Over at his website, Sean Carroll has called my attention to a paper by David Bourget and David J. Chalmers called “What do philosophers believe?” (free download here, reference below). I must admit I’ve only scanned the paper, but the interesting results (highlighted by Sean) reflect whether or not the philosophers agree with various viewpoints and […]
Alert reader Dennis called my attention to a new article in aeon Magazine (free online) by poet/philosopher Troy Jollimore. The piece is on secular ethics, is called “Godless but good,” and has the subtitle, “There’s something in religious tradition that helps people be ethical. But it isn’t actually their belief in God.” Jollimore’s thesis is […]
I wasn’t going to prolong my interchange with Eric MacDonald about “ways of knowing,” as I think we’ve both made our disagreement clear (and let me emphasize again the affection and respect I have for the man), but I want to make a few points connected with Eric’s latest response to me at at Choice […]
A while back Marc Hauser, a psychology professsor at Harvard, was accused of research misconduct, which included selective use of or even fabrication of data. I suspended judgment until an official University investigation found Hauser guilty of eight instances of scientific misconduct. Harvard suspended Hauser for a year, not allowing him to teach, and he subsequently […]
by Greg Mayer Three gorilla brothers, Kesho, Alf, and Evindi, were recently reunited at Longleat Safari Park, after Kesho had been separated as part of a breeding program. As reported in an article in The Sun (entitled “Gorillas in the Missed”!), and visible in a slideshow at the BBC, the reunion has gone quite well. There […]
UPDATE: I wrote Frans, who has read this post and many of the readers’ comments, and he said this (quoted with his permission): Funny that some commentators think that obviously all animals (e.g. hamsters) would do the same, because when we first published this study no one believed that this reaction was possible in animals. […]
O tempora! O mores! As the BBC reports, a publication about the behavior of Adélie penguins, written by George Murray Levick after joining the 1910 Antarctic expedition of Captain Scott, has just come to light after more than a century. Apparently Levick was so scandalized by the depraved and salacious behavior of the penguins that […]
I love it when people like Michael Ruse and Josh Rosenau go after me, for their continued acrimony assures me that I’m on the right track. This week, in his continuing attacks on “scientism,” Ruse singles me out for being misguided about morality. And, in the process, he contradicts himself in a confusing farrago of […]
I want to point out two pieces by website comrades that appeared today; both are worth reading. Over at EvolutionBlog, Jason continues his survey of scriptural morality in a nice post called “Is the Bible a reliable guide to morality?” He’s discussing an essay by David Lose on PuffHo in which Lose, while acknowledging that […]
Alert reader Sigmund called my attention to a 3-minute video on the BBC News website, “Ashamed to die: stigma of HIV/Aids in America’s south.” (The title comes, as the site notes, from an upcoming book by Andrew Skeritt.) Rather than rewrite Sigmund’s take, I’ll just reproduce it here. Do watch the video. I thought I’d […]
