Thomas Wells teaches philosophy in the Netherlands and blogs about politics, philosophy and economics at The Philosopher's Beard. Email: philosophersbeard [at] gmail.com
Website: https://www.philosophersbeard.org/
by Thomas Rodham Wells Parenthood is coming under increasing criticism as a selfish lifestyle choice. Parents' private choices to procreate impose expensive obligations on the rest of us to ensure those children have a decent quality of life and come out as successful adults and citizens, and that means massive tax-subsidies for their health, education,…
by Thomas Rodham Wells Clio, the ancient Greek muse of history History too important to be left to national politicians and their ideological visions of national identity and social engineering projects. First, the principle. History should be truthful, relevant, and just. As an intellectual enterprise history is a matter of fact not opinion, the discovery…
by Thomas Wells The 'new atheist' movement associated with the 'four horsemen' (Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, Dawkins) doesn't speak for me. It combines uninformed foolishness with a quasi religious dogmatism of its own and tops it all with an illiberal political programme. As a non-believer I am as embarrassed by them as many Christians are embarrassed…
by Thomas Wells Like cigarettes, meat and dairy packaging should include no nonsense factual warnings about the negative consequences of one’s consumption choices. Just as with cigarettes, there is a strong case that exercising one’s sovereign right to free choice on personal matters requires that people be adequately informed about the significant negative implications of…
by Thomas Wells The robots are coming. Even if they don't actually think, they will behave enough like they do to take over most of the cognitive labour humans do, just as fossil-fuel powered machines displaced human muscle power in the 19th and 20th centuries. I've written elsewhere about the kind of changes this new…