What, Why & How do we Know ?
I’ve previously only mentioned Friston as the source of Friston’s Free Energy Principle as the backdrop to Mark Solms proper bio-psychological account of consciousness. I listened to this discussion – hap tip to the Active Inference folks – and already made a few footnotes to the two previous posts. It’s the first time I’ve listened … Continue reading “Karl Friston and Good Fences”
I’ve been threatening to finally edit and publish my Good Fences article for a while now, but keep coming across other published pieces that could almost be the same thing in different words, or the same words in a different order, maybe. The latest I’ve had bookmarked for a week or two is this: “There … Continue reading “Good Fences Maybe?”
Really just a holding-post as a reminder I need to publish a definitive version of the Good Fences piece. It’s been compromised so many times by suggestions of tailoring it to current publishing opportunities, but the generality of it continues to emerge. This post today from Jon Haidt has given me the nudge: This is … Continue reading “Partition Walls as Good Fences”
I gave a presentation to Teesside Skeptics in the Pub on 15 December 22 Diana had asked us a question – on the Facebook Group Page in November 22 – about “whether we identified as scientific sceptics, and what that meant to us?” Back in August 22 Humanists UK had asked us to say if … Continue reading “#GoodFences – Is Scientific Skepticism Enough?”
It goes on. The TERF wars continue to rage as the main game in Twitter-town when it comes to objective science and human classes talking past each other. Firstly, Angela Saini writing “What is a Woman?” in Prospect Magazine. I’ve had problems with Saini before, being too conservative in minimising sex/gender and race differences – … Continue reading “Grist to the #GoodFences Mill”
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?”
I have a long overdue (several years, half-drafted) piece called “Good Fences” that goes right back to basic “classification & identification, definition & description” of stuff we deal with in the real world: How we subdivide the world into different kinds of stuff and different things and give them various names. It occurs everywhere from … Continue reading “Good and Bad but not Black and White”
I may at last have space to write my Good Fences piece, but first a new reference. “Western” rationality is eating itself. I particularly like the use of the word special in this piece (which I’ve not fully digested yet) when talking about Western civilisation (as I do when talking about humanity). We are a … Continue reading “Better Fences Needed”
Kenan Malik gave the Stephen Lissenberg Memorial Lecture at the NIESR in London last week (23rd Sept). The full transcript is here on his Pandaemonium web pages: “On Fences and Fractures – or what’s wrong with multiculturalism” so no need for a detailed summary here. His critique of multiculturalism is not new, but he was able … Continue reading “Avoiding objective fetishisation of cultures. “On Fences and Fractures” @Kenanmalik @NIESRorg”
Just a quickie. This is a quote from Alasdair MacIntyre’s 1977 Essay “Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science” (Offline PDF copy, original copyright acknowledged.) “Consider what it is to share a culture. It is to share schemata which are at one and the same time constitutive of and normative for intelligible action … Continue reading “Shared Cultural Values?”