Ethics via the the Biology of Consciousness? (or réchauffé Hume ?)

MY OWN VIEW IS THAT THIS IS backward: the biology of consciousness offers a sounder basis for morality than the unprovable dogma of an immortal soul. It's not just that an understanding of the physiology of consciousness will reduce human suffering through new treatments for pain and depression. That understanding can also force us to recognize the interests of other beings--the core of morality.

Steven Pinker in Time (via aldaily.com)

(from the Holy Grail) Help, I'm being Repressed!

Excluding Exclusion

Deogol argued that the antipathy against exclusiveness (see here, here and elsewhere for material) was misguided and destructive. The argument is unsound, or so I've argued in comments.

World Social Forum comes to Kenya.

Nairobi hosts the WSF this year. From the blurb:

WSF Nairobi 2007 will be an opportunity to showcase Africa and her social movements; Africa and her unbroken history of struggle against foreign domination, colonialism and neo-colonialism; Africa and her rich heritage of natural wealth, cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity; Africa and her reputation for embracing communities from around the world; Africa and her contributions to world civilization; Africa and her role in the quest for another possible, more progressive global human society.

Atlas of World Religions

At Der Spiegel, via (politicaltheory.info)

Martin Amis is a pompous t**t

From today's Independent profile:

Have you made up with your old friend Christopher Hitchens after your spat over Stalin? MARLIJN EVANS, London

We never needed to make up. We had an adult exchange of views, mostly in print, and that was that (or, more exactly, that goes on being that). My friendship with the Hitch has always been perfectly cloudless. It is a love whose month is ever May.

The Union

This is the 300th anniversary of one of the most successful, if tumultuous marriages in all of history. Long may the Union continue, since nationalism just is tribal nationalism, and tribal nationalism is a bad thing.

Save Shilpa !!

Petiton here. Do your duty!

One man he resist

Plantinga Contra Dawkins

This* appears to be Alvin Plantinga's response to Dawkins' The God Delusion. I say appears because it's not obvious why the review has been issued on a Norwegian website. However, it's written in the forthright style familiar to fans and (non-fans) of Plantinga's earlier work, and it employs the anti-naturalist argument Plantinga has expounded in many places. (e.g. here) So caveat lector and all, but it looks genuine.

Anyway, here's Plantinga's take Dawkin's complexity argument (Which seems to be the only new anti-theist argument that Dawkins advances):

Now suppose we return to Dawkins’ argument for the claim that theism is monumentally improbable. As you recall, the reason Dawkins gives is that God would have to be enormously complex, and hence enormously improbable (“God, or any intelligent, decision-making calculating agent, is complex, which is another way of saying improbable” (109)). What can be said for this argument?

Not much. First, is God complex? According to much classical theology (Thomas Aquinas, for example) God is simple, and simple in a very strong sense, so that in Him there is no distinction of thing and property, actuality and potentiality, essence and existence, and the like. Some of the discussions of divine simplicity get pretty complicated, not to say arcane.[1] (It isn’t only Catholic theology that declares God simple; according to the Belgic Confession, a splendid expression of Reformed Christianity, God is “a single and simple spiritual being . . . .”) So first, according to classical theology, God is simple, not complex.[2] More remarkable, perhaps, is that according to Dawkins’ own definition of complexity, God is not complex. According to his definition (set out in The Blind Watchmaker), something is complex if it has parts that are “arranged in a way that is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone” (7). But of course God isn’t a material object at all and hence has no parts. God is a spirit, an immaterial spiritual being, and therefore has no parts at all.[3] A fortiori (as philosophers like to say) God doesn’t have parts arranged in ways unlikely to have arisen by chance. Therefore, given the definition of complexity Dawkins himself proposes, God is not complex.

---

[1] See my Does God Have a Nature?

[2] The distinguished Oxford philosopher (Dawkins calls him a theologian) Richard Swinburne has proposed some sophisticated arguments for the claim that God is simple. Dawkins mentions Swinburne’s argument, but doesn’t deign to come to grips with it; instead he resorts to ridicule (110-111).

[3] What about the Trinity? Just how we are to think of the Trinity is of course not wholly clear; it is clear, however, that it is false that in addition to each of the three persons of the Trinity, there is also another being of which each of those persons is a part.

* Link removed by request.

A singularly powerful argument for atheism

Somebody wondered whether Barack Obama was the anti-Christ. The consequences must be read to be believed. (via Jackmormon)

ANC Anniversary

January 8th was the 95th anniversary of the founding of the ANC. There's no finer time to remember Oliver Tambo, very much the forgotten man of the Struggle, who died only a year before the full democratization of South Africa.

Also, here's a BBC piece on the occasion.

Happy New Year

Best wishes for 2007, everyone.

