The intersection of two vexed subjects, evolutionary psychology and the differences between men and women, is examined in A Mind of Her Own.… Read the rest
Proving the point
Nov 4th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSteven Pinker points out that New York Times book reviewer resorts to the very fallacy the book is about.… Read the rest
Dignity and
Nov 4th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMystery, humility, human finitude; science has nothing to say about who we are; the self cannot be an illusion; free will must be true…Such are the platitudes that greet a book on bioethics by a presidential pundit.… Read the rest
Cleaning the closets
Nov 3rd, 2002 7:50 pm | By Ophelia BensonThere is a difference between amassing a great many facts, and acquiring or conveying knowledge or understanding. There is also a difference between exploring every possible detail and speculative possibility of Poet X’s sex life, and writing a good intellectual biography. The review of yet another new biography of Byron indicates that we have yet another example of the first part of the equation instead of the second. There has been a rash of such biographies in the last decade or so, profoundly anti-intellectual works that undertake to clean out the closets of various writers and thinkers without stopping to ask why we care about those closets if we don’t care about the work. We know more than we knew … Read the rest
Elitism or Meritocracy?
Nov 3rd, 2002 5:50 pm | By Ophelia BensonFrank Dobson, a Labour M.P. and former Secretary of State for Health, has an article in today’s Observer that assails the ‘elitist’ policies of Tony Blair’s government, particularly in education and health care. The health issue seems reasonably straightforward: he says that less money is being spent in poorer areas, and that does sound like a policy that favours the already favoured. But in education, surely things are not quite so simple. There is a worry, among those who agree with Dobson, about a proposal for super A-levels to challenge super-clever children. Dobson parses the idea this way:
… Read the rest“This idea that gifted children need super A-levels comes from people who want a privileged minority to be able to look down
Science Studies
Nov 2nd, 2002 | By Ophelia BensonIn 1994, Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt published Higher Superstition,
and the pigeons have still not recovered from the shock of that particular cat.
Higher Superstition is a funny-painful ‘deconstruction’ or rather demolition
of an array of trendy anti-science ‘studies’, stances, branches of putative
scholarship: Postmodern, cultural constructivist, feminist, sociological, environmental.
Most of these orientations are on the left, although it has been frequently
pointed out (e.g. by Richard J. Evans in his article on Postmodern history on
this site) that PoMo is at least as useful to the right as it is to the left
and that there are indeed right-wing Postmodernists. But the majority of the
attacks on science come from the left (and could be … Read the rest
David Lodge thinks
Nov 2nd, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhich tells us more about consciousness, fiction or cognitive science?… Read the rest
Credentials
Nov 2nd, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPhilosophers uncover conceptual connections and thus help to make ethical debate better informed.… Read the rest
Bizarre claims
Nov 2nd, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPhilosophers will insist on getting Dawkins wrong.… Read the rest
Truth and lies
Nov 1st, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBernard Williams defends the truth, while also exploring when we need to tell lies.… Read the rest
Anyone’s neighbour
Nov 1st, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘It could be you’. Perhaps a more useful suggestion about the Nobel prize than about the lottery.… Read the rest
Tragic view
Nov 1st, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAre John Gray and Steven Pinker saying the same dismal thing about human hopes, and are they right to be saying it?… Read the rest
Cargo cult science
Nov 1st, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Statistics show’ is a mere rhetorical device in education research, used to support whatever policy one favors. Research in cognitive psychology shows promise.… Read the rest