The following is a review of my book by Edwin Montoya Zorrila from the blog, Notes From The Wreck. I preface this review with a disclosure. The author, Joshua Krook, is a friend of mine, and we have studied… Read More ›
Gertrude Stein originally called those who returned from World War I a ‘lost generation’, disoriented, wandering directionless through life, battered and broken by the war and unable to contribute to literary endeavours. Today’s youth face not a war of arms,… Read More ›
‘The Employer’s Voice’ Shaping Graduate Attributes: In the early 1990s, Australian universities were placed under increasing pressure from ‘the state, industry and other agencies’ to produce graduates who possessed specific market-relevant skills.[i] By the mid-2000s universities had enshrined graduate attributes… Read More ›
Chapter 1: The Problem Since the early 2000s there have been warning signs of the ‘health of [Australia’s] democracy’ being threatened by the abandonment of universities as communities of intellectuals, in favour of a new model driven by ‘market forces’… Read More ›
In Political Liberalism, John Rawls argues that, “political power is always coercive power backed by the government’s use of sanctions, for government alone has authority to use force in upholding its laws” (Rawls 1993, p. 136).[i] In saying as much, Rawls is echoing a commonly held belief: that the state has the power to coerce its citizens, and this coercion prevents citizens from breaking the law. In most modern states, citizens are routinely threatened with arrest and incarceration if they do not abide by the state’s legal system. The language of “authority” is often used to justify this coercive action (Goffman 1982; Morris 2004, p. 196; Weber 1947).[ii]
In 1974, the philosopher Robert Nozick came up with the idea of an ‘experience machine’, a thought experiment which involved the following situation: Suppose there was an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Super-duper neuropsychologists could… Read More ›
In his treatise on free will, philosopher Sam Harris claims that if an act is formulated in our subconscious then that act cannot be said to be willed by us. A reflex action to catch a ball, an instinctual action… Read More ›
