How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results
Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:25:11 -0700 (PDT)
We have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false
positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there
is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there
is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of
the gene pool. Our brains are belief ...
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Embracing Mind: The Common Ground of Science and Spirituality
(review)
Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:10:43 -0700 (PDT)
In "Embracing Mind" Wallace and Hodel attempt to reconcile the
typically Western approach to a science of the mind with Buddhist
contemplative methods of investigating consciousness. They are
critical of the apparent predominance of scientific materialism but
aim to draw significant parallels between the theorizin ...
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Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature (review)
Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:53:32 -0700 (PDT)
Link: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4360
The nature of photographs or photography has entered our common
language to the extent that we find ourselves speaking easily of
photographic memories or photographic likenesses. We have theatre that
titles itself, "I, camera". We even ...
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Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism (review)
Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:47:24 -0700 (PDT)
In the academic circles as well as in the popular view, Boghossian
says, it has become more and more accepted to claim that there are
"many equally valid ways of knowing the world, with science being just
one of them". This view, he claims, is counterintuitive -- after all,
on practical grounds we seldom allow for ...
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Crippa spa
Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:43:26 -0700 (PDT)
Crippa spa
Constructions Tamilnadu
Constructions
http://constructsparts.blogspot.com/ ...
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Saving Secularism: The Open Interrogation of Faith
Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:18:20 -0700 (PDT)
Link: http://www.naturalism.org/secularism.htm
In his book "The Secular Conscience", philosopher Austin Dacey aims to
rally secularists and secularism against what he takes to be
increasing threats to democratic freedoms. He warns that "The West has
achieved [the founders'] dream of an open society but forsaken ...
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Christopher Hitchens: How to be a public intellectual
Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:07:05 -0700 (PDT)
Has anyone ever described themselves as an "intellectual," or given it
as the answer to the question, "And what do you do?"??? The very term
"public intellectual"??? sometimes affects me like the expression
"organic food." After all, there can't be any "inorganic"???
nourishment, and it's difficult to conceive of ...
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Why Think? The Evolution of the Rational Mind (review)
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:13:37 -0700 (PDT)
Thinking is complex, slow and cognitively expensive and rationality
does not guarantee success. Rationality only attempts to maximize the
likelihood of success, which places it squarely on a par with natural
selection. De Sousa's excellent book sets out to investigate the
relationship between rationality and natur ...
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The Mind in Nature (review)
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:09:43 -0700 (PDT)
C.B. Martin, an early proponent of the causal theory of mind, wrote
yet another volumepromoting his 'ontologically serious' realist
metaphysics and its implications for philosophical concepts of
causation, intentionality, consciousness, and the mind-body problem.
According to the preface The mind in nature has thr ...
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Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults (review)
Wed, 9 Jul 2008 08:28:55 -0700 (PDT)
If you are looking for a strange thing to do, one option is to read
something about an uncommon subject. I read several kinds of
apparently bizarre philosophies -- e.g., Hans Veihinger's "Philosophy
of As-If --", or even truly odd ones, like those of sports, film or
whatever else you wouldn't expect to find compri ...
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