David Chart's Blog

Category: Philosophy

  • Against Meritocracy

    (Warning: Rant Ahead) We are so smug, so secure in our privilege. The clever ones. We understand the world, and we smirk at people who don’t. “How could they be so dumb as to vote for that?” “What on earth were they thinking?” “I could do a better job than that half asleep.” And you…

  • Liberalism and Diversity

    Recently, I have come to think that I have been confusing two desirable situations when thinking about tolerance, diversity, and liberty. Here, I will refer to them as “diversity” and “liberalism”, not because I think that is how the words are generally used (I think a lot of people confuse them), but because I think…

  • The Freedom to Publish and Safe Spaces

    A month or so ago, I wrote an article saying that I disagreed with OneBookShelf’s decision to start refusing to sell “offensive content”. In the discussion of that on my Facebook page, a number of people expressed incredulity at the idea that anyone might have a right to be sold. That comment thread was not…

  • OneBookShelf’s Offensive Content Policy

    On September 1st, OneBookShelf, the company that runs DriveThruRPG, announced an offensive content policy in reaction to the outrage over a product entitled “Tournament of Rapists”. Steve Wieck, the CEO, published a blog post explaining his decision. It is a thoughtful and serious attempt to wrestle with a difficult issue, and one that recognises the…

  • The Dalai Lama

    Today, the Dalai Lama gave a lecture to members of the Japanese Diet, and I was invited to attend. Not, of course, because I’m a member of the Japanese Diet, but one of my students is, and I helped out a little bit with the preparations for the event, so I got an invitation in…

  • The Happiness Hypothesis

    This book is about happiness. It’s based in psychology, and draws on both ancient philosophies and modern empirical findings to discuss what makes people happy. Most of what the author comes up with are things I already do, which might explain why I’m happy. It’s a very interesting book, with a couple of things that…

  • A Place for Consciousness

    This is the book about consciousness that I noted a little while ago, and I’ve just got around to reading it. It’s very good. In the first section, Rosenberg raises most of the problems about consciousness that had occurred to me. In short, no matter how good a physical description you have, there is nothing…

  • Peter Lipton, 1954-2007

    This morning I received an email from one of my friends from my Master’s course at Cambridge, informing me that Peter Lipton, my Ph.D. supervisor, had died. This was a great shock; he was only in his fifties. There are good general obituaries in the Guardian and on the Cambridge Department of History and Philosophy…

  • The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy

    Another fairly self-explanatory title… The series of Cambridge Companions aim to provide a range of scholarly essays on a topic or philosopher, to help advanced students to get to grips with them. Thus, they are introductory from one perspective, but very far from superficial, which makes them an interesting read. One interesting thing about this…

  • Atheism and Agnosticism

    Recently, atheism has become a a major topic of discussion. One of the most notable proponents is Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology and originally author of The Selfish Gene (which is, incidentally, a very good book). The debate has even made it into the Guardian with some frequency. All this attention to the topic makes…