Margaret Sanger on Abortion in Her Own Words November 11, 201812,078 words (~60 minutes) Tags: abortion contraception Margaret Sanger, pioneer of birth control in the United States and founder of the organizations that became Planned Parenthood, felt that abortion is “taking life,” excluded abortion from her birth control movement, and had the explicit goal of ending the use of abortion as a method of family limitation. This causes her legacy to conflict with the false dichotomy surrounding abortion today, both with the so-called “pro-life” movement that vilifies her and with the so-called “pro-choice” movement that exalts her. Read more »
Moral Arguments Are Self-Delusional December 22, 20173,141 words (~15 minutes) Tags: morality mythology psychology Often those who expound moral sentiments justify them by articulating a moral argument, i.e., a chain of reasoning in which conclusions are inferred from premises and whose ultimate conclusion is a moral judgment. I consciously and emphatically avoid moral arguments. In this meditation I articulate my reasons by examining the social intuitionist model of moral psychology. Read more »
Reality versus Morality December 3, 20174,766 words (~23 minutes) Tags: morality Morality is one of the most common features of human thought. It is also a prolific source of fallacies. A conspicuous feature of my worldview is that I enforce a strict separation between my beliefs about reality and my moral sentiments. In this meditation I articulate this separation and my motive for enforcing such a separation. Read more »
Love and Other Supposed Counterexamples December 25, 20161,674 words (~8 minutes) Tags: evolution love Love is often pontificated upon as one of the more mystical and undefinable aspects of human nature. However, it is one of the more obvious effects of evolution by natural selection upon behavior and is readily explicable using the framework articulated here. Read more »
Four Teloi of Human Nature December 18, 20162,664 words (~13 minutes) Tags: evolution tribalism mythology Human nature is profound in its banality. The objectives of much of human behavior are the same few ultimate end goals, over and over and over again. Because of their frequency, I have taken to numbering them and labeling them the "Four Teloi." They are survival, reproduction, tribalism, and mythology. Read more »
