by Mark English What do our attitudes to cats and dogs tell us about ourselves? (If anything.) I’m not a psychologist and generally try to avoid the amateur psychologizing that these sorts of questions tend to encourage. But sketching out some preliminary thoughts on the general matter of attitudes towards cats and dogs and the binary thinking which is so […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman Well, I got bogged down in the last weeks of finals and grading and was unable to release these Course Notes in a timely fashion. Readers will be pleased to hear that after a substantial review session, the students in my Knowledge and Reality course were able to pull off some respectable final exams. For a […]
By Paul So This is a response to a Washington Post article written by Gene Weingarten, which can be found here. We highly recommend you check it out, before reading this dialogue. Socrates: Hello Gene. Gene Weingarten: Wait….is that Socrates? It can’t be….you’re dead! You must be some homeless guy, impersonating Socrates. Where did you get that toga…? Socrates: Oh, […]
By Paul So In Steven Pinker’s popular book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Pinker characterizes the Blank State as “the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be inscribed at will by society or ourselves.” Pinker is characterizing the loose set of views, commonly held by today’s humanities and social science intellectuals, […]
by Dwayne Holmes This year we received some good news from the field of neuroscience. No, it’s not that scientists discovered we have free will (or a will at all). That’s something we don’t require advanced technology to deal with. Rather, a recent study has potentially freed neuroscience from further misuse, by undercutting one of the major talking points of […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman My conversation with Massimo Pigliucci on ethical eating and on the difference between virtue-theoretical and modern moral philosophical conceptions of obligation and duty. Originally aired May 1, 2016, as part of the Sophia Program, for MeaningofLife.TV, a channel of the BloggingHeads.TV network.
by E. John Winner Recently, fans of a certain aggressive R&B music found cause to mourn the loss of one of the most prolific songwriters in popular music history. He was christened Prince Rogers Nelson [1], and we already have a problem. He was not really named after a previous Nelson – he was named after a jazz band, the […]
by Mark English It’s easier to see – and say – what’s not the case than to say what is the case; to see – and say – what’s wrong with other people’s views than to outline one’s own in a coherent and convincing way. In fact, I have doubts that it is possible to achieve the latter at all […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman This is last in the series that began with Dan Tippens’ “A short note on the ethics of liver transplantation” and is a reply to “Should moral judgments enter into medical decisions?” Dan Tippens inadvertently makes a good part of my point for me, in his most recent response. By this, I do not mean to suggest […]
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