Darwinian Conservatism and the Liberal Welfare State

§1. Introduction. In his book Darwinian Conservatism the political scientist Larry Arnhart makes the case that traditional conservatism is the right political philosophy for humanity to follow because “it rests on a view of human nature that is supported by Darwinian biology” (Arnhart, 10). Arnhart developed his case by way of defending five propositions, each … Continue reading “Darwinian Conservatism and the Liberal Welfare State”

Foucault’s Concept Discipline: A Systematic Analysis

Graduate Essay by Govert Schuller Introduction In this essay I will primarily focus on the pivotal Foucauldian concept of discipline as developed in his influential 1975 study Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (hereafter DP). The plan of the paper is to first connect the concept with its immediate neighboring terms, especially punishment … Continue reading “Foucault’s Concept Discipline: A Systematic Analysis”

Entertaining, Type-II Error-prone, Axiomatic Skepticism: An Incomplete Form of Systemic Doubt

Review of “The Perks of Paranoia” (Video; 2013; 3.30 mins) by Christopher Griffin. Though the creator of the entertaining video, Christopher Griffin, used the fruitful idea of “hyper-active threat detection” derived from evolutionary psychology to explain the tendency of some hyper-active brains to see conspiracies where there are none, he is only giving a part … Continue reading “Entertaining, Type-II Error-prone, Axiomatic Skepticism: An Incomplete Form of Systemic Doubt”