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Michael Bench-Capon's Blog: Ripped at the seems

http://michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com/2014/09/ripped-at-seems.html

Thursday, September 25, 2014. Ripped at the seems. I don’t often have ideas about epistemology. Longtime readers may remember me talking about epistemic virtues of personal concern. And for a while I misguidedly tried to push the idea that Gettier was wrong about knowledge not being justified true belief. Recently though, I was listening to Peter Adamson’s excellent podcast series on the history of philosophy. Not to be happening, right? If P&Q seems to be true, does that mean P seems to be true as well?

michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com

Michael Bench-Capon's Blog: Change your life now, stupid

http://michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com/2014/11/change-your-life-now-stupid.html

Thursday, November 6, 2014. Change your life now, stupid. There’s a certain kind of atheist who doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for religious folk. They either read or write books by people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, they call themselves sceptics or rationalists or humanists depending on how closely they follow the trends, and they basically think religious people are being silly. So if I can do it, why can’t everyone? You’d save the life of a child drowning in front ...

michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com

Michael Bench-Capon's Blog: Famine, affluence, and psychopathy

http://michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com/2012/03/famine-affluence-and-psychopathy.html

Wednesday, March 21, 2012. Famine, affluence, and psychopathy. I recently read Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test. Reading a Jon Ronson book tends not to make you an expert on anything, but it did get me thinking. Many of my readers are probably familiar with Peter Singer’s paper ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’. Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom). Famine, affluence, and psychopathy. Most popular this week. Your defence of the Oxford comma sucks. The homogeneous spinning disc. Are Nato the bad guys?

michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com

Michael Bench-Capon's Blog: July 2014

http://michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com/2014_07_01_archive.html

Wednesday, July 2, 2014. Back when I was a long-haired fresher, I was taught logic from a book by Wilfrid Hodges called Logic. I’ve since lent the book to someone from whom I don’t expect to get it back, but if I remember correctly, at the end the author wonders what expressions might one day have a logic developed for them. He wonders about ‘obviously’. He says he thinks that P. Follows from Obviously P. And that it’s unclear whether or not Obviously obviously P. Follows from Obviously P. I expect that ...

michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com

Michael Bench-Capon's Blog: Uses for cloned woolly mammoths

http://michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com/2014/12/uses-for-cloned-woolly-mammoths.html

Tuesday, December 2, 2014. Uses for cloned woolly mammoths. The possibility of cloning woolly mammoths has been back in the news lately. Someone I know asked what they would be good for:. What would even be the main reason for it? Besides curiosity. Woolly mammoth cloning war - http:/ t.co/V4eZfZBd9a. 8212; Kiara White (@kiara white) November 16, 2014. I have compiled a list. Thanks to Aliya Vasylenko for her contributions. Easier to get across Alps than elephants. Episode of Inside Nature's Giants.

michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com

Michael Bench-Capon's Blog: September 2014

http://michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com/2014_09_01_archive.html

Thursday, September 25, 2014. Ripped at the seems. I don’t often have ideas about epistemology. Longtime readers may remember me talking about epistemic virtues of personal concern. And for a while I misguidedly tried to push the idea that Gettier was wrong about knowledge not being justified true belief. Recently though, I was listening to Peter Adamson’s excellent podcast series on the history of philosophy. Not to be happening, right? If P&Q seems to be true, does that mean P seems to be true as well?

michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com

Michael Bench-Capon's Blog: December 2013

http://michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com/2013_12_01_archive.html

Sunday, December 15, 2013. Fallacious proof of the continuum hypothesis. One of the things amateur mathematicians like to do is come up with fallacious proofs and disproofs of the continuum hypothesis, in much the same way professional logicians like to come up with fallacious rehashings of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Today’s fallacious argument purports to prove that the continuum hypothesis is true. Here we go. Now, presumably this argument is fallacious. It’s so short! There was...

michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com

Michael Bench-Capon's Blog: A good day to create the universe

http://michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-good-day-to-create-universe.html

Monday, August 25, 2014. A good day to create the universe. But it’s actually kind of hard to explain exactly how arbitrary divine decisions are meant to work. When philosophers of religion aren’t fretting about cosmology, they’re usually fretting about free will and divine foreknowledge. If God knows this morning what I’ll do this afternoon, how can my actions this afternoon be free? Wouldn't that mean time travel is possible? For someone with the prior commitments I have about time, free will, the exis...

michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com

Michael Bench-Capon's Blog: Bubbles might not always be silly

http://michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com/2014/11/bubbles-might-not-always-be-silly.html

Sunday, November 9, 2014. Bubbles might not always be silly. I’ve been listening to NPR’s Planet Money. Podcasts recently, and a couple of days ago I listened to this one. Now what happens if the craze is still going after a year? Is this a reasonable way of dealing with uncertainty about how long a craze will last? So here’s another question: do real commodities exhibiting the price-rise-then-crash phenomenon fit this model? Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom). Bubbles might not always be silly. Today th...