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Does Disgust Have Moral Force?
An interesting but occasionally infuriating article by Drake Bennett in the Boston Globe argues that research into the psychology of disgust undermines systems of morality. Here are some claims that I...
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Uncertainty, the Small Investor, and Recovery
By now, we have all heard the basic argument that a core problem impeding recovery during the 1930s was the uncertainty created by public policy. In Robert Higgs’ words: “the New Deal prolonged the...
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Atheists Are Just Smarter
Many electrons have been spilled over that Pew survey showing that atheists, agnostics, Jews, and Mormons know more about world religions, including Christianity, than Protestants and Catholics (I got...
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Jimmy Carter: the Gift that Keeps on Giving
In these days of youthful experimentation with witchcraft (thank you Ms. O’Donnell), “homosexual brainwashing” (thank you Mr. Paladino), and flirtations with the pagan god named “Aqua Buddha” (thank...
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Caplan on Parenting and Having Children
One of the books I read this summer was Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think. Having already read works like Judith Rich...
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The Religious Are More Trustworthy
Atheists may be smarter than the religious, but the religious are more likely to do the right thing when they aren’t being watched (see also Ron Bailey’s post here). On the other hand, the differences...
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Must Libertarians Be Amoral?
A recently published paper by Ravi Iyer and coauthors on the “libertarian personality” has been getting a great deal of attention. To recap the findings, Compared to self-identified liberals and...
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Haidt’s Biased Survey Evidence on Libertarians (Updated)
In his book The Righteous Mind (review coming soon) and in a coauthored paper with Ravi Iyer and others, moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt claims that libertarians are essentially amoral(*): they care...
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Emotion, Moral Intuition, & the Social Function of Literature
I was recently with a longtime friend who revealed that he does not believe in morality. He thinks the only ultimate good is his own happiness. Now, he tries to act in a way that others see as moral...
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