Notes and Links

* At "Feminist Philosophers" stoat has put up an interesting case relevant to epistemic injustice. I've never entirely been convinced of Fricker's claim that only discountings of credibility can be epistemic injustice. Certainly it is rare, but that's because it's rare to find us downplaying someone's testimony by overcounting their credibility. So I'm inclined to read the case straight. But there are tricky issues of interpretation, for which you should read the discussion in the comments.

* Apparently one of the big issues at Wikipedia at the moment is mediating the dispute over whether Ayn Rand should be counted as a philosopher and, if so, in what way. Ocham discusses the matter. Rand occasionally has good moments, especially when defending Aristotle from cavalier dismissal. (There's a place in her correspondence somewhere, I think in her correspondence with Hospers, where she rips apart beautifully a rather silly argument Hospers raised against Aristotle's account of time as the measurement of motion according to before and after.) I have difficulty condemning her completely, in part because of occasionally moments like these in which one sees what she could have been; in part because many of those who condemn her outright transparently have the same flaws, even if more sporadically noticeable; in part because I like her fiction; and in part because most of those condemning her have never done as much as she has for getting people in general interested in philosophy. The way to handle Ayn Rand, ideally, is not to dismiss her but to outdo her.

* John Attarian has an interesting article in which he discusses how Ayn Rand helped make him a Christian and the Marquis de Sade helped make him a conservative. (ht)

* It's a good name for it: 27 Ninja scenarios in bioethics:

Some of you might recognize the first part of that as one of my favorite things to collect: 27 Ninja Scenarios–That is, fantasy situations which 1). start with a preconceived notion (destructive embryonic research is morally acceptable) 2.) construct a scenario in which an act that ostensibly affirms the preconceived notion is the only sensible choice, and 3.) whistle past whole chunks of reality to make it work.

The original 27 Ninjas post has some good words of advice for handling far-out examples and counterexamples.

* Rabbi Michael A. Signer, a major figure in Christian-Jewish dialogue, passed away on January 11. One of his courses at Notre Dame, Jews and Christians throughout History, is available in Open Course format online.

* Frankincense has been shown to be mildly psychoactive. (ht)

* Ricardo Montalban, most famous for his roles in Fantasy Island and Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, died on Wednesday at age 88.