150 years ago today, Chuck Darwin published his famous On the Origin of Species, so it's appropriate to dedicate today's entry to the brilliance and imaginative power of this radical intellectual. In the following thought-provoking lecture, Richard Dawkins persuasively argues that Darwin may very well deserve the title of most revolutionary scientist ever, even more so than Newton or Einstein. A bold...
Metzinger makes a provocative argument, he states that there is no such thing as a self, that there never has been, that there never will be. Many philosophers, David Hume, in the Anglo Saxon universe have said that for a long time. Who am I? The physical body certainly exists, the organism exists, but organisms are not selves. He does not deny that there is a self-y feeling. He says he certainly...
I recently re-read a classic piece by J.L. Mackie (April 1955), entitled “Evil and Omnipotence,” a stupendous philosophical essay about why theologians like Richard Swinburne are forced by their belief in an omnipotent, omnibenevelont and omnipowerful god into incredible and rather painful feats of mental gymnastics. One of Mackie’s minor points in the essay is that the so-called...
I return to another article in Psychology Today ( HERE ), this time written by Darcia Narvaez , Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Collaborative for Ethical Education at the University of Notre Dame : “ Moral Landscapes Living the life that is good for one to live: The Cultural Airspace of Harmony Morality, Which emotions does your cultural airspace promote? “Although...
Scottish philosopher David Hume considers the role of religion via Cleanthes his “experimental theist” voice: The proper office of religion is to regulate the hearts of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, and obedience; and, as...
Above is Frederick the Great's palace of Sans Souci at Potsdam, built in the style known as Frederician rococo. The Enlightenment was a dramatic new moment in the history of western Europe, marking a new cultural divide. As Alexander Pope put it: Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, God said, Let Newton be! and all was light. The beginning of the Enlightenment is difficult to determine. Scholars...
All right, I promise to leave Penne & Teller alone for a while after this post, though I’m beginning to think that their show has run out of gas, and that they need a couple years of rest. Catching up with season 6, I just finished watching the episode on “world peace.” It has now become a very predictable pattern: P&T are effective and at the peak of their game when they...
Larry Arnhart gets Hume right on ought and is : Like many of the proponents of "evolutionary psychology," Thayer assumes that biological science cannot explain moral experience because science is concerned with factual claims rather than value judgments, and he attributes this fact/value distinction to David Hume. But Thayer misses Hume's point. Hume distinguishes is and ought in order to...
I had a day to myself in Edinburgh so being a Sherlock Holmes fan I thought I'd go for a wander and find the birthplace of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and anything else that took my fancy. So armed with map from the hotel reception desk I set off turning into the Royal Mile I came accross Adam Smith the economist upon who's theories Margaret Thatcher based her policies, a pair of villains if ever there...
Humility – just another ‘monkish virtue’! That was British philosopher David Hume’s opinion in the eighteenth century and I would hazard that many share it now. We are told that if we want to get anywhere in life we have to ‘sell ourselves’, be forward and build ourselves up because if we don’t nobody will do it for us. As such, humility is often incorrectly...
It seems like each new day brings another one of those headlines: regular sleep “linked to” life expectancy, playing video games “associated with” surgical prowess, bullies “at risk” of becoming criminals, and “does breastfeeding reduce a baby’s blood pressure?” (the old rhetorical question gambit). Sometimes the articles are clear: the research...
'Tabula rasa' theory. Tabula rasa means 'blank slate', which stand for an idea that every idea of an object or even that we have is built up on experience that we had with that object or event. This idea is supported by philosophers John Locke (1632-1704) and David Hume (1711-76). Hume's reasons for saying 'every idea ... is copied from a similar impression'. Hume was developing Locke's idea that everything...
David Hume - giant of the Enlightenment Friday was the 300th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Johnson. He of the famous dictionary and the subject of the equally famous biography by Scot James Boswell. Last week the Grumpy SD visited Dr Johnson’s House in Gough Square, just off Fleet Street in London. One of my favourite book’s is Boswell’s ‘Life of Johnson’ and it was...
Radical skepticism is not new. Even before Paul Feyerabend not being sure whether he could fall off a cliff or not, there was David Hume fretting about whether the sun would really rise tomorrow, just because it had risen today, and before him probably some Greek blokes . An accredited philosopher in Reading exhorts us to; “Note that despite some ‘association’ (in the minds of some...
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