[New Entry by Paolo Mancosu on July 2, 2009.] The essay begins with a taxonomy of the major contexts in which the notion of 'style' in mathematics has been appealed to since the early twentieth century. These include the use of the notion of style in comparative cultural histories of mathematics, in characterizing national styles, and in describing mathematical practice. These developments are then related to the more familiar...
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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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Mathematical Style
2 Jul 2009 | 7:02 pm -
The Correspondence Theory of Truth
2 Jul 2009 | 6:49 pm[Revised entry by Marian David on July 2, 2009. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Narrowly speaking, the correspondence theory of truth is the view that truth is correspondence to a fact - a view that was advocated by Russell and Moore early in the 20th century. But the label is usually applied much more broadly to any view explicitly embracing the idea that truth consists in a relation to reality, i.e., that truth is a relational property involving a characteristic relation (to... -
Modal Logic
1 Jul 2009 | 6:09 pm[Revised entry by James Garson on July 1, 2009. Changes to: Main text] A modal is an expression (like 'necessarily' or 'possibly') that is used to qualify the truth of a judgement. Modal logic is, strictly speaking, the study of the deductive behavior of the expressions 'it is necessary that' and 'it is possible that'. However, the term 'modal logic' may be used more broadly for a family of... -
Fitch's Paradox of Knowability
1 Jul 2009 | 5:42 pm[Revised entry by Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno on July 1, 2009. Changes to: Bibliography] The paradox of knowability is a logical result suggesting that, necessarily, if all truths are knowable in principle then all truths are in fact known. The contrapositive of the result says, necessarily, if in fact there is an unknown truth, then there is a truth that couldn't possibly be known. More specifically, if p is a truth that is never known then it is unknowable that p is a truth that is never known. The proof has been... -
Singularities and Black Holes
29 Jun 2009 | 10:16 pm[New Entry by Erik Curiel and Peter Bokulich on June 29, 2009.] A spacetime singularity is a breakdown in the geometrical structure of space and time. It is a topic of ongoing physical and philosophical research to clarify both the nature and significance of such pathologies. Because it is the fundamental geometry that is breaking down, spacetime singularities are often viewed as an end, or "edge," of spacetime itself. However, numerous difficulties arise when one tries...
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Talking Philosophy
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Michael Jackson & Proper Emotions
3 Jul 2009 | 11:33 amI was recently asked how Michael Jackson’s death affected me. I had to be honest and report that it really had not impacted my life. I did feel a degree of pity. But, I would feel the same upon learning about the death of anyone who did not deserve to die. In contrast to my rather limited response, some fans have shown incredible pain at his loss. From their responses, one would think that they had lost a parent, husband or dear friend. My initial view was that they were overreacting and that their emotional response was simply not warranted or proper. This, naturally enough, started me… -
Iran, the US, and the UK
24 Jun 2009 | 5:07 pmMike LaBossiere With the situation in Iran dominating much of the world’s attention, it might be wondered what a philosopher can say about the situation. Being an American writing for a British blog, I decided that the most reasonable thing to do would be to write about what the US and UK should morally do or not do in regards to Iran. Naturally enough, some history will be required to set the stage for the discussion. While an examination of the history involving the United States, the United Kingdom and Iran could (and does) fill numerous books, For a concise and well written overview… -
Jane Austen and women
12 Jun 2009 | 8:23 pmNorman Geras has this cool thing where writers are asked to talk about a book that has inspired or influenced them. Here’s something interesting I noticed (though perhaps not surprising). Twelve different people (as far as I can tell) have elected to talk about a Jane Austen novel (or character). Eleven of those people are women. I make no comment as to why this might be or what it might tell us about Jane Austen’s work and/or women (or indeed men). -
Descartes & My Dog
11 Jun 2009 | 4:33 pmAround 1648 Rene Descartes wrote a letter to Henry More on the topic of whether animals think or not. While Descartes was well aware of the complex behavior of animals such as dogs, he regarded the belief that animals think to be fundamentally mistaken. He does note the reason why people think that animals think: they reason by analogy. Animals are similar to us in terms of their bodies and also in their behavior. Since we believe that we think (that is, we think we think) it is natural for us to infer that animals think as well. For example, when I see food that I like (perhaps some… -
Lines of Thought
11 Jun 2009 | 4:57 amJake suggests a consideration of the doctrine of the association of ideas, and I’m game if you are. Like all good philosophy, you can get it up and running with a question: Why does one thought follow from another? And like most good philosophy, it goes back to the Greeks. I’m most familiar with Hume’s take on things, though, so maybe that’s where we should start. For Hume, ideas or thoughts are distinguished from impressions. You have an impression of a tree when you see one, and you have an idea of a tree when you think about what you saw. Hume wonders…
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AskPhilosophers.org | "All"
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Question about Art, Environment, Ethics - Jonathan Westphal responds
2 Jul 2009 | 5:37 pmIt has been suggested that the practice of Bonsai is an expression of animal chauvinism and does great harm to a tree by 'stunting' it. But aren't trees not sentient beings, and therefore the excising of branches, shoots and roots such that the tree thrives albeit substantially smaller than its genetic potential, is no different to the continual loss of roots, shoots and branches that occur under natural conditions? Response from: Jonathan Westphal There is the fact that it is possible to treat something badly or to damage it, whether or not it is sentient. A pair of shoes can be badly or… -
Question about Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy - Peter Smith responds
2 Jul 2009 | 2:47 pmI have a very vague understanding of Goedel's famous Incompleteness theorem, but I know enough to know that I see it constantly interpreted in what seem like bizarre ways that I am sure anyone who really knew the relevant math or logic or philosophy would find ridiculous. The most common of these come from "new age" sources. My question is, for someone who knows something about the theorems, what is it about them that you think attracts these sorts of odd and (to say the least) highly suspect interpretations? I mean you don't see a lot of bizarre interpretations of most technical… -
Question about Ethics, Love, Sex - Allen Stairs responds
2 Jul 2009 | 1:06 pmIs it immoral to commit adultery in a marriage when one of the spouses doesn't fulfill the other spouse? Response from: Allen Stairs "Fulfill" is a bit of a weasel word, isn't it? Suppose one partner would like to make love every night. The other, less libidinous spouse is more a two-or-three time a week type. We might say that the first spouse is "unfulfilled," but that sounds like a really poor excuse for adultery. If the lack of "fulfillment" amount to some deep incompatibility, a good question to ask first might be: have the partners in the marriage talked about what's not working? Can it… -
Question about Religion, Science - Peter Smith responds
2 Jul 2009 | 6:21 amAccording to Karl Popper, a hypothesis is scientific if it can be observationally falsified, not, if it can be verified. One instance not in accordance with a supposed law refutes the law, but many instances in conformity with the law still do not prove it. Accepting this falsification test, we may remark that the idea of the divine existence either could, or could not, be falsified by a conceivable way of observation. If it could not, then science in no position to test theism. Please comment. Thanks Response from: Peter Smith I'm not as confident as Peter Fosl about the testability issue:… -
Question about Justice, Philosophers - Thomas Pogge responds
2 Jul 2009 | 4:17 amI have a question about Rawls' theory of justice. Part of his difference principle stipulates that "social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all." I understand part (b), but part (a) I have some problems with. If I'm interpreting this right, there's a "safety net" so that the least-advantaged members of society don't go below. Thus, it takes care of the poor people, but what do the rich get out of it? After all, part (a) says that it's to everyone's…
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Leiter Reports
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Top Research Universities Based on US News Data on PhD Programs
3 Jul 2009 | 1:32 pmI haven't run one of these meta-analyses of US News reputation data on PhD programs in a number of years, but now that US News has conducted new surveys of natural science, humanities, and social science PhD programs over the... -
Draconian Budget Cuts at UCLA
2 Jul 2009 | 10:32 amStudent newspaper story here. In 2008-09, UCLA searched to fill 74 faculty lines; in 2009-10, UCLA will search to fill just 20 faculty positions. -
Fleischacker Wins 2009 Gittler Award from APA
2 Jul 2009 | 5:21 amSamuel Fleischacker (Illinois/Chicago) has won the 2009 Gittler Award from the APA for work in philosophy of the social sciences for his 2005 book On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion (Princeton University Press). -
"The Guardian" Series of Blog Postings on Great Works of Philosophy
1 Jul 2009 | 11:56 amIt's here, though I can't, I'm afraid, recommend it based on what I've seen so far. The series of items on Nietzsche's Genealogy by Giles Fraser is largely incompetent, at a level I would find unacceptable for work submitted by... -
