Another chapter on religion done 17 Nov 2017 Readers will recall I had a series on why people believe silly things… This is now a book chapter, with extra added citation goodness and many footnotes, although I haven’t yet resorted to Terry Pratchett’s practice of doing footnotes to the footnotes. Not yet. The book is New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: the Rationality of Religious Belief, edited by Hans Eyghen, and will be published by Springer. Philosophy
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Evolution quotes 25 Apr 2010 A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest… Read More
Metaphysics Zombies of qualia and intentionality 16 Sep 201116 Sep 2011 Peter at Conscious Entities has a nice discussion of the above distinction I hadn’t thought of before (h/t Brandon): p-zombies that lack qualia and those that lack intentionality, and whether we think the latter is why there are no former. We know we have intentionality, so we think that to… Read More
Biology My presentation on Mercier and Sperber’s Argumentative Theory 11 Jul 201222 Jun 2018 During my recent trip to Berkeley, I was asked to give a discussion starter about Mercier and Sperber’s recent Behavioral and Brain Sciences article on the function reasoning has been given by evolution. They broadly argue that reasoning is not an internal process and evolved with its “main function” as convincing others of what… Read More