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About this site
Selfie with Martin Heidegger’s Cabin
I’m slow with new posts as I’m trying to make a book based on the material from this blog. So be patient!
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Recent Posts
- Everything under control 20/12/2021
- The Fable of the Fable of the Bees: Private Hubris, Public Scarcity 13/12/2021
- What kind of science is afforded by technology? 13/04/2021
- The language of the voiceless: Some questions about ecological ethics 17/01/2021
- Social change and moral values: A modest research program to change the world 12/01/2021
- The Myths of the Nation-State 08/01/2021
- Responsibility in a complex world 17/12/2020
- Green shame 06/10/2020
- The stories we tell ourselves 30/09/2020
- The problem of polarization: the sense and nonsense of debates about new technology 31/05/2020
- Climate Change, Covid-19, and the Apocalypse 05/05/2020
- The idealistic fallacy of the autonomous self 22/04/2020
- The corona crisis as the big degrowth experiment 13/04/2020
- The moral charge of made institutions 07/04/2020
- The value of values: What ethics can learn from the corona crisis 05/04/2020
- Some chattering about the public debate on social media 11/03/2020
- Issues in the relationship between science and politics 23/02/2020
- Making things and discourses. An answer to the question: What is philosophy? 16/02/2020
- The eternal Golden Age: The discursive corruption of the Dutch self-image 07/02/2020
- A new way for the political left: Towards a wiser and richer society? 27/01/2020
- The amorality of organizations 05/01/2020
- Causes versus understandings: Why self-driving cars may not be a good idea 11/12/2019
- The Forgotten Virtue of Forgiveness in the Public Domain 25/11/2019
- Thinking with words and thinking with things 06/11/2019
- The romantic ideal of our illusory evolution 25/10/2019
- Free will exists because we want it to 11/09/2019
- The state of technology and society in a world without borders 20/08/2019
- About Privacy, Poo and Cyberspace 09/07/2019
- Optimization machines: The peculiar reversal of rationality 20/04/2019
- A hero like Hirschman and the turns in transition thinking 08/04/2019
- Can you call a politician fascist? Narratives, accountabilities and the ‘benefit of the doubt’ 28/03/2019
- Is moral change possible? 21/03/2019
- How do we settle the climate problem? 14/03/2019
- Moral senses of the individual and the social self 24/02/2019
- Misunderstandings about the freedom of speech: About the rules for the public debate 16/02/2019
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Recent Posts
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Author Archives: Udo Pesch
The Fable of the Fable of the Bees: Private Hubris, Public Scarcity
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandstalige versie van deze post] Following Bernard de Mandeville’s parable from long ago, neoliberal thinking sees people as ‘bees’ that compete for scarce resources. That competition is believed to bring out the best in people. This … Continue reading
What kind of science is afforded by technology?
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze tekst] To a certain extent, science is the application of technology that helps to arrive at new knowledge. First of all, scientists use instruments to experiment with and to measure. But also, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Actor network theory, Affordance, ANT, big data, H index, science, Technology
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The language of the voiceless: Some questions about ecological ethics
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] We humans are not who we thought we were, not nearly as rational, unique and intentional as we imagined ourselves to be. Instead, we are intrinsically connected with all the life … Continue reading
Social change and moral values: A modest research program to change the world
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] In order to bring about desirable social change, it is necessary to know what is morally desirable and what is social change. Unfortunately, ethics and social sciences fall short here: ethics … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Backflow, Durkheim, Ethics, Framing, Hegel, Institutions, Intersubjective reality, Moral uncertainties, Moral values, Overflowing, Pluralism, Social change, Sociology, Value change, Values
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The Myths of the Nation-State
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Commentaries on geopolitical developments often seem to start from a classical understanding of the nation-state, which is based on the convergence of central government, the idea of cultural-social unity and a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Community, Countries, Energy transition, Family, Fossil fuel, Geopolitical analysis, Nation-states, Nations, Networks
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Responsibility in a complex world
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Responsibility has many facets, and it is typical of our current moral system that those facets interact so that people can be held responsible for their individual choices. This makes it … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Accountability, accountability structures, Causality, Complexity, Foregiveness, Individual, Institutions, Regret, Responsibility
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Green shame
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] There’s an increasing amount of talk about ‘green shame’: the negative emotion you experience when you make choices that are not environmentally friendly. Wouldn’t it be sensible to stimulate this emotion … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Choice, Ecoconsumerism, Emotions, Green shame, Moral tribalism, Norms, Shame, Societal debate, Sustainability
