News PPE Forums: Dr Johanna Thoma and Dr Yaron Brook 14.02.2020

This week, the PPE Forum has heard from Dr Johanna Thoma from the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science; and also from Dr Yaron Brook, chairman of the board of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Dr Thoma gave an insightful paper on procrastination and policy formation with particular reference to the failure of governments and international organisations to make meaningful progress in addressing the existential threat posed by climate change. Using Warren Quinn’s puzzle of the ‘self torturer’, she explained the absence of effective policy to combat climate change by showing how the short term political and economic benefits of not tackling climate change appeared to outweigh the less tangible long term benefits of taking decisive action.

Dr Brook, who visited Godolphin for the second time, spoke about the morality of inequality, analysing the failure of western democracies to address rapidly growing, structural economic and political disparity through the frame of Ayn Rand’s philosophical objectivitism.