What, Why & How do we Know ?
I’ve been threatening to finally edit and publish my Good Fences article for a while now, but keep coming across other published pieces that could almost be the same thing in different words, or the same words in a different order, maybe. The latest I’ve had bookmarked for a week or two is this: “There … Continue reading “Good Fences Maybe?”
Really just a holding-post as a reminder I need to publish a definitive version of the Good Fences piece. It’s been compromised so many times by suggestions of tailoring it to current publishing opportunities, but the generality of it continues to emerge. This post today from Jon Haidt has given me the nudge: This is … Continue reading “Partition Walls as Good Fences”
It goes on. The TERF wars continue to rage as the main game in Twitter-town when it comes to objective science and human classes talking past each other. Firstly, Angela Saini writing “What is a Woman?” in Prospect Magazine. I’ve had problems with Saini before, being too conservative in minimising sex/gender and race differences – … Continue reading “Grist to the #GoodFences Mill”
I have a long overdue (several years, half-drafted) piece called “Good Fences” that goes right back to basic “classification & identification, definition & description” of stuff we deal with in the real world: How we subdivide the world into different kinds of stuff and different things and give them various names. It occurs everywhere from … Continue reading “Good and Bad but not Black and White”
I may at last have space to write my Good Fences piece, but first a new reference. “Western” rationality is eating itself. I particularly like the use of the word special in this piece (which I’ve not fully digested yet) when talking about Western civilisation (as I do when talking about humanity). We are a … Continue reading “Better Fences Needed”
Kenan Malik gave the Stephen Lissenberg Memorial Lecture at the NIESR in London last week (23rd Sept). The full transcript is here on his Pandaemonium web pages: “On Fences and Fractures – or what’s wrong with multiculturalism” so no need for a detailed summary here. His critique of multiculturalism is not new, but he was able … Continue reading “Avoiding objective fetishisation of cultures. “On Fences and Fractures” @Kenanmalik @NIESRorg”
[Work in Progress – Draft will be edited without notification.] [Feedback appreciated on the “See / Refs” – where more are needed? Meantime all those indicated will be elaborated and worked into the text. And obviously on the intelligibility of the text so far. Drafting arose out of the “Three Essays” post, particularly “Algorithms for … Continue reading “Information Ontology of Mind and Body”
Another, the first, of Richard Emerson’s interlocutors in his “Rebalancing the Future” podcast series was ex-GP writer James Willis. His “Paradox of Progress” and “Friends in Low Places” were books I reviewed very early in my own journey, and reviewed again when PoP was re-released earlier this year. We’ve been “fellow travellers” riding pillion on … Continue reading “Definitions & Rules in Technology”