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The problem of polarization: the sense and nonsense of debates about new technology
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] In debates about new technologies, one camp usually entertains unrealistic expectations of the benefits, while an opposed camp comes emphasizes the dangers that are just as unrealistic. This gives rise to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 5G, Claims, Debate, Deliberative democracy, Democracy, Expectation, Expectations, Gossip, Innovation, New technology, Pluralism, Polarization, Promises, Realism, Techno-optimism, Technology, Technophobia
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Climate Change, Covid-19, and the Apocalypse
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] All too often, the climate problem is presented in apocalyptic terms. That is unjustified, because we have long been dealing with the ecological and social effects of climate change. Moreover, such … Continue reading
The idealistic fallacy of the autonomous self
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] As a counterpart to the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ you could speak of the ‘idealistic fallacy’, which − strangely enough – seems not have been introduced yet in ethics. This fallacy boils down … Continue reading
The corona crisis as the big degrowth experiment
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Until recently, the deliberate shrinking of the economy seemed only an unrealistic hypothesis. However, the corona crisis offers opportunities to take concrete steps towards such a ‘degrowth’ economy. However, the idea … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Basic income, Corona, Coronacrisis, Debt, Decroissance, Degrowth, Donut economy, Economics, Envy, Innovation, Institutions, Postcorona economy, Social experiment, Steady state economy, Sufficiency, Suffizienz, Sustainability, Sustainable innovation, Tim Jackson
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The moral charge of made institutions
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] The free market, representative democracy and modern science can be seen as institutions that were once designed to guard important moral conditions. The individuals who function within those institutions are forced … Continue reading
The value of values: What ethics can learn from the corona crisis
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] The corona crisis has led to a recalibration of the major social values in most countries. These values were traded off and subsequently action has been taken. In principle, ethics would … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Analytic philosophy, Collective choice, Continental philosophy, Contingency, Corona, Covid-19, Crisis, Deconstructivism, Deliberative democracy, Democracy, Dignity, Ethics, Habermas, Moral truths, Moral values, Nietzsche, Nihilism, Objectifation, Rawls, Relativism, Rorty, science, Social change, Values
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Some chattering about the public debate on social media
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Isn’t it the case that the public debate has shifted from conventional media to social media – from paper to digital. After all, everyone can make themselves heard on the internet. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Cambridge analytica, Community, Facebook, Gossip, Inclusivity, Norms, Pluralism, Public debate, Social media, Tribalism, Twitter
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Issues in the relationship between science and politics
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Issues in the relationship between science and politics Political controversies such as climate change, vaccination or nitrogen deposition show that knowledge issues within a political context are not about valid knowledge … Continue reading
Making things and discourses. An answer to the question: What is philosophy?
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] For a long time I had to think about what philosophy actually is as a field of study. I know the familiar definitions, but those are just salespitches. They do not … Continue reading
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Tagged Discourse, Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant, Philosophy, Reification, Social-constructivism, Structuralism
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The eternal Golden Age: The discursive corruption of the Dutch self-image
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] The Netherlands is often seen as a very tolerant country, where the right to individual self-determination comes first. The roots of Dutch tolerance and the desire for freedom are believed to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Debate, Discourse, Discursive corruption, Dutch, Freedom, Golden age, History, National identity, The Netherlands, Tolerance
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A new way for the political left: Towards a wiser and richer society?
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Given today’s problems, you could expect left-progressive parties to be successful, because they focus on today’s major political issues: justice and sustainability. But they have no success at all. Perhaps because … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Competition, Emancipation, Equality, Justice, Neo-liberalism, Progressive left, Protest, Social Democracy
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