Busy Month

Well, it's been a busy month but it has seen some interesting stuff out there within my blogosphere light-cone.

The Maverick Philosopher has had an entertaining series of posts on the difference between fictional and impossible entities. Much of the technical discussion eluded me but I did like the characterisation of fictional as incomplete although I am not completely convinced by his critique of the "story operator".

Mike Flynn has also had a lot of fun in a series of posts on the Christian origins of the Scientific Revolution. He also brought to wider attention the fact that much of the US think that zombies would run their country better than the current Federal Government.

Over at Ed Feser's blog, there was a very interesting discussion about the AT conception of the soul and how it purports to avoid the interaction problem. This was particularly useful because it quoted Bill Vallicella articulating what I think is the most difficult thing to understand about the Thomistic line of reasoning, namely how it is that a form can interact with matter, and by interact he means as an efficient cause rather than a formal or final cause. I'm still not sure I understand the reply but I suspect that that is due to my poor understanding of the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics.

Brandon Watson at Siris echoes what I'm sure a lot of us are feeling when he takes Disney to task for its crass revisionism in the case of "Maleficent". Aside from the lamentably bad premise on which the new film appears to be based, the witlessness of this situation reminds me of the recent TV advert in which a CGI Audrey Hepburn, dazzling in her youth and vitality, rises from a scene in the film "Roman Holiday"... to appear in a chocolate commercial. I seem to recall something similar happened in the last episode of Bablyon 5, and that didn't turn out well either. The members of the Hepburn estate, moneygrabbing philistines that they are, apparently see nothing wrong with it but to me the commercial is a shibboleth which divides those who have an aesthetic sense from those who don't.

Crude, over at Crude Ideas, continues to fight the good fight against the Cult of Gnu. One of the best thing for those of limited intelligence like me is the sight of clever people discussing substantive issues on Faith, Science and Philosophy, e.g. on Feser's blog, but I must also confess to enjoying seeing fish shot in a barrel, and no-one does this better than Crude. I look forward to his new website.

Heuristics from the Citadel Library continues to provide more "beam me up, Scotty" moments and documents that there is nothing new under the sun.

And finally, a hilarious story about Richard Dawkins from Shadow to Light.

Ought - Is

After the apocalyptic excitement of the past few days, I thought I would try to do something a bit more serious and compile some references on the ought - is distinction. Since Brandon Watson seems to be the go-to guy for this in the blogs that I read, I thought I would start with his blog, Siris.

• Reading Hume on Ought and Is
• Epistemic Ought and Can
• Hume on Ought and Is, Part I: Background
• Hume on Ought and Is, Part II: The Argument
• Hume on Ought and Is, Part III: Conclusions
• Arnhart on Hume on Ought and Is
• On Ought and Is: Preliminary Detour
• On Ought and Is, II
• Is - Ought Muddles
• Blackford and Is/Ought
• Three Oughts
• Ought and Is
• On Hart's Kantian (?) Argument
• Is, Ought, Can

I'm sure I've missed some but that will keep me going for a while.

Brief Round-Up

Lots of interesting stuff around at the moment...

• Over at Mike Flynn's blog, a very nice post which ties together bats, birds, linguistic evolution, the philosophy of chemistry and dinosaurs.
• Over at Siris, Brandon Watson has an interesting post about edutainment. Given the current trend for "gamification" of educational resources in HE and the fact that research is fairly consistent in, at least, casting doubt on the fact that students always actually recognise when they have learnt something, this is something that should concern most educators.
• At The Renaissance Mathematicus, Thony Christie looks at Galileo's Theory of Tides and draws lessons for today's scientists.

Another Conspiracy

I don't know what it is about commenters in the blogs I read but the weird ones seem to be be acting a little bit too amenable lately. First there was James Chastek in his blog talking about Science (TM) and Religion, and this guy shows up in the combox and promptly exhibits almost all of the bizarre raving new atheist tropes at which point we were treated to a rousing dismemberment of his arguments by the likes of Brandon Watson and Crude. Now, in his blog, Ed Feser has written a post on Conspiracy Theories and, right on cue, we have another commenter who appears and exhibits all of the tropes associated with that particular subculture. And we are again treated to another thorough takedown by the likes of Mr Watson and other members of the AT crowd.

