Category Archives: philosophy

The IQ2 debate: awful arguments from an archbishop

Posted by Chris Hallquist on October 7, 2011 12 comments

Last month, Russell Blackford took part in a debate in the Australian “Intelligence Squared” series on the topic “atheists are wrong.” The video is now available on ABC’s website. There were six (!) speakers in the debate, and Russell was by far the best. Jane Caro was funny and made some good points, though her [...]

“Takes seriously the question”

Posted by Chris Hallquist on September 19, 2011 5 comments

I haven’t been blogging much lately, but this book review by Gary Gutting is right in my wheelhouse. It reviews a book by Philip Kitcher, and spends a lot of time talking about why he’s so much better than Dawkins. In particular: Even more important, Kitcher takes seriously the question of whether atheism can replace [...]

Skepticism is false

Posted by Chris Hallquist on August 23, 2011 10 comments

Recently, Jen McCreight (a.k.a. “Blag Hag”) did a post complaing about a Feministe blogger who declared herself a “sketpic” in that “I don’t think you can know things. I mean know them, know them. Not feel them, not experience them… but KNOW them.” Jen responded that Skepticism is not some ideology where one cannot know [...]

The secret to being rational (maybe)

Posted by Chris Hallquist on August 10, 2011 5 comments

Most people are crazy. But I think I may have discovered the secret to not being crazy. Here it is: When you’re trying to make sense of the world, you can’t care what other people will think. Specifically, if you are worried that people will think less of you for believing something, you have to [...]

Is studying philosophy beneficial?

Posted by Chris Hallquist on July 22, 2011 38 comments

From xkcd: Guy: “I used to think correlation implied causation. Then I took a statistics class. Now I don’t. Girl: Sounds like the class helped. Guy: Well, maybe. The guy’s worry in this comic sounds silly, but it’s actually a fairly good depiction of how I feel whenever someone asks/tells me, “You have a lot [...]