Hemant has a scary post about a student threatening to sue a school because she was doing poorly in philosophy. Specifically, she alleged she was going to be given a bad grade just for believing in God. This is a good opportunity to expand on my introductory philosophy lecture, which, since I was trying to [...]
Monthly Archives: June 2008
Not news
Posted by Chris Hallquist on June 16, 2008
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A list of news headlines which, if not exactly obvious, aren’t exactly surprising, either: *Bush disagrees with court’s Guantanamo ruling (AP) *Iranian leader calls Bush a ‘wicked man’ *Lawmakers say Capitol computers hacked by Chinese *McCain says gas prices won’t drop and could rise *Dems reluctant to take on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ *Alcohol craving [...]
Another bogus accusation of racism
Posted by Chris Hallquist on June 16, 2008
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Eugene Volokh informs us: Brigitte Bardot convicted of racism for criticizing Islam. For why this is dumb, see here.
Hey kids! Opioids and cannibinoids are good for you!
Posted by Chris Hallquist on June 15, 2008
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This edition of Science Sunday was inspired by a somewhat-old post at Liberal Debutante, which begins as follows: Apparently a new drug to battle obesity would have effects on children’s brains… Other researchers have found that cannabinoid receptor blockers interfere with neural connectivity in rat brains — a phenomenon that in humans is associated with [...]
The need for philosophy: a reply to Hanson
Posted by Chris Hallquist on June 15, 2008
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Awhile back, Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias launched a critique of philosophers which contained this example of what he thinks is wrong: *Rationality of disagreement* — Economists studied this since Aumann ’76, but mostly as a theory foil, not to critique human disagreement. Recently philosophers have written dozens of papers on when it is rational [...]