Great moments in misspellings
1 Jul 2009 | 5:09 amHere. Some are quite funny.
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Ethics Etc
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Journal of Moral Philosophy 6(3) (2009)
24 Jun 2009 | 10:03 amJOURNAL OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY: An International Journal of Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy (ISSN 1740-4681) Volume 6, Number 3 (2009) ARTICLES Alex Friedman, ‘Intransitive Ethics’, pp. 277-97 David Lefkowitz, ‘Partiality and Weighing Harm to Non-Combatants’, pp. 298-316 Gerald Lang, ‘Luck Egalitarianism, Permissible Inequalities, and Moral Hazard’, pp. 317-38 Heath White, ‘Fitting Attitudes, Wrong Kinds of Reasons, and Mind-Independent Goodness’, pp. 339-64 Leo Zaibert, ‘The Paradox of Forgiveness’, pp. 365-93 REVIEW ARTICLE… -
Sobel on Parfit on Subjectivism
23 Jun 2009 | 4:06 pmProfessor David Sobel (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) gave a talk recently at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar on ‘Parfit on Subjectivism.’ A copy of the paper can be found here, and he would welcome any comments/suggestions. Here’s an abstract of his talk: Derek Parfit argues that all subjective accounts of normative reasons make wildly implausible claims. He rightly insists that we have reasons to get sensations that we like and to avoid agony now and in the future. Subjective accounts cannot accommodate this thought, he claims, because likings are importantly different… -
Program for the 6th Annual Metaethics Workshop
15 Jun 2009 | 3:53 pmProfessor Russ Shafer-Landau has announced the program for the 6th Annual Metaethics Workshop, which will take place in Madison, WI on Sept 11-13, 2009, and which looks fantastic! All sessions will take place in 313 Pyle Center (702 Langdon Street) FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 11 9am - 10:15am JON TRESAN (Florida) Naturalistic Moral Realism, Moral Twin Earth, and the Meta-Moral Use of Moral Words Chair: Christian Coons (Bowling Green) 10:40am - Noon EARL CONEE (Rochester) The Best Alternative Chair: David Merli (Franklin & Marshall) 1:30pm - 2:45pm SARAH McGRATH (Princeton) Moral Knowledge and… -
Finlay on Metaethical Contextualism Defended
12 Jun 2009 | 7:06 amProfessor Stephen Finlay (University of Southern California) gave a talk recently at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar on ‘Metaethical Contextualism Defended’, which he co-wrote with Gunnar Björnsson. A copy of the paper can be found here and they would welcome any comments/suggestions. Here’s an abstract of the talk: Epistemic and deontic judgments (involving modals like ‘must’, ‘may’, and ‘ought’) seem to be essentially relative to different sets of information, and it is a perennially popular view that deontic judgments are additionally relative to different… -
Enoch on Giving Practical Reasons
25 May 2009 | 2:20 pmProfessor David Enoch (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) gave a talk today at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar on ‘Giving Practical Reasons.’ A copy of David’s talk can be found here and he would welcome any comments/suggestions. Here’s an abstract of his talk: I am writing a mediocre paper on a topic you are not particularly interested in. You don’t have, it seems safe to assume, a (normative) reason to read my draft. I then ask whether you would be willing to have a look and tell me what you think. Suddenly you do have a (normative) reason to read my draft. By my…
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European Journal of Philosophy
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Non-Relativist Contextualism about Free Will
25 Jun 2009 | 2:11 pmAbstract: Contextualist accounts of free will recently proposed by Hawthorne and Rieber imply that the same action can be both free and unfree (depending on the attributor's context). This paradoxical consequence can be avoided by thinking of contexts not as constituted by arbitrary moves in a conversation, but rather by (relatively stable) social practices (such as the practices of attributing responsibility or of giving scientific explanations). The following two conditions are suggested as each necessary and jointly sufficient for free will: (i) the agent is able to form considered… -
A Theory of Tragic Experience According to Hegel
14 Jun 2009 | 11:29 pmAbstract: Hegel's theory of tragedy is often considered to be primarily a theory of the objective powers involved in tragic conflicts[mdash]for Hegel, these are paradigmatically competing ethical notions[mdash]and of the rationality which underlies and drives such conflicts. Such a view follows naturally from a close reading of Hegel's discussion of classical Greek tragedy in his Lectures on Aesthetics. However, this view gives rise to the question of whether Hegel's theory of tragedy can account for the significance of tragic experience, in particular the experience of tragic suffering; it… -
The Normativity of Content and 'the Frege Point'
9 Jun 2009 | 4:15 pm -
'Essentially Social'? A Discussion of the Spirited Part of the Soul in Plato
9 Jun 2009 | 4:15 pmAbstract: The spirited part, thumos, plays a complex and often disputed role in Plato's account of the soul. The doctrine of the soul as specifically tri-partitioned seems to depend on a substantial conception of thumos as fundamental and non-reducible. Building on John Cooper's contribution in the discussion of the topic, this article aims to show that the role of thumos is characterised by an indispensable, deep-rooted urge for dignified self-preservation. The view is supported by Plato's own examples, and discussed with regards to Myles Burnyeat's account of thumos as an essentially social… -
Scepticism and the Senses
2 Jun 2009 | 3:17 pmAbstract: This paper is an attempt to identify and to suggest reasons to reject those assumptions about the nature and scope of perceptual knowledge that appear to make an unacceptable scepticism the only strictly defensible answer to the philosophical problem of knowledge of the world in general. The suggestion is that our knowing things about the world around us by perception can be satisfactorily explained only if we can be understood to sometimes perceive that such-and-such is so, where what we perceive to be so is the very state of the world that we thereby know to be so. This is not…
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Journal of Philosophical Logic
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Comparing Fixed-Point and Revision Theories of Truth
22 Jun 2009 | 11:12 pmAbstract In response to the liar’s paradox, Kripke developed the fixed-point semantics for languages expressing their own truth concepts. (Martin and Woodruff independently developed this semantics, but not to the same extent as Kripke.) Kripke’s work suggests a number of related fixed-point theories of truth for such languages. Gupta and Belnap develop their revision theory of truth in contrast to the fixed-point theories. The current paper considers three natural ways to compare the various resulting theories of truth, and establishes the resulting relationships among these… -
In Defense of Imperative Inference
18 Jun 2009 | 9:57 amAbstract “Surrender; therefore, surrender or fight” is apparently an argument corresponding to an inference from an imperative to an imperative. Several philosophers, however (Williams 1963; Wedeking 1970; Harrison 1991; Hansen 2008), have denied that imperative inferences exist, arguing that (1) no such inferences occur in everyday life, (2) imperatives cannot be premises or conclusions of inferences because it makes no sense to say, for example, “since surrender” or “it follows that surrender or fight”, and (3) distinct imperatives have conflicting permissive… -
Propositions and the Substitution Anomaly
4 Jun 2009 | 2:59 amAbstract The Substitution Anomaly is the failure of intuitively coreferential expressions of the corresponding forms “that S” and “the proposition that S” to be intersubstitutable salva veritate under certain ‘selective’ attitudinal verbs that grammatically accept both sorts of terms as complements. The Substitution Anomaly poses a direct threat to the basic assumptions of Millianism, which predict the interchangeability of “that S” and “the proposition that S”. Jeffrey King has argued persuasively that the most plausible Millian solution is to treat the… -
Truth and Assertability
24 Apr 2009 | 12:19 amAbstract Deflationists say that the equivalence between ‘p is true’ and p is all there is to the meaning of ‘true’. “Use” theories generally construe meaning as acceptance conditions. I argue: (i) there are certain obvious objections to a deflationary theory of truth so formulated; but (ii) they can be overcome if we employ a graded notion of use, i.e. a notion of assertability; but (iii) there appear to be certain further difficulties which cannot be overcome in this way. Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s10992-009-9103-0Authors Michael McDermott, University of… -
On Permutation in Simplified Semantics
23 Apr 2009 | 1:20 amAbstract This note explains an error in Restall’s ‘Simplified Semantics for Relevant Logics (and some of their rivals)’ (Restall, J Philos Logic 22(5):481–511, 1993) concerning the modelling conditions for the axioms of assertion A → ((A → B) → B) (there called c6) and permutation (A → (B → C)) → (B → (A → C)) (there called c7). We show that the modelling conditions for assertion and permutation proposed in ‘Simplified Semantics’ overgenerate. In fact, they overgenerate so badly that the proposed semantics for the relevant logic R validate the rule…
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Oxford Journals: Philosophia Mathematica
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Mathematical Nominalism and Measurement
28 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pmIn this paper I defend mathematical nominalism by arguing that any reasonable account of scientific theories and scientific practice must make explicit the empirical non-mathematical grounds on which the application of mathematics is based. Once this is done, references to mathematical entities may be eliminated or explained away in terms of underlying empirical conditions. I provide evidence for this conclusion by presenting a detailed study of the applicability of mathematics to measurement. This study shows that mathematical nominalism may be regarded as a methodological approach to… -
W.V. QUINE. Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine. Roger F. Gibson, ed
18 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pm -
JODY AZZOUNI. Tracking Reason: Proof, Consequence and Truth
12 May 2009 | 5:00 pm -
Justifying Definitions in Mathematics--Going Beyond Lakatos
7 May 2009 | 5:00 pmThis paper addresses the actual practice of justifying definitions in mathematics. First, I introduce the main account of this issue, namely Lakatos's proof-generated definitions. Based on a case study of definitions of randomness in ergodic theory, I identify three other common ways of justifying definitions: natural-world justification, condition justification, and redundancy justification. Also, I clarify the interrelationships between the different kinds of justification. Finally, I point out how Lakatos's ideas are limited: they fail to show how various kinds of justification can be… -
CHRISTINE REDECKER. Wittgensteins Philosophie der Mathematik: Eine Neubewertung im Ausgang von der Kritik an Cantors Beweis der Uberabzahlbarkeit der reellen Zahlen. [Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics: A Reassessment Starting from the Critique of Cantor's Proof of the Uncountability of the Real Numbers]
7 May 2009 | 5:00 pm
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Philosophical Studies
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Reasons, impossibility and efficient steps: reply to Heuer
13 Jun 2009 | 1:24 amAbstract Ulrike Heuer argues that there can be a reason for a person to perform an action that this person cannot perform, as long as this person can take efficient steps towards performing this action. In this reply, I first argue that Heuer’s examples fail to undermine my claim that there cannot be a reason for a person to perform an action if it is impossible that this person will perform this action. I then argue that, on a plausible interpretation of what ‘efficient steps’ are, Heuer’s claim is consistent with my claim. I end by showing that Heuer fails to undermine… -
Rationalist restrictions and external reasons
