“Identity and power structure” type courses are ubiquitous across universities these days. It has fed the “activism masquerading as inquiry” expansion of the university underwritten by bureaucraps, mutually reinforcing each other and attracting students who prefer to regurgitate some off-the-peg easily digestible worldview to do their “teacher’s” bidding in the absence of critical thinking and evidence-based theorizing. Now I’m…
The latest installment of Richard Marshall’s lovely interviews — here he’s talking with Ernest Sosa — a student of the wonderful Nicholas Rescher. It’s also worth listening to Sosa discussing the state of epistemology: EpistemologyErnest Sosanicholas rescherRichard Marshallsocial epistemologyVirtue epistemology
Died on this day (16th) Marc BolanmusicT-Rex
Released on this day in ’79 Zappa’s target was, according to some sources, motivated by the banning of music in revolutionary Iran. The target we do know Zappa had in mind was the ascendancy of the fundamentalist Right of the ’80s and the idiotic PMRC proposal . . . but now the target is more appropriately applicable to the regressive…
The article examines several references to Friedrich Nietzsche made by Robert Musil in his non-fictional writings. An indication of Nietzsche’s significance for Musil is given by the fact that only one name occurs more often than Nietzsche’s in the collected works of Musil, where references to the philosopher span a period of more than forty…
THE PLACE WHERE the strange events related in this book occur, Feliciana, is not imaginary. It was so named by the Spanish. It was and is part of Louisiana, a strip of pleasant pineland running from the Mississippi River to the Perdido, a curious region of a curious state. Never quite Creole or French or…
My chum and collaborator Roger Frantz is the founding editor of this new open access journal. So stay tuned for the first issue. Behavioral economicsdistributed knowledgeFriedrich HayekHerbert Simonroger frantzsituated cognition
Born on this day — see the themed issue of Cosmos + Taxis dedicated to Ken. Here is Ken at his elegant and wry best in Morals & the servile mind. I think Ken would have been chuffed by BREXIT not necessarily because of which side actually won, but because of which side was the most arrogant. Clue .…
#9/119/11 never forgetArtblue dogChristopher HitchensGeorge RodrigueLiberalismReligionOfPeaceUSA
I’ve been thinking about Turing’s lesser-known but still very important other contribution (i.e. to mathematical biology) — so while in Turing groove, I was pleased to come across this open access paper from the latest issue of Swarm Intelligence. So glad to report that Swarm Intelligence has seen through its first decade. Alan TuringArtificial intelligenceCoevolutioncollective behaviorComplex systemsMachine learningmathematical biologySwarm…
manwithoutqualities 