Best Philosophy Blog Post Winners Announced


3 Quarks Daily has announced the winners of its 2015 prize for best philosophy blog post:

  1. Top Quark, $500: Vidar Halgunset, Slow Corruption
  2. Strange Quark, $200:  Daniel Silvermint, On How We Talk About Passing
  3. Charm Quark, $100: Lisa Herzog, (One of) Effective Altruism’s blind spot(s)

Of the top two posts, Judge John Collins (Columbia) writes: “they warn us to slow down, hesitate, and carefully reconsider the rush to judgment that is often encouraged by quick-fire debate in social media and in online discussion in general.”

About Halgunset’s piece, Collins says:

there’s another subtle thread woven through this piece, that has to do with what we ought to debate publicly, and how we ought to discuss it. Halgunset begins by quoting a particularly insensitive tweet of Richard Dawkins’s and asks us to consider whether the distinction between tone and content in this message is really as clear as Dawkins would maintain. The slow corrupting influence here is that of the public expression of blind certainty in 140 characters or fewer. These are matters of tone and selective silence. I am reminded of a comment my late friend and colleague Sid Morgenbesser once made to me: “Don’t you think there are situations in which it is simply indecent to deliberate at all?” 

Deliberation on that is welcome.

Disputed Moral Issues - Mark Timmons - Oxford University Press
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