5 Jun 2009 | 2:38 amAbstract Historically, the most persuasive argument against external reasons proceeds through a rationalist restriction: For all agents A, and all actions Φ, there is a reason for A to Φ only if Φing is rationally accessible from A’s actual motivational states. Here I distinguish conceptions of rationality, show which one the internalist must rely on to argue against external reasons, and argue that a rationalist restriction that features that conception of rationality is extremely implausible. Other conceptions of rationality can render the restriction true, but then the… -
Identity and similarity
5 Jun 2009 | 2:38 amAbstract The standard approach to the so-called paradoxes of identity has been to argue that these paradoxes do not essentially concern the notion of identity but rather betray misconceptions on our part regarding other metaphysical notions, like that of an object or a property. This paper proposes a different approach by pointing to an ambiguity in the identity predicate and arguing that the concept of identity that figures in many ordinary identity claims, including those that appear in the paradoxes, is not the traditional philosophical concept but one that can be defined in… -
No deep disagreement for new relativists
4 Jun 2009 | 3:00 amAbstract Recently a number of writers have argued that a new form of relativism involves a form of semantic context-dependence which helps it escape the perhaps most common objection to ordinary contextualism; that it cannot accommodate our intuitions about disagreement. I argue: (i) In order to evaluate this claim we have to pay closer attention to the nature of our intuitions about disagreement. (ii) We have different such intuitions concerning different questions: we have more stable disagreement intuitions about moral disputes than about, say, disputes about matters of taste. -
Indiscernibility and bundles in a structure
4 Jun 2009 | 3:00 amAbstract The bundle theory is a theory about the internal constitution of individuals. It asserts that individuals are entirely composed of universals. Typically, bundle theorists augment their theory with a constitutional approach to individuation entailing the thesis ‘identity of constituents is a sufficient ground for numerical identity’ (CIT). But then the bundle theory runs afoul of Black’s duplication case—a world containing two indiscernible spheres. Here I propose and defend a new version of the bundle theory that denies ‘CIT’, and which instead conjoins it with…
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Studia Logica
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Editorial Introduction. Truth Values: Part II
30 Jun 2009 | 8:53 amEditorial Introduction. Truth Values: Part II Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11225-009-9191-4Authors Yaroslav Shramko, State Pedagogical University Department of Philosophy 50086 Krivoi Rog UkraineHeinrich Wansing, Dresden University of Technology Institute of Philosophy 01062 Dresden Germany Journal Studia LogicaOnline ISSN 1572-8730Print ISSN 0039-3215 -
The Tense Logic for Master Argument in Prior’s Reconstruction
31 May 2009 | 1:23 amAbstract In this paper we examine Prior’s reconstruction of Master Argument [4] in some modal-tense logic. This logic consists of a purely tense part and Diodorean definitions of modal alethic operators. Next we study this tense logic in the pure tense language. It is the logic K t 4 plus a new axiom (P): ‘p Λ G p ⊃ P G p’. This formula was used by Prior in his original analysis of Master Argument. (P) is usually added as an extra axiom to an axiomatization of the logic of linear time. In that case the set of moments is a total order and must be left-discrete without the… -
Book Reviews
29 May 2009 | 12:00 amBook Reviews Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11225-009-9190-5Authors Jessica Carter, University of Southern Denmark Odense Denmark Journal Studia LogicaOnline ISSN 1572-8730Print ISSN 0039-3215 Journal Volume Volume 92 Journal Issue Volume 92, Number 1 / June, 2009 -
On Conservative Extensions in Logics with Infinitary Predicates
29 May 2009 | 12:00 amAbstract If the language is extended by new individual variables, in classical first order logic, then the deduction system obtained is a conservative extension of the original one. This fails to be true for the logics with infinitary predicates. But it is shown that restricting the commutativity of quantifiers and the equality axioms in the extended system and supposing the merry-go-round property in the original system, the foregoing extension is already conservative. It is shown that these restrictions are crucial for an extension to be conservative. The origin of the results is… -
Giles’s Game and the Proof Theory of Łukasiewicz Logic
28 May 2009 | 2:00 amAbstract In the 1970s, Robin Giles introduced a game combining Lorenzen-style dialogue rules with a simple scheme for betting on the truth of atomic statements, and showed that the existence of winning strategies for the game corresponds to the validity of formulas in Łukasiewicz logic. In this paper, it is shown that ‘disjunctive strategies’ for Giles’s game, combining ordinary strategies for all instances of the game played on the same formula, may be interpreted as derivations in a corresponding proof system. In particular, such strategies mirror derivations in a…
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Synthese
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On Hans Reichenbach’s inductivism
30 Jun 2009 | 11:22 pmAbstract One of the first to criticize the verifiability theory of meaning embraced by logical empiricists, Reichenbach ties the significance of scientific statements to their predictive character, which offers the condition for their testability. While identifying prediction as the task of scientific knowledge, Reichenbach assigns induction a pivotal role, and regards the theory of knowledge as a theory of prediction based on induction. Reichenbach’s inductivism is grounded on the frequency notion of probability, of which he prompts a more flexible version than that of Richard… -
Is structural underdetermination possible?
30 Jun 2009 | 11:22 pmAbstract Structural realism is sometimes said to undermine the theory underdetermination (TUD) argument against realism, since, in usual TUD scenarios, the supposed underdetermination concerns the object-like theoretical content but not the structural content. The paper explores the possibility of structural TUD by considering some special cases from modern physics, but also questions the validity of the TUD argument itself. The upshot is that cases of structural TUD cannot be excluded, but that TUD is perhaps not such a terribly serious anti-realistic argument. Content Type… -
Choosing the realist framework
30 Jun 2009 | 8:52 amAbstract There has been an empiricist tradition in the core of Logical Positivism/Empiricism, starting with Moritz Schlick and ending in Herbert Feigl (via Hans Reichenbach), according to which the world of empiricism need not be a barren place devoid of all the explanatory entities posited by scientific theories. The aim of this paper is to articulate this tradition and to explore ways in which its key elements can find a place in the contemporary debate over scientific realism. It presents a way empiricism can go for scientific realism without metaphysical anxiety, by developing… -
On Reichenbach’s argument for scientific realism
30 Jun 2009 | 8:52 amAbstract The aim of this paper is to articulate, discuss in detail and criticise Reichenbach’s sophisticated and complex argument for scientific realism. Reichenbach’s argument has two parts. The first part aims to show how there can be reasonable belief in unobservable entities, though the truth of claims about them is not given directly in experience. The second part aims to extent the argument of the first part to the case of realism about the external world, conceived of as a world of independently existing entities distinct from sensations. It is argued that the success of… -
Reichenbach and Weyl on apriority and mathematical applicability
30 Jun 2009 | 8:52 amAbstract I examine Reichenbach’s theory of relative a priori and Michael Friedman’s interpretation of it. I argue that Reichenbach’s view remains at bottom conventionalist and that one issue which separates Reichenbach’s account from Kant’s apriorism is the problem of mathematical applicability. I then discuss Hermann Weyl’s theory of blank forms which in many ways runs parallel to the theory of relative a priori. I argue that it is capable of dealing with the problem of applicability, but with a cost. Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s11229-009-9591-zAuthors…
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Experimental Philosophy
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CFP
2 Jul 2009 | 7:45 amHi fellow experimentalist,The 2nd annual Interdisciplinary Approaches to Philosophical Issues Conference is currently accepting submissions. This year's theme is perception, action, and consciousness. Submissions that broadly meet any of these categories are encouraged. For the CFP, see here. Last year's meeting was well attended by the X-Phi community, and we are hoping for another solid turnout.This year's keynote speaker is Marcel Kinsbourne.We are also hosting a series of special invited speakers that will include John Bickle, Andrea Scarantino, and Daniel Weiskopf.The… -
Sad News...
28 Jun 2009 | 9:08 amSteve Stitch asked me to pass along the following: There is some sad news. Nicola Knight, a gifted young researcher who worked at the intersection of anthropology, psychology and philosophy, died of a heart attack on June 9, at the age of 33. Nicola had done collaborative work with Justin Barrett, Scott Atran, Dick Nisbett and others. His groundbreaking study of the patterns of justification that people offer for their moral judgments is currently under review. There is a brief memorial notice by Dan Sperber online here. -
What Situationist Experiments Show
26 Jun 2009 | 7:55 pmLong time reader; first time poster. I'm breaking my silence because we've just finished a paper on virtue ethics and the person-situation debate that might be of interest to some X-Philes. There aren't many philosophers (or psychologists for that matter) who would be interested in a paper about the true meaning of the correlation coefficient and how it relates to the person-situation debate. But, given the discussion here, I'm guessing that some of you might be.Here are the details.What Situationist Experiments Show.John Campbell, Sarah… -
X-phi on the BBC
25 Jun 2009 | 3:11 pmThe BBC programme Analysis has a show on moral x-phi this Sunday. But the pre-publicity is not very encouraging.Thought ExperimentsStudies have shown that if the smell of fresh bread is in the air we are far more generous than otherwise. In the past few years, a fascinating range of experiments has begun to shed light on the moral choices humans make. Philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards asks whether the results can tell us not just how we tend to behave, but how we should behave.You can find the show at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00l55xp and there is a podcast -
Conference on Conditionals
22 Jun 2009 | 7:41 amThanks to Richard Dietz for sending me the following conference announcement: Conditionals and Conditionalization Conference Formal Epistemology Project (FEP), Centre for Logic and Analytic Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, Sept 4-6, 2009 Organizers: Richard Dietz and Igor Douven While it strikes most as obvious that there exist close conceptual connections between conditionals and conditionalization, it is far less obvious what these connections precisely are. The aim of the workshop is to investigate these connections from an interdisciplinary…
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Feminist Philosophers
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The Sunday cat loves brave bats
3 Jul 2009 | 8:39 pmThe bat was seen gripping the hull as the space ship launched on March 15, 2009. -
SAP does gender well
2 Jul 2009 | 4:35 pm… on the same topic as jj’s last post – but more positive news. In the past conferences notable for their absence of female speakers have been held up, and those which have laudably offered a more inclusive programme also heralded. The Society for Applied Philosophy’s recent annual conference, in Leeds, had the following speakers in its plenary sessions: The Unity of the Virtues Professor Julia Annas, University of Arizona Some strengths of a consequentialist approach to human rights Dr Elizabeth Ashford, University of St Andrews Integrity and Fragmentation Professor… -
What do the following have in common?
