What, Why & How do we Know ?
“Closure – A Story of Everything” by Hilary Lawson is something I first blogged mention of back in 2003. I was prompted to obtain and read it just recently by David Morey. First my usual caveat – it’s clear from the first page that it “fits my agenda” so I am inevitably frustrated looking for “so … Continue reading “Closure”
Talking of Australian intellectals as we were very briefly in the previous post, by some spooky coincidence, I’ve been reading Bennett & Hacker “Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience” for the last couple of days. Hacker is P M S Hacker the Oxford philosopher, whereas M R Bennett is chair of physiology in Sydney. Where to start … Continue reading “What a Difference 4 Years Make”
Read and recently re-read “The Emerging Mind” originally prepared as the 2003 BBC Reith Lectures byVilayanur Ramachandran – Rama to his friends aparently. First time through (the book) I was initially disappointed (as ever) but in fact the book of 5 lectures is a gem. I was initially put off by his early suggestion that … Continue reading “Vilayanur Ramachandran”
The controversial meta-meme that memes are controversial, seems to have spread … like a meme. This post is partly in response to this article in Andrew Brown’s Guardian Blog, and partly as a result of a comment thread that became attached to an earlier (unrelated) post here, comments in several threads over at Sam’s Elizaphanian blog, and a … Continue reading “A Meme By Any Other Name”
I’ve mentioned the idea of the “memetic arms race” (after Dennett) and the devaluing of subtle terms that get simplistically mis-represented in rhetorical argument, and this is simply another example.
When Zizek writes like this his sense and “wisdom” is easy to see. When he writes like this, it is harder to see because he makes so many statements against others … creating strawmen in the mouths of others, in order to disagree with them … but he is right on the topic of debate. This is … Continue reading “Don’t just do it; Talk !”
Can’t see any acknowledgement of Dennett’s words in the title of this Andrew Marr piece. Looks promising though.
Another great Einstein quote, provided by Steve Peterson in the Hildebrand / Dewey / Rorty thread mentioned earlier on MoQ.Discuss. “Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying … Continue reading “The ever quotable Einstein”