This is big news for Percy scholars. In preparation over the past few years, edited by three contributors to Walker Percy, Philosopher, this book will be published in October by Mercer University Press. Kenneth Laine Ketner, the lead editor, tells me that the group thinks this work really does show off Percy’s systematic thought, and that it…
Published today — this should get some regressive knickers in a twist. In the past century, the tradition of Freudian psychology popularized the idea that our psychological dispositions could be traced to formative childhood experiences. In many areas of modern academic sociology and psychology this belief is still widespread, though it has been extended to…
Julian Baggini on Hume. Hume was always suspicious of what he called ‘enthusiasts’ and it is perhaps telling that the meaning of this word now has an unambiguously positive meaning . . . To be an enthusiast in Hume’s sense is to forget one is human and act as though one were a god, sufficient in…
Nicely balanced review of Dennett and Scruton’s latest books. We need both approaches. See article in Standpoint. ADAM ZEMAN Roger ScrutonconsciousnessDaniel Dennettevolutionary biologyEvolutionary PsychologyHuman natureMaterialismneural correlatesNeurophilosophyneurosciencePhilosophy of mindreductionism
New book from Alva Noë. Our lives are structured by organized activities, in the large, in the small. Our lives are one big complex nesting of organized activities at different levels and scales. Talking, walking, eating, perceiving, driving. We are always captured by structures of organization. This is our natural, indeed our biological, condition. It is…
Pinker in The Atlantic. (H/T to Shannon Selin) Worse still, we humans are the last to notice our own limited nature. In seven words, Shakespeare sums up a good portion of the findings of modern psychology: “most ignorant of what he’s most assured.” A recurring discovery of social and cognitive psychology is that human beings…
An article from The Atlantic. Allen Buchanan interviewed about his recent book. I think that any appeal to the notion of human nature, on either side of the enhancement debate, is tricky and problematic and has to be handled with care. Yes, in one sense we might say that it’s part of human nature to strive…
manwithoutqualities 