[Revised entry by Jerome Gellman on February 9, 2010. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] The term 'mysticism,' comes from the Greek muo, meaning "to conceal." In the Hellenistic world, 'mystical' referred to "secret" religious rituals. In early Christianity the term came to refer to "hidden" allegorical interpretations of Scriptures and to hidden presences, such as that of Jesus at the...
Philosophy
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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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Mysticism
9 Feb 2010 | 6:11 pm -
Automated Reasoning
8 Feb 2010 | 7:51 pm[Revised entry by Frederic Portoraro on February 8, 2010. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, Internet resources] Reasoning is the ability to make inferences, and automated reasoning is concerned with the building of computing systems that automate this process. Although the overall goal is to mechanize different forms of reasoning, the term has largely been identified with valid deductive reasoning as practiced in mathematics and formal logic. In this respect, automated reasoning is akin to mechanical theorem proving.... -
Intensional Transitive Verbs
5 Feb 2010 | 6:11 pm[Revised entry by Graeme Forbes on February 5, 2010. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html] A verb is transitive iff it usually occurs with a direct object, and in such occurrences it is said to occur transitively. Thus 'ate' occurs transitively in 'I ate the meat and left the vegetables', but not in 'I ate then left' (perhaps it is not the same verb 'left' in these two examples, but it seems to be the same... -
Eternity
4 Feb 2010 | 8:14 pm[Revised entry by Paul Helm on February 4, 2010. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Concepts of eternity have developed in a way that is, as a matter of fact, closely connected to the development of the concept of God in Western thought, beginning with ancient Greek philosophers; particularly to the idea of God's relation to time, the idea of divine perfection, and the Creator-creature distinction. Eternity as timelessness, and eternity as everlastingness, have been... -
Causal Theories of Mental Content
4 Feb 2010 | 7:13 pm[New Entry by Fred Adams and Ken Aizawa on February 4, 2010.] Causal theories of mental content attempt to explain how thoughts can be about things. They attempt to explain how one can think about, for example, dogs. These theories begin with the idea that there are mental representations and that thoughts are meaningful in virtue of a causal connection between a mental representation and some part of the world that is represented. In other words, the point of...
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Talking Philosophy
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Meditation 96 Morality without God
9 Feb 2010 | 8:56 amMorality without God Teaching ethics a number of years ago, I was told by an earnest student that there can be no morality without God. He seemed to agree implicitly with the idea that “If God does not exist, then all things are permitted.” He also believed in a visceral way that without God’s restraining hand, people would become riddled with vice, steal, kill, rape, take drugs and indulge in sinful sex. It is as if humans are just waiting to escape the leash and run amok. On this view, there is no reason whatsoever to be moral without the promise of heaven in the next life or the… -
The Departmental Meeting…
5 Feb 2010 | 8:39 amAs secretary to the university’s department of philsophy it fell to me to make a record of the discussion at the most recent academic committee meeting. And what a meeting it was! The main item for discussion that day was “the matter at hand”. And this is how the meeting unfolded… Professor Moore: “I now think it is time to turn to the matter at hand.” An uncontroversial beginning one might have thought, but rarely are things so simple at a gathering of the philosophical “great and good”: “I object to that!” offered Professor… -
Trying Terrorists
5 Feb 2010 | 7:47 amImage via Wikipedia The proposal to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York City for trial created considerable controversy. While some of it was manufactured for political purposes, there are significant issues here. First, there is the practical issue: bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the city for trial will cost millions of dollars. Interestingly, some folks have expressed a willingness to hold the trial in their town so as to bring that money into their community. In any case, holding the trial on a military facility would presumably be cheaper-the security is presumably already in… -
Being Opinionated
2 Feb 2010 | 7:11 amIs being opinionated a virtue or a vice? Is it a good trait in a philosopher? I’m with Socrates in thinking that definitions really come at the end of an enquiry, not the beginning, so I don’t want to pin the notion down right at the start. There are, though, two philosophical types. One gets mentioned to prospective students in the promotional literature: philosophers are open-minded free enquirers, willing to question everything, resolute denouncers of dogmatism, pursuers of the truth, followers of arguments wherever they might lead — at this point you may wish… -
Debating Meat I: Meat Matters
1 Feb 2010 | 5:09 pmImage via Wikipedia When the issue of the ethics of eating meat comes up, people often regard the matter as being primarily of academic concern. Or, far worse, a matter than only really matters to those who hug (and perhaps eat) trees. However, the ethics of meat does matter on a much broader scale. Since the subject is rather substantial, I have decided to devote a short series of blog posts on this matter. I’ll begin with making the case as to why meat matters. I will, of course, endeavor to do so without begging any questions for or against meat. One obvious way to motivate the…
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AskPhilosophers.org | "All"
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Question about Children, Education, Ethics - Andrew N. Carpenter responds
9 Feb 2010 | 7:06 amWhy are parents said to have the right to teach their children whatever they want? What are the underlying philosophical justifications and explanations for this right? Response from: Andrew N. Carpenter I don't know of any society where parents can teach their children whatever they want without regard to laws and social norms. With respect to laws, for example, a parent could not teach a child that it was okay to act out sexually in a way that the law would regard as involving incestuous sexual abuse. And, similarly, with respect to social norms I think that most people would say that… -
Question about Language, Philosophy - Eric Silverman responds
4 Feb 2010 | 10:18 amHas philosophy really been transformed into petty qualms about semantics? I haven't been studying it for very long, but a lot of recent talk has led me to believe that 1.) Philosophy is pretty much completely analytic now, and 2.) Analytic philosophy might as well be called 'rigorous linguistics'. I've learned that there are even philosophers who believe that all philosophy can do is help us clarify what we already know, and it *should* just be rigorous linguistics (Ayer, Wittgenstein, Russell). I thought (and would still like to believe) philosophy was about finding the truth, not narrowing… -
Question about Education, Ethics, Religion - Jean Kazez responds
4 Feb 2010 | 9:36 amI go to church regularly and say things I don't believe. I justify this by saying that it's necessary to support an institution that I believe does more good than harm and that the usefulness of a statement is more important than its truth. I think my grounds are utilitarian and pragmatic, and do not share the vulnerability, among skeptics, of belief in the statements. I am satisfied with my justification until I am asked to teach a seventh-grade Sunday School class. If I decline I leave it to somebody else, maybe as much a skeptic as I am, to give the support I want given. I can't do that,… -
Question about Philosophy - Lisa Cassidy responds
3 Feb 2010 | 1:06 pmHow can someone know that a question has an answer before knowing what the answer is? Or more specifically how is it possible that someone can place parameters on the possible answer faster than they can produce that answer? Response from: Lisa Cassidy This is a very nice question because what you are asking speaks to the heart of all inquiry, not just philosophical: How will I know I have the answer to a question if I truly don't know what the answer is?The logician might say you are asking about the difference between testing for local sufficiency and then global sufficiency (and I am… -
Question about Sport - Eddy Nahmias responds
3 Feb 2010 | 7:11 amIf we turn up to spectate a sport for instance a football match is the outcome of the game any different to what it would have been, had we not been there? Response from: Eddy Nahmias Alas, probably not, especially if (a) the crowd is very large and (b) your seat would have been filled by another fan, especially if (c) that fan would have been cheering for your team and about as loudly as you. But even if a-c are not true, it's not clear how much the cheering of the fans changes the players' performances and hence the outcome of the game. On the other hand, it always amazes me how significant…
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Philosophy News
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Applying Rawls Philosophy to Universal Health Care
7 Feb 2010 | 11:04 amIn the third article in a series on the American health care debate, Richard Pimentel surveys key aspects of the political philosophy of John Rawls and applies his philosophy to the question of whether health care is a right. This article is a follow up to his previous article on this issue. The ideas of John Rawls in the field of political philosophy are significant when looking at the justification for the right to health care. Although utilizing Rawlsian philosophy does not explicitly decide the issue, understanding Rawls’s conception of justice is vital to forming an informed view on… -
The Positives and Negatives of Universal Health Care
13 Dec 2009 | 11:45 pmReturning to the debate on universal health care–a debate current in American politics–Richard Pimentel considers the distinction between positive and negative rights. He asks whether the government has a responsibility to provide health care or merely protect citizens so they can freely access health care options. If there is a fundamental right to health care, then the government would appear to have an obligation provide access to everyone. A positive right such as this seems to place an obligation upon the government to provide the proper goods and services in order that this… -
The Right To Health Care?
