The May HOS meeting is on Saturday, May 18. We will discuss the virtue of honesty by reviewing the Honesty chapter in Tara Smith’s book Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics The Virtuous Egoist and discussing some real examples of honesty in practice. For more information about the upcoming meeting please Contact HOS .
$ $ $
The March HOS meeting will feature Dr. Tara Smith at Rice University on March 25 at 7:30 PM. Click here for more information.
$ $ $
Video of “The Theory and Dangers of ‘The Commons’,” the feature of the November 17, 2012 HOS meeting is available here.
Since Roman times, it has been held that certain resources, such as air and water, cannot and should not be privately owned, but instead held “in common.” While the idea of “the commons” is plausible—applying property rights to moving resources is complex—“the commons” is a package deal that attempts to unite disparate concretes. Today’s commons movement equates the man-made with the metaphysical, including such values as infrastructure, software, and education as a part of “the commons.” The goal of the movement is the obliteration of property rights.
$ $ $
Philosophical Lessons from Superstorm Sandy: Philosophy deals with broad abstractions, applicable not only to one storm but to every storm, and every concrete situation, event, object. As it turns out, the kinds of philosophical lessons we can draw from Sandy were already written about after Hurricane Ike hit the Houston area a few years ago. We here link to the previous article, written by Warren Ross, which has important lessons for those observing and in the midst of Sandy. For example, Dr. Ross identified the fact that a long and complex productive chain is involved in delivering even a single drop of gasoline to a car owner. This lesson does not seem to have been learned by the media, as evidenced by an NBC story in which a newscaster expressed surprise at her apparent realization that gas stations can’t pump gas when they don’t have electricity. Read the article on Ike for a discussion of the reciprocal causation involved in the production of gasoline and electricity, as well as for a discussion of the attitudes, philosophical ideas and actions required to keep a civilized society functioning.
$ $ $
The debate between Alex Epstein and environmentalist Bill McKibben is now available on You Tube.
$ $ $
HOS President Brian Phillips spoke to the Texas Patriots Tea Party on September 4. His talk was titled “Individual Rights and the Tea Party.” Video of the talk can be seen on You Tube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Q&A
$ $ $
A review of the book, The Emperor of All Maladies, a Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee, is now available here.