world can accept without committing political suicide

Part I: Human autonomy. Twins and autonomy -- Justice and freedom -- The great debate -- Slow and quick decay of family effects -- Reconciliation with twins and adoptions -- The fairness factor -- Part II: Intelligence. The raven's revolution -- Learning from astronomy -- The meta-theory of intelligence -- Scientific theories of intelligence -- Psychology and Cardinal Bellarmine

1. The problem of ethical scepticism -- 2. The significance of ethical scepticism -- 3. Jefferson and James -- 4. Hobbes and modern natural right -- 5. Aristotle and the status of ideological appeals -- 6. Von Wright and the naturalistic fallacy -- 7. The problem of the moral hero.

Beyond Patriotism argues that some millions of Americans have become "post-national" people who put the good of humanity ahead of patriotism or national honour. It discusses the decisions that led them from the Vietnamese War, to the attempt to put Pol Pot back into power, to the sanctions against Iraq. Rather than lamenting the hay day of patriotism, post-national people should congratulate themselves on attaining moral maturity. They should clarify their thinking about why nationalism is bankrupt, what American should do to pacify the world, what they owe to their native land, and what they owe to themselves.

Beyond Patriotism argues that some millions of Americans have become "post-national" people who put the good of humanity ahead of patriotism or national honour. It discusses the decisions that led them from the Vietnamese War, to the attempt to put Pol Pot back into power, to the sanctions against Iraq. Rather than lamenting the hay day of patriotism, post-national people should congratulate themselves on attaining moral maturity. They should clarify their thinking about why nationalism is b ...

AbstractThe effects of educational training are only one case of producing two groups (before and after) separated by IQ test performance on easier and harder items. The crux of the issue is whether we know that the causes between groups are genetic if they are differentiated by a Jensen effect and that the causes are environmental if they are differentiated by an anti-Jensen effect. A Jensen effect occurs when the two groups differ more as cognitive tasks become more complex. It is shown that genes vs environment must be diagnosed on a case-by-case basis, not in terms of whether a Jensen effect is present.

AbstractTe Nijenhuiset al. (2019) cite studies that show that training on cognitive tasks produces the largest standardized gains on the easiest items and the smallest standardized gains on the most difficult items. They note that this creates an anti-Jensen effect, and use this as a trump that is supposed to show that my basketball examples are irrelevant. I use a new basketball example that is compatible with those studies. It assumes that at some point improvement on the easy skills 'stalls' – and all that is left is some improvement on the hard skills. Therefore, further environmental enhancement means the higher level skill gap is increased, which gives a classic Jensen effect, which shows that the presence of such does not entail genetic causality. The difference is that we really can produce virtually optimum basketball skills while for cognition, we are still well short. I also address the problem of why IQ gains over time do not show an anti-gpattern. After all, they are environmentally caused, and 'should' do so if an anti-gpattern and environmental causes go together.

From 1971 to 1984, the Israeli Defence Forces administered two tests unaltered that qualify as IQ tests. These were the Matrices and the Instructions tests. The former is an adaptation of Raven's Progressive Matrices, similar to the original in that there are clusters with progressive difficulty and an escalation of difficulty throughout the test. The raw score range is from 4 to 35. The Instructions test is adapted from the old US Army Alpha Instructions Test and is described as an Otis-type verbal test. It includes 21 open-ended instructions. Typical items: write the last letter of the word which is the opposite of black; write the third letter of the largest word among the following four words; find the word beginning and ending with the same letter and write that letter. There are similar questions using numbers rather than letters. Both tests are timed, and most subjects do not complete either. There is no penalty for wrong answers (Col. Moshe Even-Chen, personal communication, 14 March 1990; Gal, 1986, pp. 79 and 95; Judy Goldenberg, personal communications, 4 March 1991 and 25 April 1993).

'From a black perspective…the notion that a black (who passes for white) might reclaim his ethnic identity to take advantage of preferential admissions can only trigger an almost inexpressible sense of outrage.' (Livingston, 1979)'Turning an elephant loose in a crowd offers everyone, except the beast and his rider, equal opportunities of being trampled.' (Tawney, 1931)