Philosophy and reasoning links
Tips for dealing with the “meta-bias” of not wanting to be wrong. Reasoning errors from cognitive biases: why smart people make dumb decisions.
About meditation, its nature and benefits:
Someone who claims to be serious about understanding the mind, but refuses to meditate I would dismiss as unserious. If this entails my dismissal as unserious of almost all contemporary philosophers of mind, then so be it. Analogy: You say you are serious about oceanography, but you refuse to descend into the depths? Then I say you are not all that serious. You don’t want to see with you own eyes what is down there.
Against scientism: part one and part two.
Review of an examination of the intimate connection between Heidegger’s philosophy and Nazism.
Arguing for anarchism.
Suggesting that seeking to abolish contention from society is deeply pernicious.
Talk comparing the effects of the ideas of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Online course for reading Karl Marx’s Capital. Listing various government interventions in the economy Adam Smith was in favour of.
This post provoked an informative discussion of utilitarianism.
Martha Nussbaum on the politics of disgust.
Scholar suggests that Descartes was poisoned. Raising a good question about that, if true.
Looking at indicators of the status of the philosophy of religion in academic philosophy.
Nice feminist discussion of Superbowl ad wars.
Some conversational halters in argumentation.
Exploring the dark side of contractarian thought and its application to modern employment contracts (pdf).
Study discovers different patterns of philosophical intuitions by men and women. About the study.
Thoughtful post about belief, religion and expressed preferences, documentary making, not having psychic powers and being opinionated as not a good sign.
Biology has moved on since Darwin, arguing it would be nice if philosophers caught up with that.
Evolutionary biology today is deeply Darwinian, but it has outpaced the Origin in ways that its author could never have imagined. To use a hackneyed phrase, Darwin gave biology a paradigm, and biologists have been expanding it ever since.
Going through 36 arguments for the existence of God. It does not start off well: the presentation of the cosmological argument turns it into a caricature, since the argument is based on the Aristotelian notion of causation but the critique of it translates into a different approach to causation and then criticises that. The argument is much more like “God as the cause of causation”.
About poor inference from data and using beer as an example in reasoning about fairness:
All the leading brands of beer in the United States were created by people of German ancestry, and so was the leading beer in China, not to mention breweries created by Germans in Australia, Argentina, and elsewhere. Germans were producing beer in the days of the Roman Empire.
This does not mean that beer-brewing skill is genetic, but it also does not mean that this skill - or any other skill - is randomly distributed among peoples, so that a failure to have equal “representation” of groups in a given institutions can be presumed to be due to discrimination by that institution.
About the principle of subsidiarity:
In accord with subsidiarity, true democracy is a product of local institutions and self-reliance. Consolidation is the weapon of tyranny, but the friend of liberty is particularism.
A paragraph on the philosophy of marriage:
As for marriage, it is a good thing if one enters into it for the right reasons, at the right time, and after due consideration. Bear in mind that every man has two heads. The big one is for thinking, the little one for linking. Understand their offices and respective spheres of operation. To cerebrate with the organ of copulation is Clintonian and not conducive unto happiness. Even in the question of marriage, the big head must be the ruling element.
About Ayn Rand and how her works continue to sell extremely well. Johann Hari on her life and popularity.
About not conflating race and religion:
It is deeply offensive to conflate in a report on racism racism with discrimination against people who make the choice to believe such stuff, and who then go out of their way to let the world know that they do (eg by putting black cloth over their heads, or wearing any number of religious knickknack around their necks etc).
More:
Mr. Al-Solaylee is a brown-skinned Muslim who is openly gay. He thinks the entire exercise is a frivolous diversion. “There are things that I need from the university, but this isn't one of them,” he says. “I need computers that don't crash all the time. I want students who don't have to hold bake sales to raise money for their graduate projects. There should be money for these things, not equity officers.” …
The most bizarre revelation can be found in the report's fine print. Among the students, racism and discrimination scarcely register at all. Only 315 students (out of 28,000) bothered to respond to a task force questionnaire. Half the respondents were white, and half non-white. On the question of whether Ryerson treats students fairly regardless of race, the vast majority of both groups - more than 90 per cent - believed it did. Fewer than 30 of the non-white students said they had ever experienced discrimination. That's a 10th of 1 per cent of the student body.
Naturally, the task force has an explanation for this: People are too scared to speak out! That's the great thing about systemic racism. You don't need any evidence. Every negative proves a positive, and the absence of evidence just proves how bad things really are.
