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Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life

Here are reviews of Nicholas Phillipson’s book: New Statesman The Guardian The Economist The Telegraph (reviewed by none other than Noel Malcolm who is contributing a chapter on Hobbes to our Oakeshott Companion). Beneficence (I paste in an advance copy I’ve been very kindly sent by Lenore Ealy, Executive Director of The Philanthropic Entrerprise). Who was Adam…

It was the sound that tasted different

Here’s an article from The Economist. More informative however is the work of V.S. Ramachandran and co. arguably the leading researcher in the field. See “The Phenomenology of Synaesthesia” and the recent “Survival of the Synesthesia Gene: Why Do People Hear Colors and Taste Words?“ ColorSensation and PerceptionSynesthesiaThe EconomistV.S. RamachandranVilayanur Ramachandran

Atheism and God: Review of de Botton and Scruton

Here’s a review of Alain de Botton’s and Roger Scruton’s latest book, the most recent entries into what has become a thriving publishing niche. The reviewer is rather scathing of de Botton: He is an aggregator of ideas rather than an original thinker, but his skill is to write simply about complex ideas and he gives…

Kuhn’s Evolutionary Social Epistemology

Here’s a review of K. Brad Wray’s Kuhn’s Evolutionary Social Epistemology. (Wray, by the way, has been a strong contributor to EPISTEME). It’s also worth checking out Alexander Bird’s entry on Kuhn for Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Kuhn is one of those thinkers whose work has been tarnished by academics who need an off-the-peg philosophical outlook…

Hayek, Popper, and the Causal Theory of the Mind

Here is the introduction to Ed Feser’s paper from Hayek in Mind. In late 1952, F. A. Hayek sent his friend Karl Popper a copy of his recently published book The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology. In a letter dated December 2, 1952, Popper acknowledged receipt of the book and…

Hegel and the extended mind

Anthony Crisafi and Shaun Gallagher in AI & Society (Volume 25, Number 1, 123-129): We examine the theory of the extended mind, and especially the concept of the ‘‘parity principle’’ (Clark and Chalmers in Analysis 58.1:7–19, 1998), in light of Hegel’s notion of objective spirit. This unusual combination of theories raises the question of how…

Culture wars revisited

Michael Lynch and Alan Sokal enagage in a most civil dialogue: Defending Science: An Exchange. Readers might also be interested in Susan Haack’s Defending Science-Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism and James Robert Brown’s Who Rules in Science?: An Opinionated Guide to the Wars – two cracking reads – and both past contributors to EPISTEME. Alan SokalChristian fundamentalismChristianityDavid HumeEpistemologyGodMICHAEL LYNCHReason

Cosmos and Taxis

I chanced upon this painting entitled “Cosmos and Taxis“. The inspiration is, of course, as the artist states: One effect of our habitually identifying order with a made order or taxis is indeed that we tend to ascribe to all order certain properties which deliberate arrangements regularly, and with respect to some of these properties…

Stefan Zweig

H/T to Paul Raymont’s wonderfully eclectic Philosophy, lit, etc. for bringing my attention to this review in the Literary Review. I paste in the text just in case it becomes available by subscription only. Another, though unrelated article on Zweig, can be found in Intelligent Life:  Stefan Zweig is a writer readers either love or barely know.…