How much do you know about your father’s childhood? Probably not very much. The main way you know about it is from hearing about it from him. He himself will remember a relatively small proportion of his childhood. And basically nobody would actually bother to perform the experiment in yesterday’s post where one attempts to remember … Continue reading Time Out Of Mind
Consider the following three statements: 1. The chair and keyboard that I am currently using are both here in this room. 2. The chair and keyboard that I am currently using both exist in January 2019. 3. The chair and keyboard that I am currently using both came in the color black. All three claims, … Continue reading Place, Time, and Universals
In Book III of On the Soul, Aristotle argues that the intellect does not have a bodily organ: Therefore, since everything is a possible object of thought, mind in order, as Anaxagoras says, to dominate, that is, to know, must be pure from all admixture; for the co-presence of what is alien to its nature … Continue reading Mind and Matter
Cameron Harwick discusses an apparent relationship between “New Atheism” and group selection: Richard Dawkins’ best-known scientific achievement is popularizing the theory of gene-level selection in his book The Selfish Gene. Gene-level selection stands apart from both traditional individual-level selection and group-level selection as an explanation for human cooperation. Steven Pinker, similarly, wrote a long article … Continue reading Wishful Thinking about Wishful Thinking
2015 7/5 – Why Useless? 7/6 – In Forty Days Nineveh Will be Destroyed 7/7 – Beati Mundo Corde 7/8 – Politically Incorrect Algorithms 7/9 – The Null Hypothesis 7/10 – Conspiracy Theories 7/11 – Are Hyperlinks a Bad Idea? 7/12 – Privacy 7/13 – Pope Francis and Proselytization 7/14 – The Order of the … Continue reading Chronological Archives
No, I am not going to answer the question. This post will illustrate and argue for a position that I have argued many times in the past, namely that belief is voluntary. The example is merely particularly good for proving the point. I will also be using a framework something like Bryan Caplan’s in his … Continue reading Was Kavanaugh Guilty?
James Chastek reflects on science, pseudoscience, and religion: The demarcation problem is a name for our failure to identify criteria that can distinguish science from pseudo-science, in spite of there being two such things. In the absence of rational criteria, we get clarity on the difference from various institutional-cultural institutions, like the consensus produced by university gatekeepers … Continue reading Pseudoscience
There is quick way to respond to the implicit questions at the end of the last post. I noted in an earlier discussion of form that form is not only copied into the mind; it is also copied into language itself. Any time you describe something in words, you are to some degree copying its … Continue reading Words, Meaning, and Formal Copies
C.S. Lewis discusses a certain theory of punishment: In England we have lately had a controversy about Capital Punishment. … My subject is not Capital Punishment in particular, but that theory of punishment in general which the controversy showed to be almost universal among my fellow-countrymen. It may be called the Humanitarian theory. Those who … Continue reading C.S. Lewis on Punishment
Gregory Kavka discusses a thought experiment: You are feeling extremely lucky. You have just been approached by an eccentric billionaire who has offered you the following deal. He places before you a vial of toxin that, if you drink it, will make you painfully ill for a day, but will not threaten your life or … Continue reading Kavka’s Toxin
