Category Archives: philosophical lectures

In the first two lectures on political philosophy, we discussed redistribution of wealth from the point of view of Rawls’ very famous and rather extreme proposals, and the more moderate, consequentialism-ish counter-proposal I gave. I’ve also defended free markets in general, while saying labor laws are sometimes beneficial. Now I want to consider a much [...]

Here’s a lecture that will help some for understanding the last two lectures, as well as being vital for understanding the next. How many people in this room are aware that sweatshops are evil? Sweatshops, as in overseas factories where big evil clothing corporations like Nike pay workers hardly anything and force them to work [...]

Last lecture, I started off talking about political theory, and then did a little jump to decision theory–how to rationally make decisions. I explained two ideas–the idea of average benefits when deciding under risk with known probabilities, and the idea of maximizing the worst outcome when deciding under totally uncertainty, with no probabilities. Now I [...]

>>>Okay, I’m finally getting back to the blogging schedule I set for myself when I launched this WordPress blog: lecture every Wednesday, Science Sunday on, well, Sunday. I promise to stick to it for at least the next couple months.<<< Today, we’re going to move from moral philosophy, which is generally concerned with individual actions, [...]