Two examples in as many weeks? On the Internet, where factual accuracy and considered argument are at their apogee?

A coincidence, I don't think so... something's definitely going on here!

However, it has to be said, pace my attempt to identify the latest manifestation of the global lizard space-alien conspiracy, we do cut to the chase fairly quickly. In response to the inevitable Conspiracy Theorist challenge: "Why don't you want to conduct such an investigation now?"

Brandon Watson replies:
"Because it's a waste of time and money clearly motivated by an attempt of people to find closure, whether for 9/11 itself or its aftermath, on the basis of speculative hypotheses and just-so stories rather than actual evidence; because its founding assumptions require us to believe that a government that repeatedly bungles much less elaborate projects somehow managed to be utterly successful here, with no means or mechanism in sight for it to do so, despite the fact that we are talking about something that occurred in one of the busiest buildings in the world; because nobody is in fact risking anything, much less reputation and livelihood, on the kind of speculation involved here and the supposedly 'compelling' arguments turn out to be purely speculative frameworks very tenuously linked to evidence here and there; because anyone who has ever actually looked at disaster reports knows that the supposed inconsistencies and contradictions show no signs of being anything other than the ordinary kind of confusion any significant disaster causes; and because when you actually look at the claims of 9/11 truthers, one finds a consistent pattern of exaggeration deviating from the actual evidence in a clearly identifiable direction."

which to me seems to sum up the best response nicely.

There's also a reference to an old but good xkcd cartoon that says something similar.

The thread is ongoing and the person in question is still digging his hole deeper and deeper. I suspect he won't stop as the situation is similar to that of the first commenter on the Just Thomism blog: there is too much emotional investment in the proponent's truth claim that no amount of reasoned argument will shift his position.

Facts Don't Dispel Belief in Creation Myths...

James Chastek's post on Science and Creation Myths on his ever interesting Just Thomism blog has been picked up by some of the big guns in the philosophy of science and religion blogs that I read (for example, Mike Flynn has a nice response here).  Something quite interesting happened in the comments of the original article: we were treated to a number of rather scientifically-questionable assertions by one overreaching commentator (... population genetics has proved the story of Adam and Eve to be false, original sin, etc, etc, etc) which is the standard, if mathematically illiterate, response of certain so-called gnu-atheists, as well as the usual disclaimer that scientism is a straw-man because no-one holds those views. This was followed by a very entertaining take-down of these views by one of Ed Feser's regularly commentators, a (Mr?) Crude.

Basically, it is a call-out of atheistic psychological projection and I can't do better than to quote some of it:

"Now, here’s where things really get interesting. Everything I just told you absolutely undercuts one myth – the one you’re propagating. It does so demonstrably, and it’s not even an exhaustive list of why you’re wrong. No, population genetics does not undercut a literal, historical fall. Not of Adam and Eve, and not generally. No, there are a variety of reasons that you’re utterly wrong about your claims on this topic, and a variety of ways to maintain a real and literal fall given our scientific knowledge.

But I have a prediction: You will not sacrifice your myth.

It’s too important to you, and really, that importance is just one facet of the scientism you claim does not exist, and is not actually a problem. You need, absolutely need, science to have put a stake through the heart of this religious claim – or, at the very least, it has to be capable of doing it in principle (preferably ‘any year now!’). Because if it doesn’t – if science really is not just limited, but limited in such a way that makes it incapable of giving you the intellectual certainty (and with it, authority) you desperately want it to… well, what a tremendous disappointment that would be. It’s so disappointing, that it’s an understanding that simply cannot be accepted."

This seems to me to be the underlying motivation for a lot of the new atheist rant about religion.

Update: Brandon Watson from Siris performs a clinical dismantling of the argument here and here.

What to say...in the subsequent posts, our new atheist friend retreats to an implicit fideism characterised by a refusal to engage with the arguments or withdraw statements which are shown to be false. I presume this is what geologists get when they talk to Young Earth Creationists. There's a curious symmetry about it. In any case, the rest of the commentary follows exactly the progression presicted by Crude who also gives a nice summary of the situation here.