2 Jul 2009 | 1:16 pmMarcel kinsbourne John Bickle Andrea Scarantino Daniel Weiskopf Well, “Andrea” is actually a man, so they are all men. And that means, of course, that they all meet a necessary condition on being a keynote speaker at a conference! {SNARK ALERT!} Two of them are also among my most favorite people to see at conferences, so I hardly want to lament their being featured at the 2nd Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Perception, Action, and Consciousness. Still, the area is one in which a lot of women are doing interesting work. Well, I will write… -
Investigating nuns may be fun,
2 Jul 2009 | 9:01 ambut we should be sad at this one. Women choosing to live with integrity in a way that responds to the present society and aids the needy in their community and the world may face difficulties for just that. The current investigation by the Vatican is two-fold. One, an apostolic visitation, is something usually done in response to a serious current problem, though none in this case is obvious. The second investigation is a doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which has 1,500 members from about 95 percent of women’s religious orders. This investigation was… -
Gay Sex Legal in India
2 Jul 2009 | 7:59 amHurrah! India has decriminalised gay sex, overturning a law imposed by the British. (Thanks, CR!)
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BrainPains
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Much Ado about Realization
18 Jun 2009 | 9:52 amThis week we read Tom Polger and Larry Shapiro’s “Understanding the Dimensions of Realization” (forthcoming in JPhil) which is a critical response to Carl Gillett’s earlier paper on realization. I will argue that two central issues in this debate are merely terminological. This teapot is brimming with tempest but sadly lacking in substance. One central issue [...] -
Voodoo Correlations in Neuroscience?
23 Mar 2009 | 12:57 pmWe recently read an interesting paper by Vul, Harris, Winkielman, and Pashler which effectively accuses many researchers of having used laughably poor statistical methodology in using brain-imaging to establish conclusions about where in the brain the processing occurs for many psychological states including emotion, personality, and social cognition. If this accusation is correct, it calls into [...] -
Tye on Phenomenal Concepts
20 Feb 2009 | 7:48 amIn chapter 3 of Consciousness Revisited, Michael Tye argues that · There are no special phenomenal concepts of the sort required by the phenomenal concept strategy for defending physicalism · Accounts of phenomenal concepts developed by Block, Papineau, Balog, Loar, Perry, and Tye all have serious problems · Although there are concepts of consciousness that are not a [...] -
Online Consciousness Conference–Online Now!
20 Feb 2009 | 7:18 am“Consciousness Online” is a web-based philosophy conference organized by Richard Brown from LaGuardia College, CUNY. Richard has done a great job bringing together some great papers presented by excellent philosophers around the globe. Papers are presented by video and by narrated powerpoint, and comments and discussion will also be handled online. It’s an interesting format, [...] -
Congratulations, Clayton!
15 Feb 2009 | 9:51 amClayton Littlejohn has accepted a tenure track position at U. Texas San Antonio! It’s an excellent job and well deserved–in my opinion Clayton is a top notch philosopher who has already made excellent contributions to the field and is one of the best teachers we’ve had at SMU. We’ll be terribly sorry to see him [...]
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The Prosblogion
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A puzzle about dialogue
2 Jul 2009 | 9:12 amThe dialogue I am interested in is between two persons whose religious views relevantly differ. The puzzle is that (a) such dialogue seems to actually happen--it seems that people are having a dialogue, both talking on and the same topic, exchanging views that make contact, even though (b) it seems that the two people mean different things by the words they use.Let me give a couple of examples, in all of which one interlocutor is a Catholic and the other a naturalist, though many other combinations will generate similar examples.Marriage: The naturalist (typically) understands marriage as a… -
Is Moser Making Empirical Claims About Skeptics?
2 Jul 2009 | 8:18 amI wonder if any of what Moser is saying commits him to empirical claims about skeptics. As I read him, I keep getting the feeling that he is: I get the sense that he is saying that they are selfish, unwilling to submit to higher authorities (like God), unwilling to follow their consciences in certain areas, desire to be autonomous, and perhaps more. Of course, Moser hasn't directly said these things, I think. (Moser doesn't say believers don't have these tendencies, but I think he'd say that they have chosen to refrain from them, and so are able to come to know God.) So what is Moser saying… -
NDPR Review of Oliver D. Crisp, Michael C. Rea (eds.) - Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology - Reviewed by Gordon Graham, Princeton Theological Seminary
2 Jul 2009 | 4:54 amHere. Graham complains about the structure of the work but seems to like the individual essays for the most part. The complaints concern the notion of analytic theology, in particular how it is different from plain old philosophical theology. Worth a look. Graham ends the review by claiming: In his essay Oliver Crisp employs the ancient dictum of "faith seeking understanding". This is not the same as faith seeking truth. Given its "ineradicable pluralism", however, philosophy is not plausibly interpreted as seeking truth anyway. What it seeks is a distinctive kind of understanding, a… -
100+ Living Philosophers of Religion and Their Best Work
30 Jun 2009 | 8:00 amHere. -
Central APA: Philosophy of Religion Group
29 Jun 2009 | 6:28 pmThe Philosophy of Religion Group is issuing a call for papers for its session at the 2010 American Philosophical Association Central Division Meeting on the topic of "The Hiddenness of Spiritual Realities." While the topic of "divine hiddenness" has received a modest amount of attention in recent years, the topic of this session is being cast a bit more broadly. Those proposing papers are welcome to address the topic of divine hiddenness, however the program committee is also interested in considering papers that address hiddenness in non-theistic traditions, as well as aspects of hiddenness…
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In Socrates' Wake
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New ETS grad school assessment
1 Jul 2009 | 8:49 pmSuccess in graduate school is clearly not a matter of academic ability alone. In my observation at least, a good many other virtues or emotional dispositions shape whether a person completes graduate school, and in turn, how successful they are in their subsequent academic careers. Plenty of bright people end up leaving graduate school (or the profession) because they are not sufficiently creative, focused, or persistent, for example.Now our friends at Educational Testing Service, who brought us the SAT, the GRE, the LSAT, and the other standardized tests, aim to identify those who have the… -
review of ISW in June 2009 issue of Teaching Philosophy
26 Jun 2009 | 9:13 amThose of you who are fans, or at least regular readers, of this site probably also know about the journal Teaching Philosophy, which since its founding in 1975 "has provided a peer-reviewed forum for the exchange of ideas about the challenges faced by philosophers in the classroom, and has published the largest body of original work on philosophy teaching in the English language." Over the years, I have found the journal to be a very helpful resource.The current issue (Volume 32:2, June 2009) includes a Digital Media Review section. One of the "digital media" under review is this very site. -
Philosophy behind bars
22 Jun 2009 | 11:02 amOur old friend the CHE has a short piece by Robert Gormong relating his experience of teaching philosophy in a Virginia correctional facility. I've talked to a number of people who've taught philosophy (or cognate disciplines) in prisons and nearly all find it to be highly rewarding. Gormong writes:Whatever their flaws, I thought my inmate-students were in a unique position to benefit from a class on philosophy. Philosophy is a discipline that ought to help students shape their lives and values — and at Lunenburg, my students desperately needed to rethink their lives. At their best, they… -
Best student excuses for late work
9 Jun 2009 | 11:35 amCrooked Timber has a nice post on all-time greatest student excuses for late papers. I'd love to hear other examples of the best excuses ISW readers have received. But here are some personal favorites from the CT post:"It was during my first year of teaching here in Arkansas that I got my favorite late paper excuse of all time: one of my freshmen comp students told me his paper would be late because, the night before, his stepfather had shot his computer with his shotgun while he was messing around, and it would take him awhile to get a new one.""I missed an organic chemistry final. My excuse… -
Laowai Philosophizing
5 Jun 2009 | 6:37 pmHi everyone, this post isn't really from me, but from Chris Panza who is teaching this semester in China and can't get to Blogger through the Great Firewall. He'd posted it to his blog here, but he thought it might make for a good teaching post as well.-----Sadly, my (our) time in Beijing is slowly coming to a close (we leave in July). This is not something that I or my wife are particularly happy about – both of us feel as if we are, just recently, beginning to get our “sea legs” (so to speak) in Chinese culture. The quickly approaching end of the experience has led me to reflect a bit…
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Philosophy by the Way
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Supporting civic nonviolent movements
28 Jun 2009 | 4:45 pmRecent studies have shown that civic nonviolent movements are by far more effective in bringing democratic changes in autocratically and dictatorially governed countries than movements that use violence do. Nonviolent movements are not only more effective than movements that use violence, but they bring also bigger democratic changes than more or less violent movements do. In spite of this, politicians in democratic countries that want to support democratic changes in not democratically governed countries ignore these facts and they are hardly prepared to support civic nonviolent movements… -
What's wrong with science?