16 Oct 2009 | 11:09 pmIn this latest article for WHiP, columnist Richard Pimentel questions how rights are defined and justified philosophically and then applies the definitions he describes to the current debate on health care. Is access to health care a right? Many think so. But is this correct? Justification for the fundamental right to health care for all must be established by those who advance the argument that this is indeed a right. Too often, the cart is put before the horse when this right is assumed as if this right must be accepted with no questions asked. -
Beauty and the Beholder
22 Aug 2009 | 3:55 pmIs Monty Python and the Holy Grail funny? Is U2’s The Joshua Treeenduring art or a mere pop cultural phenomenon fueled by hormonal teenagers looking for a rush? What is the value of art and how does one make aesthetic judgements? Richard Pimentel in his article for WHiP considers these and other questions. Regardless of how we answer them, Rick thinks the objects of those questions are essential facets of what make us human. There must be something about the comedy of Monty Python and the music of The Rollins Band or Burlap to Cashmere that makes it worthy to be deemed art by some but… -
Iraq: Political Philosophy in Relief
10 Aug 2009 | 10:21 pmRichard Pimentel, in his latest article for WHiP, considers whether Iraq could ever be truly free and secure. While much progress has been made in recent days, the future of Iraq is set of open questions. In “A Free and Secure Iraq?” Richard considers some of these questions and their philsophical implications. Iraq has reached a crossroads, one which will determine the success of the US invasion and occupation and the growth of Iraq after complete withdrawal of foreign forces. The crucial questions are whether Iraq can achieve freedom and security and make them hallmarks of…
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Leiter Reports
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Calvin College First School to Advertise for a Job While in Violation of APA's New Antidiscrimination Policy
9 Feb 2010 | 9:25 amMOVING TO FRONT FROM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7 IN CASE ANY READERS MISSED THIS Per the new policy, Calvin's ad is the first to appear marked for failure to comply. Several philosophers have now drafted a letter which will be sent... -
It's official: Bernard-Henri Levy is the Charlatan and Poseur You Always Suspected
9 Feb 2010 | 9:23 amNo serious scholar or philosopher--as opposed to a self-promoting poseur (not pensuer) like Levy--would have made this mistake: When France’s most dashing philosopher took aim at Immanuel Kant in his latest book, calling him “raving mad” and a “fake”, his... -
In Memoriam: Nelson Pike (1930-2010)
8 Feb 2010 | 7:15 amProfessor Pike, who passed away on January 24, was a leading contributor to philosophy of religion and longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, where he was Professor Emeritus. The UC Irvine Department has... -
King's College, London Will Require All Humanities Faculty to "Re-apply" for Their Current Positions
8 Feb 2010 | 3:31 amNews story here. This was alluded to in earlier items, and in the comments on earlier threads, but it deserves special notice, since it means the KCL bloodbath may be far from over. Administrators who think that "Digital and Visual... -
Stirling's Duff to Take Up Half-Time Post in the Law School at Minnesota
6 Feb 2010 | 12:32 pmDetails here.
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Ethics Etc
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Crisp on the Buck-Passing Account of Value
7 Feb 2010 | 10:35 pmRoger Crisp had an article in Mind in 2008 entitled “Goodness and Reasons: Accentuating the Negative.” Mind just published a piece discussing Crisp’s 2008 article by Philip Stratton-Lake, as well Crisp’s response to Stratton-Lake, both of which look very interesting. I also have a piece called “The Buck-Passing Account of Value: Lessons from Crisp,” [...] -
Raz on The Guise of the Good
5 Feb 2010 | 5:09 pmProfessor Joseph Raz (Columbia and Oxford University) will be giving a talk on Monday, Feb. 8, at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar entitled ‘On the Guise of the Good.’ A copy of Professor Raz’s talk can be found here. Professor Raz would welcome any comments/suggestions. Here’s an abstract of his talk: I [...] -
CFP: 11th Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference
1 Feb 2010 | 7:58 pmAugust 1st – 5th, 2010 Bellingham, Washington. Everyone is invited to submit a paper, or to volunteer to be a commentator or session chair, but conference attendance is by invitation only, and will be primarily limited to those on the conference program. To submit a paper: Submissions should be prepared for blind review and emailed to the 2010 [...] -
CFP: Wisconsin Seventh Annual Metaethics Workshop
1 Feb 2010 | 7:44 pmUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison September 24-26, 2010 Stephen Darwall (Yale) will be this year’s keynote speaker. Abstracts (of 2-3 double-spaced pages) of papers in any area of metaethics are due by May 1. There is a limit of one submission per person. Speakers in the 2008 or 2009 workshop are not eligible to submit abstracts for [...] -
Leeds Value Concepts Workshop, March 5-6
1 Feb 2010 | 3:29 amValue Concepts Workshop University of Leeds March 5-6, 2010 Matti Eklund (Cornell) “Misevaluation, Moral Semantics, and Moral Realism” Janice Dowell (Nebraska) “A Flexible, Contextualist Account of ‘Ought’” Antti Kauppinen (Amsterdam) “A Defence of Moral Invariantism” Simon Kirchin (Kent) “Determinables, Determinates, and Thick Concepts” Daniel Elstein (Leeds) “Why There Can Be No Good Reason to Accept the Shapelessness Hypothesis” Debbie Roberts (Reading) “Evaluation and Variability: Why Thick Concepts Are Not [...]
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Mind - current issue
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Semantic Relationism, by Kit Fine.
6 Feb 2010 | 11:19 pm -
Developmental Theism: From Pure Will to Unbounded Love, by Peter Forrest.
6 Feb 2010 | 11:19 pm -
Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association 2010 * University College Dublin, 9-11 July 2010
6 Feb 2010 | 11:19 pm -
Announcements
6 Feb 2010 | 11:19 pm -
Index of Mind Vol. 118 * Nos 1-4, 2009
6 Feb 2010 | 11:19 pm
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Oxford Journals: Philosophia Mathematica
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Godel and Philosophical Idealism
29 Jan 2010 | 8:49 amKurt Gödel made many affirmations of robust realism but also showed serious engagement with the idealist tradition, especially with Leibniz, Kant, and Husserl. The root of this apparently paradoxical attitude is his conviction of the power of reason. The paper explores the question of how Gödel read Kant. His argument that relativity theory supports the idea of the ideality of time is discussed critically, in particular attempting to explain the assertion that science can go beyond the appearances and ‘approach the things’. Leibniz and post-Kantian idealism are discussed… -
The Applicability of Mathematics as a Scientific and a Logical Problem
30 Sep 2009 | 9:14 amThis paper explores how to explain the applicability of classical mathematics to the physical world in a radically naturalistic and nominalistic philosophy of mathematics. The applicability claim is first formulated as an ordinary scientific assertion about natural regularity in a class of natural phenomena and then turned into a logical problem by some scientific simplification and abstraction. I argue that there are some genuine logical puzzles regarding applicability and no current philosophy of mathematics has resolved these puzzles. Then I introduce a plan for resolving the logical…
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Philosophical Studies
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Editorial
3 Feb 2010 | 9:58 amEditorial Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11098-010-9506-3Authors Paul Hurley, Claremont McKenna College 850 Columbia Ave. Claremont CA 91711 USA Journal Philosophical StudiesOnline ISSN 1573-0883Print ISSN 0031-8116 -
Realization theory and the philosophy of mind: comments on Sydney Shoemaker’s physical realization
3 Feb 2010 | 9:58 amRealization theory and the philosophy of mind: comments on Sydney Shoemaker’s physical realization Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11098-010-9510-7Authors Louise Antony, University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Philosophy 352 Bartlett Hall, 130 Hicks Way Amherst MA 01003-9269 USA Journal Philosophical StudiesOnline ISSN 1573-0883Print ISSN 0031-8116 -
Moorean pluralism as a solution to the incommensurability problem
3 Feb 2010 | 9:58 amAbstract Several prominent ethical philosophers have attempted to demonstrate that there exist instances or types of value that are of crucial moral significance but which cannot legitimately be compared with one another. Bernard Williams and Michael Stocker, for example, argue that it can sometimes be rational to regret having chosen the all-things-considered better of two alternatives, and that this sense of regret entails that the goodness of the worse option is not made up for by and is therefore incommensurable with that of the better. Joseph Raz and others have made similar… -
How to take skepticism seriously
1 Feb 2010 | 10:07 amHow to take skepticism seriously Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11098-010-9502-7Authors Adam Leite, Indiana University Department of Philosophy Sycamore Hall 026, 1033 E. Third St. Bloomington IN 47405 USA Journal Philosophical StudiesOnline ISSN 1573-0883Print ISSN 0031-8116 -
Recollection, perception, imagination
28 Jan 2010 | 10:03 amRecollection, perception, imagination Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11098-010-9508-1Authors Alex Byrne, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy 32-D808, MIT, 77 Mass. Ave. Cambridge MA 02139 USA Journal Philosophical StudiesOnline ISSN 1573-0883Print ISSN 0031-8116
