onegoodmove

What is consciousness? And could robots have it? is a topic of discussion in Philosophy Now magazine. Here is an article from the issue to give you background information on the debate and perhaps spark an interest in the subject. A Ridiculously Brief Overview of Consciousness A five-minute guide to the debate by Rick Lewis. Modern philosophy of mind began with René Descartes (1596-1650) who argued that we each consist of two different entities: a material body subject to all the laws of physics and an immaterial mind, which isn’t. This theory is therefore known as Cartesian Dualism. He said that the mind was connected with the brain via the pineal gland. But exactly how, to take a very simple example, does my wish to scratch my nose result in my arm being raised and my finger making scratching motions? How can something non-physical – the mind – have a causal effect on something physical? Over the next few centuries, various modified versions of Dualism tried to address this problem. According to epiphenomenalism, for instance, the interaction was only one way: the brain affected the mind, but the mind had no effect on the brain. The mind was therefore a...

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Posted by Norm at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Go To Original Bad Moves: Genetic fallacies By Julian Baggini Cow’s milk is meant for baby cows. Which helps explain why this foodstuff is a leading cause of unwanted reactions to foods that can give rise to a variety of health issues such as nasal congestion, sinusitis, eczema and asthma. Dr John Briffa, Observer Food Monthly, August 2004 Don’t get me started on “health food”. Doesn’t anyone smell a rat when they go into a shop dedicated to “natural” remedies only to be confronted by rows and rows of bottles, pills and supplements? Why is it that it seems every infusion in the world is good for you except for the everyday, normal tea we know and love? Why are stimulants such as guarana considered good while caffeine is bad? Why are the cereals we eat all the time, such as wheat, to be avoided while all the others are fantastically healthy? Do you detect a pattern here? The only principle I can see that explains all this is that the purpose of health food shops is to make life as awkward as possible by banning us from consuming all the common foodstuffs that surround us. Virtue means taking...

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Posted by Norm at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

William Sloane Coffin Jr. is an American, a liberal, and a patriot. I can't think of a better tribute to our country on the Fourth of July than his words in this CNN Interview. Quicktime Video 8.4MB 4'21 Quicktime Required...

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Posted by Norm at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It is commonly thought that we need religion to ground our morality. Most Americans will say they would not vote for a political candidate solely on the grounds that he is an Atheist. Presumably, the objection is that he will not have the proper moral values. But consider this question asked by Socrates in The Euthyphro. "Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?" If we take the first answer that what is good is good because God says so, then we have something that is arbitrary. I'll admit it may be wise to obey the whims of an arbitrary God, but suppose he is an evil being. After all, God seems to approve of slaughtering innocents, stoning children, ethnic cleansing and so forth in the Old Testament. Suppose we take the second answer, that God approves of something because it is independently good and he must approve of the good things. Then what God says is irrelevant to what is good. When it comes to morality, God is either arbitrary or irrelevant....

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Posted by Chris Jenson at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Among a heap of books claiming that science proves God's existence emerges The Probability of God (Crown Forum, 2003), by Stephen D. Unwin that computes a probability of 67 percent. People often try to give claims the appearance of scientific credibility by couching them in terms of mathematics. A good bullshit detecting technique is to find out how the person making the claim came up with the numbers that enter into the equation. When done properly Math is internally consistent. However, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. Michael Shermer takes out the trash in the following article. Scientific American: God's Number Is Up...

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Posted by Chris Jenson at 2:16 PM | Permalink

Link review Philosophical Convictions by Richard Rorty Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister--corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used. The public becomes incensed, however, when rogue philosophers come upstairs, buttonhole the tenants and tell them that there really are no foundations--that their industrious colleagues are just providing "bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct" (F.H. Bradley's description of metaphysics). Every anti-foundationalist movement within philosophy produces a spate of books by nonphilosophers denouncing "the treason of the intellectuals" (the title of Julien Benda's 1927 attack on the pernicious influence of thinkers such as Henri Bergson and William James)....

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Posted by Norm at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The late Douglas Adams said the following in a speech, "Is there an Artificial God?" at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge U.K. September 1998. Now, the invention of the scientific method is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that. It has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, "Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? ' because you're not!" If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about...

