Mark D. White

Writer, editor, teacher

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about

I’m a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, where I teach courses in philosophy, economics, and law, and the author/editor/co-editor of several books.

Category: Newspapers

  • Much Ado about Happiness

    Mark D. White Carl Bialik at The Wall Street Journal has an article in today's edition and a blog post from last night, both very evenhanded, about the attempts by governments to measure the happiness of its citizenry, and the skepticism of some regarding the efficacy of this. For a critical look at the theory behind happiness studies,…

  • Inequality: Confusing the Issue

    Mark D. White The topic of today's "Room for Debate" feature at The New York Times is inequality, prompted by a recent paper by Mike I. Norton and Dan Ariely that shows a large number of Americans would prefer to live in a society with a more equitable distribution of wealth (like Sweden). Norton himself…

  • David Brooks on individuality and sociality: A Kantian perspective

    Mark D. White David Brooks has a fascinating article on new research on human nature in today's New York Times (a condensation, of sorts, of his wonderfully written piece in The New Yorker in January–and, apparently, his new book, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, which was reviewed recently in The…

  • Lessons in Monetary Economics from Playing Monopoly

    Mark D. White The New York Times has a great little piece today on Monopoly (the game), Milton Friedman, and monetary economics, which ends with this description of a particular game which took place in a University of Chicago dorm in the late 1970s: The precise details of our classic game are blurred by the…

  • “Unnecessary” nutrients?

    Mark D. White An article from The New York Times reports on changes in the food industry's labelling standards with respect to calories, salt, fat, ands sugar, which presumably are intended not only to provide better information to consumers but also to encourage food manufacturers to lessen such aspects of its products (as Wal-Mart agreed to do not…

  • The End of Cost-Benefit Analysis?

    Mark D. White Today, the editors of The Wall Street Journal commented on the fine print of President Obama's recent executive order requiring all regulatory agencies to submit their rules to cost-benefit analysis in an effort to streamline government and reduce regulatory burden on business. They note that the order requires that agencies include in…

  • Debating the Insanity Defense

    Mark D. White In the most recent "Room for Debate" feature in The New York Times, five scholars involved in law, psychiatry, and criminal justice discuss the current state of the insanity defense in light of the Tucson shootings. A nice range of viewpoints is presented, from Alan Dershowitz's argument that the insanity defense has…

  • Lying to Get Student Discounts

    Mark D. White Thanks to Annie Lowrey, I found this recent New York Times article, "Getting a Student Rate When You're Not a Student," which advises youngish people, typically former students, on how to take advantage of the discounts that retailers and other merchants give to current students. The discussion of the ethics of this practice is…

  • Alain de Botton on the modern university’s neglect of the wisdom in culture

    Mark D. White In The Wall Street Journal today, the very prominent popularizer of philosophy from across the pond, Alain de Botton, writes of the modern university's neglect of the wisdom that can be imparted to students through the study of culture, rather than just intellectualizing it all to death. From the article: The modern…

  • One more step toward repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT)

    Mark D. White As I'm sure you already know, the U.S. Senate voted today to end the ban on open homosexuals in the military. I hope the president signs this bill and ends seventeen years of forcing gay and lesbian Americans who wish only to serve their country to either lie about or conceal an essential…