This post in the seventh in a series on Science, Technology, and Society. The previous post in the series is here, and the next post is here. All posts in the series have previously appeared on the Partially Examined Life group page on Facebook. “Science, it would seem, is not sexless: he is a man, a father and infected too.” Virginia Woolf “This is not about women doing Continue Reading …
Science, Technology and Society VI: David Bloor and the Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge
This post in the sixth in a series on Science, Technology, and Society. The previous post in the series is here, and the next post is here. All posts in the series have previously appeared on the Partially Examined Life group page on Facebook. "The aim of physiology is to explain the organism in health and disease; the aim of mechanics is to understand machines which work Continue Reading …
Science, Technology and Society V: Imre Lakatos
This post in the fifth in a series on Science, Technology, and Society. The previous post in the series is here, and the next post is here. All posts in the series have previously appeared on the Partially Examined Life group page on Facebook. "Einstein's results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or Continue Reading …
Why Substance Matters
Samuel Johnson's refutation of Bishop Berkeley's immaterialism, which says that matter does not exist, is one of those slightly famous moments in the history of philosophy. As the story goes, Johnson and his friends stood outside a church and complained about "Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter." They did not believe the idea but did not Continue Reading …
Science, Technology & Society I: Francis Bacon
This post in the first in a new series on Science, Technology, and Society. The next post is here. All posts in the series have previously appeared on the Partially Examined Life group page on Facebook. INTRODUCTION What is science? In general, answers to this question fall between two poles. The first is the traditional view of science--that it is a process of discovery Continue Reading …
The Creation of a Superintelligence and the End of Inquiry
Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence is a book that imagines how we should go about dealing with a super-AI, should it come about. The thesis of the book seems to be this: if a superintelligence were to be constructed, there would be certain dangers we'd want to apprise ourselves of and prepare ourselves for, and the book is a precis, essentially, for dealing with some of those Continue Reading …
Some Questions on Aesthetics and Art
I recently finished reading Noel Carroll's remarkable book Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction, and the result was a newfound appreciation for aesthetics and art, and it even caused me to change my mind regarding some of the untested assumptions I had regarding art. For example, I regularly meet with a writing group and we workshop short stories. The other guys in Continue Reading …
Can anarchism be defended?
Robert Nozick tries to knock out anarchism as a possible political theory in his argument for the Minimal State. But does he really knock it out? Or can anarchism as a political theory be defended? And what is at stake? In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick imagines a world in which, as if by an invisible hand, society moves away from Anarchy toward the Minimal Continue Reading …
The Wild and the Good
While Henry David Thoreau was conducting his life experiment, living simply and deliberately in a cabin alongside Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts in 1845, he began to feel that “[t]he wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar.” In Walden, he wrote, “I find myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and Continue Reading …
Nozick on Metaphysics, Yoga, and, Um, Self-Gratification
Big, meaty questions, those we tend to associate with metaphysics, inhabit the intellectual ecosystem like slaughtered prey on the plains. Once the lions of science take them down, carrion seekers—religion vultures, philosophy maggots—take over to see that the bones are picked clean, and whenever we gnaw at them, we could be said to be doing philosophy, at least in some way. Continue Reading …
Thoreauly Ponderous
Our present relationship to technology can hardly be compared to the situation Thoreau faced in 1854, when Walden was first published. American attitudes toward nature began to shift in his lifetime, as steamboats and railroads appeared on the scene. The advent of such penetrating technologies meant that the ordering force of civilization had gained a powerful new advantage in Continue Reading …
Thoreau on Over-Eating
It's been suggested that my questioning of Thoreau's (lack of) methodology was light on textual analysis. So here's an example for y'all's consideration. Wes quoted a passage from Ch. 11 ripping on over-eaters (section 5 in the annotated version): "The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or Continue Reading …
Cavell and Pirsig on Emerson’s Revolution
About an hour into their discussion the PEL guys (minus Seth) briefly grappled with the meaning of Emerson's revolution. This revolution will be wrought, Emerson thought, by a "domestication of Culture" with a capital "C." Should we take "domestication" to mean some kind of taming, or does it mean that "Culture" should be brought home in some sense? This revolution, Emerson Continue Reading …
Emersonian America
If you ever sign up for a class on Pragmatism, there's a good chance you'll find Emerson on the syllabus. In fact, you're likely to find "The American Scholar" and "Self-Reliance" among the earliest reading assignments. Emerson was a poet and a prophet rather than a philosopher but his vision deeply informed American Pragmatism, particularly the Pragmatism of William James. Continue Reading …
Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” and the Ethics of Authenticity
Anyone reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay “Self-Reliance” (1841) for the first time is likely to be taken by his call to us, his Dear Readers, to trust in ourselves, be our own persons, arrive at our own insights. He writes, “To believe your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.” And no surprise that the language Continue Reading …
Emerson on the Over-Soul
In our Emerson discussion, Wes and Dylan didn't seem too interested in trying to figure out Emerson's religious/metaphysical views, which were drawn on in the essays we read but which were not their central feature. I think (as does Thoreau, who incidentally we're talking about next) that reading him in a secular vein is ultimately more rewarding, but my complaints about how Continue Reading …
Nadler on Immortality for Maimonides vs. Spinoza
I'd like to clarify my comment on the podcast about how the emphasis on rationality as it regards the afterlife is common to Maimonides and Spinoza. I'm looking here at a review by Martin Lin of Steven Nadler's book Spinoza's Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind. Now, Nadler is my go-to local Spinoza scholar--you can see him here and here--and he's the guy Seth was Continue Reading …
Bruno Latour and the Relationship Between Science and Religion
[From Lynda Walsh] One of the threads we touched on in the Oppenheimer and the Rhetoric of Science podcast was the relationship between science and religion. It came up because Oppenheimer frequently mused on this relationship and because the main argument of my book is that the political role that science advisers now play is a mutated version of the role originally Continue Reading …
Traumatic Roots of Heidegger’s Fall into Nazism
“We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.”― Albert Camus, The Fall What accounts for Heidegger's fall from grace into Nazism? This topic is touched on in the episode on Being and Time. Are we all vulnerable to the same or some Continue Reading …
Education and Schopenhauer’s “Thinking for Oneself”
In Arthur Schopenhauer's essay “On Thinking for Oneself” (1851), he writes that there are few people who possess a natural love of learning and that they will only learn from others if they find something that triggers an innate interest inside themselves. Thinking must be kindled, like a fire by a draught; it must be sustained by some interest in the matter in hand. This Continue Reading …