philosophy

Corporations Destroying The Planet deprogram on USTREAM. Politics 

The idea that we can fully comprehend reality is an illusion - in some cases, a dangerous one.

The gourmet's ongoing failure to think in moral terms

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

Sometimes it is hard to know where politics ends and metaphysics begins: when, that is, the stakes of a political dispute concern not simply a clash of competing ideas and values but a clash about what is real and what is not, what can be said to exist on its own and what owes its existence to an other. The seething anger that seems to be an indigenous aspect of the Tea Party movement arises, I think, at the very place where politics and metaphysics meet, where metaphysical sentiment becomes political belief. More than their political ideas, it is the anger of Tea Party members that is already reshaping our political landscape.

In "Future Generations: Further Problems," and Part Four of Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit raises many perplexing questions. Although some think his ingenious arguments little more than delightful puzzles, I believe they challenge some of our deepest beliefs. In this article, I examine some of Parfit's arguments, focusing mainly on "The Mere Addition Paradox." If my analysis is correct, Parfit's arguments have extremely interesting and important implications that not even Parfit realized.

"rough cut to the feature film about AI, robots, the singularity, and the 21st century"

And yet in the more than 30 interviews I conducted with soldiers who have returned from the long current wars, what I heard was the wish to let go of the Stoic armor. They wanted to feel and process the loss. They wanted to register the complex inner moral landscape of war by finding some measure of empathy with their own emotions. One retired Army major put it flatly to me, "I've been sucking it up for 25 years, and I'm tired of it." For some, like this officer, the war after the war is unrelenting. It is about psychological trauma and multiple suicide attempts, exacerbated by his own sense of shame in not being the Stoic warrior that he thought he could and should be. He went to war to prove himself, but came home emasculated.

Why More Equality? Our thirty years research shows that: 1) In rich countries, a smaller gap between rich and poor means a happier, healthier, and more successful population. Just look at the US, the UK, Portugal, and New Zealand in the top right of this graph, doing much worse than Japan, Sweden or Norway in the bottom left.

Humans are hive enthusiasts. We love social insects like ants and bees, and we pay extra attention to Star Trek episodes when the you-will-be-assimilated Borg are featured. But what exactly is so interesting about hives? They're interesting to us because, en masse, they amount to a superorganism, with analogs to organisms at the genetic level, reproductive level, and the behaviour level. Also, just as larger, more complex, organisms tend to have a greater number of specialized cell types, larger ant colonies tend to have a greater number of "ant types"

Uncertain times in a quickly changing world behoove us to question our judgment.

mostly philosophy by thinkahol

WHAT is the difference between a sceptic and a denier? When I call myself a sceptic, I mean that I take a scientific approach to the evaluation of claims. A climate sceptic, for example, examines specific claims one by one, carefully considers the evidence for each, and is willing to follow the facts wherever they lead. A climate denier has a position staked out in advance, and sorts through the data employing "confirmation bias" - the tendency to look for and find confirmatory evidence for pre-existing beliefs and ignore or dismiss the rest. Scepticism is integral to the scientific process, because most claims turn out to be false. Weeding out the few kernels of wheat from the large pile of chaff requires extensive observation, careful experimentation and cautious inference. Science is scepticism and good scientists are sceptical. Denial is different. It is the automatic gainsaying of a claim regardless of the evidence for it - sometimes even in the teeth of evidence. Denialism is typically driven by ideology or religious belief, where the commitment to the belief takes precedence over the evidence. Belief comes first, reasons for belief follow, and those reasons are winnowed to ensure that the belief survives intact.

Atheism, religion, God, politics, philosophy, and all the other stuff we are supposed to put out of our minds.

German philosopher of mind Thomas Metzinger is one of the world's top researchers on consciousness, instrumental in its renaissance as a respectable problem for scientific enquiry. From out-of-body experiences to lucid dreaming, anarchic hand syndrome to phantom limbs, his investigations have taken him to places few dare to go. Be spooked, bewildered and amazed.

A biannual e-journal published by Humboldt State University in Aracata, California, source of some of the articles which I'll be posting about, on my homegroup.