Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Sunday, February 22, 2015

Eve Adams crosses the floor and relives Genesis

Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become mother of all the living.

Genesis III, 20.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Game Theory, Vaccinations and bad thinking (or, how right-wing ideas bite back)

Hundreds of cases of measles have been diagnosed across North America this winter, a resurgences of the disease that is being attributed to low rates of vaccination in some communities, partly for philosophical reasons.

The Globe and Mail, Friday February 20, 2015[1]

At some point of success in mass immunizations, it becomes rational for those not yet vaccinated to avoid the procedure, because to go through with it carries more cost than benefit.  Failure to be vaccinated is usually attributed to sloth, ignorance, or superstition; but this analysis suggests that, at a certain point, avoiding vaccination can be a rational exercise in pursuit of self-interest.  It may be immoral, because the Non-Vaccinators are riding free on the Vaccinators to expose themselves to risk, but it is not irrational.

Tom Flanagan, Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998)[2]





[1] “Queen’s instructor won’t lead course,” The Globe and Mail, Friday, February 20, 2015, p. A13
[2] Tom Flanagan, Game Theory and Canadian Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), p. 73.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

The Paradox of Culture: Critical Theory on Harper and the CBC

… culture suffers damage when it is planned and administrated; when it is left to itself, however, everything cultural threatens not only to lose its possibility of effect, but its very existence as well.

Theodore Adorno, The Culture Industry, 1972[1]



[1] Theodore W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture, ed. J.M. Bernstein (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 108. Adorno and Max Horkheimer first used the term “culture industry” in their book Dialectic of Enlightenment, published in Amsterdam in 1947. (Adorno, Culture Industry, p. 98).

Monday, February 9, 2015

Thoughts on Physician-Assisted Suicide

The Oath of Hippocrates (c. 460-c.370 B.C.)

I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgement, I will consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.  I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel …[1]

St. Augustine Confessions (c. 400 A.D.)

You seek the happy life in the region of death; it is not there.  How can there be a happy life where there is not even life?[2]



[1] Hippocrates, The Theory and Practice of Medicine (New York: Citadel Press, 1964), x.
[2] Saint Augustine, Confessions, tr. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 64.