http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress Religion and philosophy, in no particular order Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:17:55 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As any readers still left out there will have noticed, Arbitrary Marks has gone very quiet. I fully intended to keep up a regular blogging schedule this semester, but have found that I'm much busier than I anticipated and--this is the reason for this post--reticient to share my thoughts in ... http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/11/04/blogging-on-works-in-progress/ This month's Philosopher's Carnival had a pretty light group of submissions...below are the bloggers who made the cut: Alexander Pruss suggests a thought experiment about language, in which you have a curious lisp, causing you to sound like you're speaking Hittite. Thus, the question, What Language Am I Speaking? Tom Kow explains ... http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/11/04/philosophers-carnival/ Will be posted later this evening...pardon the delay... http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/11/03/the-nth-philosophy-carnival/ I'm headed to Chicago to attend the AAR (American Academy of Religion) conference and hope to find time to put up a few talk summaries. I'll be focusing on the Buddhist studies meetings, but probably also find time for some of the cognitive science talks. Also, the Philosopher's Carnival is here ... http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/10/30/aar-blogging-philosophers-carnival/ And why did my informal fallacy bingo cards not make the Leiter Reports, huh? Okay, maybe not getting into the Baltimore Sun has something to do with it... http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/10/16/ignored-by-leiter/ Last night I saw Religulous with some friends at the downtown Alamo Drafthouse. One good thing about the Drafthouse is, however poor a movie turns out to be, you've at least had some good beer and snacks during your two hour stay. I won't say that Maher's recent docu-flick is atrocious, ... http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/10/12/some-thoughts-on-religulous/ This is a thought that occurred to me the other day, with the news that 1 in 4 species is in danger of extinction. I'm wondering what principled motivation Buddhists have for saving an individual species, given non-attachment? While there are engaged Buddhist movements that suggest the ecological "Web of ... http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/10/08/buddhism-extinction-and-non-attachment/ So, how many did she violate in the debate on Thursday?* Maxim of Quality Maxim of Quantity Maxim of Relation Maxim of Manner *I recognize that technically, Palin wasn't making conversational implicatures, but still, given that Grice proposed these as the rational underpinnings of communication, the fact that she really violated/stretched all of them is ... http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/10/06/palin-and-gricean-maxims/ So, yes, it's been intolerably quiet here at Arbitrary Marks. Or "on" Arbitrary Marks, depending upon how you understand the semantics of blogs. Since I am working on reading and haven't been (yet) formulating my thoughts into coherent arguments, below are a couple of topics that I'm considering. They're set ... http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/09/30/nobody-here-but-us-chickens/ I've been a bad philosophy blogger. But just in time for tonight's presidential debates, I give you: Informal Fallacy Bingo! You and your friends can download this free PDF and play bingo during tonight's debates. Just put an "X" over the spot where the speaker commits one of these errors. For advanced ... http://arbitrarymarks.com/wordpress/2008/09/26/informal-fallacy-bingo/