Category Archives: Dualism vs. Materialism

“Maintaining A Thesis At All Costs”

April 14, 2017 – 10:23 pm

Daniel Dennett has a new book – From Bacteria To Bach And Back. I haven’t read it, though I likely will. Thomas Nagel reviews it, here.

By Malcolm | Also posted in Mind and Brain, Darwin and Biology | Comments (5)

Close Up Those Barren Leaves

April 25, 2010 – 9:46 pm

More from Eric Hoffer: According to Bergson “the intellect is characterized by an inability to comprehend life.” Kant was certain that “the origin of the cosmos will be explained sooner than the mechanism of a plant or caterpillar.” How outlandish then is the belief that the intellect can fathom men’s soul. How can science unravel […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in General | Comments (8)

Parallel Postulates

September 14, 2009 – 10:32 pm

Lawrence Auster is a very smart fellow, and I admire his formidable presence on the ramparts of Western culture. But he has curious blind spots, for one so intelligent, and one of them has to do with Darwinism. Have a look at this exchange with a reader, one who patiently tries to explain, as I […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in Darwin and Biology, Reason and Philosophy, Science, Religion | Comments (4)

Causes and Reasons

May 4, 2008 – 11:13 pm
This entry is part 5 of 15 in the series Free Will

Jeffery Hodges left a comment on our last post about free will (and I do apologize for approaching the subject so circumspectly, over a period of weeks) in which he asked if I was making a distinction between causes and reasons. This is an important question — and indeed I am.

By Malcolm | Also posted in Free Will | Comments (3)

Fogbound

June 30, 2007 – 11:13 pm

Over at Dr. William Vallicella’s Maverick Philosopher website there is a dicussion thread underway, prompted by a silly item in the New York Times about cognitive neuroscience and the soul. In the original article, the author, obviously unfamiliar with the labyrinthine convolutions of mind-body philosophy, embarrasses herself with the following: But as evolutionary biologists and […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in Pretty Good Posts | Comments (5)