Tag: sean walsh

Philosophy

Wittgenstein, Popper and the Poker

BY SEAN WALSH The scene. From time to time the dialectic gets feisty and on rare occasions almost physical. A meeting of the Cambridge 1946 Moral Science Club, according to some of those present, was one such occasion. Note that recollections differ, as they say1. What might have happened is this: the very intense Ludwig Wittgenstein threatened the visiting speaker, Karl Popper, with a fire poker, in the course … Continue reading Wittgenstein, Popper and the Poker

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Thoughts

Holy Faces

BY SEAN WALSH I couldn’t be what’s known as a political libertarian because the version of freedom assumed doesn’t seem to me to be worth getting excited about. To borrow the language of the Dominican Thomistic theologian Father Servais Pinckaers, I’ll take freedom for excellence over freedom of indifference. I understand that libertarianism isn’t particularly sensitive to that distinction, or many others now I think of it, which is why … Continue reading Holy Faces

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Thoughts

Anscombe and that BAFTA Incident

BY SEAN WALSH Before doing the relevant analytical deeper dive let me make two remarks, by way of qualification. First, the condition known as “Tourette’s Syndrome” should not be trivialised, and it’s not my intention to do so here; second, what I suppose we must call “BAFTAgate” (or maybe “f@@@@@g BAFTAgate”, given the subject matter) is the funniest thing to happen at an awards ceremony … Continue reading Anscombe and that BAFTA Incident

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Philosophy

The Utilitarian Deception

BY SEAN WALSH There are decent utilitarian grounds for junking utilitarian thinking. Photo: Jeremy Bentham, founder of the utilitarian crime family, in a box, where he belongs. What the philosophers call utilitarianism is actually a family of moral theories with all the feuds, competitiveness and fickle alliances that families tend to have. There may be nuances involved, but there is an intellectual genealogy which takes you from … Continue reading The Utilitarian Deception

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Politics

Sunk Cost Fallacy Territory

BY SEAN WALSH Starmer’s demise is like the final minute of the spin cycle: never ending. I suppose part of the fun in making political predictions is the post-hoc analysis of “why I was right when I said this would happen and it didn’t”. And knowing you can be serially wrong without any professional consequence. There’s quite a bit of this about at the moment, much of … Continue reading Sunk Cost Fallacy Territory

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Thoughts

On Aquinas and Puberty Blockers

BY SEAN WALSH Why are “puberty blockers” morally obscene? Aquinas would have the answer. We need to remind ourselves that the potential is as real as the actual. I’m not going to waste much time defending the self-evident truth that it is obscene to perform medical experiments on children. I mean no disrespect to the eugenicists who think otherwise, but these people are in need … Continue reading On Aquinas and Puberty Blockers

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Media

Toxic ‘Niceness’ Shouldn’t Stop Us Calling Out The Lies

BY SEAN WALSH The broadcaster Mike Graham has been sacked (according to some reports) by Talk TV for offences real or imagined (past caring). This was always on the cards given the 24/7 diligence of the grievance junkies now in charge of the public and social media spaces. It was only last week that Mr Graham was involved in an entertaining “dust up” with the … Continue reading Toxic ‘Niceness’ Shouldn’t Stop Us Calling Out The Lies

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Opinion

Trump’s Dylanesque Genius

BY SEAN WALSH When I was a child and showing worrying signs of growing up to become me, my parents put me up for investigation by all manner of psychologists and other con-artists. The experts gave me these “psychometric” tests and also exercises in something called “numerical reasoning”. Some of the questions went a bit like this: What is the next number in the following … Continue reading Trump’s Dylanesque Genius

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Freedom

Resisting the Digital Prison of a National ID

BY SEAN WALSH To steal and misapply a line from Woody Allen in Annie Hall it’s looking like Keir Starmer’s notion of compulsory digital ID won’t even make it to the concept stage, let alone become a workable idea. Colour us unsurprised. Starmer’s saving grace, his accidental virtue, is a preternatural incompetence attached to an unmatchable personal detestability. He delivers policy in the same way … Continue reading Resisting the Digital Prison of a National ID

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Opinion

Did Nobody Think to Tell Starmer that the Sequel’s Always Worse?

