Paul Nedelisky at The Hedgehog Review:
Matthew Adelstein is one of a small group of new public philosophers—a handful of young thinkers doing and perhaps performing philosophy in the public square on various social media platforms. This group is distinctive because, in addition to their status as influencers, they occupy roles within the profession of academic philosophy as graduate students in Princeton’s doctoral program in philosophy. Writing under the name “Bentham’s Bulldog,” Adelstein recently provoked a great deal of attention with a viral Substack article arguing that in sufficiently large aggregates, insects matter more than people. Of course, the thesis is manifestly false; anyone with an ounce of good judgment can see that one human being matters more than any number of insects. However, the appeal of the piece is no doubt partly due to its obvious perversity. The Philosopher’s Lexicon, a largely forgotten source of philosophical humor, has a term for this: to alvinize—named after the famous philosopher of religion, Alvin Plantinga—which means “to stimulate protracted discussion by making a bizarre claim.”
But the Internet is replete with bizarre claims. What perhaps sets Adelstein apart is his insistence that he has given good arguments for his claim, and his insistence that those who disagree are irrationally relying on unreliable intuitions and are afflicted with various biases.
More here.
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