What, Why & How do we Know ?
Series of two articles and letters to the editor in the NY Times, and a SlashDot thread … Dennis Overbye “Laws of Nature, Source Unknown” Paul Davies “Taking Science on Faith” (More of the same by the same authors in the latest “Edge“) Letters to the NYT Editor “Scientific Method; Evidence not Faith” SlashDot “Where Do the Laws … Continue reading “Taking Science on Faith”
Only caught part of this interview / debate involving Dawkins, but thought I’d better blog the link so I don’t lose it. Got the impression he was looking for compromise ground (?) based on what little I did hear, but reaction by those on the God side of the debate don’t seem to have made … Continue reading “Dawkins Mellows ?”
Plenty more TEDTalks here. Including the delicious Erin McKean. Next time someone quotes a dictionary definition at me as part of an argument, I will be pointing them at this one. And given that I’ve recently reported on reading “Breaking The Spell”, here is a link to Dan Dennett speaking on dangerous memes – ideas … Continue reading “Words + Enthusiasm = Erinaceous”
Finished Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell” – mentioned in the previous post. Excellent. Two promptings led me …. … to Hume (from Alice’s comments), I really must read in the originals, so I’ve downloaded texts from Gutenberg. (Also contact from Alice reminded me I’d still not finished “Atonement”, still sitting on the bedside cabinet – just time to … Continue reading “Reading Update”
I’m reading Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell” at the moment. I’ve made it clear I’m a fan of Dennett as a pragmatic philosopher, unlike Dawkins as an unreconstructed logical-positivist reductive-determinist scientist. Their language and quality of argument are chalk and cheese. “Breaking the Spell” is explicitly an argument against god and religion aimed at an American … Continue reading “Meta-Belief”
I happen to be reading Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell” at the moment, so refreshing after Dawkins (creator of the “extended-phenotype” term) attempt on the same topic. Dennett opens early in his book with the lancet-fluke & ant example to illustrate the “viral” metaphor of a meme infecting a brain producing behaviour inexplicable in terms of the brain’s host’s … Continue reading “Extended Phenotypes”
Interesting piece from back in January in Time magazine by Stephen Pinker entitled The Mystery of Consciousness. Thanks to David Chalmers for the link; he’s referred to in the article in connection with the easy / hard problem distinction. Lots of other good articles linked in and alongside the article. Daniel Wegner’s psychology-based work gets … Continue reading “Pinker’s Mystery of Consciousness”
Instead of reading David Morey’s novel (which I had with me on our trip to the Gulf Coast over the Thanksgiving holiday) I finished Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” and got about half-way through “Philosophical Investigations”. The latter so far just seems to continue casting doubt on the science (logic) of natural language, and of course logic … Continue reading “Wittgenstein Disappointment”