Anthony Grayling has convened a “symposium” on Reason in the latest issue of the New Scientist. Grayling’s position is very predictable but credit to him and the editors for bringing together a diverse group who for the most part seem to disagree with his conception. Neuroscientist Chris Frith, mathematician Roger Penrose and philosopher Mary Midgley are…
I’m pleased to discover that there’s a discussion going on at the blog The Austrian Economists relating to a posting by Steve Horwitz. Other luminaries such as Roger Koppl have chimed in. For the past year I’ve been working on a paper on the contemporary relevance of The Sensory Order – hence my keen interest.
Here is a PowerPoint slide-show intended to accompany my recent talk at Sussex. PowerPoint
Jonah Lehrer has a nice article on the memetics of social cognition. So much of what passes for “knowledge” and is transmitted and generated through the media, seems to have this character. This is what I have termed media “glove puppetry” – glossy people with an ideological, sentimental or showbiz hand up their arse.
In a recent article in Dessent entitled “Who’s Afraid of Friedrich Hayek? The Obvious Truths and Mystical Fallacies of a Hero of the Right” Jesse Larner expresses his surprise that he finds Hayek to be “nowhere near as extreme as his ideological descendants” and “not the cynic I had braced for.” It is reassuring to know that…
A short review of Evan Thompson’s recent Mind in Life from Metapsychology online. I have commissioned a close-grained review essay for the Journal of Mind and Behavior – stay tuned.
I received a message from Rob Wilson one of the most talented and broad-ranging philosopher-scientists around. He was updating me on what he’s been up to of late. He brought two things to my attention. 1. Rob has begun drafting the third instalment to his trilogy which he’s entitled Blood is Thicker than Water, nicht wahr? Terra Socialis: The Individual…
I don’t normally plug conferences but this one is unsual in that it falls squarely within my current research interests. Check out the conference webpage here.
This review article/interview plugging a book by Neil Gross that deals with Richard Rorty’s intellectual journey is noteworthy because the writer of this book refers to the sociology of ideas (SI) as superseding the sociology of knowledge (SK): The old sociology of knowledge may have been terribly reductive — ideas are an expression of class interests…
This paper by Naomi Rokotnitz from a recently held conference featuring Andy Clark.
manwithoutqualities 