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Philosophy & Public Affairs
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Which Relationships Justify Partiality? The Case of Parents and Children
13 Jan 2010 | 12:57 am -
A Note from the Editor
13 Jan 2010 | 12:57 am -
Information for Contributors
13 Jan 2010 | 12:57 am -
Subscription Information
13 Jan 2010 | 12:57 am -
Notes on the Contributors
13 Jan 2010 | 12:57 am
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University of Chicago: Philosophy of Science
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Quantum Field Theory: Underdetermination, Inconsistency, and Idealization
27 Jan 2010 | 9:08 amPhilosophy of Science, Volume 76, Issue 4, Page 536-567, October 2009. Quantum field theory (QFT) presents a genuine example of the underdetermination of theory by empirical evidence. There are variants of QFT—for example, the standard textbook formulation and the rigorous axiomatic formulation—that are empirically indistinguishable yet support different interpretations. This case is of particular interest to philosophers of physics because, before the philosophical work of interpreting QFT can proceed, the question of which variant should be subject to interpretation must be settled. New… -
Drift and “Statistically Abstractive Explanation”
27 Jan 2010 | 9:08 amPhilosophy of Science, Volume 76, Issue 4, Page 464-487, October 2009. A hitherto neglected form of explanation is explored, especially its role in population genetics. “Statistically abstractive explanation” (SA explanation) mandates the suppression of factors probabilistically relevant to an explanandum when these factors are extraneous to the theoretical project being pursued. When these factors are suppressed, the explanandum is rendered uncertain. But this uncertainty traces to the theoretically constrained character of SA explanation, not to any real indeterminacy. Random genetic… -
Constructive Empiricism and Deflationary Truth
27 Jan 2010 | 9:08 amPhilosophy of Science, Volume 76, Issue 4, Page 423-443, October 2009. Constructive empiricists claim to offer a reconstruction of the aim and practice of science without adopting all the metaphysical commitments of scientific realism. Deflationists about truth boast of the ability to offer a full account of the nature of truth without adopting the metaphysical commitments accompanying substantive accounts. Though the two views would form an attractive package, I argue that the pairing is not possible: constructive empiricism requires a substantive account of truth. I articulate what sort of… -
Understanding Thermodynamic Singularities: Phase Transitions, Data, and Phenomena
27 Jan 2010 | 9:07 amPhilosophy of Science, Volume 76, Issue 4, Page 488-505, October 2009. According to standard (quantum) statistical mechanics, the phenomenon of a phase transition, as described in classical thermodynamics, cannot be derived unless one assumes that the system under study is infinite. This is naturally puzzling since real systems are composed of a finite number of particles; consequently, a well‐known reaction to this problem was to urge that the thermodynamic definition of phase transitions (in terms of singularities) should not be “taken seriously.” This article takes singularities… -
Active Fault‐Tolerant Quantum Error Correction: The Curse of the Open System
27 Jan 2010 | 9:07 amPhilosophy of Science, Volume 76, Issue 4, Page 506-535, October 2009. Relying on the universality of quantum mechanics and on recent results known as the “threshold theorems,” quantum information scientists deem the question of the feasibility of large‐scale, fault‐tolerant, and computationally superior quantum computers as purely technological. Reconstructing this question in statistical mechanical terms, this article suggests otherwise by questioning the physical significance of the threshold theorems. The skepticism it advances is neither too strong (hence is consistent with the…
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Studia Logica
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Book Reviews
27 Jan 2010 | 11:57 amBook Reviews Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11225-010-9221-2Authors David Ripley, Institut Jean-Nicod (CNRS), DEC-ENS Paris France Journal Studia LogicaOnline ISSN 1572-8730Print ISSN 0039-3215 -
An Independence Relation for Sets of Secrets
27 Jan 2010 | 11:57 amAbstract A relation between two secrets, known in the literature as nondeducibility, was originally introduced by Sutherland. We extend it to a relation between sets of secrets that we call independence. This paper proposes a formal logical system for the independence relation, proves the completeness of the system with respect to a semantics of secrets, and shows that all axioms of the system are logically independent. Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11225-010-9223-0Authors Sara Miner More, McDaniel College Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Westminster… -
Associative Substitutional Semantics and Quantified Modal Logic
25 Jan 2010 | 11:05 pmAbstract The paper presents an alternative substitutional semantics for first-order modal logic which, in contrast to traditional substitutional (or truth-value) semantics, allows for a fine-grained explanation of the semantical behavior of the terms from which atomic formulae are composed. In contrast to denotational semantics, which is inherently reference-guided, this semantics supports a non-referential conception of modal truth and does not give rise to the problems which pertain to the philosophical interpretation of objectual domains (concerning, e.g., possibilia or… -
Extensionality and Restriction in Naive Set Theory
19 Jan 2010 | 10:46 pmAbstract The naive set theory problem is to begin with a full comprehension axiom, and to find a logic strong enough to prove theorems, but weak enough not to prove everything. This paper considers the sub-problem of expressing extensional identity and the subset relation in paraconsistent, relevant solutions, in light of a recent proposal from Beall, Brady, Hazen, Priest and Restall [4]. The main result is that the proposal, in the context of an independently motivated formalization of naive set theory, leads to triviality. Content Type Journal ArticleDOI… -
Using Hybrid Logic for Coping with Functions in Subset Spaces
19 Jan 2010 | 10:46 pmAbstract We extend Moss and Parikh’s modal logic for subset spaces by adding, among other things, state-valued and set-valued functions. This is done with the aid of some basic concepts from hybrid logic. We prove the soundness and completeness of the derived logics with regard to the class of all correspondingly enriched subset spaces, and show that these logics are decidable. Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11225-010-9226-xAuthors Bernhard Heinemann, Fern Universität in Hagen Fakultät für Mathematik und Informatik Universitätsstr. 1 58084 Hagen Germany Journal…
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Synthese
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Necessary limits to knowledge: unknowable truths
28 Jan 2010 | 10:04 amAbstract The paper seeks a perfectly general argument regarding the non-contingent limits to any (human or non-human) knowledge. After expressing disappointment with the history of philosophy on this score, an argument is grounded in Fitch’s proof, which demonstrates the unknowability of some truths. The necessity of this unknowability is then defended by arguing for the necessity of Fitch’s premise—viz., there this is in fact some ignorance. Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11229-009-9679-5Authors Richard Routley, Australian National University Canberra Australia… -
A survey of some recent results on Spectrum Exchangeability in Polyadic Inductive Logic
27 Jan 2010 | 11:57 amAbstract We give a unified account of some results in the development of Polyadic Inductive Logic in the last decade with particular reference to the Principle of Spectrum Exchangeability, its consequences for Instantial Relevance, Language Invariance and Johnson’s Sufficientness Principle, and the corresponding de Finetti style representation theorems. Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11229-009-9711-9Authors J. Landes, School of Mathematics, The University of Manchester M13 9PL Manchester UKJ. B. Paris, School of Mathematics, The University of Manchester M13 9PL… -
Supervenience and neuroscience
25 Jan 2010 | 11:05 pmAbstract The philosophical technical term “supervenience” is frequently used in the philosophy of mind as a concise way of characterizing the core idea of physicalism in a manner that is neutral with respect to debates between reductive physicalists and nonreductive physicalists. I argue against this alleged neutrality and side with reductive physicalists. I am especially interested here in debates between psychoneural reductionists and nonreductive functionalist physicalists. Central to my arguments will be considerations concerning how best to articulate the spirit of the… -
Advances in belief dynamics: Introduction
1 Jan 2010 | 10:52 pmAdvances in belief dynamics: Introduction Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11229-009-9710-xAuthors F. Liu, Tsinghua University Department of Philosophy Beijing ChinaO. Roy, University of Groningen Faculty of Philosophy Groningen The Netherlands Journal SyntheseOnline ISSN 1573-0964Print ISSN 0039-7857 Journal Volume Volume 173 Journal Issue Volume 173, Number 2 / March, 2010 -
The cognitive act and the first-person perspective: an epistemology for constructive type theory
26 Dec 2009 | 8:39 amAbstract The notion of cognitive act is of importance for an epistemology that is apt for constructive type theory, and for epistemology in general. Instead of taking knowledge attributions as the primary use of the verb ‘to know’ that needs to be given an account of, and understanding a first-person knowledge claim as a special case of knowledge attribution, the account of knowledge that is given here understands first-person knowledge claims as the primary use of the verb ‘to know’. This means that a cognitive act is an act that counts as cognitive from a first-person…
