A night about religion 1 Oct 2010 I’m part of a tag team night for the Student Philosophy Association at the University of Queensland. The Facebook page is here. I’m arguing for… guess which? Philosophy Religion Philosophy
Philosophy Christian capitalism and socialism 13 Aug 201113 Aug 2011 Greg Paul, whose work on dinosaurs I find most interesting, has a blog entry on the Washington Post site on another kind of dinosaur – Christian socialists. He notes that the current American Christian obsession with capitalism is quite contrary to the early church and possibly Jesus’ own social philosophy, but more… Read More
Cognition Thoughts on the Hard Problem 30 Jun 20201 Jul 2020 Most of you will already know that David Chalmers, the once-hirsute Australian philosopher of mind (only Rob Wilson seems to remain in the Hirsute Philosopher’s Club these days. God knows I never was) proposed what came to be known as the Hard Problem of Consciousness: The really hard problem of… Read More
Biology A new philosophy and biology journal 11 Dec 2009 Massimo Pigliucci has just announced Philosophy & Theory in Biology, a new online open access journal. Its stated mission is to bring “together philosophers of science and theoretically inclined biologists to interact across disciplinary boundaries. This interaction fosters a broad conception of what it means to do “theory” in science… Read More
Hmmm… Roland will argue that there is substantial empirical evidence for the miraculous, and that contemporary understanding of God is similar to physicists’ understanding of quantum mechanics in the 1920’s. Would “confused” be a good description? Is the Holy Ghost the theistic equivalent of Schrödinger’s cat? (yes, I know that was later, but God can work backwards in time – ask Wm. A. Dembski for details) Anyway, I hope you all have fun and don’t squash any of the students.
A sub-atomic incident? I wonder how Joseph would’ve taken that when Mary broached the subject? ‘Hey Joe, I’ve had a sub-atomic incident, and erm, you’re gonna be a daddy!’
John– heads-up (if you haven’t already seen it)– the current (30.ix.2010) “Nature” has a News and Views about an article in “Ibis” about species. An attempt to discipline the species concept (the?) for purposes of biodiversity surveys: start by figuring out how different (genetically, appearance-wise…) non-interbreeding sympatric species are (these are thus the “gold standard” for species), try to rule that that’s the degree of difference that should be used for non-sympatric populations which could be distinguished or synonymized… (An accident that it comes from a bird journal? there have got to be groups where it is harder to be sure that sympatric populations are non-interbreeding than birds!)
Thanks, Allen. A quick look over indicates that this is basically OTUs for BSCs. I’ll read it in detail when I can and blog on it.