21 Jun 2009 | 4:27 pmWeinberg, Nichols & Stich have shown in an article that epistemic intuitions are not as objective as they once were supposed to be. Epistemic intuitions are not universal but differ according to culture and even within a culture according to the social group. Experiments show that conclusions may be different when they have been drawn by people with different backgrounds. Now it is so that most scientific activity is done by people belonging to the highest SES group (SES=social economic status), and till not so long ago all scientists were mainly men in the highest SES groups in western… -
Arcadia
15 Jun 2009 | 6:30 amActually I wanted to write here about Arcadia, where I have been a few weeks ago. Arcadia symbolizes the simple, happy life without sorrows. A world where one does not need to think about the future because the future will be happy, too. A world of shepherds and shepherdesses who find all the needs for life, all food and shelter, around them in a beautiful landscape. A world without sufferance and without suppression. You find this world especially depicted in pieces of art in the 17th and 18th centuries.With these thoughts in my mind I passed the border of Arcadia on the Peloponnesos in… -
A visit to Nestor
7 Jun 2009 | 4:04 pmWhen Telemachos arrived in Pylos, he was, as Homeros told us, warmly welcomed by Nestor, the king of the region and a companion-in-arms of his father Odysseus, when the Greek tried to conquer Troja. He took part in the sacrificial ceremony that was just taking place on the beach, was then led to the palace and was received there as an honoured guest. Not many years thereafter, but probably after the death of Nestor, the palace was destroyed and the place where it was had been forgotten, until it had been found back again in the 20th century. Now people are walking around there, looking… -
On waiting
1 Jun 2009 | 4:23 pmSometimes I take photos that show aspects of our daily life. One such an aspect is waiting. Waiting is something that everybody has to do now and then, and it is an “activity” that many people do not like, especially not in our modern society where everything must be efficient and where waiting time is seen as lost time. However, waiting is not simply doing nothing, being inactive. Waiting has a purpose. It is doing nothing in view of something else, and seen in this way it is a kind of activity, an inactive being active. We can express it also this way: waiting is waiting for, it is…
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The Brooks Blog
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Plants can recognize each other?
1 Jul 2009 | 10:31 amThe fascinating details are here. -
Bhikhu Parekh on "Logic of Identity"
1 Jul 2009 | 10:28 am. . . in the current issue of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (subscription-only) hereAn abstract:Identity refers, among other things, to what distinguishes an individual and makes him or her this person rather than some other. It has two closely related dimensions: personal and social. Personal identity refers to the individual's fundamental beliefs and commitments in terms of which he orientates himself to the world and defines his place in it. Social identity refers to those relations with which the individual identifies and which he regards as an integral part of himself. Social… -
Bad news for new graduates
1 Jul 2009 | 10:14 amThe BBC reports here:"There is further evidence of a tough graduate jobs market with a survey showing vacancies down 13.5% on 2008.Research among the top 100 employers identified by graduates shows that the only area with significant growth was the armed forces - up 11%.As numbers of jobs have shrunk, firms have been getting more applicants for each - a third more than last year.High Fliers Research, which carried out the survey, said employers had cut recruitment targets by 28%.Employers have recruited 14,370 graduates to join their payrolls - against an original target of 19,951. Last year,… -
Andy Murray is on a roll
1 Jul 2009 | 10:09 am. . . and will now play in the semi-final. I think he may well win it all . . . -
Bhikhu Parekh on the UN and the Responsibility to Protect
1 Jul 2009 | 10:00 am. . . from his speech in the House of Lords (link here"My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, for securing and introducing the debate. I extend a particularly warm welcome to my noble friend Lady Kinnock of Holyhead. She brings to this House great experience, wisdom and courage as well as a fine record of commitment to the cause of justice.I endorse the United Nations report on the responsibility to protect. It identifies four major evils and tries to tell us how to anticipate and deal with them. These evils are genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against…
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fragments of consciousness
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Attention and Consciousness
22 Jun 2009 | 8:39 pmHere's the program for a workshop on Attention and Consciousness, put on by the ANU Centre for Consciousness. It will be held in the Sparke Helmore Lecture Theatre in the ANU College of Law later this week. If you'd like to attend, please email dicrosse [[at]] coombs.anu.edu.au.THURSDAY JUNE 258:40-9 Coffee/registration9-10:30 Eric Schwitzgebel (Philosophy, UC Riverside) Consciousness and Attention11-12:30 … -
Bob Meyer
7 May 2009 | 5:30 amBob Meyer just has died, of a heart attack after a year-long battle with cancer. Bob was a long-time member of the Philosophy Program in the Research School of Social Sciences here at ANU, and even after he moved across the university and then retired, was a ubiquitous presence here. He was a larger-than-life character who was enormous fun to be around. Bob was well-known for his work on nonclassical logic, especially relevance logic (or as Bob always insisted, relevant logic). He was also famous as Maximum Leader of the Logicians Liberation League, whose… -
PhilPapers news
6 Apr 2009 | 5:14 amIn the two months or so since it launched, PhilPapers has thrived. There are now close to 3000 registered users, and twice as many again active unregistered users. Many journals have asked to be added to the database, and we are developing methods whereby this can easily be done. In the meantime, there are a couple of major items of news.First, PhilPapers has been awarded a grant of 200,000 pounds by the Joint Informations Systems Committee in the UK. This grant will be administered by the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London, where David Bourget… -
Consciousness and the Vegetative State
23 Mar 2009 | 9:38 amThere will be a workshop on Consciousness and the Vegetative State this Thursday-Friday March 26-27 at the ANU (National Europe Centre at 1 Liversidge St), sponsored by the Centre for Consciousness. The workshop will bring together scientists and philosophers (four of each) to discuss foundational issues raised by recent work on vegetative state, especially the use of brain imaging in an attempt to detect signs of consciousness. If you plan to attend, please email dicrosse [[at]] coombs.anu.edu.au.THURSDAY MARCH 269:30-10 Coffee/Registration10-11:20 David Reutens… -
Metametaphysics
19 Mar 2009 | 7:16 amI just received my copies of the book Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, which I co-edited with David Manley and Ryan Wasserman. The book grew out of the ANU conference on Metametaphysics in 2005, followed by the Boise conference on the same topic in 2007.There are 17 papers in the book, by a superb group of authors: Karen Bennett, Matti Eklund, Kit Fine, Bob Hale and Crispin Wright, John Hawthorne, Eli Hirsch, Thomas Hofweber, Kris McDaniel, Huw Price, Jonathan Schaffer, Ted Sider, Scott Soames, Amie Thomasson, Peter van Inwagen, Steve Yablo, and me. …
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Jon Cogburn's Blog
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blog hiatus
26 Jun 2009 | 3:58 pmI'm going to be in Florida visiting my folks and sister's family from tomorrow until July 5th. Since my parents don't have the interwebs in their condo, blogging will be non-existent during that time.Please avail yourselves of the Braver on-line reading group and contribute to the discussion. My post on Braver's chapter on Hegel will be up this Monday. I don't know how big a lie it would be to say that I am looking forward to flying tomorrow. Please read this earlier insightful post. -
Leonard Cohen - Avalanche (for Michael Jackson)
25 Jun 2009 | 6:21 pm -
navel gazing
25 Jun 2009 | 6:10 pmI've been out of grad school for a decade now (some of that time as contingent labor). I've gotten fifteen articles and a book published in that time. I've reviewed articles for some pretty good journals and books for pretty good presses. I'm a good proofreader for my friend's papersI'm nowhere approaching a "star," but on the other hand I've nothing to be ashamed of.With the new child, gall bladder disease (before bowing down to reality and finally getting the thing removed, my diet was as superstitiously weird as Nietzsche's in his crazy Ecce Homo… -
3d update of list of crap to accomplish this summer
25 Jun 2009 | 5:52 pmI'm going to keep reposting this as I get things done. Proofread chapters of a friend's book [finished on 5/14/09]. Review an article for Australasian [finished on 5/24/09]. With Jason Megill, resubmit paper on Church's Thesis [finished on 6/1/09]. Write a sample article for a proposed Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy book (on the alignment system) [finished and sent to Mark on 6/21/09] With Mark Silcox, craft draft of a proposal for D & D and Philosophy book [finished and sent to Mark on 6/21/09]. With Mark Silcox, rewrite and resubmit (to new journal) paper on… -
From Mark Bauerlein's Chronicle of Higher Education Blog
25 Jun 2009 | 9:57 amHere from Common Core is another report that has an interesting finding. It compares the curricula of some high-performing nations around the world to those of the United States and concludes, “Each of the nations that consistently outrank the United States on the PISA exam provides their students with a comprehensive, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences.” The report finds that arts and humanities requirements in school are common to nation’s whose students perform well on tests. Those countries share, says Lynne Munson (quoted by Education Week), “a dedication to…
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Continental Philosophy
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Parallax, Volume 15 Issue 3 2009
3 Jul 2009 | 10:17 pmTOC Jacques Rancière: in Disagreement Paul Bowman; Richard Stamp Conjunctive Times, Disjointed Time: Philosophy between Enigma and Disagreement Sudeep Dasgupta Politics without Politics Jodi Dean Politics after Aesthetics: Disagreeing with Rancière David Ferris Heteroreductives – Rancière’s disagreement with ontology Bram Ieven Which Equality? Badiou and Rancière in Light of Ludwig Feuerbach Nina Power JR cinéphile, or the philosopher who loved things Adrian Rifkin ‘A literary animal’: Rancière, Derrida, and the Literature of Democracy Mark Robson When Does Politics Happen? -
Site has gone mobile
3 Jul 2009 | 7:17 pmI have finally set up the site in a way that it should be nicely viewed on mobile phones, such as the iphone and different browsers of smartphones. There is no new link; the site should automatically detect mobile browsers and adapt itself. I would be grateful if readers could give me some feedback. I have tested it on a few mobile browsers but not all…and not yet the iphone. So please do let me know. -
JBSP Volume 40 – Number 2 – May 2009
1 Jul 2009 | 8:37 amJBSP: Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology Volume 40 – No 2 – May 2009 Husserl’s Lectures on Internal Time-Consciousness Including the following articles: RUDOLF BERNET Husserl’s Early Time-Analysis in Historical Context NICOLAS DE WARREN Time and the Double-Life of Subjectivity: On Rudolf Bernet’s ‘Introduction’ to Husserl’s Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness LANEI M. RODEMEYER How do we Imagine the Past? Reconsidering Retention and Recollection in Husserl’s Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness GINA ZAVOTA The Importance of Number in Husserl’s… -
New SEP entry: Existentialist Aesthetics
29 Jun 2009 | 9:08 pmMany of the philosophers commonly described as “existentialist” have made original and decisive contributions to aesthetic thinking. In most cases, a substantial involvement in artistic practice (as novelists, playwrights or musicians) nourished their thinking on aesthetic experience. This is true already of two of the major philosophers who inspired 20th century existentialism: Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. For reasons of space, however, this entry is restricted to 20th century thinkers who at one point or another accepted the tag “existentialist” as an accurate… -