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Experimental Philosophy
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X-Phi Workshop in Wroclaw, Poland
3 Feb 2010 | 6:12 amReaders of this blog may be interested in an upcoming workshop in experimental philosophy hosted by the University of Wroclaw in Poland. The workshop will take place from May 21-23. The following is from their website: We invite all those interested in experimental philosophy to participate in the workshop but most eagerly encourage young scholars, graduate students, and curious undergraduates to take the opportunity and get acquainted with this new field of philosophical research. You can find more information at their website: http://www.filozofia.uni.wroc.pl/xphi/. -
Telling more than we can know about intentional action
1 Feb 2010 | 5:28 pmHi folks,I wanted to draw your attention to our new manuscript that reports on a study of Joshua Knobe's famous 'Chairman case'. I conducted the study with my colleague Sara Konrath, and we used a method called structural path analysis to uncover some pretty surprising things about people's intuitions in the Chairman case. In short, we argue that normative factors do not drive asymmetric intuitions in the case, though people think they do. The methods used in the study are relatively new in X-Phi, and we hope that people will be receptive to our approach. We would… -
X-Phi 'Lab Meetings' in NYC
31 Jan 2010 | 5:30 pmThis semester the Metro Experimental Research Group will continue to host our series of (roughly) fortnightly experimental philosophy 'lab meetings' for students and faculty in the New York area. As before, the plan is for people from New York area institutions to have a chance to present ideas for experiments and then hone their experimental designs in a collaborative discussion with other lab members. Our first meeting this semester will be this week, on Friday, February 5th, 2-4:30, in the second floor seminar roon (202) of the NYU philosophy department. … -
“Your life is completely determined” / “People's lives are completely determined” - benefits of an ambivalent belief in determinism
31 Jan 2010 | 12:10 pmHi, I am new here and this blog post will be about my Bachelor’s thesis in experimental philosophy/social psychology, which was titled ‘The prosocial benefits of a multidimensional belief in determinism’. Its main focus is how a belief in determinism can be construed cognitively as a bidimensional concept. Moreover, I examined whether there are certain prosocial benefits to a belief in determinism. In a way, one impetus to conduct this study was the controversy of the free will/determinism debate itself. One the one hand, mainstream science assumes that hard determinism (the thesis that… -
X-Phi Blog Statistics
29 Jan 2010 | 4:56 pmI thought I would post some random statistics about this blog. Keep in mind that the blog only dates back to 2004!Lifetime Page Views: 498, 857Total Posts: 529Total Comments: 2736Avg. Page Views Per Day: 243Contributors: 104Given the relative youth of experimental philosophy, I think these numbers are pretty impressive. So, thanks to all of the contributors and readers who have helped keep this blog up and running. Without your interesting posts and comments, we never could have generated the kind of interest needed to bring people to this page nearly half a million…
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Feminist Philosophers
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They’re different: look for it from day 1!
9 Feb 2010 | 3:00 amCheck out this awesome advice to new mothers. I especially like the way that she acknowledges you may not actually perceive these differences, so you should look for them: Boy or girl? That’s the first question people ask when they hear you are having a baby. And according to child psychologist Dr Pat Spungin, the answer makes a huge difference to your baby’s personality and progress, from the very moment he or she arrives in the delivery room. ‘Gender affects everything – from how well babies make eye contact in the first week of life, to whether they’re easy to potty train at… -
Query from a reader
8 Feb 2010 | 12:41 pmMV writes: Next Fall I’ll be teaching an interdisciplinary humanities honors seminar on 20th Century Intellectual History, which is effectively a broadly humanities-focused course that could be called “Important Works published between 1900-1999 the Professor Wanted to Read this Semester.” The presumption is that we read a book a week, and ideally something that looks impressive sitting on the bookshelf in a Great Works sort of way. I’ll be teaching 4 or so units on different subject matters, and I’m thinking about doing a unit on feminism. There is obviously an… -
APA Eastern Division Paper deadline
8 Feb 2010 | 12:38 pmIt’s Feb. 15 & here’s the online submission page. You need a 3,000 word paper and a 100 word abstract. I assume the word length does not include bibliography. So if you’ve got the extra paper here or there, do think of putting it in, expecially if you are already on the East Coast or have to go to the meeting for the job market (gasp!). -
And now back to madness in the UK
8 Feb 2010 | 12:30 pmThe University of Sussex is enacting massive cuts, including the elimination of Early Modern History. Other highlights include closure of the subsidised childcare facility and the sexual health clinic. (H/T Leiter.) -
When Philosophers Get Discussed on Late-Night TV
8 Feb 2010 | 6:12 amA bit of light relief: And, for you British readers: I think she meant ‘leather trousers’.
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The Prosblogion
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Social evils and the goodness of God
7 Feb 2010 | 7:00 amI was talking to Norman Daniels the other day about healthcare reform and he had some interesting observations about the history of healthcare reform in the US. He remarked that Roosevelt could have easily provided healthcare in a workers protection bill because healthcare at that time was cheap. Evidently, other nations provided universal healthcare earlier on in the development of the healthcare system (with the exception of Canada which began universal healthcare in the 70's). Norman also mentioned that Ted Kennedy says in his memoirs that he wished he had made a deal with Nixon on… -
Plantinga on Kim's Pairing Problem
6 Feb 2010 | 3:23 pmJaegwon Kim's well known Pairing Problem is supposed to show that it is impossible both that immaterial souls cannot have causal efficacy in the physical world as well as to other immaterial souls. The problem, in brief (super-brief) is that for event A to cause event B, there must be some further factor X in virtue of which A causes B. There is no such further factor X in the case of the mental events (willings, actings, intendings) of souls and physical events. So, souls cannot be causally related to the physical world. This argument is supposed to apply to ALL souls. I just finished (most… -
Royal Institute of Philosophy Birmingham Branch: Philosophy of Religion Seminars
6 Feb 2010 | 9:36 amThe Royal Instiute of Philosophy Birmingham Branch Philosophy of Religion Seminars All meetings: 4:15pm-6:00pm, Room 104 Arts Building, University of Birmingham All Welcome 8 March Kelly James Clark (Calvin College) God, Chance and Religion 15 March Tim Chappell (Open University) Glory as an Ethical Idea 22 March David Efird (University of York) The Body of Christ and the the Metaphysics of the Church -
ALVIN PLANTINGA RETIREMENT CONFERENCE
5 Feb 2010 | 5:13 amMay 20-22, 2010 University of Notre Dame Registration is now open for the Alvin Plantinga Retirement Celebration Conference. You can register online by starting here and following the "Plantinga Retirement" links. You can find complete conference details here. -
Postgraduate Scholarships at the University of Birmingham
4 Feb 2010 | 4:51 amThe School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham offers the following scholarships: For Prospective Doctoral Students (A) 1 AHRC Doctoral Award in Philosophy (B) 1 AHRC Doctoral Award in Religious Studies For Prospective MA/MPhil Students (A) Dinshaw Bursary (£1000; Theology/Inter-religious studies) (B) 1 fee-remission Scholarship (overseas) in any Masters/MPhil programme in the School (C) 3 fees-remission Scholarships in any Masters/MPhil programme in the School (D) 1 fee-remission Scholarship in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics (E) 1 fee-reduction…
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In Socrates' Wake
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Student evaluations — in the long run
9 Feb 2010 | 8:34 amFollowing up on our recent discussion of how to evaluate your own teaching evaluations, Tom Deans at Inside Higher Ed describes some of his efforts to get more "longitudinal feedback" on his teaching — feedback on a longer time horizon than simply the end-of-term evaluations most of our institutions rely on.Deans, who teachers English, outlines his "small experiment with long-delayed course assessments, surveys that ask students to reflect on the classes that they have taken a year or two or three earlier."I've been considering such evaluations ever since I went through the tenure [process]… -
Students on what frustrates them
2 Feb 2010 | 11:36 amA teaching note from the faculty center on my campus describes some recent studies about what students find to be the most frustrating instructor behaviors. The results from one student survey are below the fold. Anyone surprised by these results? What can we learn from them?:An extensive study received about 1700 responses from 250 students concerning annoying instructor behavior (Kearney, Plax, Hays, & Ivy, 1991). The researchers coded the responses into 28 categories, which can further be categorized into about five major classes of problem behavior: • a variety of disorganized… -
