Accommodationism Accommodating Science overview 13 Mar 2014 I have done quite a lot of blogging under this heading lately so I thought it might be useful to get all the posts used in order: On beliefs Why do believers believe silly things? The function of denialism Why do believers believe THOSE silly things? The “developmental hypothesis” of… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Accommodating science: Faith and reason 5 Mar 2014 [This is the penultimate chapter. I can’t be bothered trying to get the references or footnotes included in the posts, so you’ll have to wait for the book. Some of this has appeared on the blog before in less well written form, so don’t worry about the deja vu] All… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Accommodating Science: Unpicking the arguments 23 Feb 20144 Mar 2014 So given that it is not entirely clear what religion is, or even what science is, it would help if we could put the arguments clearly. It is hard to find clear statements of either the accommodationist or the anti-accommodationist positions, so what we have to do first is reconstruct… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Accommodating Science: What is the problem? 20 Feb 201423 Feb 2014 [As I write the first draft of my accommodationism book, I will post chapters here under the Category “Accommodationism”. Here is the latest – which comes before Undefining Religion] The religion-versus-science debate took a special turn in the West because of the existence not only of doctrinal religion but of… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Science outreach: A conversation 2 Feb 201420 Feb 2014 From the Freethinkers Blog Con: With PZ Myzer and Aron Ra. Continue Reading
Accommodationism Why do believers believe THOSE silly things? 28 Jan 201420 Feb 2014 If, as I argued in the last post, believers believe silly things in order to make the community cohere in the face of competing loyalties of the wider community, why is it that they believe the things they believe? For example, you will often see Jews attempt to argue that… Continue Reading
Cognition Are emotions 2D? 7 Oct 20137 Oct 2013 I recently became aware that there is a new development in emotion classification. Previously, as far as I knew, emotions were thought to be human universals, give or take some variation (such as the emotion “metagu” among the Ifaluk islanders, see Linquist 2007) and researchers like Paul Ekman, who works as… Continue Reading
Biology Gilbert White on Instinct: stepping back from Nature 20 Jan 201320 Jan 2013 In the course of helping teach a “History of Nature” course for Sara Maroske just lately, I re-encountered Gilbert White’s lovely Natural History and Antiquities of Selbourne, a classic of literature and field biology. As a philosopher I hadn’t read him closely as there is little abstract argument in it, but this… Continue Reading
Biology Evopsychopathy 5: Conclusion 2 Jan 20133 Jan 2013 The criticisms of evolutionary psychology and its predecessors sociobiologies 1 through 3 focus on three major points: 1. It is adaptively-biased; 2. It is gene-centric (or biological determinist, which amounts to the same thing); 3. It is culturally biased in favour of the privileged classes of the people making the… Continue Reading
Biology Evopsychopathy 1. Conditions for sociobiology 6 Dec 201218 Sep 2017 Well I better put up or shut up, I guess. Here are my ruminations, excretions, and expressions regarding evolutionary psychology, or, as we might call it, evopsychopathy. I am, as I have said, a born again sociobiologist, so I guess that makes me an evopychopath. Let’s get a few things… Continue Reading