The biological roots of moral sentiments? permlink
Category: Psychology
David Brooks has a new column grandly titled The End of Philosophy. Heather Mac Donald at Secular Right chides him for his criticism of the New Atheists, while John Derbyshire offers guarded praise. It seems to me that the jab...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 11:42 AM • 2 Comments •
Experiments in Ethics permlink
Category: philosophy
If the trolley problem is not known to you, I would recommend Kwame Anthony Appiah's Experiments in Ethics. It is one of those works which combines brevity with density, a feast of ideas laid out before you which is nevertheless...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 12:34 PM • •
The will be from ought be fallacy permlink
Category: philosophy
From page 33 of Brian Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosophy from Plato to Popper: I came to realize, then that what matters above all else in politics is what happens, not what people say...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 6:21 AM • 4 Comments •
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory is like.... permlink
Category: philosophy
...Das Kapital! So says Bora: Forget Dennett's strawmen destruction - read Gould carefully for what GOULD is trying to say. The Big Book is 'Das Kapitaal' of the 21st century biology - someone now needs to write a shorter, simpler...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 2:01 AM • 17 Comments •
Micro to macro; why history isn't dead permlink
Category: philosophy
A few months ago I saw a paper which showed that small average differences across societies on a microeconomc parameter can result in massive variance in macroeconomic trends. Small differences in average trustworthiness or patience across societies (or, more precisely,...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 12:14 PM • 5 Comments •
