A philosophy blog 24 Jul 2010 I have only just found the blog Journeyman Philosopher by Paul Mealing, a fellow Australian. It is a thoughtful and infrequent blog in which he deals with everything from quantum mechanics and time through to popular culture and speciation. I strongly recommend subscribing to this one. Mealing is a writer, not a professional philosopher (as you might have inferred from the title), which makes his posts the more remarkable. And he’s even been mentioned by Larry Niven! Administrative Philosophy AdministrativePhilosophy
History Responsibility 23 Dec 201122 Jun 2018 Click to go to the original and make rude comments about the misuse of “begs the question”. Late note: The bastard fixed it. Find something else to complain about… Read More
Metaphysics P-Angels 28 May 2010 There is a class of beings called P-Zeds, which are not unspellable atheist bloggers, but “philosophical zombies”, beings exactly like us in every way, but which lack consciousness. A P-Zed behaves just like you and I, and is identical at the physical level, but it has no self-awareness, reflexivity or… Read More
Epistemology Two new papers of mine 18 Aug 2009 Deflating genetic information – in which I argue that the only sense in which genes have “information” is the causal sense of specificity Darwin on species and heredity – in which I reprise some blog entries on this site about myths of Darwin. Both are under review, and hence neither… Read More
Well, after a few comments with him. I’m afraid that either I’m pretty ordinary (as in brain dead) at thinking or Paul is just someone who finds it profound to proffer arguments from ignorance and incredulity. He finds the statement ‘The greatest mystery of the universe is that it created consciousness,’ even meaningful. It’s like asking why is there something rather than nothing? Argument from ignorance.
Just to demonstrate my militant atheist qualities. What does he mean by the universe creating anything? Is it god? Spinoza…..
For my part, I was rather unimpressed at Brian’s commenting style. Leaving aside the content of his comments, what irks me more is Brian’s failure to take responsibility for saying what he intends to say the first time he says it. At one point Brian posts three comments in a row, and later a further two comments in a row. We all occasionally need to write a postscript, but doing so with such regularity smacks both of laziness and of hogging the microphone. (It did not take long for Brian to dominate the ‘recent comments’ widget.) I think this is a bad habit. If it were my blog, I would have edited Brian’s comments by putting some of the postscripts in with the originals, and then deleting the former.
I think it’s just a very emotive topic for some folks Flesh eating dragon and one that it is difficult to grasp opposing perspectives or find any value in diffrent approaches. Presenting a fundamental and exagerated argument and going on academic jihad can be usefull and certainly in my time at uni. somewhat typical in the early stages of a debate. But it’s when both sides start to move, identify the fault lines in there own approach and meet in the middle that they are most succesfull. Somewhat problematic when they don’t and a particular identity becomes static and entrenched.