* The concept of epistemically transformative experiences, applied to whether or not to have children.
* Why assessment exercises in higher education are either tautological or lead to an infinite regress. Remind me to tell my Dean... Oh, wait, already done!
* Are Neil deGrasse Tyson and the American Museum of Natural History afraid of a philosopher? It sure looks like it...
* The Masters of our society have a visceral distaste of public education and the common good. Time to get rid of the Masters?
* A majority of Austrians think the Nazi would be elected if they were allowed to run today. Thereby demonstrating that human beings really do learn precisely nothing from history.
* The right of Israel to exist should not be questioned, but the right of a Jewish state to exist very much should.
* Why libertarians are profoundly wrong about the existence and functioning of markets.
* The real life Frankensteins that inspired Mary Shelley.
* A neuroscientist talks about neuro-hype.
* Why Ray Kurzweil's new book is a piece of crap, part I.
* Why Ray Kurzweil's new book is a piece of crap, part II.
The two philosophy blogs I read now are this one (of course!) and the NYTimes.com THE STONE, which, BTW, has a link to Rationally Speaking (to the X-Phi post) in its latest post.
ReplyDeletehttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/ronald-dworkins-religious-atheism/
So nobody's ever become libertarian on empirical grounds?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThe republican view of markets in the article sounds pretty much like the "Ordo" in the Ordoliberalist school of thinking. Still seems like the view that makes most sense to me - regulation is not bad per se, as long as it sets a framework that allows actors to plan.
ReplyDeleteChris
Did you really find McGinn's arguments convincing?
ReplyDeleteI don't think much of Kurzweil's ideas, but I was horrified by McGinn's review. According to McGinn, information requires a subject and neurons can't send signals. He says things like, “There is no perceptual recognition going on at all in thinking about an absent object.”
ReplyDeleteIt was almost as bad as his Deacon review.
Yeah, McGinn is pretty embarrassing most of the time. Kurzweil, likewise, though for different reasons.
DeleteThanks for the "visceral distaste" link. There should be
ReplyDeletemore discussion of the “Environmental Literacy Improvement Act”
as it is indeed an analogue to teaching Creationism.
W.r.t the piece on having children, so the only criteria for something being a rational pursuit is how good you feel after you've done it? Consequently I think work on the subject is very shallow as it doesn't scratch the moral and ethical issues around having kids for the individual parent and society as it stands. Am I conflating two issues?
ReplyDeleteLouis,
Deletewere did you get the feeling well part from the article? The argument is that it's not a rational decision because that would require you to fully comprehend both options, which is impossible.
Chris
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteSorry, your question is fragmented. My point is whether you think it makes you happy or not is only a small facet of the issues around having kids. Likewise I find her argument unconvincing, I haven't read her paper in honesty.
DeleteWould anyone like to respond to my question?
DeleteHi Louis,
DeleteI don't think you are wrong, exactly, however I think for most people the choice to have kids or not probably does boil down to self-interest, even if it's just the satisfaction of some instinctive emotional longing.
Few people are socially-conscious enough to make such a personally momentous decision on the basis of the marginal effects it would have on society as a whole.
As such, for the majority of people, the analysis of the paper seems pretty reasonable to me.
That's my feeling too DM.
DeleteSo, why didn't AMNH disinvite Krauss, too? A #fail there by Tyson.
ReplyDelete