GWOT has come to East Africa, as everyone now knows. It was probably inevitable, and may even turn out well. (Though not if the Americans keep missing targets and blowing up what look remarkably like civilians). What is annoying is the recent closure of the Kenya/Somalia border. As far as I can tell, this means Somalis fleeing the fighting are buggered. Since it's not impossible to vet refugees at the border, and leaving vulnerable people cooped up in Somalia is a bad idea, why doesn't the govt. just ask for help vetting and housing the refugees?

General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte

Jara sang, his song a weapon, in the hands of love,
You know his blood still cries from the ground

-U2, One Tree Hill.

Postcards from the Occupation II

Please pray for the parties involved in this war.

The Logician's Liberation League Manifesto

Logicians Liberation League Manifesto
whereas logic is the essence of philosophy,
and logic is the organon of philosophy,
and logic is the form of philosophy and
WHEREAS
coaches, assistant coaches, managers, trainers and fans
of the IU philosophy team have
made frequent and insinuating remarks about the number of
logicians recruited for this year's philosophy team,
have discouraged the recruitment of outstanding out-of-state
prospects solely on the ground that they are logicians,
have refused to recognize the right of logicians to their
own unique cultural heritage, acquiescing in particular in
the denial to them of such treasured items as blackboards,
erasers, chalk, and old napkins,
performed acts degrading to logicians as human beings,
performed acts degrading to logicians as individuals,
performed acts degrading to logicians as men,
performed acts degrading to logicians as manifestations of God, collections of atoms, free spirits,
THE EFFECT OF WHICH HAS BEEN
misery, suffering, pain, affliction, and one severe case of philosopher's foot,
We the members of
THE LOGICIANS LIBERATION LEAGUE
do hereby announce our intention, if attention to our fair
grievances is not forthcoming,
to boycott Friday practice sessions,
to howl and jeer when the name of an ethicist, metaphysician,
epistemologist, aesthetician, or any other kind of
Establishment jerk is proposed for addition to the team, to root for the political science department in competition for the coveted Ewing Bowl,
to reveal that other members of the team are mere symbol
pushers and hawkers of uninterpretable calculi,
to prove the existence of God, the relativity of moral judgments,
the identity thesis, and the truth of neo-Pythagorean skeptical hedonism,
thus leaving other members of the team with nothing to talk about.
Do not be deceived, Establishment pigs (this means you too, Establishment dogs).
The subservience of past generations of logicians does not mean that we shall bear forever our treatment as animals (you barnyard fowl).
We are human beings (you swine). You are living in a day when logicians
will not any longer endure your taunts, your slurs, your
insults (you filthy vermin). In the name of A. N. Whitehead
and B. Russell we gather; in the spirit of R. Carnap
and A. Tarski, we march; by the word of W. V. O. Quine, we shall prevail.
Beware you snakes of the Philosophical Power
Structure, which you have created and which you maintain to
put down the logician; you have caged the eagle of reason,
the dove of wisdom, and the lark of a definite, precisely
formulated formal system, with exact formation rules,
a recursive set of axioms, and clear and cogent rules of inference,
and you have made them your pigeons. Oh, you filterable viruses,
we will shake you off and fly once more.

All my love, Robert K. Meyer Maximum Leader Logicians Liberation League
______________________
Presented at the close of a Philosophy seminar given by Professor Paul Eisenberg, to the Department of Philosophy, Indiana University, in the (northern) autumn of 1969. The Maximum Leader was attacked during the presentation of this manifesto, with a banana cream pie, by Mrs. Marianne Tienson.

Blessed John Duns Scotus

As Gerard Manley Hopkins said of him:

Of realty the rarest-veined unraveller; a not

Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;

Who fired France for Mary without spot.

Also, the only truly great medieval philosopher/theologian who wasn't Italian!

Our Lord and Master speaks

There's full video of Saul Kripke's recent talk, (and some video of post-talk comments and questions) on the first person here.

True believers in the causal theory of reference, unite! You have nothing to lose but your senses...

Aristotle as he was

A bust of Aristotle found beneath the Acropolis in Athens is the first to show the Greek philosopher with a hooked nose.

Archaeologists said that the 46cm (18in) marble bust, which dates from the 1st century AD, about 400 years after Aristotle lived, was “the best-preserved likeness ever found”. Alkestis Horemi, who supervises digs at the Acropolis, said: “This is the only bust portraying the philosopher with a hooked nose in line with ancient descriptions.” (AFP)

Times, October 25 2006.

Exceptionally good news

The National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) will henceforth pay the full cost of members’ inpatient bills.

And this comes at no extra cost to contributors of the medical insurance scheme.

The programme will be implemented in some 380 accredited hospitals, it has been announced. Further, the fund announced it would also offer comprehensive cover for expectant mothers who deliver by caesarean section.

More here.