Category: philosophy

  • Schieber vs Hernandez: Does God Exist

    Having some time to kill yesterday, I watched a theism/atheism debate between Justin Schieber and Eric Hernandez, hoping to see a new or (at least) interesting argument from the theism side. Alas, Hernandez’s arguments were old, illogical, debunked-centuries-ago nonsense, from a very particular strain of Christian Protestantism.

  • Materialism Isn’t “Defunct”

    Holloway seems to believe that if a theory encounters a problem, the whole theory should be tossed out. This indicates a major misconception with how theories (in the scientific sense) operate.

  • Confabulation, Math, and Self-Knowledge

    As with many other people, I often find myself denigrating things that I consider ridiculous, and on my best days I’ll catch myself and ask myself ‘ok, but *why* is that ridiculous…?’. There’s that weird experience of being in two places at once, the Brian that’s experiencing the ridiculous and seeing it as the silliness…

  • The Writing of Philosophy

    I’ve been thinking about the writing of philosophy, whose writing I enjoy the most, whose style I most wish to emulate, and I think that there isn’t just one philosopher who’s style I love. (all of the names that follow will be white and male, as I’ve been slowly going beyond what was available in…

  • Being an Effective Devil’s Advocate

    Scene: a coffee shop where two people are in a heated discussion over a complex topic. Galina: “So you can see that, generally speaking, this is predominantly the case!” Bob: “No! What about this one time, that thing happened! That shows that you’re completely wrong!” Galina, confused: “I don’t understand what that has to do…

  • Physician Assisted Dying and the BC Catholic

    Physician assisted Dying (PAD from here on, aka active euthanasia) is currently being legislated in Canada, so it’s being discussed by a number of outlets, with a variety of opinions being put forward. This is a topic that has a storied history within philosophy, and I think it’s important that we have informed conversations on this topic…

  • Studies in Mediumship

    As someone who spends a fair amount of time reading philosophy, I find that I have pretty strong commitments to physicalism/materialism (i.e. the physical world is all that there is, and all non-physical things can be reduced to physical objects). I’m also extremely confident that any forces that can affect objects over long distances have…

  • Philosophy of science. Again.

    I wrote about philosophy of science back in 2012, and a recent spat in biology has brought this up again. The Wired article “Twitter Nerd-Fight Reveals a Long, Bizarre Scientific Feud” explains the details of that fight pretty well, and I just want to dig into a particular comment that seems to represent the core…

  • Fashion Bloggers in Cambodia

    I ran across this short online reality show ‘Sweatshop’ on Ecouterre “Fashion Bloggers in a Cambodian Sweat Shop“, and it’s worth taking a look at. It’s mostly a expression of ignorance and privilege, but it’s also helpful to put clothing production into the proper context. There’s a line in particular that stands out, in the…

  • Dr. Emoto, Water, Intention and Magic

    I’ve been recently discussing with someone the possibility that, basically, magic is a real thing that really happens in the real world. Really. In fairness, those are not the terms that they use, but nevertheless that’s the argument being presented. The idea is that since our intentions can affect water, and humans are “70% to…