What, Why & How do we Know ?
Heard Graham Bell talk again last week, this time a LAAG event entitled: “Making moral decisions: Are ‘you’ really in charge?” (With scare quotes around the ‘you’ in the original.) Obviously with that title presented that way, I was prejudiced to expect the usual “You and your free-will are illusions” line of denial. In fact, … Continue reading ““Making moral decisions: Are ‘you’ really in charge?””
This is a side post following a truly excellent Dan Dennett lecture at the Royal Institution this evening. More on which later, but I was prepared for disappointment meeting a hero of mine in the flesh. He did not disappoint. However this post concerns a single Q&A. James Shaftesbury(*) asked a politically incorrect question on … Continue reading “James Shaftesbury – Vive la Difference”
Listening to Simon Blackburn last night at Conway Hall, indeed mulling over the title of his talk before listening to him, it is transparently obvious that he has an important agenda when it comes to his close association with humanism and the BHA. Now Blackburn is probably “the” greatest living British philosopher active and teaching … Continue reading “Simon Blackburn’s Message on Virtues for Humanists”
Drs Alice Roberts and Michael Mosely on BBC2 Horizon today 29th September. Just rough personal notes here, whilst watching: Vive la différence, I usually say 😉 Hmmm. Nothing is “hard” wired. Some stuff is pre-wired, genetically and in foetal development, neurally and hormonally, and a great deal is infant developed by stereotypical “encouragement”, and a lot more is … Continue reading “Male & Female Brain Differences, Again @DrAliceRoberts”
Rupert Sheldrake’s “The Science Delusion” (2012) so-called by his publisher as a pointed response to Dawkins, is called “Science Set Free” in the US. Given my agenda – alternatives to logical-positivist materialist-reductionist scientistic-dogma worldviews – it’s not possible for me to be ignorant of Sheldrake, but I’m pretty sure I’ve not read anything of his … Continue reading “Rupert Sheldrake’s Science Delusion”
‘Tis. ‘Tisn’t. ‘Tis. ‘Tisn’t …. One reason the left / right brain myth persists is because there is of course some truth to it. The problem is the simplistication of reality leading to the wrong myth, one that’s fairly easy to “debunk” as people often do, but one reason the left / right brain myth persists … Continue reading “That Pesky Left/Right Brain “Myth””
Blogging live from the IAI – How The Light Gets In – conference at Hay-on-Wye. (Not to be confused with the contemporary and almost co-located Hay Festival of Arts and Literature.) Well, I was live when I wrote that – but sadly teeming rain, muddy tented venues and lack of any safe power supplies, meant … Continue reading “Bang Goes The Big Bang”
Another for the Master / Slave collection: This time David Hume quoted by David Gurteen: Reason is the slave of the passions. David Hume(1711-1776) vis Master & Emissary – McGilchrist after Einstein & Nietzsche and Logic vs Passion – Whyte / Boscovich (possibly alluding to Hume?)