Category Archives: Philosophy

A Celebration of Human Ingenuity

Posted on Monday 25 November 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish on The Inevitabilty In Beauty. Theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed and novelist Ian McEwan recently discussed the relationship between art and science, often agreeing that what might unite them is beauty. I like McEwan’s response: I would … Continue reading →

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The Trolley Problem

Posted on Sunday 24 November 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

NYTBR reviews not one but two books about the ‘trolley problem’, a hypothetical situation in which the decisions people make reveal how intuitive moral decisions are made differently by different people. The question is, suppose you see a runaway trolley … Continue reading →

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David McRaney 2, Gravity, Haiyan, GRR Martin

Posted on Tuesday 19 November 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

I’ve been meaning to close out my thoughts on David McRaney’s brilliant second book, YOU ARE NOW LESS DUMB, which I first posted about a month ago. First, let me follow up on his ‘narrative bias’ described in the first … Continue reading →

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To put matters at their simplest

Posted on Tuesday 29 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Reading A.C. Grayling’s The God Argument, a simplistic title that might be better replaced by its subtitle: “The Case Against Religion and for Humanism”. Grayling is a British philosopher who has written on many topics; i.e. he’s not just a … Continue reading →

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Man in the Sky

Posted on Monday 21 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Via The Dish, Embracing the Void. Making the sky into a humanlike God is a shortcut to making it legible. If you believe that there is a man in the sky, you can interpret its unpredictable cinema, its colour shifts … Continue reading →

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Thoughts of a Thursday Afternoon: After the Apocalypse

Posted on Saturday 28 September 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Every human being starts from scratch: he or she comes equipped with a mind honed by evolution for survival, prone to superstitious, self-interested thinking for the same reason, but ill-equipped to accurately perceive reality, the reality that can be deduced … Continue reading →

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Odds and Ends, 23Sep13

Posted on Monday 23 September 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Scientific American has this Michael Shermer essay about struggling with motivated reasoning– http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-we-should-choose-science-over-beliefs Give him credit — he struggles with ideological convictions in the light of evidence, and changes his mind. But finds that others at a Libertarian conference are … Continue reading →

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Plinks: Adam Frank, PZ Myers, Hendrik Hertzberg

Posted on Thursday 22 August 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Just after yesterday’s post about Donald Prothero, on “The Serious Consequences of Science Illiteracy”, comes this op-ed by scientist Adam Frank in the New York Times, which says pretty much the same thing…. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/opinion/welcome-to-the-age-of-denial.html The triumph of Western science led … Continue reading →

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Notes on Daniel Dennett, 1

Posted on Wednesday 24 July 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

I plan to post various kinds of responses to books I’ve read or am reading; some will be reviews, some will be notes with comments. This entry is one of the latter. (Note this only covers the first 60 pages … Continue reading →

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