How we change our minds and what it looks like
There is a sense out there today that something has gone horribly wrong. That the ordinary flow of debate and argument and discussion and civil disagreement has broken down. In its place are dogmatic and inflexible tribes, people who are strangers to their own rationality, and whose minds will never change. But this is wrong!
Where we find ourselves getting so hung-up is not on the irrationality of our fellow human beings, but on our own poor understanding of what rationality is, why it is that people change their minds, how it is that they come to those decisions, and what a change of mind actually looks like when it does happen.
A Poggean Approach to Mass Atrocities
Humanitarian intervention and R2P have been plagued in practice by a pervasive lack of political will to action. To overcome this situation and supply determinacy for international responses to global manifestations of mass atrocities, a two-stage approach is required. Firstly, increasing political will via the development of a new and encompassing moral edict, where humanitarian intervention and R2P are recognised as unavoidable obligations upon the international community. And secondly, increasing political will via an achievable reform agenda that lowers political/material barriers, and diminishes the size and scope of future humanitarian challenges. Such an approach is achievable, predominantly through an adaption and expansion of the work of cosmopolitan philosopher Thomas Pogge.