The Laboratory Safety Song

OK I saw this at Science Blogs and had to share. The muppets do lab safety.

Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science

It’s Only a Theory has up a great post on metaphysics and the philosophy of science. It’s basically critique of Sider’s view of metaphysics. I confess I’m more on Sider’s side here. (Sider and Williamson are my two favorite analytic philosophers at the moment – even when I don’t agree with them) Sider’s point is [...]

Who Does Metaphysics

Interesting quote from NDPR’s review of Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology That the questions asked by metaphysicians should simply be left to physicists is not a criticism that those not generally skeptical of philosophical inquiry should take seriously. As philosophers, we tend to value the methodology of our own discipline and (whether [...]

Polling Beliefs and Action

Interesting post up by Megan McArdle on polls on global warming. As many have noted this week there was a 14 point drop in the number of people accepting global warming. While some of that might be explainable by persuasion by warming skeptics, I think McArdle is correct that something else is going on. She [...]

Creationism as a GOP Litmus Test?

There’s some interesting discussion about whether Creationism has become a kind of litmus test for GOP candidates. Razib, writing over at Secular Right, notes [I]t looks like 3 of the front-runners for the G.O.P. nomination are rather frank Creationists (Palin, Huckabee and Pawlenty). I’m skeptical about any of these as likely candidates (i.e., if you [...]

Musings on Matter

Vallicella’s post on matter and Working Note’s post on Derrida and matter have had me thinking today. (When not working) Of course both materialism and naturalism have long been problematic terms — often more clearly defined in terms of what the author using them opposes. Merely tying the term “matter” to physics seems insufficient even [...]

Math Comics

Review at the NYT of Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth. It is sometimes interesting to realize how many of the great mathematicians were complete lunatics by the end. The real history sometimes reminds me of H.P. Lovecraft stories (like say “The Dreams in the Witch-House”) sometimes. From the review:

Multitasking: Missing the Point?

Chris sent me an interesting story last week regarding the multitasking debate. It asks whether multitasking studies are missing the point. You probably recall the discussions on studies that those who multitask do more poorly than those who single task. Which, I think we all already knew from our personal experience. (I was honestly surprised [...]

German Mind

Brandon at Sirus posted a funny quote by Duhem on Kant: Highly skilled at deduction, the German mind is poorly endowed with common sense. It has a limitless confidence in the discursive method, whereas its confused intuition gives it only a weak assurance of the truth. Read the full quote and discussion at Sirus. He [...]

Missing Dads and Bad Behavior: Environment or Genes?

An other fascinating post from Razib. This one on the question about whether bad behavior from homes without dads is primarily due to environment (as both liberals and conservatives tend to suggest) or genes. I’d never have even thought to raise the question. It’s quite fascinating even though it doesn’t fully resolve the issue. (There [...]

Anti-Science in the Left

I’ve been a big critic of some of the ridiculous anti-science stuff that folks on the right have done. Especially some of the actions by the Bush administration (which sometimes have been egregiously politically opportunistic and other times outright anti-science). However now that Democrats are in power we’re getting that side’s anti-science. Something all the [...]

Solar Storms

We were talking about the relative quiet of the sun today. It’s frankly amazingly quiet right now. However a friend pointed me to a solar storm back in 1859 that was so bad that it actually disrupted telegraph stations around the country. Sparks reportedly flew from the wires causing fires in some cases. (See, for [...]

Pirated Books

The problem of scholarly books being scanned and posted online. I confess I’ve downloaded a few of these – but only ones out of print. (HT: Brooks Blog) That said the scholarly book industry is about the only industry worse than the recording industry. Authors get basically nothing. And most books are priced for libraries. [...]

Mormons Worse at Believing Evolution?

There’s a few blogs discussing the figures from the Pew survey on religion about evolution. Given that this is the month of Darwin I figured I’d comment on this a bit.

The Extended Mind

One view I’m rather partial to is the extended mind thesis. This is the notion that what we call mind shouldn’t be limited to the brain. This isn’t the same as externalism, although one can obviously see them related in certain ways. But it seems to me one could be an internalist about mental content [...]

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