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About this site
Selfie with Martin Heidegger’s Cabin
I’m slow with new posts as I have been finishing a book based on the material from this blog. This book can now be ordered at Edward Elgar.
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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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Category Archives: Uncategorized
The amorality of organizations
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Organizations are an inseparable part of our social life. Yet they are strange, as they do not fit into the moral system that has been developed since the Enlightenment. In that … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged accountability structures, Actors, Adam Smith, bureaucracy, companies, Democracy, division of labor, Enlightenment, firms, individuals, institutional domains, ministries, Montesquieu, Neo-liberalism, organizations, parliamentary democracy, Responsibility
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Causes versus understandings: Why self-driving cars may not be a good idea
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] To explain human behavior you can start from causes, such as our evolutionary instincts, learned reflexes or statistical regularities. However as we our actions are also informed by the way we … Continue reading
The Forgotten Virtue of Forgiveness in the Public Domain
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] According to Hannah Arendt, the ability to forgive plays an essential role in public life, because participants do not have to feel discouraged about introducing something new – a decision, a … Continue reading
Thinking with words and thinking with things
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Thinking is usually assumed to occur exclusively within the brain. But there is much to be said for also looking at the thought processes that take place outside of the brain. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged BCI, Brain, Cognition, craftsmanship, craftsmen, education, flynn effect, imposter syndrome, Intersubjective reality, Language, science, sketching, smart drugs, Technology, things, thinking
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The romantic ideal of our illusory evolution
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] There is the tendency to place the essence of being human in our prehistoric past, the period in which man evolved. Evolutionary psychologists make decisive statements about who we are and … Continue reading
Free will exists because we want it to
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] It is not always clear that free will is not a mere physical phenomenon that obeys natural laws, which leads to confusion about the status of free will. But free will … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Consciousness, Determinism, Enlightenment, Ethics, Free will, Intentionality, Language, Self
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The state of technology and society in a world without borders
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Political thinking often assumes an antagonism between state and society. Just as often, the role of technology is fundamentally ignored. However, modern information technologies such as the internet bring about changes … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Borders, Citizenship, ICT, Imaginaries, Nationalism, Politics, Public, Society, Technology
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About Privacy, Poo and Cyberspace
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] With the rise of digital technology, privacy is increasingly seen as a matter of managing and protecting personal information. Our intuitions about privacy, on the other hand, are not formed by … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Cars, Crap, Cyberspace, Data protection, Data security, Excretion, Feces, Home, Identity, Poo, Privacy, Public/private distinction, Secrets, Self-control, Social media, Toilet, Vulnerability
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Optimization machines: The peculiar reversal of rationality
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] The rational individual is an ‘optimization machine’ who chooses the right means to achieve a given goal. A problem is that people turn out to be not rational at all, which … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Autonomy, Biases, Bounded rationality, Choice architectures, Computers, Dialogue, Enlightenment, Heuristics, Machines, Neo-liberalism, Nudges, Nudging, Optimization, Rationalisation, Rationality, Responsibility, Smart, Utilitarianism, Wisdom of the crowds
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A hero like Hirschman and the turns in transition thinking
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Although they are completely different subject areas, there is a striking similarity between transition thinking and development economics: both assume a development curve that describes the shape of an S. This … Continue reading
Can you call a politician fascist? Narratives, accountabilities and the ‘benefit of the doubt’
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Right-wing populist politicians have had electoral success in quite some countries. This has led to much debate about how far you can go in criticizing these politicians. Can you call them … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Anti-semitism, Conspiracy theory, Democracy, Fascism, Hannah Arendt, Narrative, Pluralism, Popular sovereignty, Populism, Totalitarianism
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Is moral change possible?
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Whether we can change morally is a question that is not asked often, but it is a relevant one. After all, if this was not the case, ethics would become a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Dialogue, Ethics, Moral change, Moral emotions, Moral intuitions, Social norms
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How do we settle the climate problem?
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] The fundamental uncertainties that are the essence of the climate problem require new forms of politics. You could see the Paris agreement as such a new form. Maybe it is not … Continue reading
Misunderstandings about the freedom of speech: About the rules for the public debate
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] The public debate is one of the pillars of democracy. But not many people seem to know the rules of that debate, mostly it is propagated that you should be able … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Exclusion, Freedom of speech, Media, Opinions, Politics, Public debate, Public opinion, Social media
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Identity and discomfort
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] Discussions about identity appear to be complicated, because it is not clear what is morally right: do we have to give up the values that we currently maintain, because they hurt … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Cancel culture, Emancipation, Equality, Idenitity, Justice, Liberalism, Private sphere, Public sphere, Public/private distinction, Recognition, Woke
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Democracy versus innovation: the need to look critically at technological promises
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] While all kinds of new technologies will affect our future world to a great extent, there is no proper democratic discussion about the desirability of these new technologies. This is mainly … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Democracy, Elon Musk, Innovation, Promises, Resources, Responsibility, Societal responsiveness, Technology
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Our extended thinking
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] How rational is our brain? Can our limited mind compete with computers? Questions that are easily posed, but which assume a wrong idea of how human cognition works (or should work). … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged AI, Artificial intelligence, Brain, Cognition, Computer, Extended cognition, Language, Rationality, Singular point
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What is good: About why we think something ought to be
[Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie van deze post] We people are a judgmental lot. Opinions conduct, art, politics, about others and about ourselves, they are quickly formed, we have an idea of what should be and we like to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Categories, Expectations, Intersubjective reality, Judgment, Language, Music, Politics, Practices, Social domains, Taste
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