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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

Varieties of Conservatism

The varieties of conservatism

Parties and IQ

Political parties, sex differences and IQs.

Genetic Map of Mormons

There’s an other interesting Mormon-centric post by Razbin up. It’s on the genetic map of Mormons. Aka if Mormons were a country.

Agent-Libertarianism

A new kind of agent-libertarianism? I’m not convinced that moving chance from inside the agent ala Kane to outside is going to assuage most Libertarians (like Blake) who need some kind of ontological choosing stuff.

What if Time Exists?

Sean Caroll (of Cosmic Variance) on what if time exists? Basically considers QM conceptions of time (Presentism) as accurate and reaches a Heraclitean conclusion. (I’m sure Blake will like this essay)

Dark Matter

Cosmic Variance on those dark matter stories. There were a ton but I’ll just link here.

Ocean Acidification

Ocean acidification happening 10-20x as fast as climate models predict. Yikes. Wormwood here we come.

Peirce as Scientific Mystic

Peirce as a scientific mystic. I think that, as with Heidegger, one can really overplay the mystic angle. But also as with Heidegger there’s something to be said for it.

Mormons the New Catholics?

Are Mormons the New Catholics? (In entertainment that is)

Morality in the Multiverse

Richard on morality in the multiverse. (Note this is a particular subset of multiverse theories) One of my favorite posts of Richard. It’s responding to a post I’d linked to last week at Uncertain Principles.

Continental Channel

YouTube channel all about Continental philosophy (HT: Enowning) I think I’d prefer it as podcasts but in a few places the video makes a difference. Hopefully there will be more online classes like this. (Hint, hint BYU)

History of Rome

The history of Rome as a podcast. (iTunes link)

False Memory

Create your own false memory in less than a second

Disorder Spreads

Disorder spreads. That theory that small crimes propagate has a bit more empirical evidence behind it now.

Reading Club: Ostler 2

OK, I’m back to commenting on Blake’s book. Some of you might recall that I started a reading club on Blake’s recent book Exploring Mormon Thought: Of God and Gods. Unfortunately life took a turn for the very busy and I wasn’t able to make it very far. So here’s my next [...]

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