just another blog on skeptic thinking
Like someone bloating and sickening from overindulging in industrial sugar, the uncritical moralist overindulges in moral convictions – restlessly driven into a state of deadly fervour devoid of reason and health. What if our modern civilization is plagued with a pandemic, not unlike the obesity pandemic, of overindulgence in maladaptive morals?
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1. Introduction A central concept for the understanding of evolutionary theory and subsequent disciplines such as evolutionary game theory or psychology is that of fitness (cf. Millstein 2021, p.5; Alexander 2001, p.1). But: There are few idioms as popular and as regularly misunderstood as the survival of the fittest, which was coined by Herbert Spencer and popularized by Charles Darwin….
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Introduction To ask a human what and how influential social norms are, is a little bit akin to asking a fish: What is water and how does it affect you? The difference: fish seem to honour the old latin proverb si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses and don’t embarrass themselves by trying to answer. Humans are ultra-social beings, with a capacity to….
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1. Introduction Whenever the expected utilities of one agent’s choices depend on another agent’s decision, such an interaction can be modelled as a game and analysed through the lens of game theory (GT) (cf. Binmore 2007b, p. 3 – 5). Despite its theoretical success many academics and “practical men of business used to dismiss game theory as just one more….
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1. Introduction Human decisions often deviate from the prescriptions of rational choice theory. Psychologists and behavioral economists usually explain this deviation with biases, which are mental patterns or heuristics causing incorrect inferences and irrationality, especially when relying on fast thinking and intuitions (cf. Kahneman 2012, p. 19). Biases are a vibrant area of research. Consequently, there is a growing interest….
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6. Restrictions and implications As elaborated in the previous section, contrary to the second idea of the stationary state paradigm, the existence of growth is normatively relevant and a stationary state is not desirable in principle. However, this does not necessarily mean that, maximising economic growth is always desirable without restrictions. In the following, possible limitations and objections to the….
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5. The normative value of perpetual growth According to Brian Kogelmann, normative arguments in favour of economic growth can generally be divided into two categories: wealth-sensitive and wealth-insensitive arguments, or wealth-dependent and wealth-independent arguments (cf. Kogelmann 2022, p. 478). Wealth-sensitive arguments imply that growth is only necessary to achieve a normatively desirable level of prosperity, which is why: “If a….
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4. The limits of growth The aim of this thesis is primarily to elaborate on the normative meaning of growth and thus above all to criticise the second idea of the stationary state paradigm, i.e. the idea that growth is normatively irrelevant or undesirable. However, the first idea of the paradigm must also be addressed at this point – at….
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3. The stationary state paradigm Over the past two centuries, humanity has experienced unprecedented, exponential economic growth. Global GDP per capita rose from $1,102 to $15,212 between 1800 and 2018 (Maddison Project Database 2020). The positive effects of the prosperity achieved through this growth – such as the increase in life expectancy, the reduction in poverty and infant mortality –….
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The normative significance of economic growth Translation of my Bachelor thesis at the Chair for Political Philosophy of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Supervisor: Dr Matthias Brinkmann, Grade: 1,0 (perfect score / excellent, US Equivalent: 4.0). German Original: https://leveret-pale.de/der-wert-des-wirtschaftswachstums-bachelorarbeit 1. Introduction If economic growth is discussed at all in practical philosophy, it is usually from a position of scepticism or rejection of….
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1. introduction Since its inception, the internet has continuously transformed people’s lives at an unprecedented speed. This transformation is not only of a technical and economic nature: the Internet connects, permeates and shapes cultures. The digital world dominates everyday life in an almost totalitarian way like no other medium before it, forming an omnipresent aesthetic framework and at the same….
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