Exploring Irony and Trolling in Intellectual Discourse

This week we have one of our first encounters with the Academic Edgelord final boss, Stephan Kershnar. We enter the Kershnar-sphere by looking at his argument against equality of opportunity. For this edgelord — who is author of papers on adult-child sex, slavery, and more — its actually one of his milder takes. It’s from Why Equality of Opportunity is not a Valuable Goal, in the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

We also read a response in the same journal from John O’Dea. We’ll look at Kershnar’s case, and ask what it misses about good equality of opportunity arguments. Plus: what exactly is he doing? We discuss whether Kershnar is a kind of useful gadfly, a dishonest ideologue, or just a petulant troll.

The post EP10: Is Equality of Opportunity Not Valuable? (On Stephan Kershnar’s Attack on Equality of Opportunity) appeared first on Academic Edgelords.