A final exam on grading
29 Jan 2010 | 7:10 amTeach Philosophy 101 has a thought-provoking "final exam" on grading, aimed at instructors. All of the questions raise important issues about grading, but here are a couple of the exam questions that struck me. Curious to know how ISW readers would answer them:3. ESSAY QUESTION: Student X writes an excellent paper and gets an A. Student Y writes a poor paper but takes advantage of the offer made to all students in the class that they may rewrite their paper as many times as they wish. After several rewrites (responding to the teachers comments each time), student Y finally produces a paper… -
A frustration: Evaluating reasoning vs. evaluating premises
20 Jan 2010 | 7:19 amHere's a frustration I have in teaching reasoning to students.I don't teach logic or critical thinking, but do feel compelled to give students a foothold in logical reasoning in introductory level philosophy courses. So in my introduction to ethics courses, I introduce students to the concept of an argument and try to put them in a position to begin evaluating the arguments we confront in the course.Since this is not a formal logic course, I try to keep things loose or informal, stating that arguments should have (a) good reasoning, and (b) premises that are true (or for which there is… -
Reading Student E-Mails
14 Jan 2010 | 12:11 pmNow that my long sabbatical is effectively over (sigh), it’s time to start thinking about school again and about issues that haven’t crossed my mind in a while. As I was putting together my syllabi, one of them struck me: the issue of how to write a proper email to a professor. Perhaps it’s just me, but I get the distinct impression that with respect to emails the writing skills of many of my students has degraded to an almost embarrassing level. The problem is so bad at times that I keep reminding myself to put some policy about it into my syllabus, but I never get around to doing it…
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Philosophy by the Way
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Am I different persons? Personal identity (23)
8 Feb 2010 | 5:01 amTo the right and to the left still the same person?One of the problems discussed in the philosophy of personal identity is that body cells or body parts are artificially replaced by new cells or parts. For example it is Parfit’s case in which I am (or rather my brain and body is) teletransported to another planet with the help of a machine. Then, according to Tye in Consciousness and Persons, “I no longer exist” (p. 148). But he continues: “[W]hat happens to me, if 10 percent is replaced, or 35 percent, or 70 percent? Is there a fact of the matter about which partial… -
On philosophical puzzles
1 Feb 2010 | 5:46 amOne of the attractive things of philosophy is that it racks your brains. This sounds weird, but actually it is this what philosophers do: racking their brains. I do not know how it is for other philosophers, but I become restless and get an unsatisfied feeling, when I haven’t thought about difficult problems or when I haven’t read a difficult philosophical book for some time. Happily, I have my blogs that I have to write each week. And in those days that I did not yet write blogs, I wrote articles or my dissertation. Actually, philosophizing is torture that causes happiness, at least for… -
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
25 Jan 2010 | 5:12 amOften I receive useful and interesting reactions to my blogs and I am my readers grateful for them. One such a reaction was by a reader of my blog last week, who added the comment “post hoc ergo propter hoc!”, to which I reacted “Exactly!”, for that is what my argument is (see note). I concluded seemingly that the recent cold waves in Europe and elsewhere in the world had been caused by the Climate Conference in Copenhagen. In fact, my blog was a cynical critique of the Climate Conference, of course, and I suppose that the readers of my blog have understood this.Usually post hoc ergo… -
The effectiveness of “Copenhagen 2009”
17 Jan 2010 | 4:36 pmI have never seen never seen an international conference that has been as effective as the Climate Conference in Copenhagen one month ago. People have criticized this conference and called it a failure because no substantial decisions have been taken there. However, hardly had the conference ended or Europe and other parts of the world have been hit by a cold wave. -
Dutch passion
10 Jan 2010 | 4:34 pmWhen it is winter and the temperature falls below the freezing point, the Dutch become restless: will it be possible or will it not? And yes, this year we can do it again, and I could do it again, too: skating. Of course, we can skate a big part of the year round on rinks with artificial ice, but skating on natural ice is something different. Skating on natural ice means skating on little or large lakes, on ponds, ditches and canals. Marvellous and extended spaces open for you once you can move on the ice. Places where you never come when the water is not frozen, even not by boat. Nature…
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Knowledge and Experience
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Conservation Priorities: Mountain Gorillas
8 Feb 2010 | 7:59 amConservation biologists groan when charismatic megafauna are the face of conservation. Everyone wants to save the panda and the polar bear, but from a biological point of view, endangered grasses and fungi can be just as important.Still, there can be no doubt that humans share something special with other primates.In this wonderful story in support of wildlife conservation in Congo, Jeremy Bernstein tells of a magical experience seeing mountain gorillas in the wild:We moved on and found ourselves in a small cluster of gorillas. The young ones rushed around and brushed up against us. Their… -
Mind and Body
4 Feb 2010 | 9:38 amThe NYTimes reports on an imaging study that "Trace of thought is found in 'vegetative' patient" and that a method was devised which allowed the patient to communicate simple yes and no answers.In an editorial accompanying the article, Dr. Allan H. Ropper...warned against equating neural activity and identity.“Physicians and society are not ready for ‘I have brain activation, therefore I am,’ ” Dr. Ropper wrote. “That would seriously put Descartes before the horse.”I bet he was waiting a long time to use that line! -
Nature, Culture, and Gardening
31 Jan 2010 | 5:46 pmI've been participating in a community-based restoration project in my neighborhood. The agreed upon objective is to restore and maintain a mature (probably old-growth)oak-hickory woodland. The woodland is part of a city park, and the city has had a hands-off management approach. About once a year, paths are cut through the largest deadfalls blocking trails, and the city will take down dead trees that threaten structures on the neighboring properties. The park has dense networks of trails, and it is heavily used in all seasons.It's also ecologically distinctive. It contains a number of mature… -
Engineers and Ethics
29 Jan 2010 | 10:43 amAre engineers more pre-disposed to become (right-wing) terrorists than others?Apparently, violent jihadists are more likely to have been trained as engineers than to have attained degrees in other areas of higher ed. Three or four times as likely. Is this because terrorist organizations have the foresight to recruit highly trained technical experts?Hertog and Gambetta argue in the New Scientist (and based on a peer-reviewed journal article) that instead it's due, in part, to the personality/cognitive traits that attract certain individuals to engineering in the first place. They found that… -
Philosopher of Physics--and Phemale
25 Jan 2010 | 11:10 amMany helpful responses to my last post requesting references on philosophy and wine. Thanks for those!So here's another request.I'm putting together my spring quarter syllabus for a course on those topics in philosophy of science which are more closely related to physics and metaphysics:determinism and causalitythe nature of lawsrealismtime and spaceBut I'm shocked and embarrassed that my draft syllabus has only one female author on it (Nancy Cartwright, of course). It can't be too hard to find female authors, or can it?Here are the criteria:--on the above topics or providing a historical…
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The Brooks Blog
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JOBS: Cambridge (2)
9 Feb 2010 | 4:22 amMellon Post-Doctoral FellowSocial Justice and Criminal JusticeUniversity of Cambridge - Faculty of PhilosophySalary: 27,319-35,646 paLimit of tenure: 30 September 2012The Faculties of Philosophy and Law wish to appoint a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Social Justice and Criminal Justice for two years from 1st October 2010. This is a collaborative project across the two Faculties, with the Faculty of Philosophy as the lead institution.This post presents an excellent opportunity for an outstanding early career researcher to gain substantial research and teaching experience within prestigious… -
Problems with "the Tea Party 'movement'"
8 Feb 2010 | 8:59 amOver this past weekend, the Times ran a piece "It's our country--let's take it back" that I found unsettling. (The full piece can be found here.) Some excerpts:"[. . .] Tom Tancredo, a former Republican congressman who ran for president in 2008 on an anti-illegal immigration platform, said of the voters who elected Mr Obama: “They could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English and they put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House — Barack Hussein Obama!”Decrying America’s multiculturalism, Mr Tancredo said that Republicans and Democrats had voted for a black… -
Robert Talisse on pragmatism
8 Feb 2010 | 7:55 am. . . can be found here, over at philosophy bites. Highly recommended! -
How intelligent are you? Your pet may be a clue . . .
