Month: November 2016

Fake News and the Internet Shell Game, Michael Lynch at the NYTimes | The Stone

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November 28, 2016

“Only a few days after the presidential election, the Oxford English Dictionary crowned its international word of the year: post-truth. The dictionary defined it as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” To say that the term captured the zeitgeist of 2016 is a lexigraphical understatement. The word, the dictionary’s editors explained, had “gone from being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary.” ”

Read the full article here.

November 29, 2016. Public Discourse Project seminar, Paul Bloom

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Paul Bloom (Psychology and Cognitive Science, Yale)

Location: UCHIm Babbidge Library, 4th Floor, Room 4/209
Title: Against Empathy

Many psychologists, philosophers, and laypeople believe that empathy is necessary for moral judgment and moral action-the only problem with empathyis that we sometimes don’t have enough of it. Drawing on research into psychopathy, criminal behavior, charitable giving, infant cognition, cognitive neuroscience, and Buddhist meditation practices, I’ll argue that this is mistaken. Empathy is a poor moral guide. It is biased, short-sighted, and innumerate-we should try to do without it. We are much better off, in both public policy and intimate relationships, drawing upon a combination of reason and distanced compassion.

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Indigenous Refusals of Settler-Capitalist Notions of Precarity and Aging: The Struggle for Indigenous Elsewheres – Sandy Grande

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Tuesday, November 15th, 4-5:30pm
UCHI Seminar room (Babbidge Library, 4th Floor, Room 4/209)

Sandy Grande (Quechua) is a Professor of Education as well as the Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) at Connecticut College.

This talk is part of the Political Theory Seminar Series.

Democracy and Disagreement by Michael Lynch at UConn Today

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““The best lack all conviction,” William Butler Yeats noted, “while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Rarely has the Irish poet’s famous warning against the perils of dogmatism seemed more apt. As a nation, we are so deeply divided that our disagreements extend past values, past even the facts, to the very meaning of what a fact is. As a result, many in the United States believe there is no point in talking to the other side. Why bother, when you already know you are right and they are wrong?”

Read the full story at UConn Today.

“Democratic Rehab” by Scott F. Aiken and Robert B. Talisse at 3Quarks Daily

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Monday, November 07, 2016

“When we tell people that we write about logic and politics, we let our interlocutors make the big joke. There is no logic in politics! It’s a funny joke, for sure. But it’s also tragic. And the tragedy is double-barreled. First, good reasons should be behind decision making. Without good reasoning, policy will likely be an irrational hash. There may be no logic in politics, but there ought to be. Second, the politics referred to in the quip is the politics of our democracy. And in a democracy what’s true of the politics is often true of the participants. This includes not only the candidates, politicians, lobbyists, and media personalities, but the citizens as well. And it’s hard to deny that we, the democratic citizens, are not users of logic when it comes to politics. The joke’s on us.”

– Read the full article here at 3Quarks Daily