social
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The Art of Rhetoric: Working through the challenges and disagreements that arise from our shared lives. Series 4.3.
In my previous post, I suggest Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion are complementary reads. Why? Because a study of Haidt’s moral theory alongside Kahneman’s work on our cognitive/perceptual errors and biases might well make the barriers to both offering and receiving criticism Continue reading
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Thinking, Fast and Slow. (And 2 worries.)Series 4.2.
Some of my books have well-worn pages, others are falling apart from use. The books I use heavily are usually those I think worth giving others. And so I do. I peruse used-book shops and thrift stores to stock my library with multiple copies. This way, I often have a book on hand to share. If Continue reading
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The Righteous Mind. Series 4.1.
My husband, Paul, and I host a weekly reading group. We read one book in the fall, another in the spring. This past spring we read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind which, week after week, generated the best discussions we’ve had to date. (Note that I’m not doing a comprehensive book review here.) Haidt notes that Continue reading
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The day the Russians nuked my sawmill camp. A survivor’s memoir.
Prelude: After 44 years, my memory of this late cold-war-era event is not perfect. But it left an impression that planted seeds for my future interest in social epistemology, the social dimension of knowledge. Perhaps as something like Y2K will do for others. ‘Epistemic’ means pertaining to what we know, how we know, and so Continue reading
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Social Epistemology, 5 Short Examples (suitable for a class)
You can’t fact check every little thing and still have friends. Can you imagine what a jerk I’d be if I insisted on fact checking everything everyone says to me? Tammy: I went to the mall this morning. Pam: Did you now. Which mall? Tammy: THE mall. The only mall in town. Pam: How do Continue reading
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Community and Alienation, 4 Vignettes
A Community of Sufferers* I’m having a meal with my husband at a pub in Bristol, delighting in the warm and jovial conversation of the three older men having a pint at the neighbouring table. By their camaraderie, I assume they’ve had a long history together, probably meeting at this very pub over many years. As Continue reading
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Five Human Commonalities. Intro by Thomas Hobbes.
Intro. We are equally vulnerable. Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind, as that, thought there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man and man [and woman*] is not so considerable Continue reading
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