8 Feb 2010 | 7:38 am. . . as we learn that those with university degrees are far more likely to own a cat than those without. As someone with cats and university degrees, it sounds right to me . . . . Details here. -
Sad news from my home state
8 Feb 2010 | 7:36 am. . . involving a gas explosion. Further details are here.
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Jon Cogburn's Blog
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First thought on Faye's book
9 Feb 2010 | 4:03 amI've just opened Emmanuel Faye's Heidegger: The Introduction of Naziism into Philosophy (due to a round table discussion for LSU's Philosophy Club in April). [For penance I'm going to read Richardson's classic (and shamefully out of print) Through Phenomenology to Thought (the source text for the two stage theory of Heidegger's oevre, one Heidegger himself endorsed as an old man, for whatever that's worth).]A couple of thoughts already occur to me though. Reading Faye's book will give me a very good rebuttal to every continental philosopher who excoriates… -
Schedule for Third Annual LSU Graduate Philosophy Conference
9 Feb 2010 | 3:29 amLSU Philosophy Conference Location: Coates Hall, Rooms 145, 152, 155 Date and Time: Friday and Saturday February 19th and 20th FRIDAY, February 19th 2:30pm- Coates 152 Official Welcome to the Conference 3:00pm Room1- Coates 152 Christopher Turner, DePaul University Animals vs. Humans in Plato's Statesman: What's the Difference? Moderator: Joseph Tran Room2 –Coates 145 Peter Capretto, Allegheny College Wittgenstein on Hermeneutic Limitation: Forms of Life and the Rejection of Religious Explanation Moderator: Clayton Alsup Room3-… -
life in the Cogburn household
8 Feb 2010 | 11:15 amHere's Thomas showing off his new sister. You can really start to see how he takes after Emily and her mom (good news for him!). It freaks me out how babies can curl up like that. My neck would hurt in that position. Audrey's totally happy though. She just started really clearly smiling the last few days. We don't have a picture yet. It was really difficult to get Thomas to take a bottle when he was little and he had a more difficult time sleeping. My mom (ever the behaviorist) is convinced that this is because Emily and I were more nervous with a first kid, and at some… -
The Dictators - Search and Destroy (Iggy and the Stooges cover)
7 Feb 2010 | 5:31 amThe Dictators were the one punk rock band that AC/DC really loved in their first American tour (they played CBGBs in 1977; fantastic photos HERE). This video shows why. Check out the bass player of this era Dictators who went on to joined Twisted Sister. Later he would rejoin the Dictators along with Twisted Sister's drummer. Pretty cool. Another odd factoid, Bruce Springsteen is a big fan and actually does the countdown for a song on their third album. -
"Ignore the following if you don't think Jon Cogburn's thoughts are worth your time. . ."
7 Feb 2010 | 4:38 amHa! Rest of quote, "continue reading if you do think they're worthwhile. (There is no big payoff at the end.)" And there is more of the same in a post titled "A Very Bad Argument for Skepticism" from my number two internet fan Daniel Lindquist HERE. Lindquist is commenting on a possibly worthwhile post of mine on Brandom HERE.Levi Bryant also has a post referencing it HERE.Paul Ennis has one HERE.Mark Silcox and Andrew Johnson raise interesting (worthwhile IMHO) points in their responses in the original thread. Johnson wants to know if Speculative Realists deny…
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Continental Philosophy
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Slavoj Zizek – A Revolution ne s’autorise que d’elle même
2 Feb 2010 | 8:43 pmLink -
Judith Butler and Giorgio Agamben. Eichmann, Law and Justice. 2009
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Conference: HEGEL’S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY:
1 Feb 2010 | 8:41 pmA great conference line-up Thanks to David Vessey -
CFP: Duquesne University
25 Jan 2010 | 10:09 pmCall for Papers Duquesne University 4th Annual Graduate Philosophy Conference Thinking Desire Keynote Speaker: Babette Babich Fordham University April 10, 2010 The general theme of this conference is “thinking desire.” On this topic, broadly understood, we welcome high quality submissions focusing on contemporary issues as well submissions drawing from any period in eastern or western philosophy. Comparative studies on desire from different historical periods and schools of philosophy as well as novel approaches to traditional themes are welcome. This conference has been organized… -
Conference: Who is Calling? – Responsible Hermeneutics and the Hermeneutics of Responsibility
24 Jan 2010 | 10:06 pmHosted by the Research Group in Philosophical Hermeneutics, Institute of Philosophy and History of Ideas. Philosophical hermeneutics, in the broadest sense of the term, has grown to signify a current within contemporary thinking loosely united by the insistence on the historical and linguistic nature of human existence and experience. As such, the primary object or concern of any philosophical-hermeneutical thinking seems to be the understanding and interpretative relations between man, language, and history – a concern that provides common ground for dialogue between a wide variety of…
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In Search of Enlightenment
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New Aging Documentary
9 Feb 2010 | 5:45 amOn Thursday a new documentary entitled "To Age or Not to Age" will premiere. Viewing the trailer, and reading some info about the film suggests this might have the real potential to awaken humanity from its dire neglect of the fact that aging is the leading cause of death and disease in the world today and that the science has reached a tipping point where we can envision a future where late-life morbidity and mortality can be dramatically reduced. As I have noted many times before on this blog, I believe that global aging is the real challenge of our times. Hopefully this documentary will… -
The Biology of "Egalitarianism"
8 Feb 2010 | 1:33 pmPolitical philosophers interested in abstract debates about equality vs priority and sufficiency should find this recent study in Nature Neuroscience of interest (as well as this News piece). It is commonly assumed that the impulse to maximize one's own self-interest is automatic and can be contrasted with the deliberative, reflective sentiments of prosocial actors who care about equality. But it seems that the decision-making of the latter is also automatic emotional processing. Here is the abstract of the paper:'Social value orientation' characterizes individual differences in anchoring… -
Nature Medicine News Piece on Statins
6 Feb 2010 | 4:11 amThe latest issue of Nature Medicine has this interesting News item on statins. A sample:Dan Rader doesn't have high cholesterol. Nor does he have a family history of premature heart disease. But when Rader, who leads the University of Pennsylvania's Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine and Lipid Clinic, turned 50 last year, he started taking statins—just in case. “I figured the way to try to reduce the risk of coronary disease at 80 is to start taking your statins at 50,” he explains in between spoonfuls of low-fat black bean soup at the café in his research building. Rader admits that… -
Aristotle, Aging and Politics as the "Architectonic" Science
4 Feb 2010 | 12:15 pmAs a political theorist interested in aging and longevity science, I am in a minority among researchers in the field. The literature on distributive justice, multiculturalism, equality, liberty, deliberative democracy etc. is voluminous and detailed. Little has been written on science and justice, let alone a marginal field of scientific inquiry like biogerontology.And thus I suspect many theorists think my interest in aging is odd, if not frivolous. When there are so many pressing problems in the world today the idea of fixating on aging has little, if any, intuitive appeal. A fews ago I use… -
Globe Article on MMR Vaccination
4 Feb 2010 | 7:07 amToday's Globe has this interesting piece about the purported concerns of the MMR vaccination and how it plays into people's fear that science and medicine are ruled by greedy pharmaceutical companies intent on injecting toxins into our bodies to make profits. This fear, ignorance and suspicion comes at a hefty price- greater risk of fatal childhood diseases. Here is a sample: ...Before The Lancet article, the vaccination rate for MMR – the three-in-one shot for measles, mumps and rubella – had reached 91 per cent. A few years later, the rate had slipped to less than 50 per cent in some…
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In Living Color
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A concern, a quibble, and a point
9 Feb 2010 | 7:46 amI can't complain about a reviewer who calls my book "cogently argued" and compliments me for taking "a fresh, often funny, look at difficult issues." (That's Sanjida O'Connell in BBC Wildlife Magazine.) But I can be just a bit concerned about what she covers in her short review. She makes it seem as if the main message of my book is that Jonas Salk was right to experiment on animals in the 1950s -
Division of Caring
7 Feb 2010 | 2:27 pmLast night I got to see a talk by Greg Mortensen, author of Three Cups of Tea. A man with an amazing life story, against all odds he's built over 100 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the last 10 years. He spoke incredibly movingly about the importance of lifting up whole societies by educating children--especially girls. Next to me at the talk was a woman wearing a fur coat--not a faux -
Temple Grandin on HBO
5 Feb 2010 | 7:34 amI'm so proud to have Temple Grandin's endorsement on the cover of my book. My only problem--how am I going to watch the HBO movie about her life, if I don't get HBO? She's being played by Claire Danes, a fine actress who does a great Grandin imitation. The New York Times gives the movie a glowing review, calling it "funny, instructive, and also intangibly charming." Grandin is what I'd call a -
God Talk
4 Feb 2010 | 8:11 amNo, God didn't talk at SMU yesterday, but Alvin Plantinga did. He gave a talk called "Science and Religion: Where the Conflict Really Lies." From that title, you'd expect to hear Plantinga concede some tension between science and religion, right? But no. Surprise, surprise, the "religion" that conflicts with science isn't religion--like Christianity, for example. It's naturalism. -
Goodbye DJ
4 Feb 2010 | 7:15 amI'm a huge fan of Point of Inquiry, the podcast produced by the Center for Inquiry. Which means: I'm a huge fan of DJ Grothe. When I listen to him, I get the feeling he agrees with everything I think. He asks exactly the questions I want him to ask. But here's the magic: probably everyone feels that way. DJ is a former magician, so it's possible he's doing something with scarves and mirrors.
