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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.
By David Brown | Posted at 15:3:21
Freud: the last great Enlightenment thinker (Prospect 12-14-11)
Freud's ideas are today not simply rejected as false. They are repudiated as being dangerous or immoral; the “gloomy mythology” of warring instincts is condemned as a kind of slander on the species, the fundamental nobility of which it is sacrilege to deny. To be sure, righteous indignation has informed the response to Freud's thought from the beginning. But its new strength helps explain one of the more remarkable features of intellectual life at the start of the 21st century, a time that in its own eyes is more enlightened than any other: the intense unpopularity of Freud, the last great Enlightenment thinker.
Jan 25, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 14:27:59
A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond (NY Times 1-19-12)
IN 1905, at age 55, Sir William Osler, the most influential physician of his era, decided to retire from the medical faculty of Johns Hopkins. In a farewell speech, Osler talked about the link between age and accomplishment: The “effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of 25 and 40—these 15 golden years of plenty.”
In comparison, he noted, “men above 40 years of age” are useless. As for those over 60, there would be an “incalculable benefit” in “commercial, political and professional life, if, as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.”
Jan 20, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 9:5:41
What Happened Before the Big Bang? The New Philosophy of Cosmology (The Atlantic 1-19-12)
Last May, Stephen Hawking gave a talk at Google's Zeitgeist Conference in which he declared philosophy to be dead. In his book The Grand Design, Hawking went even further. “How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Traditionally these were questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead,” Hawking wrote. “Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.”
In December, a group of professors from America's top philosophy departments, including Columbia, Yale, and NYU, set out to establish the philosophy of cosmology as a new field of study within the philosophy of physics. The group aims to bring a philosophical approach to the basic questions at the heart of physics, including those concerning the nature, age and fate of the universe. This past week, a second group of scholars from Oxford and Cambridge announced their intention to launch a similar project in the United Kingdom.
Jan 17, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 10:34:0
Teachers Matter. Now What? (The Nation 1-15-12)
Last month, economists at Harvard and Columbia released the largest-ever study of teachers' “value-added” ratings-a controversial mathematical technique that measures a teacher's effectiveness by looking at the change in his students' standardized test scores from one year to the next, while controlling for student demographic traits like poverty and race.
Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff analyzed the test scores and family tax returns of 2.5 million Americans over a twenty-year period, from 1989 to 2009. The team concluded that students who have teachers with high value-added ratings are more likely to attend college and earn higher incomes, and are less likely to become pregnant teens.
By David Brown | Posted at 10:11:49
'Mein Kampf' Extracts To Be Sold in Germany (Der Spiegel 1-17-12) LINK BROKEN
The Bavarian Finance Ministry takes a similarly strict view of the planned publication of “Mein Kampf.” It declared: “Permission to publish volumes isn't granted in Germany or abroad.” It added that Bavaria would use “all means at its disposal” to fight copyright infringements. Their aim was to prevent the spread of National Socialist propaganda and to send a “clear signal” of opposition to its content, it continued.
McGee regards that as nonsense. “Mein Kampf is an extremely bad book, it is badly written, has awkward language and no internal logic,” he says. “The thoughts are strewn across the whole book.” But he adds that one can only recognize its insanity if one confronts the text.
In McGee's edition, each page contains a column of original text alongside critical commentary. “We're aware of the dark power of this book but it stems from the fact that no one has read it. The aura of being forbidden accounts for its myth,” said the publisher.
By David Brown | Posted at 9:30:43
The Lure of the Peak—Philip Kitcher reviews Derek Parfit's On What Matters (New Republic 1-11-12)
One prediction is almost undeniable. On What Matters will be the subject of innumerable graduate seminars, a book to be pored over for weeks and months by apprentice philosophers and their mentors, a source for journal articles that will refine a principle here or challenge an argument there. It will be a paradigm in the original, uncorrupted sense of the word, one that will give rise to a professional practice of philosophizing. But will it-or should it-have an impact on broader cultural discussions, shaping future thoughts about what we ought to do or want or aspire to become?
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