Author: Colin Turfus

Colin Turfus is a quantitative risk manager with 16 years experience in investment banking. He has a PhD in applied mathematics from Cambridge University and has published research in fluid dynamics, astronomy and quantitative finance.

Fact and Value: Two Sides of One Coin?

Are the concepts of fact and value as distinct as we tend to believe? It is a common understanding that fact and value are distinct categories, mutually exclusive to the extent that philosophy has developed separate fields for the study of each, respectively epistemology and axiology. But is this really so? I shall try below… Continue reading Fact and Value: Two Sides of One Coin?

Identity and Worldview

I consider below the two seminal ideas of identity and worldview from a cognitive perspective. My starting point is the newly emerging view of the human mind as a prediction machine which operates on the basis of an embedded model of the world it experiences, This model it constantly seeks to improve, so as to… Continue reading Identity and Worldview

From Redistribution to Retribution: The Evolution of the Woke Agenda

Saul Alinsky writing in the 1970s famously prescribed a set of rules to be followed by leftist radicals to maximise the effectiveness of their protests and mobilizations. At the heart of his strategy was a focus on problems rather than solutions: The organizer’s first job is to create the issues or problems, and organizations must… Continue reading From Redistribution to Retribution: The Evolution of the Woke Agenda

On Ends and Means

A perennial question in philosophy is whether the end can be said to justify the means. The philosopher whose name is most associated with the advocacy of this idea is Niccolò Machiavelli, a 16th century diplomat and government official of the Florentine Republic, best known for his writing about political philosophy. The fact that the… Continue reading On Ends and Means

Donald Trump, High Prophet of Neoiconoclasm

One thing that both Trump’s critics and his supporters can probably agree on is his being the cause of a major reconfiguring of the world order as he calls time on a plethora of US and global institutions. But is it the case that these changes are a consequence mainly of his agency? Or is he merely uncovering fault lines which have existed for some time?

The Diversity Deficit in the Moral Sphere

This is a presentation made at the 5th ICHJA conference in Korea. We argue that an important first step in the pushback against cultural socialist hegemony is in recognizing and publicizing the ways in which it is being exercised and in understanding the contours of the contemporary moral landscape which facilitate the hegemony. There needs… Continue reading The Diversity Deficit in the Moral Sphere

Blessed Are the Equity-Deserving

We trace the origins of the concept of equity in the promotion of social justice in Canada. Rather than preventing denial of opportunities and benefits it has entrenched the same through the designation of “disadvantaged” groups whose members are deemed “equity-deserving”, in contrast to the others who are not. The UK should learn from the backlash this is generating in Canada.

The Decline of Virtue

It was observed by Haidt (2012) based on his moral foundations theory that the difference in perspective between liberals and conservatives is not so much in the values they espouse as in the weights they assign to them, with liberals in particular citing the embodiment of care (kindness) as the overriding moral imperative at the… Continue reading The Decline of Virtue