Further comment.
About meditation, its nature and benefits:
Someone who claims to be serious about understanding the mind, but refuses to meditate I would dismiss as unserious. If this entails my dismissal as unserious of almost all contemporary philosophers of mind, then so be it. Analogy: You say you are serious about oceanography, but you refuse to descend into the depths? Then I say you are not all that serious. You don’t want to see with you own eyes what is down there.
Against scientism: part one and part two.
Review of an examination of the intimate connection between Heidegger’s philosophy and Nazism.
Arguing for anarchism.
Suggesting that seeking to abolish contention from society is deeply pernicious.
Talk comparing the effects of the ideas of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Online course for reading Karl Marx’s Capital. Listing various government interventions in the economy Adam Smith was in favour of.
This post provoked an informative discussion of utilitarianism.
Martha Nussbaum on the politics of disgust.
Scholar suggests that Descartes was poisoned. Raising a good question about that, if true.
Looking at indicators of the status of the philosophy of religion in academic philosophy.
Nice feminist discussion of Superbowl ad wars.
Some conversational halters in argumentation.
Exploring the dark side of contractarian thought and its application to modern employment contracts (pdf).
Study discovers different patterns of philosophical intuitions by men and women. About the study.
Thoughtful post about belief, religion and expressed preferences, documentary making, not having psychic powers and being opinionated as not a good sign.
Biology has moved on since Darwin, arguing it would be nice if philosophers caught up with that.
Evolutionary biology today is deeply Darwinian, but it has outpaced the Origin in ways that its author could never have imagined. To use a hackneyed phrase, Darwin gave biology a paradigm, and biologists have been expanding it ever since.
Going through 36 arguments for the existence of God. It does not start off well: the presentation of the cosmological argument turns it into a caricature, since the argument is based on the Aristotelian notion of causation but the critique of it translates into a different approach to causation and then criticises that. The argument is much more like “God as the cause of causation”.
About poor inference from data and using beer as an example in reasoning about fairness:
All the leading brands of beer in the United States were created by people of German ancestry, and so was the leading beer in China, not to mention breweries created by Germans in Australia, Argentina, and elsewhere. Germans were producing beer in the days of the Roman Empire.
This does not mean that beer-brewing skill is genetic, but it also does not mean that this skill - or any other skill - is randomly distributed among peoples, so that a failure to have equal “representation” of groups in a given institutions can be presumed to be due to discrimination by that institution.
About the principle of subsidiarity:
In accord with subsidiarity, true democracy is a product of local institutions and self-reliance. Consolidation is the weapon of tyranny, but the friend of liberty is particularism.
A paragraph on the philosophy of marriage:
As for marriage, it is a good thing if one enters into it for the right reasons, at the right time, and after due consideration. Bear in mind that every man has two heads. The big one is for thinking, the little one for linking. Understand their offices and respective spheres of operation. To cerebrate with the organ of copulation is Clintonian and not conducive unto happiness. Even in the question of marriage, the big head must be the ruling element.
About Ayn Rand and how her works continue to sell extremely well. Johann Hari on her life and popularity.
About not conflating race and religion:
It is deeply offensive to conflate in a report on racism racism with discrimination against people who make the choice to believe such stuff, and who then go out of their way to let the world know that they do (eg by putting black cloth over their heads, or wearing any number of religious knickknack around their necks etc).
More:
Mr. Al-Solaylee is a brown-skinned Muslim who is openly gay. He thinks the entire exercise is a frivolous diversion. “There are things that I need from the university, but this isn't one of them,” he says. “I need computers that don't crash all the time. I want students who don't have to hold bake sales to raise money for their graduate projects. There should be money for these things, not equity officers.” …
The most bizarre revelation can be found in the report's fine print. Among the students, racism and discrimination scarcely register at all. Only 315 students (out of 28,000) bothered to respond to a task force questionnaire. Half the respondents were white, and half non-white. On the question of whether Ryerson treats students fairly regardless of race, the vast majority of both groups - more than 90 per cent - believed it did. Fewer than 30 of the non-white students said they had ever experienced discrimination. That's a 10th of 1 per cent of the student body.
Naturally, the task force has an explanation for this: People are too scared to speak out! That's the great thing about systemic racism. You don't need any evidence. Every negative proves a positive, and the absence of evidence just proves how bad things really are.
Further comment.