Browse by:

Colin McGinn on Philosophy of Mind

McGinn, one of my favourite philosophers of mind, notwithstanding Dennett’s view of McGinn’s well-known position: In the Critics section of this week’s New Statesman, ten pages of which are devoted to a philosophy special, our Critic at Large is Colin McGinn, professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami, who surveys the current state of…

Connectome

Here’s a recent WSJ article summing up the state of play in mapping brain connectivity. Here is Susan Bookheimer who holds the Joaquin Fuster Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience chair at UCLA – Fuster is off course a name many readers will recognise from my postings here and here. The images are from the Human Connectome…

Dewey and Oakeshott on Politics and Education

Here’s a very recent paper from the Philosophy of Education. Here is the correct link for Francis Schrag’s reference to Bob Grant’s “On Writing Michael Oakeshott’s Biography.” Speaking of which, Bob Grant has written a fantastic biographical essay “The Pursuit of Intimacy, or Rationalism in Love” for Paul and my Companion. Bob GrantMichael OakeshottPhilosophy of Educationrationalism

Rob Rupert Papers

Check out two forthcoming papers from Rob Rupert, one of the sharpest minds around: 1. Against Group Cognitive States (forthcoming in S. Chant and G. Preyer (eds.), From Individual to Collective Intentionality. No listing on OUP’s website yet). English users are not fazed by such sentences as “Microsoft intends to develop a new operating system” and…

Liberal Education

A review in The Economist of Stefan Collini’s What Are Universities For? The best articulation of the instrumental/intrinsic debate is still Oakeshott’s The Voice of Liberal Learning. Here is the first essay from VLL online. And Paul Franco is tackling this topic for the Oakeshott Companion. Mr Collini is moved by Newman’s insistence that a liberal education is…

Paradoxical Roots of “Social Construction”

David Kaiser reviews Michael Polanyi and His Generation: Origins of the Social Construction of Science by Mary Jo Nye. Fifteen years ago, scientists, historians, and sociologists traded salvos in what was termed the “science wars.” Passions ran high; “social construction of science” became a battle cry. Critics like physicist Alan Sokal pointed an accusing finger at…