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Stephen Law
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Chomsky on the education system
9 Feb 2010 | 8:06 am -
Haiti "Magic is Real" Benefit
9 Feb 2010 | 1:14 amIan Rowland (great magician - and the world's leading cold-reading expert) writes:Dear Friends, ‘Magic Is Real: Haiti Benefit Evening’ It will happen this coming Wednesday! It will only happen ONCE. It will be a great, memorable and unique occasion! Why would you miss this? We’ve got the TIME. We’ve got the PLACE. We’ve got the ENTERTAINMENT. We’ve got the MAGIC. We’ve got some fantastic Charity Auction items that I promise YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE. Someone on Wednesday evening will pick up the BARGAIN OF A LIFETIME. I am not even close to kidding about this. So… you have been… -
The Iraq bomb detector - a box with little in it
7 Feb 2010 | 11:42 amCheck this link to BBC video on the amazing Iraq bomb detector. It sounds as if the Iraqi government has unwittingly bought itself $85m worth of dowsing equipment, on which its military have then been relying to detect bombs. The Uri Geller dowsing kit is much cheaper, and includes "crystal pendulum" too.There is nothing to program in these cards. There is no memory. There is no microcontroller. There is no way any form of information can be stored - Dr Markus KuhnRandi site says:In a refreshing news item, the BBC and others are reporting that Jim McCormick, inventor of the ADE 561 Bomb… -
Skeptic's toolbox and bacon sandwiches
5 Feb 2010 | 7:02 amA great resource from skeptics toolbox on medicine. Go here. Thanks to the committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Based on a powerpoint by Harriet Hall MD.It is particularly good on absolute vs relative risk, about halfway through. Long, but worth the effort to read. A recent study showed that using a cell phone doubled the risk of acoustic neuroma (a tumor in the ear). The relative risk was reported as 200% and alarmed parents took their children’s phones away. But the baseline risk of acoustic neuroma is 1:100,000. 200% of 1 is 2. The absolute risk was 1 more tumor per 100,000 people. Acoustic… -
PAUL KURTZ 27th Feb talk
5 Feb 2010 | 2:01 amSaturday 27th February 2010 in the LIBRARY at Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1 4RL. FREE EVENT.From 11.00 am to 1 pm. Talk on “NEW DIRECTIONS FOR SECULARISTS AND HUMANISTS” by Professor Paul Kurtz. Professor Kurtz is Chair Emeritus and Founder of the Center for Inquiry (CFI), Council for Secular Humanism, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and Prometheus Books. Paul Kurtz is visiting from the US.From 10.00 am to 11.00 am. A representative from the Center for Inquiry in Eastern Europe will give a talk on Humanism in his / her country.There will be ample time for questions and…
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Gone Public
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A City Turned Inside Out
15 Jan 2010 | 8:31 amI am haunted by a line a student said in a class last spring. We were trying to make sense of the concept of civic life, of democratic space as something that occurs as relations among people, as something that could be a resource for change. This is the kind of power that Hannah Arendt noted arises when people speak and act together on some matter of common concern. We talked about how this often invisible kind of power is created in one community after another. Then a young woman from Haiti spoke up. She said there was nothing like this in her country because “no one goes… -
Connecting New Media and the Political Unconscious
18 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pmIn two podcasts this week I have had the delightful opportunity to talk with colleagues from two distinct worlds about themes ranging from the political unconscious to new media. Early this week Brad Rourke, whom I know through our mutual association with the Kettering Foundation, engaged me in a conversation on the subject of his own work, new media and civic life, picking up some of the themes in my previous post, Discerning Media. We made a couple of key points: (1) the distinction between professional media and citizen media is less helpful than the distinction between journalism (which… -
Discerning Media
11 Nov 2009 | 6:28 pmI spent part of yesterday and today in meetings at the Kettering Foundation thinking about media and democracy. These conversations still, to my chagrin, keep getting tangled up with the debate about old school journalism versus new media. I’ve blogged about this debate before. But I keep coming back to these meetings because I think that something incredibly promising is happening in this new media environment. But it won’t happen inevitably; it won’t happen because the new technology just makes it so; it won’t happen unless we discern and aim toward using these… -
Execution Style
10 Nov 2009 | 6:38 pmNo doubt John Allen Muhammad was a sociopath and a murderer. I only wish that we as a society might be better than that. I’m sick to my stomach that our collective way of dealing with such sick, sociopathic murderers is to murder them back and in the process model killing as a way to solve problems. Shame on us. Shame, shame, shame. As reported in the New York Times: John Allen Muhammad, the Washington-Area Sniper, Is Executed John Allen Muhammad, the man known as the D.C. Sniper whose murderous shooting spree in the fall of 2002 left at least 10Ex dead, was executed at a Virginia… -
Twenty years ago today…
9 Nov 2009 | 2:12 pmIt was twenty years ago today that…. How do you finish that sentence? There are plenty obvious ways: …that the wall came down. …that the Cold War ended. …that Communism failed. …that capitalism (or was it democracy? or are these even interchangeable?) triumphed. blah blah blah Okay, it was some of all of that, though with Slavoj Zizek I agree that it wasn’t the last thing on that list. What I think changed that day, along with the weeks that led up to it and the cushy and technicolor revolutions that followed, was the notion that politics is about…
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Alexander Pruss's Blog
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"p and I don't believe that p"
8 Feb 2010 | 8:57 amA number of folks seem to think that there is some innate "pragmatic contradiction" in assertions of the form: "p and I don't believe that p". Certainly, whenever I've heard these Moorean sentences mentioned, the mentioner assumed this. Yet, there are counterexamples to the "pragmatic contradiction" thesis. And this fact seems to be pretty well-known to people in the relevant field. I mentioned that I had some counterexamples to an ethicist and he found it surprising and interesting. But I then mentioned it to some epistemologists, and they were quite unimpressed. So, here, we have a case… -
A fun argument for dualism
4 Feb 2010 | 5:11 amI'm told that a version of the following argument is somewhere in C.S. Lewis: (Premise) Our embodiment is universally seen as funny. (Premise, justified inductively by 1) Our embodiment is objectively funny. (Premise) The essence of the funny is incongruity. (Premise) If materialism is true, there is no incongruity in our embodiment. (Premise) If materialism is false, then dualism is true. There is incongruity in our embodiment. (2 and 3) Materialism is false. (4 and 6) Dualism is true. (5 and 7) -
Why does time fly by as you get older?
