Scientist Jerry Coyne argues persuasively that, in important ways, they cannot.
Category Archives: philosophy
The ego boom
February 3, 2009 – 11:02 am
Baudrillard said it first and, perhaps, best, in The System of Objects
Maybe people aren’t as stupid as psychologists think
December 31, 2008 – 9:49 am
While browsing the slides from Joshua Porter’s lecture, Leveraging Cognitive Bias in Social Design, I came across the following one, which presents the canonical example of the conjunction fallacy from Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman:
I wonder if a better explanation for the fact that about 85% of people pick the latter option is that, rather [...]
Greenspan’s mea culpa
December 20, 2008 – 11:56 am
Alan Greenspan reflects on how his ideological belief in the ability of markets to self-regulate has been shaken. Henry Waxman, Chairman of the Oversight [pun?] and Government Reform Committee is on a bit of a self-righteous crusade and is obviously looking for a sound bite from Greenspan (which he gets). But it’s an effective approach, [...]
Could you have a base without a superstructure?
December 16, 2008 – 8:58 pm
I don’t believe the terms ‘base’ and ’superstructure’ were articulated by Marx/Engels until later, but the gist of these distinctions is already apparent in the earlier work, The German Ideology. Reading the first part, on Feuerbach, one can’t fail to notice that while the critique of the young Hegelians is in itself generally cogent, the [...]
Environmental politics over the long term
October 21, 2008 – 5:35 pm
According to George Monbiot,
While prime ministers in Italy and eastern Europe are demanding a bonfire of environmental measures in order to save the economy, in the UK politicians from all the major parties have made the connection between environmental destruction and economic meltdown.
At any rate, both the UK and Europe are thinking longer-term than the [...]
Bot-mediated reality
October 20, 2008 – 10:24 pm
Having just spent upwards of 25 hours in a car driving between Peterborough, Toronto, and Pukaskwa National Park, one of the ways we passed the time was listening to a variety of podcasts, including Philosophy Bites, CBC Ideas, and the Long Now Foundation’s Seminars About Long Term Thinking (SALT).
While SALT has hosted a bevy of [...]
Slavoj Zizek: McCain is Bush with lipstick
September 28, 2008 – 7:47 am
The true message to American voters from the Republican Party, says Zizek, is: “you have the right not to understand. We will sell you this rhetoric about populist revolt and fighting Washington, but really you know we have the backroom boys like Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and so on, who will take care of things, [...]