Simon Critchley on Heidegger in the Guardian
29 Jun 2009 | 8:56 pmSeveral parts to this series, currently Part 4.
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Philosophy of information
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Interview on The Fourth Revolution
29 Jun 2009 | 2:07 amI just received the podcast of an interview I had with Nigel Warburton, you can listen to it by clicking on the title of this blog or visiting www.philosophybites.com "Luciano Floridi on The Fourth Revolution". It is also available from iTunes.Luciano Floridi's blog on the Philosophy of information -
The supernova effect of Michael Jackson's death
28 Jun 2009 | 3:15 amThe death of a star may create a supernova explosion. A massive shock wave radiates throughout the whole star, which heats up and then explodes. This flash is as bright as a whole galaxy and leaves behind a rapidly spinning neutron star.The death of Michael Jackson caused a similar supernova effect on the web this week. Initially, when news of his sudden death spread, people at Google thought they were under a cyber attack. You can see why from the graph in this blog.Millions of people who searched for the star's name on Google News were greeted with an error page: "your query looks similar… -
Asia-Pacific Computing and Philosophy 2009
19 Jun 2009 | 1:24 amCALL FOR PAPERSAsia-Pacific Computing and Philosophy 2009 will be held on October 1st-2nd, 2009 in Tokyo, Japan. The conference will be hosted at the University of Tokyo's Sanjo Conference Hall. Keynotes speeches will be given by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University) and Professor Shinsuke Shimojo (Caltech). This year AP-CAP 2009 will be held in conjunction with the Devices that Alter Perception workshop, which will form a special track.The conference invites papers from philosophy, computer science, robotics, and media arts. Practitioners of these and related fields like artificial… -
Philosophy of Technology - An Introduction
8 Jun 2009 | 2:47 amA good book, with plenty of information, but...The writing is not as good as the contents: typos, cut&paste repetitions, redundant bits of information and some awkward sentences make the reader wish the text had been properly copy-edited by the publisher, especially given the fact that this is the second edition. And the philosophy is a bit too light: plenty of notes on a variety of topics, but the material could have been marshalled with a stronger hand.On the whole, worth reading together with Ferre's textbook.Luciano Floridi's blog on the Philosophy of information -
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTER GAMES
27 May 2009 | 3:32 amTHE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTER GAMESINTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN OSLO 2009August 13-15, 2009Keynote speakers: Kendall Walton, author of "Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts" (Harvard University Press, 1990), Miguel Sicart, author of "The Ethics of Computer Games" (The MIT Press, 2009) and Grant Tavinor, author of "The Art of Video Games" (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming in October 2009).CALL FOR PAPERSWe hereby invite scholars in any field who take a professional interest in the phenomenon of computer games to submit papers to the international conference "The…
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In Search of Enlightenment
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Ventor and Dawkins Video
2 Jul 2009 | 1:04 pmThis video is truly fanscinating and well worth watching. Venter and Dawkins tour Venter's Institute. It's just amazing how far genetic sequencing technologies have come in just a decade. And computing technology is at the fore of this progress. As Venter puts it in the interview, it's "the industrialization of biology". Venter estimates that the goal of a $1000 human genome could be achieved in 5 years, which would revolutionize medicine. This video, with two of today's most important scientists, is a real gem and effectively illustrates the incredible speed with which the genetic revolution… -
A Tale of Two Johns
30 Jun 2009 | 11:01 amWhen I began my graduate studies back in the mid 1990's I decided early on that I would write my dissertation on John Rawls. I was moved by the elegance, sophistication and persuasion of Rawls's theory of justice. And in my dissertation, and then early publications, I attempted to defend Rawls's theory against various critics- communitarian, egalitarian, left-libertarian, etc. But over time I became less committed, then somewhat critical, and then very critical, of the Rawlsian project (by which I mean the industry of Rawlsian scholarship rather than Rawls's own specific contribution). This… -
PNAS Study on How New Experiences Trigger Changes in Brain
26 Jun 2009 | 10:05 amThe early content of the PNAS has this interesting study of how new experiences trigger changes in the brains of the zebra finch. Here is the abstract:New experiences can trigger changes in gene expression in the brain. To understand this phenomenon better, we studied zebra finches hearing playbacks of birdsong. Earlier research had shown that initial playbacks of a novel song transiently increase the ZENK (ZIF-268, EGR1, NGFIA, KROX-24) mRNA in the auditory forebrain, but the response selectively habituates after repetition of the stimulus. Here, using DNA microarray analysis, we show that… -
Where the Action Is: On the Site of the "Playful" Life
23 Jun 2009 | 6:26 amLately I have been swamped finishing off a few ongoing projects and preparing a new course for the Fall term. So I haven't posted many substantive posts for a few weeks now. Today I want to just say a few words about a newish interest I am now tackling (which arose out of my perfectionist ethics and interest in love) and plan to start seriously posting about here as I switch gears a bit with my research interests. And that new topic is...- PLAY! I came across the topic of play via many overlapping personal and professional interests- my experiences as a husband and father, my interests in… -
Main Menu (June 2009)
17 Jun 2009 | 6:26 amRecent posts on "In Search of Enlightenment" include:(1) Appreciating the Impact Natural Selection Has on Our Lives (2) The Parallels Between Apologism and Theism (3) Idealism Meets Realism: Tackling Chronic Disease Via Age Retardation Cheers, Colin
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Manyul Im's Chinese Philosophy Blog
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Survey for Instructors of Chinese Philosophy
2 Jul 2009 | 9:59 amMOVING UP TO FRONT (fill out the survey if you have not yet): Minh Nguyen, who is on the APA Committee on the Status of Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies, is working on a report for that committee on teaching Chinese philosophy. Minh would like to survey anyone who teaches the subject, and collect some data for the report. Here is his request and below it, the survey itself. The survey is being collected throughout the summer, via Minh’s email; I imagine the easiest thing to do would be to cut and paste the survey into an email or doc and answer each question… -
Confucianism — Saving the Planet!
26 Jun 2009 | 8:40 pmI don’t know; I’m a bit skeptical. Someone convince me otherwise. From the Christian Scientist Monitor: Opinion How Confucianism could curb global warming China openly debates the role of Eastern thought in sustainability. By James Miller from the June 26, 2009 edition Kingston, Ontario – Now here’s a curveball to secular Western policy experts: China’s intellectuals are openly debating the role of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism in promoting the Communist Party’s vision of a harmonious society and ecologically sustainable economic development. Nowhere… -
Rules of Gold
17 Jun 2009 | 11:26 amAnalects 15.24 is often cited as the “Reverse Golden Rule” and it’s easy to see why: 子貢問曰：“有一言而可以終身行之者乎？”子曰：“其恕乎！己所不欲，勿施於人。” Zigong asked: “Is there a single teaching that can be practiced to the end of one’s life?” Confucius replied: “It is reciprocity! What you don’t desire for yourself, do not desire for others.” The Golden Rule, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is found in the Gospels, in Matthew 7:9-12 and Luke 6:27-31. In the… -
Filial Piety, Fathers & Sons Revisited
15 Jun 2009 | 10:42 amI saw this (Associated Press) article about the son of the Holocaust Museum shooting suspect: WASHINGTON – The son of a white supremacist accused of killing a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said Monday the shooting was unforgivable and he wished his father had died instead. Erik von Brunn told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he and his father James didn’t like each other. The interview followed ABC’s release Sunday of comments by the son that his father had long burdened their family with his white supremacist views and that James should have… -
Summer Pace
10 Jun 2009 | 5:56 amThings will be sporadically slow here while I dive into a few projects for the summer. Once again, anyone who’s interested in seeing what blogging is like on this end and wants to take advantage of having a ready and willing audience for relatively serious Chinese philosophy discussion, should consider guest blogging. Contact me; you know who you are. [Moved up to front. Check comment updates for pointers to interesting discussions on other sites...]
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jean kazez
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Saving God...Saving WHAT?
