Will Wilkinson And Jonah Goldberg On Bloggingheads: Updating Libertarianism?

Full discussion here.

Moral Foundations webpage here where Wilkinson gets some of his analysis.   Happiness Tests here.

Perhaps each succession of Americans’ moral culture is becoming more liberal in a way that can in part be described by Jonathan Haidt (though I’m highly skeptical of the depth of moral reasoning and method of analysis that could arrive at such a conclusion, especially when it’s applied to current politics).  

Regardless, let’s assume it’s true.  As for libertarianism, Wilkinson asserts that it’s most important not to cling to the old guard but to meet these new groups of young people where they stand and will increasingly stand (by appealing to their sense of social justice and fairness) and showing them that the best way to achieve their aims is through limited government and lots of economic growth, not through the old liberal democratic channels.

It’s certainly clever and I wouldn’t mind seeing it work…but like I said, I’m not sure that I can know that the analysis such reasoning rests upon is valid.  

It also gives me the impression that the libertarians are merely appealing to the liberal side of the spectrum out of necessity right now…and perhaps abandoning their alliance with folks like Goldberg.

Interesting conversation. 

From Scientific American: Was Einstein Wrong?

Full article here.

Can philosophy/metaphysics effectively help to deepen physics…or will it always be a way of attaching particulary deep thought (if done well) to even deeper thought?

———————————————————————————————

The authors, philosopher trained in physics David Albert and writer Rivka Galchen point out a problem they think ought to be focused on:

“-In the universe as we experience it, we can directly affect only objects we can touch; thus, the world seems local.

-Quantum mechanics, however, embraces action at a distance with a property called entanglement, in which two particles behave synchronously with no intermediary; it is nonlocal.

-This nonlocal effect is not merely counterintuitive: it presents a serious problem to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, thus shaking the foundations of physics.”

I’m pretty sure I’m not qualified to answer…

———————————————————————————————

See Also:  David Albert’s turn on bloggingheads with Sean Carroll.

Also, maybe it’s a trend (writers moving directly to science)?  Writer Louisa Gilder has a book out called “The Age Of Entanglement” on much the same subject, which she discusses here too on bloggingheads.

———————————————————————————————

Further:  The enlightenment happened, so if you’re going to make a successful metaphysical theory, it’s good to try and understand the mathematical sciences of the day and go from there (Newtonian mechanics for Kant), like Kant did: 

Michael Friedman’s Kant And The Exact Sciences tackles the subject ( I know him not and of course this too is more metaphysics and certainly not the mathematics of today…but if you’re going to be carrying Kant around …it’s good too understand how deep he went, what he seemed to understand and what he may have not understood at all about the Enlightenment explosion around him).