Archive for January, 2008
Posted in Academic Life, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Culture, Extended, Philosophy, Science, literature
January 25, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Today I offer a pleasant (if shallow) argument for why science fiction is the last place in contemporary fiction where we still find philosophical questions and challenges, posted by Clive Thompson for Wired. I agree wholeheartedly and have been making this argument for some time. I used to teach at least one Greg Egan short story in my Introduction to Philosophy classes (usually “Learning to be Me”), and I’ve even lectured on “The Pedagogical Utility of Science Fiction for Philosophy” to one or another of the modern language associations. I firmly believe that science fiction leads right into philosophy, and is a very accessible introduction for students who haven’t been exposed to much philosophy in the past. I would love to teach an Introduction to Philosophy via SciFi, and think I could do a great job with a Minds, Machines, and Persons type course all via SciFi, too. Perhaps with a follow-up course of pure philosophy to complement it. Anyway, I digress. The point is, I think Thompson is right – and it’s why I haven’t read much contemporary fiction at all in the last 15 years.
If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best — and perhaps only — place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas.
From where I sit, traditional “literary fiction” has dropped the ball. I studied literature in college, and throughout my twenties I voraciously read contemporary fiction. Then, eight or nine years ago, I found myself getting — well — bored.
Link to article at Wired (more of an exposition than an argument, but I still agree with him!)
Posted in Democracy, Extended, Philosophy, ethics
January 24, 2008 at 6:27 pm
From a BBC News Article:
A woman believed to be the last native speaker of the Eyak language in the north-western US state of Alaska has died at the age of 89.
Marie Smith Jones was a champion of indigenous rights and conservation. She died at her home in Anchorage.
She helped the University of Alaska compile an Eyak dictionary, so that future generations would have the chance to resurrect it.
How wonderful it is that this woman knew and desired to preserve her dying language. We should be so lucky to have the remaining Native Americans preserve their languages and cultures in similar ways. So much is already lost.
Link to article at BBC News
Posted in Academic Life, Blurb, Democracy, Digital Culture, Technology, ethics
January 23, 2008 at 11:40 am
Hollywood laid much of the blame for illegal movie downloading on college students. Now, it says its math was wrong. In a 2005 study it commissioned, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44 percent of the industry’s domestic losses came from illegal downloading of movies by college students, who often have access to high-bandwidth networks on campus… He says 3 percent is a more reasonable estimate for the percentage of revenue that might be at stake on campus networks.… Link to article in Wired News
Posted in Blurb, Critical Thinking?, Democracy, Feminism, ethics
January 22, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Today, Governor Mike Huckabee is scheduled to travel to Georgia to commemorate the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. There he plans to join Georgia Right to Life to lend his support, as well as the focus of the national media, to HR 536….Establishing in law that life begins at the moment of fertilization could lead to, he writes, “enforcement of homicide laws against pregnant women, restricting the activities of pregnant women, outlawing contraception and so on.” He continues, “The big picture is that the Human Life Amendment creates uncertainty in the law leaving it up to future legislatures to establish implementing laws and up to enforcement officials and courts to sort out what the law might mean in various applications.” In other words, let’s leave your right to use contraception up to your local assemblymember, district attorney and sheriff. Link to Cristina Page at the Huffington Post
Posted in Comics, Critical Thinking?, Digital Culture, Extended
January 20, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Great xkcd comic today. My columns won’t allow me to display it, so you’ll just have to go look for yourself. I always appreciate a good geek comic, but even moreso when it’s anti-pseudoscience.
Posted in Blurb, Democracy, Technology
January 19, 2008 at 2:25 pm
“A top homeland security policy maker suggests that the recently released mandates for a de-facto national I.D. card could help stop meth labs, if the government required that pharmacy’s demand that cold medicine buyers show their REAL ID.” Link to article at Wired.com
Posted in Atheism, Blurb, Democracy
January 15, 2008 at 3:26 pm
The United States Constitution never uses the word “God” or makes mention of any religion, drawing its sole authority from “We the People.” However, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee thinks it’s time to put an end to that. “I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.” Link to terrifying article at The Raw Story
Posted in Extended, Philosophy
January 14, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Wherein he explores other people’s theories, fails to give them any credit, and acts as though he’s breaking new ground once again.
Originally I thought of concentrating on the inventory of the basic thoughts out of which all complex thoughts are composed. That is, could you come up with an alphabet of thought, so to speak, which provides the raw materials for all our complex thoughts, where everything we can think is either an assembly of simpler concepts or a metaphorical abstraction of concrete concepts? So when we say that the economy rose and fell, we’re taking a physical source, that is where an object is in space, and we’re extending it to a much more abstract domain. A lot of that ended up in one chapter, chapter five, called “The Metaphor Metaphor,” about the metaphorical basis of thought, and a little bit in the final wrap-up chapter. But I realized that I had a lot more to say than just that, and it became clear to me as the book was taking shape that it was language as a window into human nature more generally.
For a fully developed theory of the embodied metaphorical basis of abstract concepts, see anything by Lakoff and Johnson. I recommend Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought.
Link to exclusive interview with Steven Pinker at Powells.com
Posted in Blurb, Evolution, Philosophy, Science
January 11, 2008 at 5:28 pm
“Historically, scientists believed that behavioural differences between colonies of chimpanzees were due to variations in genetics. A team at Liverpool, however, has now discovered that variations in behaviour are down to chimpanzees migrating to other colonies, proving that they build their ‘cultures’ in a similar way to humans.” Link to article in Physorg.com