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Posted by Chris Jenson at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto — God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger. Sometimes I think they are all the same. A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined. — Dorothy Allison...

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Posted by Norm at 11:38 AM | Permalink

You could write an entire book on logical fallacies using examples from the Bush Administration. Case in point: The White House sought on Monday to raise questions about the Massachusetts senator's credibility as Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, charged that if Kerry refused to name names "then the only alternative is that he is making it up." Fallacy: False Dilemma Definition: A limited number of options (usually two) is given, while in reality there are more options. A false dilemma is an illegitimate use of the "or" operator. Proof: Identify the options given and show (with an example) that there is an additional option. Example of additional option: Kerry could refuse to name names to avoid revealing a confidence. President Bush said on Tuesday that his Democratic rival John Kerry should back up his comments that foreign leaders want to see the Republican president defeated. The president is asking John Kerry to betray a confidence. Apparently keeping a confidence is not high on the presidents list of values. Link to Story From Dave Letterman March 15th "john kerry says that foreign leaders want him to be president, but that he can't name the foreign leaders. that's all right, president bush can't...

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Posted by Norm at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Keith Burgess-Jackson says that Andrew "Sullivan's blog would illustrate an entire course on fallacies." a statement I don't doubt. Fallacious reasoning can be found on most blogs. BJ's post begins with "Andrew Sullivan complains about having his views distorted by William Bennett. See here. Sullivan is in no position to complain about this, for he routinely distorts both the motivation for the Federal Marriage Amendment (which he disingenuously calls the "religious right amendment") and arguments against homosexual marriage. " an excellent example of the Tu Quoque Fallacy. What Mr. Sullivan distorts has nothing to do with the question of whether his views were distorted by William Bennett. BJ doesn't address that question. It appears he is using his criticism of Andrew Sullivan to avoid the question of whether Mr. Bennett is guilty of what he is accused of, distorting Mr. Sullivans views. There is no way that Mr. Sullivan's guilt can absolve Mr. Bennett from his. It is ironic that in a post on logical fallacies Mr. Jackson would let one of his own slip in. Is that a reason to dismiss his criticism of Mr. Sullivan, only if we want to engage in the same fallacy Burgess-Jackson commits. But...

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Posted by Norm at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From the October/November 2003 issue of Philosophy Now Richard Rorty is perhaps the best-known living philosopher in the Pragmatic tradition, and one of the most talked-about thinkers of the present day. He is a philosophy professor at Stanford University. Giancarlo Marchetti chatted with him about his ideas and his hopes. How did you come to study philosophy? When I was a teenager, I read Plato and Nietzsche, and thought about the issues between them. I think this is a fairly common way in which people come to take an interest in philosophy. And I happened to go to a university where philosophy was very popular. It was taught in all the courses so it was a sort of natural career to go into. Who in particular influenced you during your early studies? Various teachers at the University of Chicago: Leo Strauss, Charles Hartshorne, who was a student of Whitehead, Rudolph Carnap, quite a few different people. Which philosopher do you especially admire and why? I think the one I admire most is William James. He never lost a sense of humor about his own writing. He wrote because he enjoyed it. There's a kind of joyful exuberance to his work...

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Posted by Norm at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I'm a pragmatist in the John Dewey, Richard Rorty tradition. Many conflate pragmatism with an undisciplined relativism, a feel good anything goes attitude. They couldn't be more wrong. I found an excellent critique of pragmatism in The Philosopher's Toolkit by Julian Baggini and Peter S. Fosl. I think it will be useful in clearing up the confusion. Pragmatist critique On what basis should we accept or reject certain beliefs? Perhaps the most common answer one might receive to this question would be 'On the basis of whether the belief is true or not, of course.' But how are we best to unpack the meaning of 'true' here? Traditionally, many people have answered that true claims somehow express or mirror the nature of reality, and reality is what it is independent of whatever we think or say about it. The job of philosophy and science, from this point of view, is somehow to produce theories that picture or capture or reflect or represent that independent reality. Pragmatists, however, think that there's something wrong with this way of conceiving truth, philosophy and science. According to the pragmatists, closer scrutiny will convince you that little sense can be made of what it means...

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Posted by Norm at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)