Epistemology Reduction and surprisal, or, why water is wet 8 Aug 201122 Jun 2018 In his classic work A System of Logic, which set up so many of the issues and problems of the modern field of the philosophy of science, John Stuart Mill wrote: Not a trace of the properties of hydrogen or of oxygen is observable in those of their compound, water…. Continue Reading
Biology Reduction and emergence 8 Aug 20118 Aug 2011 I have been having a metaphysical debate on Twitter, which is more surreal than reading the Tractatus. My interlocutors said a few things which leads me to want to clarify my views a little more than Twitter allows. Hence… My thesis is this: Emergent properties are no different, ontologically speaking,… Continue Reading
History Wittgenstein, transformation, and evolution 31 Jul 201131 Jul 2011 Reposted from my first blog, and edited. When Wittgenstein collaborated for a period with Friederich Waismann, the outcome was an unpublished book, Logik, Sprache, Philosophie. He was working his way from the logical atomism of the Tractatus to the holism of the Philosophical Investigations. They wrote: Our thought here marches with certain views… Continue Reading
Epistemology Domains and theories in science 19 Jun 201122 Jun 2018 We are getting to the tail end of this series. Here are the previous posts: The false analogy between species and art Pattern cladism and the myth of theory dependence of observation Species, phenomena and data More on phenomena Disambiguating the Theory-Dependence of Observation thesis (TDOT) In this post I… Continue Reading
Epistemology Disambiguating the Theory-Dependence of Observation thesis (TDOT) 16 Jun 2011 For the past half century it has been largely agreed that one cannot observe without prior theory. This is rarely explicated, however, and there seems to be some ambiguity in the claims made. So I will do a rough taxonomy of the TDOT. When N. R. Hanson introduced the claim… Continue Reading
Epistemology Is the soul something we should be agnostic about? 27 May 201127 May 2011 In a piece on the Scientific American guest blog, the day before mine, Sean Carroll made an interesting argument: Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely… Continue Reading
Creationism and Intelligent Design Pope on evolution: more of the same teleological thinking 26 Apr 201126 Apr 2011 Recently, the Pope did what religious leaders appear increasingly inclined to do on Easter: bash science: Benedict emphasised the Biblical account of creation in his Easter Vigil homily, saying it was wrong to think at some point “in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of… Continue Reading
Creationism and Intelligent Design Repost: What actually *is* design? 18 Feb 201118 Sep 2017 This is a repost from my old site, with corrections. I will be back properly online next week, I hope. I’ve been wondering of late what it is that is explained when something is called “designed”. Continue Reading
Biology The false analogy between species and art 26 Jan 201118 Sep 2017 Biological topics are used widely in philosophy to illustrate arcane and recondite philosophical topics,and one of the most widely used, and most abused, are species as examples of natural kinds. Kangaroos, swans, tigers, lions, cats, and of course humans are all brought in to assist our intuitions. As Umberto Eco… Continue Reading
Philosophy The Greek Pantheon Test 5 Nov 2010 I’ve been very busy teaching, and so this blog has suffered. So I thought I’d do a short screed of an idea that I have had for some time. I have discussed what a religion is for a while now. Instead I want to ask today, What is a god?… Continue Reading