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Glossary of free-will debate terms
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How to subscribe to LDS-Herm. An LDS theology and continental philosophy mailing list.
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Economics and utilitarianism
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The new Philosopher's Carnival is up.
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On the Null set
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The book Shopping for God and Mormonism. Interesting discussion in the comments.
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FPR on John's account of Christmas is Revelation. I bring up 1 Ne 11 which is tied to Rev 12.
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FPR on Myth analysis and Mormonism. I tend to take the poststructuralist skepticism although I confess I have a lot of myth-criticism books on my shelf.
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Against Evolutionary Psychology explanations of women with narrow waists and big hips. EP in my view oversimplifies things and produces "just so" explanations. I honestly can't figure out why they are so popular in the press.
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Should cousins be banned from marrying? Would anyone want to anymore? For some reason I always think of rural areas where people have lived stably for a long time with little outflow or inflow of populations. Where is that true now?
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Razib on the follies of economics. I don't know enough to say much beyond noticing that many economic majors have horrible math skills. Not all do of course. But when math is such a big part of modeling it always left me with heavy skepticism towards the profession. Undoubtedly unfairly so since there are many very well versed in math and statistics. I'm also skeptical of the "rational actor" model that is behind so much.
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... the production of spontaneous facial expressions of emotion is not dependent on observational learning but simultaneously demonstrates a learned component to the social management of expressions... (HT: Gene Expression) Not that surprising all things considered. I suspect most human phenomena ends up being about 50-50 learned vs. wired. But there's still a lot of folks who push the nurture basis way too much.
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Happiness and those around you. Argues your happiness doesn't depend upon your friends.
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Reading Burn After Reading. Coen meet Freud.
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Public vs. Public Morality
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Vallicella on Eliminative Materialism. Also see his post on what Eliminative Materialism is.
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Richard refutes Anselm. I think just thinking through all the ways to refute the ontological argument are interesting. It's an excellent problem to think through. I like Kant's existence is not a property approach best. Marion also has a discussion about whether the ontological argument is ontological at all. I'm not sure I agree with Marion (on numerous things) but it is interesting.
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Far Side reenactments (HT: BCC)
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What is the Mormon answer to the meaning of life? I always took us as more Nietzschean than Utilitarian. That is I think happiness isn't the meaning of life but merely something we obtain while pursuing it.
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Nauvoo polygamy. Fantastic discussion that made me reconsider several things. (Although the trolls come in after a while) Also a the earlier post on the same which has some great comments as well.
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FPR on the Divine Council in Hebrew literature.
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Brains and spirituality. Or why discovering cognitive units for spirituality should be expected and not be shocking to the religious person.
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Intuitions of free will. Not at all unexpectedly different people have different intuitions.
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The Sorites paradox and non-standard arithmetic. Great post. This issue of vagueness is one of my favorite philosophical topics.
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Volokh makes the case that voters of both parties are ignorant. The scariest thing about our democracy is how elections are rarely decided on the issues.
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More Entries

On Intuitions in Argument

Who needs intuitions? (HT: Richard) I’ve not read this one yet but from the abstract it looks very interesting. It argues that it’s the propositional content of intuitions and not the psychological fact of intuition that plays an evidentiary role in philosophical argument.

Philosopher’s Carnival

The 71st Philosopher’s Carnival. Once again a really stand out carnival.

Dreyfus on Heidegger and Husserl

Dreyfus on Heidegger and Husserl on YouTube. The pompous introductory music is great. (HT: Another Heidegger Blog)

Science Under Attack?

I was listening to the podcast of NPR’s Science Friday as I was packing chocolate. Last Friday’s show included a discussion about that Louisiana Creationism issue I mentioned last week. The Science Friday Show went well beyond that though.

Conservatives Happier?

Mixing Memory on those studies that conservatives are happier than liberals. I’m skeptical but who knows.

Monkey Symbolic Manipulation

Symbolic manipulation in monkeys. I’d add that how they are manipulated matters. I think Peirce’s three categories of signs is useful here. (Perhaps I smell a post coming?)

Low vs. High

Great post at Cognitive Daily where what sound we hear depends upon the words we read.. Read positive words and you identify high tones better and read negative words and you identify low tones better. Is this, as the comments suggest, associated with how deep voiced predators were?

Davidson: First Person Authority

I’m slowly going through some of my Davidson texts. I’m starting with Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. This is a procession through roughly the first person perspective to the shared perspective to the objective.
So the first obvious question is why we should assume that first person introspection is so trustworthy. Or, [...]

Cancer Advances

P. Z. Meyers has a fantastic post on advances in cancer treatment.

Anatomy of a False Memory

Anatomy of a false memory. Great post. I’ve been fascinated by false memories for a few years now. I’ve noticed the phenomena even in myself at times - you have distinct memories of small events that never happened. (Usually I notice this when it’s about putting something away and my wife [...]

Literary Theory

French Theory’s American adventures and

Nate on God & Promising

Nate Oman on the oddity of God promising.

Louisiana Puts Creationism in the Schools

Louisiana appears to have passed a law teaching Creationism in school.

Mentos-Diet Coke Explosion Explained

Mentos-Diet Coke explosion explained at New Scientist. Goes beyond the famous Mythbusters episode.

Alien Doritos Ad

Scientists broadcast Doritos ad to aliens. No. Seriously.

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