3 Feb 2010 | 6:46 amHere is a hypothesis. -
Cooperating with evil
2 Feb 2010 | 6:52 amHere is an interesting case raising the question of when it is permissible to cooperate with evildoers. -
Draft posted: A counterexample to Plantinga's Molinist Free Will Defense
1 Feb 2010 | 2:37 pmGet the draft here.
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The Splintered Mind
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My entry on "Introspection" is now up in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
3 Feb 2010 | 9:08 am... here.From the intro:Introspection, as the term is used in contemporary philosophy of mind, is a means of learning about one's own currently ongoing, or perhaps very recently past, mental states or processes. You can, of course, learn about your own mind in the same way you learn about others' minds—by reading psychology texts, by observing facial expressions (in a mirror), by examining readouts of brain activity, by noting patterns of past behavior—but it's generally thought that you can also learn about your mind introspectively, in a way that no one else can. But what exactly is… -
Podcast of "An Empirical Perspective on the Mencius-Xunzi Debate about Human Nature"
2 Feb 2010 | 9:21 amgiven to the Confucius Institute of Scotland on Jan. 19,here.The podcast is audio-only, so you won't see the overheads. I don't think you need to see the overheads to understand the talk. But for completeness here they are (as MS PowerPoint 2003).You may also be interested to see this article, which was part of the basis for the talk. -
Knowledge Is a Capacity, Belief a Tendency
29 Jan 2010 | 5:57 amIn epistemology articles and textbooks (e.g., in the Stanford Encyclopedia), you'll often see claims like the following. S (some person) knows that P (some proposition) only if:(1.) P is true.(2.) S believes that P.(3.) S is justified in believing P.Although many philosophers (following Gettier) dispute whether someone's meeting these three conditions is sufficient for knowing P and a few (like Dretske) also dispute the necessity of condition 3, pretty much everyone accepts that the first two conditions are necessary for knowledge -- or necessary at least for "propositional" knowledge, i.e.,… -
Supersizing Introspection
18 Jan 2010 | 11:43 amI've always enjoyed Andy Clark's work (hence my desire to emulate his drink preferences), but I hadn't ('til now) got around to reading his latest book, Supersizing the Mind. Clark is one the the leading advocates of the view that cognitive processes extend beyond the boundaries of the brain to include aspects of the body and environment. The boundary of skull and skin is no privileged border, such that human cognition can only take place within it. If mental images of Scrabble letters are part of your cognitive process when thinking about your next play, then so also are the actual physical… -
British Tour
8 Jan 2010 | 9:51 amI'll be speaking around Britain the next couple of weeks. Here's my schedule, if anyone wants to come to a talk or meet for coffee:Tues Jan 12, 12:30 pm: Arrive in London (overnighting in Oxford until the 19th).Thurs Jan 14, 12:00 pm, University of London: "Acting Contrary to Our Professed Beliefs, or the Gulf Between Occurrent Judgment and Dispositional Belief" (Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study).Fri Jan 15, 4:00 pm, Bristol University: "Introspection, What?" (Common Room, Philosophy Department, 9 Woodland Road).Sat Jan 16, 9:45 am - 6:00 pm, Oxford University: Limitations of…
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In the Space of Reasons
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Presentation for Amsterdam
7 Feb 2010 | 7:35 amI owe some fine folk in Amsterdam an abstract for a talk in a couple of months.In my Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry I attempted to defend, in rather a breathless manner, three anti-reductionist theses. One such claim marks each of the three main sections of the book. The irreducibility of mind to brain; of moral judgements to principles; and of uncodified skilled epistemic judgement to codified evidentiary principles. In this paper I briefly reconsider the arguments for these claims. Whilst the targets differ in the three cases (reductionism in the philosophy of mind aims to discharge… -
Brix 1999-2010
5 Feb 2010 | 10:34 amVery sadly although Brix had gamely coped with an illness of her front legs for some time, Lois and I finally decided that we would have to have her put down, today.Since Christmas, she had lost too much of a happy, catty lifestyle and no longer seemed to have enough fun.I am more upset than I can say and will miss her, the best cat in the world. -
On wishing for a paradigm shift
4 Feb 2010 | 2:10 pmI need to draft a short commentary (say 2,500 word) for the AAPP bulletin which has as its focus, in the words of Jim Phillips, ‘a couple recent articles on DSM-V - and the conflict they have generated - by Allan Frances. Dr. Frances, primary architect of DSM-IV, published articles in Psychiatric Times in June and October of this year criticizing the process of developing DSM-V. His June paper generated a lively exchange, with critiques, responses, and counter-responses by some of the major players.’ And so again in accord with my original motive for this blog (to tell my students about… -
Housekeeping
4 Feb 2010 | 8:10 amAs well as having been just unaccountably busy for a while now, this academic year I have had one illness after another so there has been little incentive to record any items of housekeeping. But such as they are:I’ve been invited to spend a bit of time at the University of Paris-Descartes by Pierre-Henri Castel to discuss anglo-american philosophy of psychiatry. I am frantically - but with minimal success so far - trying to revise my O level French.After the summer, I’ve also been invited back to Paris to a workshop on social neuroscience in October.Between the two there’s a workshop… -
Searle's odd comments about intentionality
28 Jan 2010 | 11:14 amNo time for the moment to think more about this (essays to mark, abstracts to read, the initial plans for the content of the Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry to review) but an undergraduate dissertation on Dennett made me look at Searle’s discussion of intentionality and the Background in his Rediscovery of Mind [Searle 1994]. Summarising the role that the Background has in helping out intentionality, he says:1. Intentional states do not function autonomously. They do not determine conditions of satisfaction in isolation.2. Each intentional state requires for its functioning a Network of other…
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freemasoninformation.com
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Masonic Central Japan with guest Br. Jim Johnston
8 Feb 2010 | 5:17 pmMasonic Central Japan! Brothers Michael Pearce and Bill Patterson launch their inaugural edition Masonic Central Asia with their guest Br. Jim Johnston, PhD., who is one of the foremost scholars on Masonry in Japan. Also, Br. Johnston is a Past Grand Master of the island nation, a 33º Brother of the Scottish Rite, and a founding member of the Lodge of research Japan. Listen to the program now! This episode was pre-recorded for the time difference but your questions and comments are very much welcome and encouraged! Or listen on our home at Blog Talk Radio. Related Articles: Karl Grube from… -
The Journal For Research Into Freemasonry & Fraternalism
6 Feb 2010 | 6:35 pmMasonic Central Japan! Brothers Michael Pearce and Bill Patterson launch their inaugural edition Masonic Central Asia with their guest Br. Jim Johnston, PhD., who is one of the foremost scholars on Masonry in Japan. Also, Br. Johnston is a Past Grand Master of the island nation, a 33º Brother of the Scottish Rite, and a founding member of the Lodge of research Japan. Listen to the program now! This episode was pre-recorded for the time difference but your questions and comments are very much welcome and encouraged! Or listen on our home at Blog Talk Radio. Related Articles: Karl Grube from… -
Christianizing secular society and the Cult of the Supreme Being
5 Feb 2010 | 5:20 amMasonic Central Japan! Brothers Michael Pearce and Bill Patterson launch their inaugural edition Masonic Central Asia with their guest Br. Jim Johnston, PhD., who is one of the foremost scholars on Masonry in Japan. Also, Br. Johnston is a Past Grand Master of the island nation, a 33º Brother of the Scottish Rite, and a founding member of the Lodge of research Japan. Listen to the program now! This episode was pre-recorded for the time difference but your questions and comments are very much welcome and encouraged! Or listen on our home at Blog Talk Radio. Related Articles: Karl Grube from… -
In His Image
30 Jan 2010 | 8:14 amMasonic Central Japan! Brothers Michael Pearce and Bill Patterson launch their inaugural edition Masonic Central Asia with their guest Br. Jim Johnston, PhD., who is one of the foremost scholars on Masonry in Japan. Also, Br. Johnston is a Past Grand Master of the island nation, a 33º Brother of the Scottish Rite, and a founding member of the Lodge of research Japan. Listen to the program now! This episode was pre-recorded for the time difference but your questions and comments are very much welcome and encouraged! Or listen on our home at Blog Talk Radio. Related Articles: Karl Grube from… -
Grand Lodge vs. Blue Lodge: Who Serves Who?
27 Jan 2010 | 3:20 amMasonic Central Japan! Brothers Michael Pearce and Bill Patterson launch their inaugural edition Masonic Central Asia with their guest Br. Jim Johnston, PhD., who is one of the foremost scholars on Masonry in Japan. Also, Br. Johnston is a Past Grand Master of the island nation, a 33º Brother of the Scottish Rite, and a founding member of the Lodge of research Japan. Listen to the program now! This episode was pre-recorded for the time difference but your questions and comments are very much welcome and encouraged! Or listen on our home at Blog Talk Radio. Related Articles: Karl Grube from…