BY SEAN WALSH If you’ve seen it, you’ll know that A Prayer for the Dying is the worst film ever made. If you haven’t then you’re just going to have to trust me. Its awfulness is incommunicable even by critics far more articulate than this one.  You might get a sense of it if I tell you that Mickey Rourke is an IRA gunman with … Continue reading Did Nobody Think to Tell Starmer that the Sequel’s Always Worse?

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Alcohol, Religion

Breaking Bad and the Strange Culture of 12-Step Recovery

BY SEAN WALSH In Season 3 of Breaking Bad, two low-level, sci-fi-obsessed and endearingly hapless addicts and meth dealers, Badger and Skinny Pete (not their real names), infiltrate a 12-Step recovery group, intending to use the “share time” to promote their uniquely pure, trademark-blue “product”. The scheme is misconceived, not least because the healing space generated and curated by 12-Step groups is not controllable. Certainly not … Continue reading Breaking Bad and the Strange Culture of 12-Step Recovery

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Opinion

Light Up, Children

BY SEAN WALSH Let’s get smoking again, if only to help the easily offended “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” —Albert Einstein If we’re serious about arresting our spiritual, cultural, moral, and aesthetic decline—and if we wish to push back against the general entropy of good manners—then we need to get people smoking again. Not … Continue reading Light Up, Children

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Law

The Tragic Cleverness of Lord Sumption

BY SEAN WALSH The amusingly Dickensian Lord Sumption, doubtless still writing that final ruling on the perduring Chancery matter of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce, has temporarily removed his wig in favour of a clerical collar, to better sermonise on the state’s treatment of Lucy Connolly.  “I shall not waste any sympathy on Mrs Connolly” he reassured us last week, as if “sympathy” were some auditable or … Continue reading The Tragic Cleverness of Lord Sumption

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Opinion

We Need to Become More Offensive

BY SEAN WALSH Dostoevsky was right on the money when he wrote about how some people straight-up enjoy taking offence at the most trivial things: “A man who lies to himself is the first to take offence…he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thereby he reaches a point of great hostility” – The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky’s novel is an unsurpassed literary dissertation … Continue reading We Need to Become More Offensive

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Obvious Satire

Diary of Mr Peter Hitchens

BY SEAN WALSH I have instructed my solicitors Phillips, Schofield, and Childs to issue a “cease and desist” letter to Mr. Professor (Emeritus) Richard Dawkins on the grounds that the title of his book “The God Delusion” could be considered libellous. I will set out my reasons to myself below, while reminding myself, Mr. Peter Hitchens, that I am not a lawyer. It is what … Continue reading Diary of Mr Peter Hitchens

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AI

He’s So Fine?

BY SEAN WALSH For competent plagiarists this could be the best of times In 1976 a New York court decided that George Harrison had committed “subconscious plagiarism” by passing off My Sweet Lord as his own work. It ruled that the Quiet Beatle’s paean to peace, love and understanding was more than coincidentally similar to the Chiffons’ 1963 hit He’s So Fine. The decision must … Continue reading He’s So Fine?

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Education

The Value of Latin Best Appreciated Sub Specie Aeternitatis  

BY SEAN WALSH Trigger warning: contains references to Catholicism.  No politician does casual spite quite like Bridget Phillipson. In a Seasonal message to the struggling but aspirational middle-class family she has decided to cancel the Latin Excellence Programme. This, you may know, is a provision introduced in 2022 to around 40 non-selective state schools. From February the resource will no longer be available to the … Continue reading The Value of Latin Best Appreciated Sub Specie Aeternitatis  

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