Continuations

A good place to start Philosophy Mondays is language. After all, I will be using, well, language, to write the posts. A huge amount of philosophy is about language because it is so central to the human experience. In my book The World After Capital, I make the argument that written language was the decisive breakthrough which allowed humans to accumulate knowledge, which is the source of our power. Throughout this post I will use language as synonymous with human language (as opposed to say c...

In the current discussions on what to do (or not to do) about the Ebola outbreak the word “panic” is being abused. Panic means a “sudden, overpowering terror, often affecting many people at once.” And some of the nonstop CNN coverage can rightly be accused of contributing to a potential panic among the population. But the word is also being used widely to criticize anyone calling for stronger measures. In that context it is not only wrong but also used to chill what should be a rational discu...