Mark D. White

Writer, editor, teacher

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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: Posts by Mark D. White

  • When economics and philosophy divorced…

    Mark D. White In a recent "The Shrink and the Sage" piece in the Financial Times Magazine, Julian Baggini (prolific popularizer of philosophy) and Antonia Macaro discuss the pursuit of happiness, which is very interesting in itself, but I was particularly amused by how Baggini started his half of the discussion: When psychology and philosophy…

  • This is what happens when you vote on issues of human rights…

    Mark D. White From today's Albany TImes Union: CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — More than 1,500 married, New Hampshire gay couples could be placed into a classification all their own if lawmakers succeed next year in repealing the state's two-year-old law legalizing same-sex unions. Legislation to repeal gay marriage is one of the highly charged issues…

  • Why hasn’t social economics focused more on the family?

    Mark D. White A question occurred to me this morning as I did some basic research on alimony after reading Alexandria Harwin's New York Times op-ed "Ending the Alimony Guessing Game": why don't social economists focus more on the family? Ms. Harwin's article interested me more at first due to her discussion of judicial discretion…

  • Marriage equality in New York: It should have been done better.

    Mark D. White Last nigt New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill allowing same-sex marriage after a lengthy process of legislative tomfoolery. Those who have read my previous posts and work on the issue will not be surprised to hear that I am very happy about the result and less than pleased with the…

  • Considering “The Failure of Rational Choice Philosophy” (The New York Times’ The Stone)

    Mark D. White In today's installment of The Stone in The New York Times, UCLA's John McCumber presents a very critical view of "rational choice philosophy," by which he seems to mean the narrow version promulgated by most mainstream economists. In discussing the ethical problem with rational choice theory, he writes: Rational choice theory, being…

  • The overseas superstar status of Michael Sandel and what economics can learn from it

    Mark D. White Thomas L. Friedman had an interesting piece in The New York Times last week describing the rock star reception given in Asia recently to Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel, author of Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? and lecturer in the accompanying PBS series (available here). In the piece, Friedman…

  • A fascinating first-person account of the health care reform battles

    Mark D. White Regardless of where you stand on the law, economics, or politics of the Affordable Care Act, I highly recommend Ilya Shapiro's new paper "A Long, Strange Trip: My First Year Challenging the Constitutionality of Obamacare" (forthcoming in Florida International Law Review), in which the CATO scholar details his year of writing, speaking,…

  • Assessing Competence to Refuse Medical Treatment

    Mark D. White Last night I read a wonderful and concise article by Jillian Craigie (King's College London) from the latest issue of Bioethics (25/6, July 2011) titled "Competence, Practical Rationality and What a Patient Values." The abstract follows: According to the principle of patient autonomy, patients have the right to be self-determining in decisions…

  • Willpower and poverty

    Mark D. White Just read a very interesting article from The New Republic by Jamie Holmes titled "Why Can't More Poor People Escape Poverty?", detailing new work on the intersection of psychological studies of ego depletion and self-management–the work by Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Vohs, and others that I've cited widely in my own work on willpower–and…

  • David Brooks’ false dichotomy regarding autonomy and sociality

    Mark D. White Last week, David Brooks' column "It's Not About You" in The New York Times spoke to the challenges that new college graduates face as they enter "the real world," focusing on the change in the imposed structure that has shielded them from life to this point: More important, their lives have been perversely…