The world is NOT going to hell in a handcart, as I have discussed elsewhere. But people like to think…
Category Philosophy
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel and flag-waving the first action of a warmonger.
yes-no2
I am British, English, and live on the south coast of the UK. That said, the coming Thursday referendum affects me as much as most people in the country. I will set out what is, for me and my compatriots, the most important democratic decision in the last hundred years, if not ever. At present, the polls are all suggesting it too close to call. They are neck and neck.
I am really happy to have done an interview with Kaveh Mousavi at FTB on his On the Margin of…
One of the very first blog pieces on ATP from the early days when we were Skeptic Blogs was The Experience Machine: Would You Live In A Utopian Virtual Reality? I am now going to revisit this a little.
I’m not sure about anyone else, but I find myself aloof at times. It’s easy for me to become so bogged down in this world of abstract thinking that I forget that most people don’t care whether such things as metaphysical nihilism or modal realism are descriptive of reality or not. And I think that I, like many people, need a creative release.
Someone with whom I once did teacher training is now a fervent Catholic and blogger at his site. We have had many a strong argument on facebook, and recently he alerted me to this blog post to see what I thought. I am now going to critique his piece on abortion and Dawkins.
I was listening to a Reasonable Doubts podcast from a few years ago, and it was, as ever, cracking. This one was about consciousness, its hard problem, dualism, and how it, and neuroscience, are being co-opted as a philosophical area to argue for the “God of the Gaps” style argument in the same vein as evolution in the creationist and intelligent design movements.
The term fundamentalism is bandied about with wild abandon, but what does it really mean? We have an intuitive sense of what it means, perhaps. When I use the term, I have in my mind ideas of hardliner, fanatical beliefs, adhered to by uncompromising believers in a dogmatic insistence that a particular (holy) text and/or ideology is correct.
Thi is a great article from Salon.com. I have started it off here, but it is well worth reading the…
‘Rationality is useless if it is not sound. This is what Martin Luther meant when he called reason a “whore”. Pick the wrong premises, and rationality is utterly screwed. Therefore, merely that someone is “rational” means absolutely nothing about whether that person is well-connected to reality.’
I, as you may well know, contribute to the Skepticule podcast by recording a counter-apologetics segment for them, Pearced Off.…
I have talked about abstract objects many times before, such as here. It is a fundamental area to almost everything in philosophy and is not debated nearly enough. We had a Tippling Philosophers’ debate in the pub last night about the ‘I’ and personhood, which came down to whether they really existed as concepts or not. I actually deny the continuous ‘I’.
The Information Philosopher, Bob Doyle, who has also written a book called The Scandal of Free Will has proposed a two-stage model of free will based on the thinking of William James. I bring this up because previous and infamous ATP commenter, JohnM (John Muze) has been commenting on the Unbelievable forum on facebook about it. It is his knight in shining armour which supposedly gives him the free will for which he argued so vociferously and badly when he commented here.
I cam across ‘Trick Slattery some years ago on facebook and whatnot due to his similarity of philosophy concerning free will and determinism. Indeed, he was kind enough to buy my book when it first came out. Back then, he was writing his own book, or ruminating on it. Well, he has written it and has released it on Kindle. I will read it over the next week or so and review if for ‘Trick. He has guest posted here to coincide with the book’s release.
Here is Part IV of James A. Lindsay’s series on infinity. The first three can be found here, here and here. I edited his fantastic book, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly, which is available form the sidebar over there.
As previously noted, I’m writing a series of blog posts that are adapted from notes I made as preparation to talk with philosopher and author Peter Boghossian’s Atheism class at Portland State on November 19, 2013. This is the fourth and final post in this series. I visited his class to address infinity and God, following from the theme presented in my new book, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly.
This subject is fundamental to much of philosophy. It underpins disciplines like moral philosophy, and so it provides the ontology…
A reminder to all local skeptics and philosophiles:
I am pretty excited that my biggest talk to date will take place later this month on Thursday 29th May in the Spiegeltent for Philosophy Hour at the Brighton Fringe Festival, one of the biggest fringe/arts festival in the world.
I have recently had a conversation on facebook that left me truly flabbergasted. I think it qualifies as the most jaw-dropping conversation I have had. It was with someone whom I did teacher-training with (though who chose not to finish the course). Now I wouldn’t normally go into detail about personal matters when evaluating somebody’s claims and positions, but I think it explains so much in terms of cognitive dissonance, and is so relevant to the topic, that it does need mentioning. The person in question has certain tendencies which are deemed sinful to the Catholic Church. He lives in Brighton, ironically a city in Britain known for its diversity and sense of equality.
I reported in my Free Will? book that we can laser in memories to fruit flies, so it was only a matter of time before such procedures were contextualised to humans. Scientific American reports:
I really enjoyed being a guest on the Skeptic Canary Show podcast where we covered lots of issues and philosophy,…