Category: philosophy
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The Problem of Democracy
Link to review: The Problem of Democracy.
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Humanity invented in 1800 by the French
A comment from earlier this week struck a nerve with me. I’ll repost it in totality first: I find it interesting that Fox Keller seems to be assuming that human interest in “nature” began only in the 19th century. Rather, the concept of manki…
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The loss of sacred belief?
Over at the Less Wrong blog there is a post, So You’ve Changed Your Mind. This portion caught my attention: So you’ve changed your mind. Given up your sacred belief, the one that defined so much of who you are for so long. You are probably…
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A problem of knowledge
A boring man Immanuel Kant is famous. You’ve probably heard of him. And you know some of his ideas, such as the categorical imperative, or have at some point started the Critique of Pure Reason (if you’re like me, you never finish it). But…
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Species, not arbitrary, but not clear & distinct
John Hawks and Jerry Coyne are mooting the ‘species concepts’ debate, with particular focus on recent human origins (specifically, the relationship of modern humans to Neandertals and Denisovans). Coyne, who coauthored the book Speciation …
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Descartes’ Baby: How The Science Of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human
Link to review: Inducing Disgust
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The possible impossibility of truth and the importance of incorrectness
In the post below on the genetic history of India, or earlier when discussing the revisions of European prehistory, one general trend that is cropping up is that the future seems more complex and muddled than we’d presumed. This introduces the real possibility that in the foreseeable future we won’t be able to opine with…
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Project your own probability
By now you’ve probably stumbled onto Wired’s profile of Sergey Brin, and his quest to understand and overcome Parkinson’s disease through the illumination available via genomic techniques. I want to spotlight this section: Not everyone with Parkinson’s has an LRRK2 mutation; nor will everyone with the mutation get the disease. But it does increase the…
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The origins of morality do not matter | Razib Khan
Mothers will makes sacrifices for their children, whether they believe in God, karma, or a mindless evolutionary processIs morality meaningless when its natural foundations are exposed? No, unlike the naked emperor there is a clear substance to the gen…
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Razib Khan: Unlike Singer, Confucius recognised the natural impulse to impose a heirarchy on the value of human life
Unlike Singer, Confucius recognised the natural impulse to impose a heirarchy on the value of human life – and his ideas enduredNo one will deny that Peter Singer can provoke. Most recently, in The Life You Can Save, Singer lays out a utilitarian argument for attacking world poverty, extending ideas from his 1971 essay, Famine,…