I’m a 3QD Philosophy Prize semifinalist 12 Sep 201122 Jun 2018 You no longer can vote for me, but I made the cut for this post on phenomena, so I think you should go read some cool philosophy posts while we wait for the editors to pick six entries to send to Pat Churchland for a final judgement… So, this being the closest thing to any kind of award I have ever received, I must show this badge: Administrative Philosophy
Cognition Eww, I stepped in some evolutionary psychology and other crap 4 Dec 201218 Sep 2017 *Sigh* I try and try to stay out of the muck, but they keep pulling me back in! I saw what I thought was a careful and rather overly-documented critique by Edward Clint of a talk by Rebecca Watson against evolutionary psychology (EP). It was full of references and arguments, devoid… Read More
Epistemology Is the dismal science even possible? 4 Feb 20124 Feb 2012 A thought occurred to me. Given that money is an abstraction of an abstraction (value) of an abstraction (resources and labor) of things, and so has no standing in any ontology of society, is economics even possible as a science? I mean, linguistics is a science because it involves natural… Read More
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
Someone by the name of John Wilkins made a document titled A deflationary account of information in biology openly available on the web. I’ve been out of touch with research and the literature for 15+ years now. Perhaps I wasn’t very good when I was more deeply involved . Nevertheless … I am fascinated by the concept ‘biological Information’. It has been my more or less, on and off preoccupied theme-of-interest for several decades. (Seeking out Lila Gatlin’s work on the information content of DNA is what lead me to finding Wilkins’s manuscript.) Your manuscript holds me speechless sir. Even though I cannot bring myself to read it at the present moment because it is immediately strongly emotive and confusing. …. too much so to be useful for me … Despite all such, I immediately saw that document as touching upon and addressing, many if not all of the pertinent and essential qualities of ‘information’ and it’s relationship to biological process. Notwithstanding my own limited scholarship and dated knowledge … I cannot recall any other author or ‘theoretical biologist’ matching your complete and explicitly targeted engagement. That achievement of recognizing and engaging all that is prominent and appropriate is a sufficient and remarkable achievement, in and of by itself. You have earned my admiration. Thank you
I was over in Europe while this was going on, and am still trying to catch up with the Internet. When I have time (which may be before or after I am dead), I intend to read all 37 nominees for the prize so that I can find out which I would have voted for if I had voted, so that I can tell you, so that you can cast aspersions upon my sanity for my poor taste. Meanwhile I’m also reading the copy of “Lucian: Selected Dialogues” that I bought at the British Library (actually, my bookmark has been sitting patiently at page 74 for some time now). My comment so far is that the poor guy would have been a far better writer if only someone had had the foresight to lend him some Pratchett.