Arbitrary Marks

As a plot mover, the Joker was less an agent of chaos and more like the TA for a freshman philosophy course, leading everyone through twisty little exercises in artificial circumstances that present the poor student with difficult choices. (link)

I’m not sure whether I should take that as a compliment or an insult.

While I may not agree with the Churchlands on everything, I do appreciate their interdisciplinary approach to philosophy. I think these quotes, taken from Patricia Churchland’s book, Neurophilosophy, get at why:

“A theoretical value derived from studying neurological cases, therefore, is their potential for dislodging conventional assumptions…Such data seem to me crucially relevant in coming to understand how deficient folk psychology really is and how little we know of the deeper capacities underlying the known cognitive capacities of the brain…”

At the very least, neurological cases ought to be part and parcel of the thought experiments in philosophy of mind (and they are, much more, since the publication of her text). She talks about blindness denial and one philosopher’s argument that if one is conscious, it is impossible to fail to know you are blind. If empirical data seems to contradict this, then we should be perhaps a bit skeptical about arguments from a priori features, even while we continue to examine the data to be sure it’s represented properly.

I don’t have time this morning to delve more deeply into it, but I will: an article by Francisca Cho and Richard K. Squier in the latest Journal of the American Academy of Religion is guilty of what amounts to creationist quote mining. I doubt that was their intention, but in “He Blinded Me with Science,” the [...]

This interview in Sign and Sight has some interesting tidbits (Habermas is constantly responding to Tugenhadt in his works).  His discussion of Heidegger is one reason to read it, but I spotted this at the end and had to excerpt it here, although 3QuarksDaily has already done so:
What function does philosophy have now? Is it [...]

While I’m posting pithy quotes, here’s one from philosopher Tim Crane:

“Reading Richard Dawkins is a bit tiring. It’s a bit like being followed down a long corridor by this very intelligent guy shouting at you, ‘And you know, here’s another thing about religion….’ while all the time you are trying to get to the bar.”

His new blog (and thoughts on Dawkins) can be found here.

…philosophy takes upon itself problems it can solve through neither self-reflection nor self-referential argumentation does the philosopher find himself constrained to offer "ultimate justifications." - Habermas, Remarks on Discourse Ethics

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I’m excerpting this discussion of the term “nature” from Martha Nussbaum’s essay, “Constructing Love, Desire, and Care” (Sex and Social Justice) because I want to be able to link back to it.  To make it clearer, I’ve added bullet-point formatting.  In terms of the ethical questions often discussed here, it’s a great touchstone*:
We use the term [...]

In 1980, India passed a bill that allowed non-Hindus to adopt children (prior to that time, only Hindus could adopt). However, Muslims in that country believed that the Qur’an does not allow adoption. They tried to block the law. I’ve read about this recently in Martha Nussbaum’s Sex and Social Justice. [...]

Via PZ Myers, I’m reminded of a quote from the movie Bladerunner, one which has more emotional impact if you’ve seen the movie:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams…glitter in the dark near Tanhauser Gate. All those…moments will be lost…in time, like tears…in [...]

Purushottama Bilimoria writes*,
“So the question comes down to this: can religions in reality be compared? A positive answer to this presumes that (1) there is a multiplicity of religious phenomena across various cultures, (2) they can be grouped into ‘‘religions,’’ and (3) they have something in common (e.g., a belief in the transcendent or in [...]