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DUMBING-DOWN THE WORLD, 2020
Who is responsible for the dumbing-down of the world's population? Language is the medium of consensus and of discord. As cultures seek a meaningful world-view, volubility increases with the need for more words. Concepts become redundant and discarded; words are invented and reification changes reality. Modern science, religion – and contemporary education – are based on the presumption of Pluralism (not Realism or Materialism, as is commonly held). The primacy of a metaphysical perspective has all-but been abandoned. The vast body of academic scholarship over the last century was predicated on the catastrophic Oxford Model and is mostly meaningless and redundant. An incomprehensible waste of resources and lives supporting the crumbling edifice of Ivory Tower-based education. That culture, based on erroneous assumptions, must take responsibility for the World's stultified condition. The world-view of the vast majority is based on harm, through ignorance, lies and deception.
WordPress, 2022
Over the last six years, I have heard, read, and observed more ignorance, idiocy, irrationality, and ineptitude exhibited by people than I ever have before during my many decades of life! For the life of me (as my mother used to say), I am unable to comprehend the beliefs, ideas, arguments, theories, and conclusions held so tenaciously by so many of the supporters of our most recent former president. I simply am at a loss to make sense of their nonsense, embedded as it is in anything but reality and truth. I have written frequently about the confluence of beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors in both religion and the public. My research interests over the last decade have focused on cognitive and behavioral sciences, supposing that these sciences can shed light on the formation and strength of opinions and behaviours of individuals and groups in the political arena.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2019
This article advances a new analysis of stupidity as a distinctive form of cognitive failing. Section 1 outlines some problems in explicating this notion and suggests some desiderata. Section 2 sketches an existing model of stupidity, found in Kant and Flaubert, which serves as a foil for my own view. In section 3, I introduce my theory: I analyse stupidity as form of conceptual self-hampering, characterised by a specific aetiology and with a range of deleterious effects. In section 4, I show how this proposal meets the desiderata and I clarify how it diverges from existing accounts. My position is close to a 'public health approach', in contrast to the virtue/vice framework employed by Engel or Mulligan.
Stupidity turns out to be complicated. Stupidity in its many guises does more damage on a daily basis than generations of clever ideas have ever been able to cope with. Human stupidity ranges all the way from planetary destruction to self mutilation by vengeful individuals cutting off their own nose to spite their face. Given the scale of stupidity’s ravages, it is a matter of wonder that it attracts so little systematic public research under its own name.
Book manuscript
Draft form of an article published in M. Anguel Fernandez Vargas, Performance Epistemology, Oxford University Press, 2016
An analysis of neo-liberal dogma and its control on all aspects of social life. Chapters on ideology of idiotism (Smith, Hayek, Rand, Friedman); economics; politics; culture; democracy. The final draft is uploaded here. If quoting, please check accuracy and pagination in the published version.
Although people with a mental disorder may plea not guilty by reason of insanity when charged for a crime, no such plea exists for people who are considered or consider themselves stupid. But why is this the case? What is it about stupidity that there exists no such plea? And is it correct that such a plea does not exist? In other words, are stupidity and responsibility mutually exclusive or possibly compatible? This paper compares two contrasting views on that question: that of Jean-Paul Sartre and of Hannah Arendt. Sartre considers stupidity to be an oppressive structure. The one who we call stupid is in fact a displaced human being, whose instruments are not suited to the situation and task she is undertaking. Within the structure of stupidity, however, her freedom is limited by others. Therefore, Sartre argues, we should abandon the structure of stupidity and maintain that there are no fools, but only wicked people, for the latter are free, but misuse their freedom against the freedom of others. This implies that for Sartre 'true' fools cannot be held responsible, for they are not free. Those who are called fools, however, are in fact free and therefore responsible human beings. Arendt argues that fools, those people who are thoughtless, should still be considered responsible for their actions. This stems from her claim that the ability to think is innate in every human being. This claim brings us closer to the deeper-lying problem of stupidity: is it an inability, and if so, in what way and to what extent? On the basis of a combination of Sartre's and Arendt's thoughts on stupidity, this paper develops a conceptual definition of stupidity as a refusal to think that is so deep that it becomes like a second nature to the one considered a fool. As the fool thus remains able to think, she remains responsible. Even within an oppressive structure this ability and responsibility cannot be absolved. Maintaining that the innate ability to think is part of what makes us human, I contend that we should maintain that the fool is responsible. For taking away her responsibility means taking away that which partly makes her human, thereby dehumanising her.
Academia Letters, 2022
Mémoires et documents publiés par l'Académie chablaisienne, tome LXXIV, Beaumont, 2019, p. 69-106.
Jewish Quarterly Review, 2018
La forme idéale à la Renaissance / Forma ideale durante il Rinascimento, 2023
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2002
Nelle terre del marmo II, 2023
Sosyal siyaset konferansları dergisi, 2022
European Psychiatry, 2017
Pregnancy Hypertension: An International Journal of Women's Cardiovascular Health, 2012
arXiv (Cornell University), 2024
Research, Society and Development
Vision Research, 1979
Köz-gazdaság - Review of Economic Theory and Policy, 2011
Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing, 2019
Journal of Heterocyclic Chemistry, 1980