3 Jul 2009 | 11:12 amWhat could possibly be the thesis of this book, coming soon from Princeton philosopher Mark Johnston? Here's the most mysterious book description I've read in a long time.In this book (Saving God) Mark Johnston argues that God needs to be saved not only from the distortions of the "undergraduate atheists" (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) but, more importantly, from the idolatrous tendencies of religion itself. Each monotheistic religion has its characteristic ways of domesticating True Divinity, of taming God's demands so that they do not radically threaten our… -
Atheism, Loud and Quiet
2 Jul 2009 | 7:15 amI shall now tread into a combat zone, gingerly...inadvisedly..and without really having done my homework. What's with all the criticism of Chris Mooney, here, here, here, and elsewhere? From what I gather, Chris Mooney is a promoter of science literacy and science-based policy-making. He also happens to be an atheist. His view, I take it, is that it's problematic to promote atheism and science literacy at the same time. The receptive audience for science is vastly larger than the receptive audience for atheism, and religious folk can get turned off to science messages when they're mixed up… -
The Life You Can Save
30 Jun 2009 | 8:33 pmMy review is in the most recent issue of The Philosopher's Magazine. -
What to Read Now
30 Jun 2009 | 6:39 amInteresting list. I like that Random Families, by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, is so close to the top. A lot of stuff on there I haven't read...but now hope to. -
Philosophy as Confabulation
28 Jun 2009 | 6:14 amConfabulating. That's what we're doing, says psychologist Jonathan Haidt, when we have a strong intuition and try to make up reasons to support it. You have a strong intuition that gay male twins shouldn't have sex with each other (ack! I read about a case like this in a book about twins), so you make up a reason why that's the case. The reason is not in fact the source of the intuition, and doesn't sustain it. The whole exercise of trying to defend your view creates an illusion that your view is a conclusion arrived at rationally when it really isn't.How often is philosophical reasoning…
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Stephen Law
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Morality Podcast
2 Jul 2009 | 4:19 amJanet Radcliffe Richards looks at a fascinating range of new experiments shedding light on how humans make moral choices.Go here.Have not listened to it yet but JRR is always exceptionally good. -
Vernon vs. Warburton on agnosticism
2 Jul 2009 | 2:13 amYou can, for a short time only, hear a discussion on the Richard Bacon show between Mark Vernon (agnostic) and Nigel Warburton (atheist) on whether agnosticism is a cop out.Go here and then hit "listen again" for Tuesday, and scroll through to about 2hrs 13 mins through to end (with interruptions).You can read Mark Vernon's brief comment on his appearance on the show. -
India decriminalizes homosexuality
2 Jul 2009 | 2:04 amDelhi High Court legalizes homosexuality2 Jul 2009, 1050 hrs IST, TIMESOFINDIA.COM NEW DELHI: In a historic judgement, the Delhi High Court on Thursday decriminalized homosexuality by striking down section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. The Section 377 of the IPC as far as it criminalizes gay sex among consenting adults is violation of fundamental rights, said the high court. Any kind of discrimination is anti-thesis of right to equality, said the court, while allowing plea of gay rights activists for decriminalization of homosexuality. A bench of Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S… -
Baloney Detection Kit
1 Jul 2009 | 1:14 amAvailable from Michael Shermer here. -
God Look-a-Likey
29 Jun 2009 | 8:58 amIf there is a God I imagine he looks and sounds alot like this ...Those curious numbers and letters in the backgrounds spell out the meaning of life - if you can decode them.
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Alexander Pruss's Blog
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Propositions
3 Jul 2009 | 5:07 amCertain arguments that I've used myself in the past have presupposed that back-reference to things one's interlocutor said standardly reference the interlocutor's expressed proposition. For instance, if George says "I am hungry" and you say "I believe that", you are not expressing a belief in your hunger, but George's—you are assenting to the proposition that he is hungry. I knew, of course, that there are cases where things aren't quite like that. For instance, you tell me on the phone "It's a cold day", I might say "Not here!" But of course the proposition you uttered includes a rigid… -
Life is short
2 Jul 2009 | 9:07 amIt is a truism that life is short. But this truism is in tension with the very plausible claim that life-long commitments are hard. So which should go? Or can it be, perhaps, that life-long commitments are hard—for those who have not existentially appropriated the shortness of life? If so, then we would have the following prediction: In societies where individuals are socially isolated from the fact of death, well-kept life-long commitments are more rare (either because life-long commitments are more rare, or because they are kept less well). I suppose this is one of those predictions that… -
Caves and holes
1 Jul 2009 | 7:51 amOn the face of it, the ontology of caves is just like that of holes. But there do seem to be some significant differences. A hole is, as it were, pure nonbeing, albeit of a sort that depends on its walls for its existence. But a cave includes the hole and the walls. When we talk of cave walls, we think of them as parts of the cave. But what is the wall? Is it just a veneer of the rock? It seems to me that if you could take a cave and cut it out of the rock, keeping a thin veneer of rock, and put it in space (so the veneer wouldn't collapse under its own weight), the cave would survive. So… -
Ponzi schemes
30 Jun 2009 | 5:33 amWith Madoff getting 150 years in jail, it's topical to say something about Ponzi schemes. So let me make this remark: There are possible worlds where there is nothing wrong with Ponzi schemes. For instance, there is nothing morally wrong with certain Ponzi schemes in certain worlds. What makes Ponzi schemes problematic in our world is that with a finite amount of total wealth (including future wealth), it is not possible to have a system of transactions that do not create wealth, increase the wealth of some, and do not decrease anyone's wealth. But in a world with an infinite number of… -
Pascal's wager and decision theory
29 Jun 2009 | 5:07 amI think Pascal's wager could be seen as a way of destroying most of standard decision theory in the case of many agents. The reason for this is that just about any significant choice one makes will have the property that according to some religious views, that choice affects the probabilities of getting an infinite payoff, and unless the agent has a way of assigning zero epistemic probability to that religion, these infinitary considerations will swamp all the finite considerations. Thus, one wonders to oneself: "Should I self-flagellate?" There is an obvious answer: "No, because it hurts."…
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Alanyzer
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More on Merricks on Truthmaking
3 Jul 2009 | 12:26 pmI've now finishing my re-reading of Trenton Merricks' book Truth and Ontology and I'm still quite unconvinced by his contention that what's true does not depend on what exists in any substantive way. A couple posts ago I noted my main reasons for dissatisfaction with Merricks' arguments:He loads down truthmaker principles, which affirm a substantive dependence of truth on being, with extraneous commitments.Most significantly, he takes the raison d'etre of such principles to be that of catching all sorts of metaphysical "cheaters"--those who either (a) try to have their truths on the cheap,… -
Gratuitous Evil and Divine Providence
2 Jul 2009 | 11:28 amI'm really happy right now because a paper of mine ("Gratuitous Evil and Divine Providence") was just accepted at Religious Studies. In my experience, at least, the turnaround at that journal is phenomenally fast. This is the second paper I've submitted there. On both I received an acceptance notice within a week or less.I'll post a digital version of the paper to my website once I've sent the final version off to the journal. Here's the abstract:Discussions of the evidential argument from evil generally pay little attention to how different models of divine providence constrain the… -
Merricks on Truthmaking
1 Jul 2009 | 12:53 pmI've recently been rereading Trenton Merrick's book Truth and Ontology (Oxford, 2007) in which he argues against the substantive dependence of truth on being. Thus, he rejects theses likeTM - Every truth has a truthmaker, a parcel of reality the existence of which necessitates, and thereby grounds, that truth.TSB - Truth supervenes on being. I.e., every possible difference in truth corresponds to a possible difference in reality (i.e., in what things exist and in what properties have and/or what relations they stand in), and vice-versa.Correspondence theory of truth - A proposition (or… -
I Made the List
1 Jul 2009 | 12:51 pmof 100+ living philosophers of religion. -
Back to Blogging
30 Jun 2009 | 2:39 pmI haven't done much in the way of blogging for the past several months. In large part this is because my energies have been focused on being a father to my now 18-month old daughter and on finishing several papers that I've been working on. Now that my desk is starting to clear up, I'm going to resume blogging again.I don't promise to blog regularly. Blogging is something I do when I have spare time. It's not something I want to get absorbed into. So when I feel like I'm spending too much time at it, I'll back off again for a while. We'll see how it goes.I'll put up a post sometime tomorrow…
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The Splintered Mind
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On Debunking V: The Final Chapter
2 Jul 2009 | 12:16 am(by guest blogger Tamler Sommers)First, let me offer my thanks to Eric for giving me this opportunity and to everyone who commented on my posts. This was fun.Since my latest post on debunking I came across a paper called “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments” by Guy Kahane. (Forthcoming in Nous, you can find it on Philpapers.org.) Kahane mounts some careful and compelling criticisms of selective (“targeted”) debunking strategies and global debunking strategies in metaethics, and I strongly recommend this article to anyone interested in the topic. For my last post, want to focus on a claim… -
The Mystery of the Chiming Bell
28 Jun 2009 | 8:11 pmWe've all had this experience: The clock tower starts chiming. At first, you're paying no attention, but about three or four chimes in, you suddenly notice. In memory, you can count back those first few chimes.Here's the question: Did you have auditory experience of those chimes before you started thinking about them? Were they part of your stream of conscious experience, part of your phenomenology, part of "what it was like to be you", during those first few inattentive seconds? Or, until you started attending to the matter, were the chimes no part at all of your conscious experience, not… -
Friends of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
19 Jun 2009 | 1:06 pmThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is to date the most visible and successful experiment in "open-access" -- that is, free -- academic philosophy. (This isn't to say there aren't also other excellent open-access resources like Philosophers' Imprint and various archiving projects.) Fans of open access who loathe the finacial abuse of academic libraries at the hands of companies like Springer might consider paying the modest fee to support the Stanford Encyclopedia: $5 per year for students, $10 or $25 for others. Who'd've thought you could buy friendship so cheaply?The SEP is trying to… -
Avowing Dream Skepticism in a Dream
18 Jun 2009 | 10:00 amLast night I dreamt I was giving a talk -- a talk I am due to give next week in Australia. The talk wasn't going so well, and I suggested to the audience that maybe, just maybe, I was actually dreaming giving the talk. My evidence was that I remembered having planned to polish things up in the remaining few days before the talk but now I couldn't remember those days having occurred.Alex Byrne, in the back of the room, looked highly skeptical and a bit dyspeptic. Dave Chalmers looked mildly amused. Dan Dennett stood up and said, "I very much doubt that you are dreaming, but I agree that your… -
Are Ethicists Any More Responsive to Undergraduate Emails Than Are Other Professors?
