Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category
Monday, May 8th, 2017
Colin McGinn had a comment on the human tendency to irrationality, partly wondering why people are so irrational given that "human irrationality can seem the oddest and least adaptive trait of the species," and accepting that "we need to know what causes irrationality and what we can do to fix ...
Posted in Cognitive Science, Philosophy | No Comments »
Monday, May 8th, 2017
Christopher Hitchens has followed in the footsteps of Steve Harrigan and subjected himself to the process known as 'waterboarding' in order to be able to report more insightfully on just what it is that is the focus of so much controversy. He reports that it is clearly torture and that ...
Posted in Philosophy, Politics | No Comments »
Monday, May 8th, 2017
A: Imagine this
B: Look at this
Something big wrapped in plastic
Christo Javacheff (2000) Wrapped Reichstag Project for Berlin
A pickled cow
Damien Hirst (1995) Mother and Child, Divided
Some bricks
William Anastasi (1964) En Route (Stack of Bricks) Originally untitled
A toilet
Marcel Duchamp (1917) Fountain
A bike seat with handlebars arranged like a bull
Pablo Picasso (1943) Head ...
Posted in Art, Philosophy | No Comments »
Sunday, May 7th, 2017
The following is from an email I sent on 22/03/2007. I thought I might as well keep it here as anywhere.
Some people have pointed out that wikipedia articles often say true things. That may very well be so. In fact it might even be the case that, in general, it ...
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Sunday, May 7th, 2017
From Megan McArdle
A commenter claims:
Umm, you can make "corporations" (or engineers) give us more fuel-efficient cars simply by increasing fuel efficiency standards. If they passed a law tomorrow that said all cars sold by 2010 must get 45mpg, Detroit could do that pretty easily. They just don't, because they don't ...
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Sunday, May 7th, 2017
The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology has issued a report, "The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants," which declares that the ‘dignity’ of plants must be considered in our handling of them. Apparently "living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are ...
Posted in Philosophy, Politics | No Comments »
Friday, January 16th, 2015
The Thread in the Labyrinth
One fine July morning, under a pounding sun, I began to wonder where we had come from, where we were going, and what we were doing on this Earth.
Posted in Philosophy, Texts | No Comments »
Friday, January 16th, 2015
Recommended Reading
Shakespeare, Tragedies
Bible: (Ecclesiastes)
Nagel, T. (1971) “The Absurd.”The Journal of Philosophy 68, pp. 716-27.
Camus, A. (1942) Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Editions Gallimard:Paris
Introduction
The question of the Meaning of Life is one of those questions that the layman thinks should be at the very heart of the philosophical ...
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Monday, November 10th, 2014
At Harry’s Place Gene is seeking suggestions for a list of books that are appropriate for the ‘Decent Left’. His readers are an erudite bunch and have come up with a vast number of suggestions. I’ve collected the good suggestions from that post and its comments here.
Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: ...
Posted in Philosophy | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, September 24th, 2014
There is a question whether Yoga is necessarily a religion or whether it is possible to be a practitioner and remain, for example, a good Christian. Now, ‘Yoga’ is the name of a wide variety of beliefs and practices – we might compare it to the Dao of the classical ...
Posted in Philosophy, Religion, Yoga | No Comments »