Some relevant comics 4 Jan 201221 Jun 2018 As always, click to go to the originals. Evolution Humor Religion
Epistemology Pizza reductionism, emergence and phenomena 20 Sep 201227 Oct 2018 Debates over reduction in science are as old as philosophy of science, but in the 1960s, Ernest Nagel’s book The Structure of Science really set things going. Nagel argued that a goal of science was to reduce one theory to a more general and explanatory theory, so that one can deduce… Read More
Epistemology Evopsychopathy 2: The phylogenetic bracket 7 Dec 20122 Jan 2013 As noted, SB and EP have a very unfortunate tendency to reflect the status quo in their results and research questions. This is not unique to them. History, sociology, other fields of psychology (psychotherapy for gods’ sake!), and in my own profession, ethics, all have this “Pull of Privilege”. Somehow… Read More
Philosophy On dictionaries, movements and rhetorical flourishes 9 Feb 2011 Lately, PZ Myers has been on a tear. He has rejected what he calls “Dictionary Atheism”. I have to admit, he has a way with words. I love it that he can come up with such things as the Courtier’s Reply, his Complexity Design Argument, and so forth. It’s fun… Read More
Don’t want to kill the joke with pedantry, but it occurred to me that, taking Zach’s summaries at face value for a moment, you could argue that Bentham’s “maximise happiness” was supportive of, and in a sense a general approximation to Darwin’s point: I can’t speak for other species, but in H. sap. the sex drive is centred on the anticipation of considerable, if not always lasting, happiness; maximising the amount of sex in society would be (done right) one contribution to maximising the happiness in it (just sayin’). You could even stretch a point and argue that Socrates is at least in the right ball park, since “justice and right thinking” should tend to create an environment which favours the survival and reproduction of more individuals than would be the case in an unjust and arbitrary one. But I’m afraid poor old Aquinas is waaaay off beam, there. Not asking the right questions, not even wrong.