U.S. drops its support for a ban on trading polar bear parts; Greenpeace doesn’t care if bears are killed, either

Why Evolution Is True

What the hell is up with Greenpeace—and with the U.S., for that matter? According to Macleans, the U.S., once a strong supporter of banning trade in polar bear parts (I assume it’s the skin that’s the valuable “part”), has now dropped its support, and Greenpeace doesn’t care. Remember, these bears are on the wane.

Inuit hunters may have just brought down their biggest quarry ever.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided to stop pushing for an international ban on the trade in polar bear parts — an effort that has been strenuously opposed by Inuit and the Canadian government.

The U.S. agency has been trying for years to have skins and other parts put in the same category as elephant ivory. It sponsored votes at the last two meetings of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species that would have prevented Inuit hunters from selling hides…

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The Naturalistic Turn — II

Footnotes to Plato

[for a brief explanation of this ongoing series, as well as a full table of contents, go here]

Willard Van Orman Quine

“Belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths that are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truths that are synthetic, or grounded in fact” and “reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construction upon terms which refer to immediate experience.” These are the famous two “dogmas” that W.V.O. Quine imputed to positivism (Quine 1980: 20), and that he proceeded to dismantle in one of the best examples of progress in contemporary philosophy. As we shall see, the rejection of a sharp distinction between analytic and synthetic truths, as well as the abandonment of the strict logicism of the positivists, do not necessarily amount to the complete abandonment of “first philosophy” (i.e., philosophizing to be done independently of any…

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The Naturalistic Turn — I

Footnotes to Plato

[for a brief explanation of this ongoing series, as well as a full table of contents, go here]

“To be is to be the value of a variable.”

(Willard Van Orman Quine)

We have seen so far that philosophy broadly construed has a significant public relation problem, and I’ve argued that one of the root causes of this problem is its sometimes antagonistic relationship with science, mostly, but not only, fueled by some high prominent scientists who locked horns with equally prominent anti-scientistic philosophers. In this chapter we will examine the other side of the same coin: the embracing by a number of philosophers of a more positive relationship with science, to the point of either grounding philosophical work exclusively in a science-based naturalistic view of the world, or even of attempting to erase any significant differences between philosophy and science. This complex discourse is sometimes referred to as…

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The Naturalistic Turn — III

Footnotes to Plato

[for a brief explanation of this ongoing series, as well as a full table of contents, go here]

What is naturalism, anyway?

As we have seen, one cannot talk about naturalism in 20th century philosophy (and beyond) without paying dues to Quine’s fundamental, one would almost want to say game changing, influence. And the reason to talk about naturalism at all in the context of the current project is that the “naturalistic turn” in (analytic) philosophy represents a crucial piece of the puzzle of how modern philosophy sees itself and its relationship with science. This, finally, is pertinent to my attempt at understanding how the two fields can be said to make progress, albeit in different senses of the term.

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Canadian parents convicted for killing son by giving him maple syrup and other nostrums for meningitis

Why Evolution Is True

On March 10 I told the story of David and Collet Stephan, a couple from Alberta who killed their son Ezekiel, afflicted with meningitis, by withholding medical treatment in favor of bogus “alternative” medicine. Here’s what the CBC said when reporting on their prosecution for criminal neglect. (Ezekiel died in 2012):

In a bid to boost his immune system, the couple gave the boy — who was lethargic and becoming stiff — various home remedies, such as water with maple syrup, juice with frozen berries and finally a mixture of apple cider vinegar, horse radish root, hot peppers, mashed onion, garlic and ginger root as his condition deteriorated.

Court heard the couple on tape explaining to the police officer that they prefer naturopathic remedies because of their family’s negative experiences with the medical system.

The Stephan family runs family runs Truehope Nutritional Support, a dubious food-supplement company.

Ezekiel had bacterial meningitis, which is highly…

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Introduction: Read This First — II

Footnotes to Plato

[for a brief explanation of this ongoing series, as well as a full table of contents, go here]

Before concluding this overview and inviting you to plunge into the main part of the book, let me briefly discuss some of the surprisingly few papers written by philosophers over the years that explicitly take up the question of progress in their field, as part of scholarship in so-called “metaphilosophy.” I have chosen three of these papers as representative of the (scant) available literature: Moody (1986), Dietrich (2011) and Chalmers (2015). [2] The first one claims that there is indeed progress in philosophy, though with important qualifications, the second one denies it (also with crucial caveats), and the third one takes an intermediate position.

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The Nature of Philosophy — Preamble

Footnotes to Plato

Dear Readers,

I’m about to start an unusual project here at Plato’s Footnote, one that will take several weeks to complete, and which I hope will turn out to be of general enough interest. Beginning next week, I will publish a number of posts comprising the entirety of my new book, The Nature of Philosophy: How Philosophy Makes Progress and Why It Matters. The book, on which I worked since 2012, is finally ready for prime time, and I decided to give it an unusual platform: blog serialization.

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The ultimate cowardice: British student union refuses to condemn ISIS

Why Evolution Is True

When even Muslim organizations are condemning ISIS left and right, one organization refuses to do so. That’s right—it’s the National Union of Students, the British students’ organization.  And below is the motion up for approval at their convention, according to The Tab, an Oxford student news site:

Proposed: Daniel Cooper
Seconded: Shreya Paudel, Clifford Fleming

NUS National Executive Committee notes:

1. The ongoing humanitarian crisis and sectarian polarisation in Iraq – which has resulted in thousands of Yazidi Kurds being massacred.

NUS NEC believes

1. That the people of Iraq have suffered for years under the sectarian and brutally repressive dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, the US/UK invasion and occupation, the current sectarian regime linked to both the US and Iran, and now the barbaric repression of the “Islamic State” organisation.

2. That rape and other forms of sexual violence are being used as weapons against women in IS-occupied areas, while minorities are being ethnically cleansed.

NUS NEC resolves

1…

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In defense of Sam Harris

Why Evolution Is True

Over at Quillette, Jeff Tayler, late of Salon, has written an eloquent and well documented essay: “Free speech and Islam—in defense of Sam Harris.”

I’ve often written about the unconscionable and undeserved criticism, and even hatred, that Sam Harris gets—and not just from religious people! It’s often the nonbelievers and secularists who heap the most opprobrium on him: for supposedly being “Islamophobic,” for supposedly advocating “racial profiling” and torture, for supposedly advocating nuclear first strikes on Muslim nations, and even for daring to suggest that moral judgments may be “objective.”

I say “supposedly” in the last sentence because if there’s anything that characterizes the nastiest criticisms of Sam Harris, it’s that more often than not they’re based on either misunderstanding or deliberate misrepresentation of his claims. Most of us know this, but few people who engage in Harris-bashing bother to go back and read what he actually said. It’s just…

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Angela Merkel trying to suppress free speech in Germany

Why Evolution Is True

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has shown some moxie in trying to make Germany do the humanitarian thing by absorbing many fearful immigrants from the Middle East. Many of her constituents don’t want those immigrants, and so her approval rating has dropped strongly in the last year, particularly after the mass attacks on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.

I’ve supported her stand, but now I want to criticize her about a different matter: her handling of free speech. As many of you probably know, a German comedian, Jan Böhmermann, wrote a scatalogical poem criticizing Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and broadcasst the poem on German television. I haven’t been able to find the poem, or even a transcript, as the clip has been removed. Many, however, found it not that funny, tasteless, and offensive on the grounds of both its nature and its profanity.

Böhmermann’s poem apparently accused Erdogan of being a pedophile and of copulating with animals;

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