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"Jeremy Shearmur"
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Hayek and After
This book offers a distinctive treatment of Hayek's ideas, as a \"research programme\". It presents a detailed account of aspects of Hayek's intellectual development and of problems that arise within his work, and then offers some broad suggestions as to ways in which the programme initiated in his work might be developed further.
eBook
Beveridge and the Brief Life of 'Social Biology' at the LSE
Sir William Beveridge, 1879-1963, was a distinguished figure in the history of public policy. His 1942 report Social Insurance and Allied Services played a key role in the development of the British welfare state. The idea of 'social biology' looks to have been thought up by Beveridge himself -- although there may well have been discussions with Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial chairman Beardsley Ruml about the idea. It formed part of a package for work which might be undertaken with Memorial funding, in an area which was referred to as 'Natural Bases of Social Sciences'. Beveridge was dogged in his support of the Department of Social Biology, and tried to do everything he could to have it continue. But he was his own worst enemy. First, as indicated earlier, it seems to me that a major problem was that his view of the program was itself intellectually incoherent. Second, Beveridge seemed oddly unaware of what, in fact, the Department of Social Biology was doing.
Journal Article
The Political Thought of Karl Popper
The Political Thought of Karl Popper offers a controversial treatment of Popper's ideas about politics, informed by Shearmur's personal knowledge of Popper together with research on unpublished material in the Popper archive at the Hoover Institute.While sympathetic to Popper's overall approach, Shearmur offers criticism of some of his ideas and suggests that political conclusions should be drawn from Popper's ideas which differ from Popper's own views. Shearmur introduces Popper's political ideas by way of a discussion of their development, which draws upon archive material. He then offers a critical survey of some of the themes from his Open Society and Poverty of Historicism, and discusses the political significance of some of his later philosophical ideas. Wider themes within Popper's philosophy are drawn on to offer striking critical re-interpretations of his ethical ideas and social theory. The book concludes with a discussion which suggests that Popper's views should have been closer to classical liberalism than they in fact were.
eBook
The Gift Relationship Revisited
If unremunerated blood donors are willing to participate, and if the use of them is economical from the perspective of those collecting blood, I can see no objection to their use. But there seems to me no good reason, moral or practical, why they should be used. The system of paid plasmapheresis as it currently operates in the United States and in Canada would seem perfectly adequate, and while there may always be ways in which the safety and efficiency of supply could be increased, there seems no reason whatever to think that there would be an improvement if the current system changed so as to rely entirely on unpaid donors. Further, given the adequacy of paid plasmapheresis, I could see no problem if the collection of whole blood were to take place on a similar, fully-commercial, basis. Such a view is controversial. To argue for it, this paper offers just one strand in a complex argument: a critique of Richard Titmuss’s
Gift Relationship
, which holds an iconic position in the critical literature on the paid provision of blood. As I conclude: all told, there seems no good basis for rejecting supply of whole blood for money—let alone the supply of blood plasma.
Journal Article
LUNCHING FOR LIBERTY AND THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF A PUBLIC SPHERE: ON BRITAIN'S INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AFFAIRS
Fino a che punto le opinioni e le idee che circolano in un “think thank” possono avere un peso sulle politiche pubbliche (public policies) tanto da influenzarne i contenuti e ripensarne addirittura i contenuti ideologici? Ricostruendo una storia intellettuale dell'Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), in questo contributo si vuole mostrare come esso questo abbia dato l'impressione di essere riuscito ad ottenere un molo di primaria importanza nel dibattito pubblico contemporaneo grazie alla divulgazione delle idee a sostegno del libero mercato, delle libertà economiche e politiche (“lunching for liberty”). Nella prima parte, si sostiene che la notevole influenza dell'IEA sulle politiche pubbliche sia dovuta alia creazione di un particolare tipo di ‘sfera pubblica’, sfruttando la strategica posizione geografica e riuscendo ad interpretare a proprio vantaggio il tipo di ethos che operava nella politica britannica in quel moment. In questo modo l'IEA è riuscito a presentare e sottoporre le proprie idee ad una vasta gamma di figure chiave nella politica britannica, del giornalismo, del industria e del commercio e, aspetto non secondario, talvolta ha visto accogliere le proprie idee anche tra un pubblico non simpático verso il suo orientamento politico. La seconda tesi, argomentata nell'ultima parte del lavoro, riguarda il modo in cui l'IEA è stato successivamente esso stesso trasformata da vari cambiamenti nel modo in cui la politica, il giornalismo e gli affari britannici hanno funzionato. Tale trasformazione viene argomentata pariendo da un confronto tra la natura organizzativa delle sfere pubbliche e l'imparto che la circolazione delle idee ha avuto in tali contesti, in presenza di un mondo sempre più pluralistico e de-polarizzato, ma in cui talvolta sono gli esiti delle politiche pubbliche a rimettere in discussione il “mercato delle idee”.
Journal Article
On Barry Hindess' Philosophy and Methodology in the Social Sciences
This article discusses Barry Hindess' strangely neglected Philosophy and Methodology in the Social Sciences and, in particular, his critical engagement there with Karl Popper. It argues that while there are some minor flaws in his interpretation, Hindess raises an issue of the greatest importance. This concerns how it can be coherent to test theories on the basis of reports on observations which are taken to have theoretical content. Shearmur suggests that a response can, indeed, be offered from a \"Popperian\" theory of knowledge which rejects the idea that knowledge claims can be justified, and he reports briefly on what such an approach might look like.
Journal Article
Why the ‘Hopeless War’?: Approaching Intelligent Design
This paper addresses the intellectual motivation of some of those involved in the intelligent design movement. It identifies their concerns with the critique of the claim that Darwinism offers an adequate explanation of prima facie teleological features in biology, a critique of naturalism, and the concern on the part of some of these authors including Dembski, with the revival of 'Old Princeton' apologetics. It is argued that their work is interesting and is in principle intellectually legitimate. It is also suggested, however, that it needs to be appraised qua 'research programme' (after the fashion of the early work of Lakatos), and that, seen in that light, what needs to be accomplished might seem daunting.
Journal Article
In Defense of the Commercial Provision of Blood: Reactions to Voluntarism in the United States National Blood Policy in the Early 1970s
In the course of his critique of the commercial provision of blood in The Gift Relationship, Richard Titmuss raised the following problem. In his view, the voluntary supply of blood was both virtuous and beneficent in its consequences. He favored a particular form of voluntary provision, as was practiced in the UK, and in the US by the American National Red Cross. But he argued this to be in danger of being undermined by the spread of commercialized blood banks, the practices of which he argued to be morally and practically undesirable. For people likely to sell their blood, itself a somewhat stigmatized activity, would, if they were selling out of desperation, be less likely to tell the truth when asked if they had engaged in at-risk behavior, compared to unrewarded donors. In 1971, as a response to this issue, the US government declared itself in favor of a National Blood Policy. One of its concerns was to improve the safety of the blood supply. Ideas about getting rid of the commercial supply of blood were articulated during the period between 1972 and 1973. This paper considers some of the alternatives that stood between so-called blood-for-booze arrangements and the form of donor provision so-called anonymous altruism that Titmuss favored.
Journal Article