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Steven Fuller on Liberal Humanism vs. neo-Darwinism

January 21, 2012 by Tom McDonald 38 Comments

I'm interested in this debate as a strictly philosophical observer, not as a theologian, humanist, scientist, or neo-Darwinist. And I entertain the possibility that the outcome of this dilemma may be that we have to abandon an unjustifiable confidence in the human intellect for neo-Darwinism. The secular philosopher-sociologist Steven Fuller performs here the role of  Continue Reading …

How Did We Get Here?: Fukuyama on The Origins of Political Order

December 11, 2011 by Tom McDonald 4 Comments

In his new book The Origins of Political Order,Francis Fukuyama tackles the history of the idea and its reality "from prehuman times to the French Revolution." Fukuyama works under the contemporary name of political science, but he is really one of the few people we have today intellectually able to go beyond the narrow confines of academic specialization and to give us the  Continue Reading …

Being Old in a Democracy: Peter Lawler on Plato and Us

November 28, 2011 by Tom McDonald 2 Comments

Why is oldness found so repulsive in our culture today? Why do old people feel so compelled to make themselves look like worse versions of young people through plastic surgery? The easy answer is 'it's natural', i.e., youth gives a competitive Darwinian advantage, so if we have the bio-technology available to keep ourselves younger we gotta go for it! However, one of the most  Continue Reading …

Hannah Arendt on Scientism

November 26, 2011 by Tom McDonald 7 Comments

The question of the "pernicious influence" of scientism on modern life and philosophy gets raised fairly often here at PEL. I get the sense that Wes and Seth think the influence 'quite pernicious' while Mark thinks 'not so pernicious'. (Correct me if I'm wrong guys). So I thought it would be helpful to clarify what is implied by the term, so that we might open the way for some  Continue Reading …

Can We Be Philosophical Realists?

November 16, 2011 by Tom McDonald 4 Comments

The analytic philosophy of logical positivism or logical empiricism, which dominated 20th-century Anglo-American scientific thinking, leaves philosophy with a complex and problematic legacy that must be addressed and overcome if we are to have any hope of a renewed, meaningful, philosophically rational realism. On the one hand, the positivist view of philosophy is  Continue Reading …

More Analytic vs. Continental: What is the “Situation of Reason”?

August 14, 2011 by Tom McDonald 4 Comments

The disciplinary identity of philosophy is in question. So says John McCumber in “Reshaping Reason”, where he makes a serious argument with evidence of trends pointing toward a sort of Hegelian synthesis in American philosophy to overcome the “Fantasy Island” of analytic thought and the “Subversive Struggle” of continental thought. "Fantasy Island" and "Subversive Struggle"  Continue Reading …

From Technologist to Humanist: Google’s “In-House” Philosopher

July 24, 2011 by Tom McDonald 5 Comments

I had been thinking about the PEL debate on the value of higher education, and came across this compelling story by Damon Horowitz. Did you know that Google has an "in-house philosopher"? Horowitz shares his personal story of self-transformation in this article for the Chronicle of Higher Education. With a background in software engineering, he had developed a career in the  Continue Reading …

Naturalism & Philosophical Thinking

June 17, 2011 by Tom McDonald 20 Comments

[editor's note: Here's our guest blogger Tom McDonald with a bit of original philosophizing. You can read more like this on his blog zuhanden.com. -ML] I want to pose some general questions to all readers, but especially to those scientifically inclined and favorable to a naturalistic worldview. The questions are about the naturalistic worldview that is presently normative  Continue Reading …

Naturalism & Philosophical Thinking

June 17, 2011 by Tom McDonald 20 Comments

[editor's note: Here's our guest blogger Tom McDonald with a bit of original philosophizing. You can read more like this on his blog zuhanden.com. -ML] I want to pose some general questions to all readers, but especially to those scientifically inclined and favorable to a naturalistic worldview. The questions are about the naturalistic worldview that is presently normative but  Continue Reading …

Atheists Against Atheism

May 16, 2011 by Tom McDonald 41 Comments

Not all atheists are on board with 'the four horsemen' of the New Atheism: Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens. Julian Baggini, podcaster and author of Atheism: A Very Short Introductionpoints out their generally unsophisticated grasp of religion. I met Baggini in New York last December when he came to speak to a small group of us on the subject of politics. He's British,  Continue Reading …

Greeks vs. Germans

April 27, 2011 by Tom McDonald 3 Comments

And now for something completely different: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur5fGSBsfq8 SPOILER ALERT: The Germans are disputing it! Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-analytic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming that it was offside. But  Continue Reading …

Hattiangadi on Meaning in Language

April 21, 2011 by Tom McDonald Leave a Comment

Oughts and Thoughts: Scepticism and the Normativity of Meaningis a 2007 book by Oxford philosophy professor Anandi Hattiangadi that develops a response to Saul Kripke's skepticism about whether there is a fact of meaning in a person's use of language. In Kripke's 1984 book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language,he argued, via a controversial interpretation of Wittgenstein,  Continue Reading …

Hegel vs. Eliminative Materialism in Neuroscience

April 14, 2011 by Tom McDonald 24 Comments

Paul and Patricia Churchland are researchers and advocates of eliminative materialism in neuroscience and philosophy of mind. Eliminative materialism claims that everyday concepts such as the beliefs, feelings, and desires we attribute to each other are illusions of what we should refer to as "folk psychology." They believe not only that these concepts are destined to be  Continue Reading …

Lawrence Cahoone on Rorty: Bridging Analytic and Continental Philosophy

April 12, 2011 by Tom McDonald 4 Comments

Richard Rorty: A friend of Dan Dennett (and his dreaded scientism : ). A neo-pragmatist. An analytic philosopher who began teaching around the mid-20th-century, he eventually turned against its scientism. Rorty felt that 20th-century analytic thought was going down the wrong track by taking up the same sort of epistemological foundationalist project as Descartes. Rorty saw the  Continue Reading …

Kojève on Hegel: “The Concept” is Time itself

April 10, 2011 by Tom McDonald 5 Comments

Having read many commentaries on and interpretations of Hegel's Phenomenology, I've found Alexandre Kojève's Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spiritto be the best written and most helpful. The language is terse, direct, powerful, fresh, and compelling. It's always struck me as an example of how philosophy ought to be articulated, and I  Continue Reading …

Hegel and the Negativity of the Modern Spirit

April 4, 2011 by Tom McDonald 5 Comments

[Editor's Note: Tom McDonald, guest podcaster on our Hegel episodes, has eagerly agreed to join us on the blog to share more of what he's picked up about Hegel. You can read more by Tom at zuhanden.com -ML] It's hard to overestimate how important for Hegel is Kant's critical philosophy following the Enlightenment. Kant's elaboration of 'the critical turn' in modern  Continue Reading …

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