I am currently writing a book on the topic of the "social ontology of government". My goal is to provide a short treatment of the social mechanisms and entities that constitute the workings of government. The book will ask some important basic questions: what kind of thing is "government"? (I suggest it is an agglomeration …
Guest post: VK Ramachandran on details of life as a day laborer in India
[V. K. Ramachandran was a Professor of Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, and is at present vice chairman of the State Planning Board of the state of Kerala. He is the author of Wage Labour and Unfreedom in Agriculture: An Indian Case Study. Previous discussions of Ramachandran's work in Understanding Society can be found …
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Regulatory failure and the 737 MAX disasters
The recent crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX aircraft raise questions about the safety certification process through which this modified airframe was certified for use by the FAA. Recent accounts of the design and manufacture of the aircraft demonstrate an enormous pressure for speed and great pressure to reduce costs. Attention has focused on a software …
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Nuclear power plant siting decisions
Readers may be skeptical about the practical importance of the topic of nuclear power plant siting decisions, since very few new nuclear plants have been proposed or approved in the United States for decades. However, the topic is one for which there is an extensive historical record, and it is a process that illuminates the …
Philosophy of technology?
Is there such a thing as “philosophy of technology”? Is there a “philosophy of cooking” or a “philosophy of architecture”? All of these are practical activities – praxis – with large bodies of specialized knowledge and skill involved in their performance. But where does philosophy come in? Most of us trained in analytic philosophy think of a …
Conflicts of interest
The possibility or likelihood of conflict of interest is present in virtually all professions and occupations. We expect a researcher, a physician, or a legislator to perform her work according to the highest values and norms of their work (searching for objective knowledge, providing the best care possible for the patient, drafting and supporting legislation …
The Morandi Bridge collapse and regulatory capture
Lower image: Eugenio Ceroni and Luca Cozzi, Ponte Morandi - Autopsia di una strage A recurring topic in Understanding Society is the question of the organizational causes that lie in the background of major accidents and technological disasters. One such disaster is the catastrophic collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa in August, 2018, which …
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Skilled bodily capacities
When philosophers think of action they generally have in mind a combination of intentionality and simple motor movements. "John flips the switch to turn on the lights." But a great deal of human action is substantially more complex than this. Skilled bodily performance -- playing the piano, returning a tennis serve, fabricating a guitar -- …
Bodily cognition
Traditional cognitive science has been largely organized around the idea of the brain as a computing device and cognitive systems as functionally organized systems of data-processing. There is an emerging alternative to this paradigm that is described as "4E Cognition," where the four "E's" refer to cognition that is embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended. For example, …
Marx’s ideas about government
Marx had something of a theory of politics and somewhat less of a theory of government. The slogan “the capitalist state serves as the managing committee of the bourgeoisie” represents the simplest version of his view of the state. He generally regarded government and law as an expression of class interests. That said, Marx was …
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