16 Jun 2009 | 5:39 pmAs regular readers know, Joshua Rust and I are interested in the moral behavior of ethics professors -- namely, do they behave any better? Pending the invention of the moralometer, though, it's a bit tricky to measure actual ethicists' actual moral behavior. Josh and I are forced to be a little creative. Here's one of our ideas: Assuming it's morally better, generally speaking, to respond to undergraduate emails than to ignore them, we can look at the rate at which ethicists respond to undergraduate emails, compared to other professors.Thus inspired, Josh and I sent phony emails to several…
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Logic Matters
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Rum and reason
30 Jun 2009 | 12:23 pmLong time readers will remember I used to link to The Daughter's cooking blog, BakeMeHappy (that's still on line, full of good things, and beautifully written -- but apart from a little late flurry, it really came to a halt a year ago). She's now left Italy, and is cooking up a storm in the Bahamas: and to go with that move, there's a new blog, Rum & Reason, promising more great food and another good read. Enjoy! -
Rosser's Theorem
26 Jun 2009 | 9:01 amWolfgang Rautenberg's very nice A Concise Introduction to Mathematical Logic states Gödel's first theorem in the usual sort of way. Roughly: given a suitably axiomatized omega-consistent theory T containing enough arithmetic, there's a Pi_1 undecidable sentence. He proves this by appeal to the diagonalization lemma applied to the predicate not-Prov (where Prov suitably expresses provability in T)A fixed point G for this is neither provable nor disprovable. And being equivalent to not-Prov('G') that's undecidable too. But not-Prov by construction is Pi_1, so that gives us a Pi_1 undecidable… -
Functions and gunctions
22 Jun 2009 | 2:54 amTim Gowers has a very nice piece on his blog about functions, multivalued functions, relations and the like, called "Why aren't all functions well-defined?". -
The book problem
21 Jun 2009 | 12:51 amSo you start buying books -- I mean academic, work-related, books of one kind or another -- in your late teens. As retirement age looms you've been doing it for more than forty-five years. Suppose you average a couple of books a month. Not that very difficult to do! You buy a few current books on topics that you are working on; books for reference; books you feel you should read anyway, given the ripples they are producing; books for seminars or reading groups you belong to; books it is useful to have to hand for teaching (the textbooks the kids are reading, or just useful collections of… -
Gowers on Razborov's theorem about monotone circuit complexity
20 Jun 2009 | 2:40 pmI mentioned before that I'd been to Tim Gowers's lectures on computational complexity. As I noted before, videos of his lectures are available here. But, as promised, he has also written up the proof which was the topic of the first part of the course, namely Razborov's demonstration that the monotone circuit complexity of the clique function is superpolynomial. You can read it here. Tim Gowers puts a lot of effort into making the ideas seem reasonably "natural". Enjoy! -- if you have a taste for this sort of thing.
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In the Space of Reasons
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Wellbeing
2 Jul 2009 | 9:47 amI’ve just read Mark Vernon’s short book Wellbeing in the Acumen Art of Living series: the same series as Havi Carel’s book Illness.It’s a very interdisciplinary book drawing on some of the usual philosophical suspects (Aristotle, Plato, Kierkegaard), religious traditions, but also more recent empirical work by Layard and Seligman. It’s also quite chatty and a single train journey would be enough to read it. But I’m unconvinced by the central message.There’s a basic trajectory starting with a discussion of the importance of happiness and utilitarian calculations. But happiness in… -
Rationality, interpretation and inconsistency
23 Jun 2009 | 11:10 amOne of my underlying philosophical commitments is to the idea that there’s something right about what Rorty described in Davidson’s work as the ‘philosophy of language of the field linguist’. So the idea that radical interpretation is a good perspective from which to think about meaning (although some care is needed to avoid a Quinean sideways on view of it), and that it connects belief and meaning holistically to the demands of rationality even whilst that notion resists codification, are both in my conceptual index. In picking out the philosophy of language of the field linguist, I… -
Narrative and wellbeing
15 Jun 2009 | 10:53 amArthur W Frank (pictured), a sociologist visiting from Calgary, gave a talk at Uclan today on narrative. Since I’m keen to try to pin down what’s meant by that term, I went along. In the background was the working assumption that something was a narrative if it met enough of a large number of criteria which he didn’t exhaustively spell out today. So there wasn’t exactly an analysis of ‘narrative’ but there were a number of pointers as to how understood it, including the claims that narrative makes lives narratable; that it involves people ‘holding their own’; that… -
Philosophy and ethics on the MRCPsych syllabus
11 Jun 2009 | 3:43 amI’m going over to the University of Sheffield tomorrow to give a lecture on their MRCPsych course inspiringly called ‘Basic ethics and philosophy of psychiatry’. Checking on the planned new MRCPsych syllabus, there seems to be a much greater emphasis on practical skills and sensitivities which fits both a particularist approach to moral judgement and my colleague Bill Fulford’s articulation of ‘values based medicine’ rather well.What is less well developed is the role for philosophy, summarized simply as: The history and philosophy of science as it relates to concepts of mental… -
Moral phenomenology and subjectivity
10 Jun 2009 | 2:18 amBen Smith asked me for an abstract for an edited book on moral phenomenology. Combining two interests, I have come up with the following somewhat negative view based on a talk I gave at the relevant conference in Durham last year (see below). But in what is merely implicit in this is a further worry that goes back a long way in my understanding of McDowell.My assumption (below) is that to count as a form of analytic phenomenology, an approach has to have a connection to subjectivity. Just such a connection seems to be part of McDowell’s discussion of platonism in his early paper on…
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Sherryx's Weblog
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India’s Pink Revolution:Nehru’s Glorious Legacy Brings One More Freedom To India
3 Jul 2009 | 5:44 amThe landmark decision by Delhi High Court which has declared that clause “unconstitutional” which criminalizes homosexuality has opened up a new gate of Freedom not only for India but also for this whole region. Section 377 of Indian Penal Code which criminalizes homosexuality was a dirty legacy of British Imperialism. Justice Murlidharan, has not received any “Harvard Medal of Freedom” unlike our honourable Chief Justice, but his decision is truly revolutionary. Our great chief justice despite having received “Harvard Medal of Freedom” has not written… -
Gay Freedom Comes to India: India Shines
2 Jul 2009 | 9:45 amIf the country had not been torn apart by British stooges today, Pakistani homosexuals would have been nearer to freedom. Indian courts once again have acted independently . While our courts are releasing monsters like Hafiz Saeed Indian courts are making India more secular and democratic. SA From BBC: Activists welcome India gay ruling Gay rights activists in India say a ruling by the Delhi High Court decriminalising homosexuality in the country is a landmark. The judgement overturns a 148-year-old colonial law which described a same-sex relationship as an “unnatural offence”. -
Kerbala-e-Tehran:Angel of Freedom Neda
30 Jun 2009 | 2:07 amThaper Jis Ne Marre, Wu hath ik Kirdar tha! Aariz Sakina ke na the,Tareekh ka rukhsar tha “Slaps on the cheeks of Sakeena[daughter of Hossein], were the slaps on the face of history and the one who slapped her, merely a character of an everlasting historical epic. “At 19:05 June 20th Place: Kargar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st. A young woman who was standing aside with her father [sic, later identified as her music teacher] watching the protests was shot by a Basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could… -
Freedom craving ‘fuelling Iran unrest’
21 Jun 2009 | 10:46 am13 fell today at Kerbala-e-Tehran after Yazid threatened the freedom fighters in the sermon. Like the Mullahs who gave fatawa against Hossein on orders of Yazid, the Mullahs of Iran have started killing the freedom fighters. Today people burned down a mosque in Tehran, the capital of Islamic Republic of Iran, the message is clear to the Mullahs any thing which becomes home of reaction against revolution will be burned to ashes. The betrayal of the reformist leadership is becoming clear by the moment but victory is inevitable later if not sooner. The sacred moment when the symbol of ignorance… -
Hidden History of Homosexuality in Iran
19 Jun 2009 | 12:02 pmThere are no Homosexuals in Iran . Mehmoud Ahmadenijad I found this very good article here.The author has reviewed the book on history of homosexuality in Iran by the famous Iranian academic Janet Afray , who is a Professor of History and Women Studies at Purdue University and also is the president of International Society of Iranian Scholars. The book is called “Sexual Politics in Modern Iran”, the deals with the constructions of gender and sexuality over a wider historical period. Her extensive reading of the ancient texts have demonstrated the rather “normal”…
