René ten Bos is professor of philosophy and organizational theory at Radboud University, The Netherlands. He is the author of 13 or so books and more than 100 articles which merely suggest a wisdom where there is not. Currently, he is writing a book on animals and the various ways human beings organize, domesticate and [...]
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain, and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789.
I am alive, though turned of eighty; still in [...]
For K. M. K.,
still my favorite eschatologist
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1977, p. v.
It’s true—you can earn a living as a philosopher. Starting in July, I will be Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rochester.
Wittgenstein’s ideas concerning truth were rather generally adopted by the early Viennese Circle. The first to raise doubts, which soon developed into a very energetic opposition, was Dr. Neurath. The first who recognised the importance of Neurath’s ideas was Prof. Carnap. He joined some of his most important theses and gave them [...]
“to be a meteor is to be a rock (or whatever) that is falling, or has fallen, into collision with another rock”
Jerry Fodor, “A Modal Argument for Narrow Content”, in Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 88, No. 1, January 1991, pp. 5-26.
Jay Rosenberg, “Philosophy: What is to be done?—Bleak prospects”, in Topoi, Volume 25, Numbers 1-2, September 2006, pp. 97-99.
Keywords: philosophy, pedagogy, mass-media, barbarism, superstition, muck, ignorance, stupidity, resignation, frustration, rage, hamsters.
There have been a number of attempts in recent decades to show that mathematical entities are dispensable. The chief difficulty for these proposals lies in the vast number of mathematical entities to be dispensed with.
Zoltán Gendler Szabó, “Review of A Subject with no Object”, in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 108, No. 1, January 1999, [...]
The Royal Society has just made all journals available free of charge back to 1665. This is from the introduction to the first issue of Philosophical Transactions, published in 1666.
James L. McGaugh, “Make mild moments memorable: add a little arousal”, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 10, Iss. 8, August 2006, pp. 345-390.
The paper also includes the lovely section title, “Preserving the uneventful recent past”.
Other examples include the interaction between a ray of white light and a red filter, the deformations of fenders of automobiles that bump into one another, and the mutual arousal of lovers who exchange a passionate kiss.
Salmon, Wesley C. 1980. “Probabilistic Causality”, in Causality and Explanation, 1998 Ed, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980, pp. 208–232. [...]
A flexible plastic corrugated tube known as the Hummer was a popular sonic toy in the early 1970s. It produces pleasing sonorities when whirled in the air. In this article, we propose a physically informed model of a singing corrugated tube. The model was used in the composition Garden of the Dragon, which is also [...]
Recently I bought a beautiful old copy of Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici from Berkelouw Books. I had been looking for a nice copy for some time, having been intrigued by William Sebald’s description of Browne’s life and work in his masterpiece Austerlitz. The copy was around AU$40, but I decided it was worth it. Having [...]
Steffen Ducheyne has just uploaded a fascinating paper to the PhilSci archive, “Galileo’s Interventionist Notion of “Cause””, forthcoming in The Journal of the History of Ideas. Ducheyne argues that Galileo’s view of causation was motivated by the same interventionist intuition developed most recently by James Woodward (see the NDPR review). With this piece of intellectual [...]
“I now think that it’s a mistake to reject the logical (or even physical) possibility of time travel on the grounds that it cramps our style”.
(Kadri Vihvelin, “What Time Travelers Cannot Do”, in Philosophical Studies, Vol. 81, No. 2-3, March 1996, p. 317).
I always thought I was a good father, being proud of both my kids and not trying to push them into any particular direction. I did not want them to be professors like me. I would be just as happy if they were truck drivers or ballet dancers, provided they really enjoyed what they were [...]
So far we have assumed that our game animals have been standing or moving slowly and that they have been broadside to the hunter or slightly quartering. It would be very pleasant indeed if animals always presented themselves like that.
Jack O’Connor, The Art of Hunting Big Game in North America, Outdoor Life, 1967.You can either [...]
I am embarrassed to be in the same discipline as someone who can write this:
“Can we prove the existence of God? As anyone acquainted with contemporary philosophy of religion knows, the apparent simplicity and straightforwardness of this question is deceptive. Many subsidiary questions must be asked before any informative answer is forthcoming. Chief among these [...]
Normally I refuse to buy books with pen or pencil marks in them, but tonight I bought a second-hand copy of Simon Blackburn’s Spreading the Word from Gleebooks which has pen marks and notes in the margins all through it—and indeed, Gleebooks had it marked down to next to nothing, presumably for that reason. But, [...]
A rather remarkable thing to say about a book called Why there is Something rather than Nothing:
“a welcome contrast to much recent work of a more speculative nature”
Eh? From NDPR.