Category Archives: Philosophy & Ethics

FANTASY FEARS AND REAL ISSUES

June 22, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on machine sentience and the real problems with AI, was my Observer column on 19 June 2022. It was published under the headline “Forget sentience… the worry is that AI copies human bias”. ‘I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” So claimed a Google software program, creating a bizarre controversy over the past week in AI circles and beyond. The programme is called LaMDA, an acronym for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, a project run by […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: ai bias, artificial intelligence, blake lemoine, facial recognition, google, lamda, predictive policing, privacy, sentience, surveillance, timnit gebru

ON THE ASSISTED DYING DEBATE

October 26, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the complexities of the assisted dying debate, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 24 October 2021, under the headline “Claiming a monopoly on truth and decency is no way to win the assisted dying debate”. A man is standing on the parapet of a bridge. He is about to jump. What should you do? Most people would agree that the moral act would be to talk to him to try to persuade him not to. […]

Categories: Britain, Human, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: assisted dying, baroness meacher, death, netherlands, ronald dworkin, sanctity of life, slippery slope, suicide

OMAR LITTLE AND MORAL COMPLEXITY

September 14, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the significance of Michael K Williams, Omar Little and The Wire, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 12 September 2021, under the headline “In an age too given to moral certainty, let’s remember The Wire’s Omar as a study in complexity”. It’s not often that a shotgun-wielding thief and killer comes to be seen as possessing a moral core. But then it’s not often that you have a character like Omar Little. Or an actor […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: baltimore, black lives matter, cop shows, david simon, left behind, michael k williams, morality, omar little, television, the wire, trumpism

COVID AND THE MYTHS OF EAST AND WEST

August 10, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on why there is no simple divide between “Eastern” and “Western” values, was my Observer column this week. It was published in the Observer, 8 August 2021, under the headline “Can Covid death rates be reduced to a clash of values? It’s not so simple”. “The fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of ‘Asian values’.” “Asian culture’s emphasis on obedience to authority could play a role in explaining how successful public health measures have been in the region.” “The massive […]

Categories: International, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: asian values, china, communitarianism, confucianism, covid 19, east asia, east v west, eastern philosophy, individualism, japan, liberalism, olympics, south korea, taiwan, tokyo olympics, trust, western philosophy

ORIENTALISM AND AHISTORICISM

May 2, 2021 by Kenan Malik

I wrote a short piece for my Observer column on Edward Said, Hannah Arendt and James Baldwin and why I have come to appreciate them more despite (or perhaps because of) the contradictions in their arguments. I thought it might also be useful as a counterpoint, to publish a short part of my original critique of Said’s Orientalism from my 1996 book The Meaning of Race. It is part of a much longer critique, but gets to the essence of […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: aijaz ahmed, edward said, enlightenment, essentializing, greek philosophy, orientalism, west

TRANSLATION AND IDENTITY

March 9, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on the debate over the translation of Amanda Gorman’s poetry, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the Home Office’s inflexibility over British citizenship.) It was published on 7 March 2021, under the headline “Lost in translation: the dead end of dividing the world on identity lines”. In 1768, the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder paid a visit to the French city of Nantes. “I am getting to know the French language […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Language, Multiculturalism, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: amanda gorman, identity politics, invisible man, marieke lucas rijneveld, racism, ralph ellison, stay in your lane, translation

INEQUALITY AND POLITICAL DIVIDES

March 3, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on perceptions of inequality in Britain, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 28 February 2021, under the headline “The left/right divide still exists. But it’s struggling to escape the lure of identity politics”. First, the good news. Britons see inequality as a major problem and divide broadly along traditional political lines in their attitudes towards it. Then, the bad news. Britons are also inclined to see inequalities as driven by individual behaviour as much as […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: bobby duffy, brexit, british politics, conservative party, covid 19, identity politics, individualism, inequality, labour party, pandemic, racism, reluctant individualism

LESS ABOUT MONEY THAN ABOUT PRIORITIES

January 12, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the failure to tackle inequality, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 10 January 2020, under the headline “Lives are falling apart. Enough talk about inequality, it’s now time to act”. Inequality. Everyone agrees it’s bad. Everyone agrees that the pandemic and lockdowns have exacerbated inequality. And everyone agrees that something must be done to reduce it. So, what has been done? Nearly a year into the pandemic, and at the start of the third national lockdown […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics

