Bertrand Russell once went on a radio program and suggested, as an example of conjugating an irregular verb, “I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.” It’s nice that he did this on radio, because it meant the masses got treated to a wonderful bit of linguistics, but it’s a shame the [...]
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Reposed Uncrediblity: Haloween in Madison
Posted by Chris Hallquist on October 31, 2008
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>>>This is something I tried to repost back in July, but it caused weird techincal difficulties for my blog. At the time, I was only reposting it because I liked it, but with Halloween being today it’s suddenly relevant again. First published 30 October 2005.<<< The Halloween festivities here in Madison are a draw for [...]
Aphorism decay
Posted by Chris Hallquist on October 30, 2008
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Old post from Christian CADRE complaining that Dawkins says the gaps in the fossil record are explicable. There are good reasons for thinking this–most organisms will never become fossils, and there’s reason to think that speciation happens relatively quickly–emphasis on relatively, that is relative to geological time–because it tends to be spurred by ecological changes [...]
Pseudoreductionism
Posted by Chris Hallquist on October 30, 2008
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In discussion of science and the mind, there’s a line of thinking that goes like this: if everything is physical, then stuff like emotions and thought and the talk therapy of clinical psychology are downgraded. Last month I wrote a post for the Biology of Mind class weblog about dualists trying to use this view [...]
Consciousness and Intelligent Design
Posted by Chris Hallquist on October 30, 2008
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You need to read this post by David Chalmers on attempts by the IDiots to appropriate the issue of consciousness. Here’s the skinny: Scientific and philosophical interest in consciousness has been going strong for a decade or two. Lots of interesting stuff there. A limited form of dualism is taken seriously, if not widely embraced, [...]