This last part of the review (see parts one and two) is mostly for the sake of completeness. Thus, it will be shorter, but I’ll be talking about something a lot of people care about: the status of our scientific beliefs. At the end of his chapter on Plantinga, Gutting makes a claim that he [...]
Category Archives: science
Review of Gary Gutting’s What Philosophers Know, part 3
Posted by Chris Hallquist on January 17, 2011
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What’s Wrong with Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape (review)
Posted by Chris Hallquist on January 11, 2011
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I’m getting caught up on reading over winter break, and among other things just finished Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape. Initially, I was going to say that while I think there are problems with Harris’ view, I didn’t think any of the commentary I’d read had quite gotten right what those problems are. However, via [...]
Ignorance: Comparing Dawkins and Plantinga
Posted by Chris Hallquist on December 29, 2010
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A good chunk of my blogging over the next few weeks will be following up my post on leaving philosophy for neuroscience, particularly my comment about the worthwhileness of philosophy. Among other things, I’m planning on doing a (likely multi-part) review of Gary Gutting’s book What Philosophers Know, which I had mentioned in the previous [...]
Let nothing be held hostage to dogma
Posted by Chris Hallquist on October 30, 2010
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It’s tempting to see the accommodationist vs.Gnu atheist debate as a debate about two questions. One is about of principles: if science and religion do conflict, would we have to tell the truth about that? The other is about priorities: is it more important to get evolution taught in public schools, or more important to [...]
Attacking individuals vs. nebulous criticism
Posted by Chris Hallquist on August 26, 2010
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Here’s an idea that sounds, at first, very nice: when you need to criticize a bad idea, or a common sort of bad behavior, don’t say whose idea it is, or give examples of people engaging in the bad behavior. From a purely pragmatic angle, you don’t want to provoke angry reactions from the people [...]