If the creation of this blog means less sporadic posting by Jacob T. Levy, Henley suddenly has a new challenger for my favorite liberterian in the blogosphere.
It wouldn't be The New Republic if they hadn't invited Abigail Thernstrom to participate.
It's not impressive so far. I wonder how long until most of them lose interest. Six months? Four?
It's not that impressive so far. I wonder how long it will take until most of them lose interest. Six months? Four?
I predict failure. Does anyone read Becker-Posner anymore? Is it still ongoing?
2: Yeah, it's a bit annoying that they invited two conservative think-tankers without university affiliation. At least McWhorter has serious academic credibility, though it's also sad that he decided to leave linguistics for the think-tank route. Anyway, it's not like think-tankers need an extra public megaphone.
Dammit, I would be a really good pundit. Why do you have to have a doctorate to be one of those people? Doctorates are more a matter of being able to endure six years of misery than they are any sort of certificate of elite judgment.
Oh, and welcome Steve! Glad to see you posting here.
(Ned: Start a blog, you'll probably catch some links from here.)
8: Thanks, Matt. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up with the pace here, which is a bit like drinking from a firehose. (Also, I feel as though I should post as "A gin marshmallow" or something to fit in better.)
8 - I've wondered about that myself, in my sporadic posting, but I figure that among the obvious pseuds (like "Gary Farber" or "Matt Weiner") there are people with normal names posting as well.
Tom, did you make it your personal project to comment on every blog in the US blogsophere a couple of months ago. All of a sudden I saw you everywhere I went.
Hey Tom, I ran across you on a Lubbock blog I googled up somewhat randomly. Do you have any actual connection to this place?
Maybe 11 answers 12. ("This place" = Lubbock.)
11 - no. The blog in question is written by an old Kibologist who I occasionally look up for no apparent reason. 10 - A couple months ago... if that was after July 15 or so, I was busy trying not to think about large quantities of explosives dropping on the country where I had been living. Else, maybe I was just geeking out a bit.
Bleurgh. Make that 12 and 11, respectively, in 14.
speaking of Ev. Psych stuff, I just finished the adapting minds book. The last four or five chapters aren't as good as first few chapters.
Some reviewer on amazon has a good point:
re: 16
The problem with that is there are pretty good philosophical and scientific reasons to be sceptical of strong forms of essentialism about species and natural kinds in general.
And that quote from the Amazon commentator is also a load of question-begging bollocks.
The philosopher is not allowed to define the terms of science in his own bizarre way and then claim to have detected a synthetic a priori inconsistency in the scientific use of the term.
In cases like this, philosophers are trying to come up with the right way of understanding particular terms. Claiming that some philosopher or other's understanding of 'species' is at fault is kind of begging the question at issue.
Maybe I'm just showing my ignorance herte but which scientists are essentialists about human nature, other than perhaps ev-psych, if Buller is right? And does a critique of essentialism have anything to do with philosophers critiques of sciences (what critique, in singular no less?).
16-18: I had kind of the same reaction, though. There was an argument roughly of the form: "Ev. Psych types think they can argue that some mental structures are natural to the human mind in the same fashion that having two kidneys is natural to the human body. Their attempt to show this fails, because having two kidneys is not natural to the human body -- some perfectly healthy people are born with one or three. Q.E.D. Ev. Psych is wrong."
And that left me going "Yeah, right." I mean, having two kidneys may not be normal, or natural, or whatever words you want to object to but it's something. Pick a word for it, a healthy human is overwhelmingly likely to have two kidneys. If the Ev. Psych. types could show mental structures that people were as likely to have as they are to have two kidneys, I'd think they had done something profoundly interesting -- while the philosophical critque might still be valid, it also seems like pointless nitpicking.
re: 19
Yeah. I presume your comments are directed at the Amazon comment quoted in 16?
re: 20
I wouldn't want to base a critique of EP on an anti-essentialist position about biological kinds, that's for sure.
I'm inclined to be secptical of strong forms of essentialism in the biological sciences but that doesn't mean denying that, as a matter of contingent fact, most humans have two kidneys.
In the same way, I'm fairly certain there are some near-universal human psychological traits. Finding those wouldn't validate EP unless those traits were the traits claimed by EP and exhibited all the features claimed of them by the EP model.
22: Sure. The scientific critique struck me as strong and convincing. The philosophical critique struck me (probably because I'm not a philosopher) as pointless nitpicking.
And what do you mean by "Yeah"? That you agree with me, or that you answered yes to my questions?
re: 23
Yeah. I'm not sure if it was particularly relevant given the general project in his book. Using a general anti-essentialist argument as a tool against a very specific set of concrete claims in psychology seems like missing the target unless it can be shown that the psychological claims depend tightly on a very specific essentialist reading of human nature. And I don't think you can make that case with EP. EP may be informed by a generally essentialist outlook on the part of its advocates but that's not the same thing.
re: 25
Yeah, I agreed with you.
But then wondered for a second whether you were disagreeing with me -- I'm in a state of coffee and sleep-deprivation today.
I woke up this morning convinced it was Saturday!
27, 25, 24, 21, 19, 16: Entirely too silly.