Epistemology My Absent Career 10: Contra Quality 1 Jan 20231 Jan 2023 So, taking this extreme parsimony approach leads me to sharply distinguish between things that are and things we think there are. A good many of our most favoured ideas are projective. Qualia are the primary example for me (because I first learned of them as an undergraduate). For those who… Continue Reading
Book New edited species book 19 Oct 202119 Oct 2021 So, what have I been doing for the Covid Lockdown. Many things. This is one of them. The CRC Press link is here, but I’ll give the table of contents below. The beautiful cover art is by Scott Partridge, an artist in North Carolina. It is entitled Abyssal Zone. Table… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
Ecology and Biodiversity New book contract 29 Jul 201930 Oct 2019 Well CRC Press haven’t learned their lesson yet, and have given me, Frank Zachos (Vienna) and Igor Pavlinov (Moscow) a contract for an edited book of science and philosophy dialogue entitled Species and Beyond. Anyone who wants a particular topic to be covered, leave it in the comments. I won’t… Continue Reading
Biology A not terribly good post on the species problem 18 Jul 2019 As a biological phenomenon the species problem is worthy of serious study as an end in itself, and not as a mere corollary to work in some other field. It is, to be sure, a problem so fundamentally important that it touches many such fields. Workers in any one of… Continue Reading
Evolution What is special about humans? 23 Nov 201827 Feb 2019 As soon as somebody asks the question “what is a ____?” we get into trouble. Not because we do not know about the thing in the blank, but because we tend to have the wrong idea about how to answer that question. Since the Greeks, the general feeling is that… Continue Reading
Ecology and Biodiversity 12 Days to Species publication 3 Feb 2018 Due 15 February! Details here Continue Reading
Ethics and Moral Philosophy An Agnostic’s Apology 25 Jan 201823 Nov 2018 From Sir Leslie Stephen’s 1903 book. “Apology” here means defence (from apologia). AN AGNOSTICS APOLOGY Continue Reading
Epistemology 50 words for snow 7: explanations and phenomena 18 Dec 20171 Mar 2019 Series Conceptual confusion The economics of cultural categories What are phenomena? What counts as sociocultural? Species Constructing phenomena Explanations and phenomena Anyone who has ever had a child knows the issue with indefinite “why?” questions. The interrogator asks why for every answer that is given, until the responder gets tired… Continue Reading
Biology Species: The evolution of the idea 5 Aug 2017 I have completed and submitted the manuscript now for my revision of Species: A history of the idea, now renamed Species: the evolution of the idea. I am publishing it with CRC Press, and it is due out next year. In addition to updating and revising the historical sections of… Continue Reading