This year has been a relatively quiet one on the blogging front. Life has gotten in the way. Still, I did manage to post some decent pieces. Here are 12 of my favourites -- one from each month. I didn't use any objective metric to decide on what to include. I just focused on the ones I happened to like when looking back over them this morning. That said, with only two exceptions, my choices coincide with the 'most read' post from each month.
- Popper's Critique of Utopianism and Defence of Negative Utilitarianism (Jan 2018) - I've been thinking a lot about utopianism in the past year or so. This is largely as a result of a book project I'm working on. This post, from January, is my critique of Karl Popper's critique of utopian political philosophies.
- Taking the Relational Turn: How should we think about the moral status of robots, animals and others? (Feb 2018) - David Gunkel kindly invited me to take part in a workshop about his book Robot Rights at the Robophilosophy Conference in February of this year. This post was part of my preparation for this workshop. It analyses Gunkel and Coeckelbergh's critique of traditional approaches to the ascription of moral status and their defence of something they call the 'Relational turn'.
- Should we care about inequality? A critical analysis of Pinker's optimism (Mar 2018) - Steven Pinker made quite a splash with his book Enlightenment Now earlier in the year. While I agree with a lot of what he has to say, and I think some of the criticism of his book is misguided, I did take issue with some of the things he said in his chapter on inequality.
- Running to Stay Still: The Vice of Delayed Gratification (April 2018) - We're often told that delaying gratification is the path to success, but what if we're wrong? What if it is the path to perpetual dissatisfaction? That's the argument considered in this post.
- The Badness of Grief: A Modest Defence of the Stoic View (May 2018) - I wrote a lot about grief this year (following the death of my sister). This post was the one that seemed to resonate most with readers of this blog.
- Algorithmic Micro-Domination: Living with the Threat of Algocracy (June 2018) - This post was a return to some of the more traditional themes of this blog. It uses the republican theory of freedom as non-domination to analyse algorithmic governance technologies.
- Transhumanism as Utopianism: A Critical Analysis (July 2018) - Continuing the obsession with utopianism, this post considers whether transhumanism can be considered a utopianist movement. I argue that it can, and that this is not a major problem.
- Is the criticism of cultural appropriation self-defeating? Thoughts on the paradox of cultural appropriation (Aug 2018) - This was the most popular post of the year. I guess that is unsurprising: anything about the so-called 'culture wars' attracts undue attention on social media. I hope, however, that this was a reasonably balanced assessment of the phenomenon.
- The Optimist's Guide to Schopenhauer's Pessimism (Sep 2018) - Given my general mood for the past 12 months, it was perhaps unsurprising that I spent the month of September brooding over the merits of having an optimistic or pessimistic outlook on life. In this post, I assessed Schopenhauer's famous case for pessimism.
- The Automation of Policing: Challenges and Opportunities (Oct 2018) - Automating technologies already play a significant role in modern policing, but what does the future hold? Can we expect more automation of key policing functions? Will this move us away from a 'detect and enforce' model of policing to a 'predict and prevent' model? I offer my thoughts on these, and other, questions in this post.
- Am I a Hypocrite? A Philosophical Self-Assessment (Nov 2018) - We're all a little bit hypocritical from time to time. Is this a serious moral failing (as many philosophers argue) or is it a weakness that should engender sympathy? I make the case for a nuanced and less moralistic understanding of hypocrisy, using my own behaviour as a case study.
- Hume, Miracles and the Many Witnesses Objection (Dec 2018) - Just in time for Christmas, I wrote this analysis of Arif Ahmed's recent defence of Hume's argument against miracles from the 'many witnesses' objection. Ahmed's original paper is quite dense and technical. This was an 'ordinary language' explanation.
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