Understanding Species is here in hard copy 19 Apr 202319 Apr 2023 When I first watched Back to the future, I was mid-undergraduate studies, and had no thought that I would ever publish anything, but I was taken by Grispin Glover’s George McFly getting a box of what looked like 50 copies of his latest novel. The most I have ever gotten for any of my books was nine: things are less generous now than in the 80s, I guess. Also, academic books are orders of magnitude lower in numbers than commercial fiction. Still, the hard copies for any book are treasured, and thus I reveal to you: The interesting thing is that this is a compact size, around A5, which I guess is the thing now, what with Very Short Introductions to topics and so on. It’s still only £14.99/US$19.99, (AUS$28.95) so go get a copy. I think the price goes up in May. As a teaser, here’s a figure illustrating what different definitions of species do to our own species: Philosophy
Creationism and Intelligent Design Random thoughts about God and evolution 27 Jun 2010 As some may know, I am writing a couple of book chapters to try to sell a proposal to a publisher for The Nature of Classification, a book I am coauthoring with Malte Ebach. I bring the philosophy and he brings the knowledge. However, this means I am not devoting… Read More
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
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Ethics in 5 minutes 24 Feb 202525 Feb 2025 “…ethics is a tradition. People sometimes get annoyed at the fact that they have to read Plato, Aristotle or some other old and very Western source. But this is the price one pays for entering a tradition, as any student of religion, literature, architecture, or art can tell you. But, and this is important, that is the academic or formal side of ethics. One can understand issues (not all of them) without knowing the canon.” Read More