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Apr 5, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 11:34:24
Metaphysical Kit—Kit Fine interviewed by Richard Marshall
(3:00AM Magazine 3-23-12)
Metaphysics is the philosophical study of the general nature of reality. It asks questions like: what is the nature of space and time?; what is the relation between mind and body?; do abstract objects exist or is everything concrete? I believe that metaphysics is like mathematics in being a priori; it comes to its conclusions without the benefit of any particular experience but, in contrast to mathematics, it is concerned with the general categorical features of reality and not with the purely mathematical or 'structural' features. It is a mystery how we can acquire knowledge of this sort from the armchair and perhaps even a mystery how we can acquire mathematical knowledge from the armchair, but I am in little doubt that we can in fact obtain such knowledge.
At the very least, for many of the questions of interest to metaphysics-such as the existence of abstract objects-it is unclear how empirical inquiry of the sort with which we are familiar in science could be even remotely relevant. In my monograph The Limits of Abstraction, I did employ mathematics. But the mathematics there is in the service of metaphysics and of philosophy more generally. The questions ultimately of interest to me are philosophical, such as: what is the nature of numbers?; how do we refer to them?; how do we know they exist?.
Mar 13, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 12:39:57
Do advances in neuroscience give the lie to free will? by Julian Baggini (Financial Times 3-9-12)
Advances in neuroscience have given the free will deniers new impetus. The ace in the pack is the work of the late Benjamin Libet, which neuroscientist Sam Harris says in Free Will shows that “some moments before you are aware of what you will do next … your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this 'decision' and believe that you are in the process of making it.” For the likes of Harris, evidence like this shows that the absence of free will is now scientific fact, not philosophical theory.
But as other new books on the same issue show, it's far more complicated than that. Michael Gazzaniga, one of the world's leading neuroscientists, also acknowledges the soundness of Libet's research, yet his answer to his book's eponymous question Who's in Charge? is that you are. Then you have philosopher Tamler Sommers not disputing that free will is an illusion but arguing in Relative Justice that ideas such as moral responsibility are not as threatened by this as much as we might fear. Finally, there is the eminent psychologist Roy F Baumeister, with the aid of science journalist John Tierney, making a powerful case for the Willpower of his book's title, which almost completely bypasses the whole free will debate. What's going on?
By David Brown | Posted at 12:36:25
What Anscombe Intended & Other Puzzles (3:00AM Magazine 3-10-12)
Kieran Setiya is a chillin' philosopher in Pittsburgh. He's thinking hard about knowing right from wrong and has written a book about this coming out soon. He wrote a book called Reasons Without Rationalism and wonders whether moral theory corrupts youth. He wrote about knowledge of our intentions in the recent seminal book Essays On Anscombe's Intention.
Jan 30, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 16:32:1
The Same-Sex 'Marriage' Proposal is Unjust Discrimination by Patrick Lee (Public Discourse 1-30-12)
The “marriage equality movement”: that's the name chosen for themselves by same-sex “marriage” supporters. The implicit argument is that the state's granting marriage licenses only to opposite-sex couples is undue discrimination. The claim has an initial plausibility” the state grants a marriage license to John and Mary but not to Jim and Steve. Isn't that unequal treatment? But this charge, I will show, rests on a profound confusion about both marriage and equality. A state's recognition that marriage is only between a man and a woman is not unjust. What's more, a state's endorsement of same-sex “marriage” does create an arbitrary and invidious discrimination.
By David Brown | Posted at 16:24:27
The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake - review by Mary Midgley (UK Guardian 1-27-12)
We need a new mind-body paradigm, a map that acknowledges the many kinds of things there are in the world and the continuity of evolution. We must somehow find different, more realistic ways of understanding human beings—and indeed other animals—as the active wholes that they are, rather than pretending to see them as meaningless consignments of chemicals.
Rupert Sheldrake, who has long called for this development, spells out this need forcibly in his new book. He shows how materialism has gradually hardened into a kind of anti-Christian faith, an ideology rather than a scientific principle, claiming authority to dictate theories and to veto inquiries on topics that don't suit it, such as unorthodox medicine, let alone religion. He shows how completely alien this static materialism is to modern physics, where matter is dynamic. And, to mark the strange dilemmas that this perverse fashion poses for us, he ends each chapter with some very intriguing “Questions for Materialists”, questions such as “Have you been programmed to believe in materialism?”, “If there are no purposes in nature, how can you have purposes yourself?”, “How do you explain the placebo response?” and so on.
By David Brown | Posted at 16:6:19
Citizen Philosophers-Teaching Justice in Brazil (Jan-Feb 2012)
Getting out of the cave and seeing things as they really are: that's what philosophy is about, according to Almira Ribeiro. Ribeiro teaches the subject in a high school in Itapua, a beautiful, poor, violent neighborhood on the periphery of Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia in Brazil's northeast. She is the most philosophically passionate person I've ever met.
Jan 26, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 16:5:55
What Really Happened at the Beginning of Time? by David Berlinski (Ricochet 1-25-12)
In a very bravura passage, David Hume writes that “if we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics let us ask this question, does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can be nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
What of Hume's own remarks? Not so good. Hume was an early victim of the Vise, the circumstance that attends a philosopher who finds himself squeezed between the premises and conclusion of an argument by which he attempted to squeeze others.
By David Brown | Posted at 15:56:36
Religion for Atheists: An Interview With Alain de Botton (Talking Philosophy 1-24-12)
In my book, I argue that believing in God is, for me as for many others, simply not possible. At the same time, I want to suggest that if you remove this belief, there are particular dangers that open up—we don't need to fall into these dangers, but they are there and we should be aware of them. For a start, there is the danger of individualism: of placing the human being at the center stage of everything. Secondly, there is the danger of technological perfectionism; of believing that science and technology can overcome all human problems, that it is just a matter of time before scientists have cured us of the human condition. Thirdly, without God, it is easier to loose perspective: to see our own times as everything, to forget the brevity of the present moment and to cease to appreciate (in a good way) the miniscule nature of our own achievements. And lastly, without God, there can be a danger (note the tentative can) that the need for empathy and ethical behaviour is more easily overlooked—in other words, that evil becomes less incongruous.
By David Brown | Posted at 15:51:42
Philosophy—What's the Use? (NY Times 1-25-12)
The perennial objection to any appeal to philosophy is that philosophers themselves disagree among themselves about everything, so that there is no body of philosophical knowledge on which non-philosophers can rely. It's true that philosophers do not agree on answers to the “big questions” like God's existence, free will, the nature of moral obligation and so on. But they do agree about many logical interconnections and conceptual distinctions that are essential for thinking clearly about the big questions.
By David Brown | Posted at 15:14:34
Maudlin on the philosophy of cosmology by Edward Feser (1-23-12)
What's the difference between a philosopher of science and a scientist who comments on philosophy? The difference is that the philosopher usually makes sure he's done his homework before opening his mouth. I've had reason to comment on recent examples of philosophical incompetence provided by Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Stephen Hawking, and others. (I'll be commenting on further examples provided by Peter Atkins and Lawrence Krauss in some forthcoming book reviews.) In an interview over at The Atlantic, philosopher of physics Tim Maudlin comments on Hawking's ill-informed remarks about the state of contemporary philosophy. Hawking and his co-author Leonard Mlodinow claim in The Grand Design that “philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.” The gigantic literature that has developed over the last few decades in the philosophy of physics, philosophy of biology, philosophy of chemistry, and philosophy of science more generally, not to mention all the work in contemporary philosophy of mind informed by neuroscience and computer science, easily falsifies their glib assertion.
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