Citizens often think of a state's interests in terms of the promotion of ideals such as democracy, a particular way of life, or other values which they endorse or see as part of their historical continuity and identity. In this domain as in others values are not fixed, and so a state's interests are dynamic and in a constant state of negotiation and construction.
Dale JamiesonPeople with long memories and a vivid sense of the past have an immediate understanding of politicians like Donald Trump. They are not surprised by the behavior of Google, a corporation that notionally (until recently anyway) espoused the slogan "don't be evil" and then runs over individual people and even entire nations in the pursuit of profit.
Dale JamiesonClimate change involves behaviors that are individually negligible, whose impacts go far beyond the spatial and temporal constraints that define our sense of community.
Dale JamiesonWe live in a world in which everyone wants solutions. But we can't find solutions if we don't understand the problems, and we can't understand the problems without knowing how we got here.
Dale JamiesonThe Enlightenment is not a nightmare, nor is it something that comes easily to us. It is an aspiration - and a good one!
Dale JamiesonCritics of Consequentialism have often assumed that hedonism (or preference-satisfaction) must be the theory of the good, that the deontic principle must be maximizing, and that the principle should be applied to individual acts. Indeed, this version is often called "classical utilitarianism" and attributed to Bentham and sometimes even to Mill. Rather than a "classical" view it is a recent construction foisted on to the tradition.
Dale Jamieson