US National Academy of Sciences report says there is no connection.… Read the rest
Theory of Mind
Jun 4th, 2004 1:12 am | By Ophelia BensonAnimal cognition seems to be in the air this month. I read a review by Frans de Waal of two books on the subject a few days ago, and today find that one along with two more at SciTech. Each is about one of the books that de Waal reviews, so the three together make an interesting comparative package, and they’re all interesting in themselves.
This one on Clive D.L. Wynne’s Do Animals Think? is not only interesting but also quite amusing.
… Read the restStudents in the first-year university philosophy classes that I teach often believe that their dogs, cats, budgies, and goldfish are thinking pretty much the same thoughts they are. Unfortunately, some of them are right, I point out
South Africa, Zimbabwe, Human Rights
Jun 3rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMbeki governent could do more to pressure Mugabe, critics say.… Read the rest
A Boffin is an Engineer
Jun 3rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPeople who are fascinated by the possibility of making something happen.… Read the rest
Nietzsche in the Movies on ‘Front Row’
Jun 3rd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonB&W columnist talks about eternal recurrence and A Fish Called Wanda.… Read the rest
Meaning
Jun 2nd, 2004 10:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonI’ve been thinking about religion and the arguments people use to defend it, again. Or more likely I’ve never stopped. It’s a line of thought that shrinks or expands, that takes up a position in the middle of the living room or creeps into the back of a closet, depending on what I’ve heard or read lately, but it probably never goes away entirely, never actually packs the wheely suitcase and marches away into the sunset (which would be inadvisable from here, actually, because you would drown). Anyway I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about the idea that religion has something to do with humans’ desire for meaning – that religion does something about that desire. Satisfies it, … Read the rest
Eve Garrard on Amnesty International
Jun 2nd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAre violations of human rights by liberal democracies worse than greater ones elsewhere?… Read the rest
How Language Can Shape Thought
Jun 2nd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPhilip Stott on the metalanguage of ecology.… Read the rest
Novel Without Verbs, Review Ditto
Jun 2nd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonScott McLemee in satiric vein, boneless chickens, queasy sensation.… Read the rest
Tolkien Studies: Pop Culture or Scholarship?
Jun 2nd, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTolkien himself was a scholar, but his fans are more like Trekkies.… Read the rest
Majority-Minority
Jun 1st, 2004 8:30 pm | By Ophelia BensonThere is a lot lurking behind this question (as there so often is with questions of this kind) about what is more interesting – the widespread acceptance of a given social practice or custom, or the minority dissent from it. For one thing there is the comparison or analogy with everyday life and with present politics, reform, ideas of progress and improvement. Looked at in that way, it may be said that at least in some ways the reformist side is more interesting than the pro-status quo side. That’s almost a truism, or what Jerry S calls in that scholarly way of his that I can never hope to emulate, an argument by definition. Imagine to yourself a conversation. X … Read the rest
Is the Ubiquitous Interesting?
Jun 1st, 2004 1:55 pm | By Ophelia BensonSome people find inter-blog disputes tedious, other people fun. And no doubt many people who claim to find them tedious actually find them fun. But this at least is a dispute about a substantive matter…
So to business. Ralph on Clio. He claimed, a while ago, on B&W:
“When something is ubiquitous, the interesting question isn’t ‘how could it have been tolerated?’ because it was commonly and widely accepted.”
I think this is very silly. Ralph objects to my thinking it very silly. He says:
… Read the restI made the claim in the context of a discussion of slavery and its ubiquity in the early modern world. Explaining the presence of pro-slavery arguments in a world in which slavery was ubiquitous is
What About Apes, Do They Think?
Jun 1st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNathan Emery reviews Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings.… Read the rest
Do Animals Think? How Much? What About?
Jun 1st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonStan Persky reviews Clive D.L. Wynne’s Do Animals Think?… Read the rest
Frans de Waal on Animal Cognition
Jun 1st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDo animals have a theory of mind?… Read the rest
Twelve Ways to be a Philosopher
Jun 1st, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPuns, promissory notes, ethical conundrums about Nazis, personal jargon.… Read the rest
The straw man fallacy
Jun 1st, 2004 | By Julian BagginiFree-market capitalism is founded on one value: the maximization of profit. Other values, like human dignity and solidarity, or environmental sustainability, are disregarded as soon as they limit potential profit.
Naomi Klein, nologo.org FAQ
Nasty, greedy folk, these free market capitalists. If, as I suspect, you hold values other than the maximization of profit, you can’t possibly be on their side. Better to join the anti-capitalists, for whom human dignity, solidarity and environmental sustainability count for something.
If Klein’s moral victory over capitalism seems too easy, that’s because it is. The problem becomes evident when you ask yourself what this demonic free-market capitalism actually is.
It certainly isn’t capitalism as instantiated in European liberal democracies. There, all sorts of mechanisms … Read the rest