Or rather, our moral disorder lies outside of us because we inhabit morally disordered human communities. But let me start from a ways back… Recently, I posted an article about some hormonal matters which work from our insides to shape our personality characteristics — The Resurrected Will Need to Be Flooded With Oxytocin and Vasopresin. … [Read more…]
I speak of my own mind moving in and out of active formation. I’ve reached a point where I wish to deal with issues that I can’t wrap my mind around. And, so, I’m trying to expand and reshape my mind in the appropriate ways, acquiring more of the contents which will become the container … [Read more…]
The brain-scientist and philosopher Patricia Churchland is giving some lectures on a specific and partial answer to the question: What can neuroscience tell us about morality? A short news article about these lectures can be found here. Her main point according to the article is hardly a surprise to those who’ve been keeping up at … [Read more…]
I’ve finished reading Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions but I continue to think about the issues he raised. Some of his attempts to make sense of these “scientific revolutions” involve efforts to make sense of the language used by various groups of scientists. When talking about the need to use a assumption-loaded … [Read more…]
There’s a review, Language and spandrels, at the weblog of John Hawks which discusses the question: “How can there be one grammatical structure for all human beings if there is no known way to see selective pressures for the rules of grammar?” As the review notes, the famous linguist Noam Chomsky did a lot of … [Read more…]
I’ve just finished reading Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He’s quite aware of the objective nature of reality but he speaks of major changes in understanding of the world leaving scientists (or others in different conversations) as if in a new world. Elsewhere he speaks a bit more reasonably of the scientist … [Read more…]
John Hawks, prominent anthropologist and leader of the Neandertal Anti-defamation League, made some interesting comments in reviewing the article Language processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind adults, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(Early online) by Marina Bedny, et al. See John Hawks Weblog for his review, Language bootstrapping the … [Read more…]
[This is a somewhat freewheeling response to Biblical Leadership — first given as a lecture in 1928, a chapter in the book On the Bible: Eighteen Studies, a collection of short writings taken from the various works of Martin Buber.] In the essay, Biblical Leadership, Martin Buber states: I believe that we are standing at … [Read more…]
As I read books on mathematics and science, I’m always thinking of issues in theology and metaphysics and politics and history. My inclination, whatever works I produce as byproducts, is to absorb knowledge as if it were background knowledge for a novelist. This doesn’t mean ‘research’ that will produce reliable historical novels but rather the … [Read more…]
I’m about 2 years late in writing a follow-up to So What if the Human Mind is a Product of Evolution? published on 2009/05/05. For those who don’t follow the link to that earlier article, I’ll quote the first paragraph: Why do we resist changes in our beliefs about our selves, the world around us, … [Read more…]