What, Why & How do we Know ?
Baggini, Churchland, Flanagan in dialogue around the topic of Julian’s latest book “How to Think Like a Philosopher” – or as he preferred it “How NOT to think like a philosopher” >>> rough notes: All positive about Dennett, McIntyre, Wittgenstein, Descartes, Hume, etc. More than wondering in vacuo – adjacent sciences matter. Glad to hear … Continue reading “How do Baggini, Churchland and Flanagan Think?”
Started reading Julian Baggini’s latest on David Hume as “The Great Guide” for our times and have already completed the intro and first chapter without yet taking any notes, so just some pre-review thoughts for now. Front / end / blurbs / etc: Nagging issue for me is no mention of Simon Blackburn anywhere, is … Continue reading “Baggini – The Great Guide”
Before getting into Laland’s daunting read (previous post), I broke off to read a little gem from Julian Baggini. “A Short History of Truth” is 15000 words over 100 entertaining and readable pages. It is indeed a brief history of western philosophical ideas of truth topically related to the everyday frustrations we’ve come to know … Continue reading “Baggini’s Truthful Traits”
[Note – Local copies of linked articles re-instated.] Julian Baggini, editor of TPM – “The Philosopher Magazine” and goto philosopher of British media, has interviewed Robert Pirsig about his Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ), via e-mail rather than face-to-face, and placed the entire transcript [local copy] as well as his own article “Zen and the Art of … Continue reading “Pirsig Interviewed by Baggini”
Minority Groups, Women and Julian Baggini – Julian Baggini writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education [via NIBBS] on the Philosophy, Science and Humanities triangle as perceived on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Some interesting points actually, though personally I have trouble with Julian’s style.
I’m reading Dennett’s memoir “I’ve Been Thinking” – not really intending to read the whole right now, as I mentioned before, but it’s a pretty good read, so I am close to a third through. The reason to pause and make some notes was a striking parallel to Pirsig that jumped out at me. Like … Continue reading “Dennett & Pirsig”
Trying to get back into writing, clearing away some reading after a week on vacation and shaking-off another damn cold, I found myself reading some old posts, prompted by some link hits in the stats. I’ve written some good stuff, if I say so myself. A lot of it concluding I really should stop noodling … Continue reading “Some Good Writing?”
Just a quick diary of my 4 days at the IAI “How the Light Gets In” festival in Hay-on-Wye 2 to 5 June 2022, from a logistical & meta perspective first, before I get down to any people and significant content. Being also the Jubilee holiday, the main car-park in Hay was free so I … Continue reading “HTLGI2022@Hay – Mostly Meta”
Tim Mulgan’s view he calls “ananthropocentric purposivism” (AP). AP is the view that, contra atheism, the universe has a purpose, but, contra benevolent theism (BT), that purpose is non-human-centred. Put simply, there is a cosmic purpose, but humans are irrelevant to that purpose. Made me laugh. I have a holding post on the special position- … Continue reading “Ananthropocentric Purposivism”
A new overload of bookmarked pages to capture. Life remains complicated for reading and writing for domestic and work reasons, so I’ll dump most here without reading or reviewing in detail for now. Resources for later. Philip Goff on this old chestnut … Hacking, White and McGrath all referenced (but not Anthropics …) ‘Is the … Continue reading “Link Dump”