12 in 12

Great things I discovered in 2012 (possibly after everyone else)--

The state of California.
Trees (the fall issue of The Philosophers' Magazine contains my paean to trees).
Bjork--esp. Homogenic and Biophilia. Can't get enough of Joga and Cosmogony.
Joanna Newsom--daughter turned me into a total fan in the past 24 hours!  Try The Book of Right On.
The problem of personal identity. It used to be

West Texas

You must, if you live in Texas, visit the Fort Davis area.  Who knew there were so many riches a mere (ahem) 10 hours' drive from Dallas?  Most of the drive is either boring or hideous, but there's something pretty neat about seeing bumps, and then hills, and then high mountains rise out of the plain. By the time you get to the far west end of the state, the landscape has become truly beautiful,

A Nation of Idiots

Idiot #1 - Wayne La Pierre
I knew yesterday's announcement would be depressing, but underestimated the man. Armed guards. That's the way to prevent another Newtown.  Let the bad guys keep their guns, and give more guns to the good guys. He wants trained volunteers to guard our schools.  Now--I would not reject that idea entirely. If off-duty police officers wanted to guard our neighborhood

All I want for Christmas is ... life and death

So ... I'm being ridiculed by my family just because three items on my holiday wishlist include the words "life" and "death" --

Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Jill Lepore, The Mansion of Happiness:  A History of Life and Death
Bernd Heinrich, Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death

Gloomy, me? Oh come on. I also asked for the book

Law and Order (and the vigil)

New York Times

Our political leaders need to reinstitute the assault weapons ban that lapsed in 2004.  This might really be possible, in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, especially if gun control advocates sell the idea in the right way. When President Clinton signed the assault weapons ban in 1994, he was something new and different--a "law and order" Democrat.  In addition to signing

Light

Last night the rabbi spoke about light in a time of darkness as people lit hundreds of menorahs in our temple's lovely sanctuary. It's hard to hold onto a feeling of life's basic goodness in the face of yesterday's massacre of completely vulnerable little children and their teachers. I can't think of anything insightful to say except the obvious:  gun control, now.

Losing My Religion

It's Friday, so let's have a song. This, from The Sandy Relief concert on 12-12-12, was amazing.

Must Philosophers Be Parents?

Philosopher Justin E. H. Smith rebels against pressure to be a parent here. He resents the fact that philosophers are always telling him there are things he just can't know, because he's childless.

All the hyperventilation about parenthood can be excessive, but how can it not be the case that parenthood gives people special experiences and insights?   For example, parenthood makes you think

12 X 6 = Time for ... What?

It's just about 12:12:12 on 12/12/12, so it's an auspicious time to ... what? That's the the only problem. I can't figure out how to use this obviously precious moment!

The Metaphysics of Corpses

Continuing to explore whether I was ever a zygote (or embryo, or fetus) ....

Current favorite picture of things:  I am an organism, essentially (so: Animalism). But must I think I began to exist as a zygote? Maybe not. First there was a zygote, which developed and grew into an embryo, and then a fetus (etc.) and at some point the fetus became me.  There's a lot to say about why that picture is

More Kerfuffling

Let us not kerfuffle endlessly, especially during winter break, when all good academics get vast amounts of work done (right?).  But I can't resist noting that Jerry Coyne weighs in here on the topic du jour.  If I'm reading between the lines correctly (I'm not betting large sums on that), he thinks Rebecca Watson is too rough on evolutionary psychology.* I'm prepared to believe what he says on

Feminist Science Criticism, 300 BC

Yesterday I happened to be reading Aristotle's account of reproduction, and came upon a nice example where having a feminist science critic on the scene would have been helpful.  Let us imagine one Kallista, (imaginary) champion of women from 300 BC, responding to this passage from Generation of Animals (Book I, ch. 21, trans. Platt) --



Aristotle says here that a female is passive and a

Feels Like We Only Go Backwards

It's Friday, so time for a great song...and great video!  Makes me think about John Lennon. Finder's credit: RAG

Becoming

Was I ever a a fetus? I continue to read and think about this.  So far I'm inclined to go along with Eric Olson's animalism, which says that the entity I am right now did start to exist as a fetus, way back when.  I think there are some excellent arguments for that view in his two books. But it does make me a bit queasy.  It seems odd to suppose that I was once a millimeter long. The oddity is

Feminist Science Criticism

Update 12/6: Here's a vastly more exhaustive response to Watson and Clint than mine. Great stuff.

For your viewing pleasure, I give you a controversial talk by feminist skeptic Rebecca Watson:






A lot of people seem to be impressed with this excoriation of Watson, by one Ed Clint, but I'm not so impressed. In fact, I'm amazed.  If Watson's talk amounts to "science denialism" then there are

Taking Persons too Seriously

In Persons and Bodies Lynne Rudder Baker says the Constitution View takes persons seriously, and other accounts of what we are don't take them seriously enough. I would say, rather, that the Constitution View takes persons too seriously. On the Constitution View, persons (like us) are persons essentially.

What makes a person a person, Baker contends, is having a first person perspective (FPP).

Favorite Philosophers

Philosophy Bites asked a lot of philosophers "Who's your favorite philosopher?"  Most of then chuckled first and then said ...

Hume
Aristotle
None
Montaigne & Nietzsche
Sartre, None
Aristotle
Carnap
MacKinnon
Hume
Descartes
Nietzsche
Frege
Kant
Hobbes, Rousseau
Aristotle
Aristotle
Thucydides
Socrates
Hume
Wittgenstein
Hybrid of Wittgenstein, Marx, Mill
Hybrid of Armstrong, Smart, Lewis