RESPECT AND TOLERANCE, PEOPLE AND IDEAS

December 15, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on the changing meanings of respect and tolerance, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the revelations at the Grenfell inquiry.) It was published on 13 December 2020, under the headline “Ideas can be tolerated without being respected. The distinction is key”. Should Cambridge University academics and students “tolerate” or “respect” the views of others with which they might disagree? Should we tolerate Millwall fans booing players taking the knee? Should gender-critical feminists who argue for […]

Categories: Free Speech, Philosophy & Ethics, Women • Tags: cambridge university, censorship, football, free speech, les ferdinand, millwall, racism, respect, salil tripathi, taking the knee, tolerance, transgender, twitter

WORTHY BOTH OF CELEBRATION AND CONDEMNATION

September 22, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate about the legacy of David Hume, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg.) It was published on 20 September 2020, under the headline “David Hume was a complex man. Erasing his name is too simplistic a gesture”. “Learn, Mr Hume, to prize the blessings of Liberty and Education, for… had you been born and bred a slave, your Genius, whatever you may think of it, would never […]

Categories: History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: david hume, david hume tower, edinburgh university, enlightenment, jonathan israel, racism, radical enlightenment, slavery

WHEN MONUMENTS FALL

September 12, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This is the opening section of my essay in the New York Review of Books‘ NYR Daily on the statues debate. Read the full article on NYR Daily. “We stand today at the national center to perform something like a national act—an act which is to go into history.” So said the great nineteenth-century former slave and staunch abolitionist Frederick Douglass at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., in 1876. “That we are here […]

Categories: History, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: abraham lincoln, black lives matter, boris johnson, confederate statues, edward colston, emancipation memorial, frederick douglass, iconoclasm, racism, statues, toppling statues, winston churchill

RACE, CLASS AND WHITE PRIVILEGE: A RESPONSE

August 30, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. The political philosopher Chris Bertram published two posts last week on Crooked Timber, the philosophy and social science blog, the first challenging critiques of the concept of “white privilege”, the second arguing that certain claims about race and class are irrational. As I was one of the targets of these articles (Chris linked to one of my posts as exemplifying the problem, and we had previously debated the issue on Twitter), this is a response. (It has been published on […]

Categories: Class, Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, chris bertram, inequality, police killings, racism, school exclusions, white identity, white privilege, working class

FAIRNESS IS A POLITICAL JUDGMENT, NOT A THING IN ITSELF

August 25, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on algorithms, political judgments and fairness, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 23 August 2020, under the headline ‘The cruel exams algorithm has laid bare the unfairness at the heart of our schools’. . What children know and too many politicians seem not to: a few years ago, the psychologists Alex Shaw and Kristina Olson ran an experiment in which they told young children about two boys, Dan and Mark, who had cleaned up their […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: algorithms, boris johnson, british politics, education, fairness, michael gove, ofqual, scottish qualifications authority

HIROSHIMA AND THE MORALITY OF VICTORS

August 11, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the morality of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 9 August 2020, under the headline ‘Don’t let the victors define morality – Hiroshima was always indefensible’. ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ So said Curtis LeMay after America obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with two atomic bombs in August 1945. LeMay was no bleeding-heart liberal. The US air force chief of staff who […]

Categories: International, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: a bomb, chester nimitz, curtis lemay, douglas macarthur, eisenhower, harry truman, hiroshima, japan, john dower, manhattan project, martin harwit, nagasaki, nuclear weapons, racism, robert mcnamara, second world war, war crimes, william leahy

CULTURE WARS CAN MAKE YOU BLIND TO SOCIAL CHANGE

June 23, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on how the fog of culture wars can obscure the degree to which societies have become socially liberal, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 21 June 2020, under the headline ‘Culture wars risk blinding us to just how liberal we’ve become in the past decades’. ‘Prime minister Boris Johnson stirs culture war over Churchill statue.’ So ran a recent New York Times headline. The Washington Post agreed. As ‘counter protesters’ took to the streets to ‘protect’ statues and as controversy […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: black lives matter, british politics, culture wars, immigration, racism, social liberalism, statues, usa, working class