Charles Taylor on CBC

Found this one out late! Give it a listen before it's off the list. Charles Taylor if probably Canada's greatest philosopher, and the author that got me into philosophy.



CBC Radio | Ideas | The Best of Ideas Podcast

Modern Social Imaginaries



What makes modernity different from all previous ways of life? Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor talks to IDEAS producer David Cayley about what makes us modern.

Technorati Tags: Charles Taylor, podcast, Canada, CBC, philosophy

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Just War and Retribution

Here are some thoughts about the idea of a just war and retribution, prompted by the Hon. B Gen Gordon O'Connor:

Canadian war against Taliban is "retribution" for 9/11 attacks

Speaking at a symposium about Afghanistan, O'Connor said Canadian soldiers are in the country because Afghanistan's democratically elected government wants them there, because Canada has a responsibility to help as one of the world's richest countries and because the war is in Canada's own interest. "When the Taliban or al-Qaida came out of Afghanistan, they attacked the twin towers and in those twin towers, 25 Canadians were killed. The previous government and this government will not allow Canadians to be killed without retribution," O'Connor told his audience of roughly 200 people, many of them military personnel.

Definition of retribution - Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Main Entry: ret·ri·bu·tion Pronunciation: "re-tr&-'byü-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English retribucioun, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin retribution-, retributio, from Latin retribuere to pay back, from re- + tribuere to pay -- more at TRIBUTE
1 : RECOMPENSE, REWARD
2 : the dispensing or receiving of reward or punishment especially in the hereafter 3 : something given or exacted in recompense; especially : PUNISHMENT

Classically the justice of a war is assessed using three criteria: legitimacy, just cause and just intention. The Afghan mission as it has been sold to the Canadian public has met all three of these criteria. It has legitimacy in the legal sense that it is sanctioned by international law and a supranational body. It is the new articulation of our cause and intent worries me.

The very idea of retribution cannot be a just cause; as a cause of military action retribution implies that the original injustice that has been perpetrated against one's self deserves to be met with deadly force. There is no reason for military force other than military force. The argument slips into a deadly circle with terrible consequences. It is the applicability of the same flawed argument to the enemy's circumstances that makes this kind of reasoning so pernicious and dangerous. Moreover it inverts the normal labels of innocence; for If our innocents were lost in an attack, then retribution would seem to demand that their innocents must pay too. No justice can come from the death of innocents.

The attack of the 11th of September 2001 may serve as the basis of a just cause for military action. That day may have demonstrated the existence of a threat or that the Al-Qaida/Taliban coalition represents the kind of oppressive hate inducing regime that is both a danger to our security and the rights of Afghan people that requires immediate action. It may have been the case a week prior, but that attack could be a just cause to bring one nation to action.

When a state is spurred to military action and whose intention is to seek retribution there can be no end to the bloodshed. Military action requires an objective in order to focus the application of force; and this is why I do not believe the defence minister. Objectives in Afghanistan seem, from this distant perspective, to be focused on securing infrastructure from terrorists in order to provide security for reconstruction. To my mind that is not punishment or a form of blood lust that would expected from a mission of retribution. My faith in the justice of our war in Afghanistan would be severely shaken if not for the actions of our troops speaking louder than the words of their Minister.

[ed. Incidentally I do not necessarily endorse the theory of Aquinas that I linked to above, he is just one of the early proponents of a tripartite and very popular theory of the justice of wars.]

Technorati Tags: just war, afghanistan, canada, retribution, politics, conservative party of canada

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Pure Genius!

I've always thought that the whole "set your watch 5 minutes ahead and you won't be late" thing was retarded. I believe that it is impossible for a rational person to deceive him/herself. Thus a rational person who intentionally sets his/her watch will compensate and not fall act as though it was on time. Of course you can get a friend to pick a random time, but that can be easily defeated and you are back to square one. So here is a new solution:



David Seah : A Chindogu Clock for Procrastinators

Enter the Procrastinator’s Clock. It’s guaranteed to be up to 15 minutes fast. However, it also speeds up and slows down in an unpredictable manner so you can’t be sure how fast it really is. Furthermore, the clock is guaranteed to not be slow, assuming your computer clock is sync’d with NTP; many computers running Windows and Mac OS X with persistent Internet connections already are.

H/T Crooked Timber

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Schools and Gangs

Over the holidays I had a chat with an old friend who is a schoolteacher in Ontario. He mentioned a theory of his that seems to make sense to me. The idea is that by making the school year a year we would help to reduce the ability of gangs to recruit high school aged children. Idle hands are the devil's workshop and by insuring that high school hands are not idle for long, the more sinister will have difficulty influencing them.

I remember those long summer breaks. They could be quite boring and I could get into a lot of trouble if there wasn't anything organised for me. The idea of a long summer break has come and gone. Children are not required to work on the farm any more and the two parent household has to fork out a lot of money to entertain children over the summer. Moreover the children forget so much of what they have learned over the summer that a long break seems a bad idea from a pedagogical point of view.

I am neither a teacher nor a criminologist, so I am not really in a position to speak in much more detail, but, the idea seems sound and worthy of further investigation. It doesn't need to be applied universally, but only where it makes more sense and there are a lot of different ways of applying the idea. The same number of school days can be maintained just spread out differently or another trimester can be added to make busy curricula less so.

There are a lot of ideas out there for dealing with youth and crime, many of them involve programmes, and money. Schooling is one of the biggest and most effective such programmes, why not see if it can be used more effectively.

Technorati Tags: school, school schedules, gangs, crime, youth crime, education, canada, politics

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Gee Mom I want to go back to Ontario

We are back in Ontario for the Holiday season and I am reminded of what seems to be the greatest difference between life in Ontario and life on the Island. DRIVING. We have spent a lot of time on the road already and the differences are stark. First there are the design differences. On the island the highways have low speed limits and even the divided highways have traffic lights: not so in Ontario, ofcourse. But the most significant difference to my mind is the culture of highway driving that seems to exist out East. There is a set of behavioural expectations that motorists have of eachother - whether it is to yield lanes or speed up/slow down in certain circumstances. This culture seems well entrenched. You can tell that people follow it and expect others to follow it. It is a truly amazing thing when compared with the kind ofdriving out West. In Ontario there are few old duffers cruising in the left lane, doing the speed limit and shaking there fists at passing cars because nobody should be overtaking a car doing the limit. Funny, though the more I travel the more I notice how the culture changes a little with each highway.



Ahh, and then there is that lttle piece of commuting heaven called the 407!

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