What, Why & How do we Know ?
Struck by two references to E. M. Forster in a couple of days. Reading John Gray, as I was last week, as I was intrigued by reference to E. M. Forster that I clearly need to follow-up. Now I’d previously been no fan of Julian Baggini, having described him as the “darling of British philosophy”, wheeled out … Continue reading “Forster in Philosophy of Mind”
Just a holding link to this piece by Julian Baggini, where both head and heart are needed to recognise the value of something arithmetically expensive. (Hat tip to David Morey on FB a week or two ago. Significant on balance because Julian is one I’ve criticised before, but increasingly I see I can agree with … Continue reading “Head and Heart Scream Yes”
“Spiritual but not religious” is a meme of a joke these days, because (as this BBC Magazine piece shows) the term spiritual can cover a multitude of new-agey sins. Interestingly the list of “spiritual” books includes Pirsig’s 5m-selling ZMM, but none of the books are actually mentioned in the piece. Instead we get interview quotes … Continue reading “@BHAHumanists #Spiritualbutnotreligious”
Heard Julian Baggini in a debate on BBC R4 Sunday programme, discussing the recent militant secularism – the local council prayers and the latest baroness Warsi / Dawkins spat. I’ve previously always found Julian a little too non-committal, too wishy-washy, too willing to please … But here he was taking a positive strong middle-ground stance … Continue reading “Credit Where Credit’s Due”
Irrelevant to the Bin Laden context I reckon, but a worthwhile piece from Baggini on the idea of torture being an absolute no-no as some matter of principle. Of course like all rules, it’s the exceptions we need to be talking about – the old adage that “Rules are for the guidance of wise men … Continue reading “Never Say Never”
Just read my first Terry Eagleton prompted by the Laurie Taylor interview referred to by Sam, and a number of earlier references on MoQ Discuss. First “The Meaning of Life” followed immediately by “Reason, Faith and Revolution” In the former, his Alexei Sayle-esque stand-up routine targets every variant of the use of the words meaning and … Continue reading “Terry Eagleton”
I’ve mentioned many times that “meta” is an important concept – the word itself seems to come and go with fashions. “Meta-X” equals “X concerning X” In my agenda here it is a way, in this Subject / Object oriented world, of taking that one step back from the apparent objects and focusssing on the … Continue reading “Meta Quality”
Thanks to David Morey over at MoQ-Discuss for picking up these links to papers mentioning Pirsig’s work. (I’m guessing partly prompted by the observations from Sam and Ant about the Ram-Prasad “Great Divide” article decrying the dearth of links between Eastern and Western philosophy – lets’ not overlook Pirsig and Northrop.) A Hubert Dreyfus paper … Continue reading “Wow, it’s full of holes.”
Julian Baggini article at Butterflies and Wheels. Subject close to my heart, but this article is mainly pointing out the rhetorical extremes between explanation and none, rather than the relative qualities of arguments. Some good points in the article about the human need for an explanation to accept, even where there there isn’t one available … Continue reading “Quality of Explanation”
Butterflies and Wheels [via Ray Girvan] Butterflies and Wheels is “fighting fashionable nonsense” (particularly pseudoscience driven by political ideology). There’s currently a dig at cultural relativism and at the charge of elitism (is it elitist to strive for excellence, and why does no-one ever cry “elitism” over those given special treatment to foster their sporting … Continue reading “Butterflies and Wheels”