Chimps have Brocca’s Area?

Fascinating article here

Emotive Realism Ch. 2

Here is the (rough draft) of the second chapter of the dissertation. Again, comments are welcome! Emotive Realism Ch. 2 –Language and Metaethics A propos of all the recent discussion of Berkeley, here is an excerpt It had been long recognized that language can be used to do more than to merely describe the world. This [...]

A Random Thought about the Oscars

So, I was watching the Oscars last night and I was struck by the fact that there is a separate prize for best actor and best actress (in both lead and supporting categories). It seems to me that there is no reason to have separate awards for these, I mean we do not have separate [...]

Emotive Realism Ch. 1

So I am in the process of writing the final draft of my dissertation in the hopes of having it ready for a September defence. I figured I would make the chapters available here nin the semi-final form in case anyone cares to read them. As always I welcome comments!! Emotive Realism Ch. 1 –Introduction

Has Idealism Been Refuted?

So, I have been having a very nice and informative discussion with Brandon about Berkeley’s so-called “Master Argument” which got me to thinking. Has immaterialism been refuted? It seems to me not. Here is a brief, and no doubt sketchy, survery of some of the better known ‘refutations’. I. Kant Kant famously argued as follows: I [...]

New Philosophers’ Carnival

is here The philo-gangsta rap is funny…but don’t forget about my my philo-yo mama jokes!!!

Email and Speech Acts

There are broadly speaking two conceptions of how we perfrom speech act. One, the Austinian one, is that speech acts are purely conventional. So to promise is simly to utter the words ‘I promise…’ because there is a convention in English that says that saying ‘I promise…’ counts as making a promise. The other view [...]

Homomorphism Theory and the Mental Attitudes

OK, so I have been distracted the last few days with thoughts about Berkely and the relationship of God to quantum mechanics, but today I have to get back to work on my consciousness stuff…April will be here before you know it, and I have still got to turn this into a powerpoint presentaion!  So, [...]

God Vs. The Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser

This is the name of an experiment first proposed in 1982, and is the one that I have had in mind when talking about God and quantum mechanics. I realized that most of the comments I have received seem to be taking me to be talking only about the standard double-slit experiment; this is of [...]

God and Quantum Mechanics: Round Two

I was re-reading the comments on an earlier post where I proposed a dilemma for God’s knowledge of the nature of the reality. I argued that if God knows the outcome of the the random events hypothesized in (some interpretations of) quantum mechanics then his knoweldge of these outcomes will interfere with the physical process [...]