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Sherlock Holmes and mathematics. The recent movie, not the books.
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Do you really learn from lectures? (I never did – I have much preferred the professors just hand out their lectures)
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What can neuroscience teach us about evil? My favorite bit, Will Wilkinson says that the recent Slate article “confirms my impression that neuroscientists think the ability to fabricate colorful and misleading technicolor pictures of brains license them to philosophize with impunity.”
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Heidegger, realism, and OOO Very nice post. I'm still working through Harman. I favor the "hyper-realist" readings of Derrida and Heidegger regardless of whether they are the thinkers own. The too speculative nature of OOO makes me pretty uncomfortable though.
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Chris H. has a blog up on theory, culture and Mormonism. We're ideologically pretty separated (he's a liberal, I'm conservative, he's a neo-Kantian of sorts ethically whereas probably Levinas and Derrida come closest to my ethical views to the degree I have any) Still I always enjoy my discussions with him.
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Russell Fox responds to that hack job on Mormons in Harper's. Also a response at the Deseret News.
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Only 15% of scientists at major universities think there is a conflict between science and religion. I'm actually surprised it's that low. I guess the New Atheists have been less persuasive than it appeared. More surprising was that a majority saw both science and religion as "valid avenues of knowledge."
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More on faster than light neutrinos from the ever wonderful xkcd.
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Scientists can now safely sequence the genome of a fetus. Should they? I'd say yes but I can understand why some anti-abortion people might disagree. It's interesting since we chose not to get the Down Syndrome test on our children since of course we'd not abort had we discovered the disorder.
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Americans over-report church attendance. (Linked to in the comments to one of Razib's posts) It's from a year ago but was interesting I thought you folks might like it. This issue of the difference between what one does and self-reporting is a constant one to keep in mind when evaluating certain polls.
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More Entries

The Problem of Extra-Semiotic Entities

I fully confess that I may be reading Derrida through too Peircean a lens. I can but say that if I do it is a fruitful way to read. Given that the following excerpt from Kelly Parker’s excellent The Continuity of Peirce’s Thought might be in order.

Harman on Derrida’s Realism

Sorry I’ve not posted for so long. I’ve just been too ridiculously busy. I did want to draw your attention to an interesting post of Graham Harman on Derrida’s realism. I wish I had time to comment on it. On the one hand I’m one of those who think Derrida’s a realist but I don’t [...]

Derrida and OOO

I’ve not done anything on OOO in over a year. I’ve just been too ridiculously busy. I have a bunch of Graham Harman’s books sitting here beside me on my nightstand waiting to be returned to. I’m hoping I can get back into them next week. However I was reading something by Levi today which [...]

The Derrida Debate

There’s an other debate about Derrida going on in various blogs. Deconstruction Inc has a nice round up. It seems fairly related to that debate from last year tied to OOO over whether Derrida was a realist or not. Whether he is or not (I think he is) I think that this way of reading [...]

Best Introduction to Derrida?

The blog Deconstruction, Inc. had up an interesting question about what the best introduction to Derrida would be. For pure Derridean texts I have to agree that some of the interviews are a good place to start since Derrida is far less “demonstrative” in those texts. Derrida speaking clearly is often better to get started [...]

Some Quick Thoughts on Derrida and Plotinus

Sorry. Still behind. But Will had up a great post on Derrida and OOO. It immediately brought to mind some old thoughts of mine on Derrida and Plotinus. Effectively I think OOO is a kind of scholastic realism which acknowledges a kind of Heideggarian “like” withdrawal of the object. That is one considers the object [...]

Derridean OOP

Just a quick set of thoughts. I still am planning on engaging with Harman. I just want to do a rigorous job with it. In the meantime I have been thinking a lot about object – object relations in the kinds of thought I tend to be most sympathetic towards. As I’ve long said I [...]

Derrida and Animals

There’s a great essay on Derrida and Animals at Deconstruction Inc. I’ve not read the whole thing yet. But I wanted to pass along the link to everyone else nonetheless. The problem I ponder is that if Derrida approaches animals from a notion of hospitality or “letting be” then exactly why does this same logic [...]

One Last One on Realism

One last post on realism. Graham has up a post on how everyone wants to be a realist. I think this really brushes under the rug what is the real bone of contention. (No pun intended) What kind of realism? I think some are shocked that people defend Derrida as a realist while never asking [...]

Peirce & OOP

OK, last post on OOP. I promise. It’s just not fair to discuss it until I know it better otherwise I’ll just end up critiquing a strawman. That said something obvious struct me while thinking about Peirce (who talks about objects a lot given their place in his semiotics) and OOP. The main focus of [...]

Derrida and Basic Ontology

There’s been a whole lot of discussion at the various OOP related blogs the past few days on Derrida. Most of it appears to be tied to some discussions over at Levi’s blog. Graham talks about it here and then some additional comments here. Levi then chimes in as well. There’s two interesting aspects to [...]

Trumpery, Heidegger and Derrida

Graham Harman has had up a few posts on what he calls trumpery. The latest includes some bits about Heidegger and Derrida. First let me quote the Derridean bit. Orthodox Derridean: “…as in the shallow and naive charge that Derrida ‘reduces the world to a text.’” Comment: But Derrida does reduce the world to a [...]

Heidegger and Epistemology

One thing I’ve long wondered about is how to think about epistemology. On the one hand some of the approaches to epistemology common in the analytic tradition seem a bit off to me. I’ve not gone through the details of how this affects the practical reasoning, but clearly some of the critiques that Heidegger leveled [...]

Thoughts on Derrida and Realism

I thought I was a bit alone in how I read Derrida. I always took him as a bit of a realist – although not a realist of the correspondence sort. That is he opposes the traditional story since Descartes of a clear inside and outside. In this story realism is an account of how [...]

Beyond Realism and Idealism

I’ve been reading, off and on, various blogs by speculative realists. Since I’m still recovering my health I’ve not delved into any of their formal works yet. (Plus I still have some Badiou and Davidson to finish before starting any new projects) Still, some of the blog posts, especially by Harman, really make me think. [...]

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