What, Why & How do we Know ?
It’s become a industrial strength polarising meme in its own right, to cast Jordan Peterson and anyone who finds sense in his thinking as naive boys or unreconstructed misogynist lads or indeed something altogether more sinister. Your mcm https://t.co/I7oOTlJx6N — Adam Banks (@adambanksdotcom) March 15, 2018 “Masculinity is order, symbolically and femininity is chaos, symbolically. But … Continue reading “Taking Down Jordan Peterson”
Which came first? The second or the first? “The Second Cybernetics” is the title of a 1963 paper by Magoroh Maruyama which I discover from a bit of googling around was considered seminal in shifting the focus of cybernetics from machines and mechanistic systems to the biological and social sphere. Much referenced in many later … Continue reading “The Second Cyberbetics”
Weekly collection of bookmarks that fell into TL/DR Â category and not blogged or linked elsewhere, yet. Dave Edmonds (of Eidenow & Edmonds “Wittgenstein’s Poker” fame) writing In Defence of Moral Experts in the OUP Blog: With links to BBC Post-Brexit Points of View including philosopher contributions already noted here, and to his own book including … Continue reading “Collected TL/DR Bookmarks for w/e 23 Sept 2016”
Jerry Coyne ranting in response to this NYT piece by James Blachovicz. A recurring topic, but I had to react to this: Blachovicz: Scientific method is not itself an object of study for scientists, but it is an object of study for philosophers of science. It is not scientists who are trained specifically to provide … Continue reading “There Is No Scientific Method?”
Identity Politics It is increasingly topical that names used to identify “groups” become contentious topics. Muslim vs Islamist, Humanist vs Christian Humanist, Race vs Ethnicity, Gay vs Straight, CIS vs Trans, Sex vs Gender, Ukraine vs Crimea, Greece vs Europe, UK vs its parts, Locations vs Communities, even species of Monkeys vs Humans. (Post Note … Continue reading “Identity is not (not just) politics?”
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”
Two interesting reads this morning. Dan Dennett conversation in The Edge, on the co-evolution of culture with human individual mental capabilities. “De-Darwinizing” the presumed processes to recognise the chicken-and-egg of co-creativity. Also today in Best Thinking is Alan Rayner’s piece “What Stops the Penny Dropping“, born of the frustration with “Abstract Mindedness” where we assume … Continue reading “Co-creative co-evolution”
Struck by a parallel, reading the Roger Anderton translation of the Dusan Nedelkovich (1922) work on Roger Boscovich (1763). A parallel with Alan Rayner. Earliest piece on unified field theory (100? years before Mach and 150 before Einstein) already led to ideas of relativity in the world as we experience it being distinct from any … Continue reading “Space-Time / Space-Matter”