Rationally Speaking Latest Blog Posts

Dear readers, Rationally Speaking is soon going to be (also) a podcast, produced by New York City Skeptics , and co-hosted by Julia Galef and yours truly. Before each (initially biweekly, starting at the end of January) episode we will publish a “teaser” like the one below, introducing the ...

* The American Museum of Natural History displays a collection cabinet that belonged to Alfred Russel Wallace , co-discoverer of the principle of natural selection. * Academic careers ain't all they are cracked up to be. Duh. * Steven Pinker's review of "What the Dog Saw," by Malcolm ...

* MSNBC, the liberal-leaning news channel, criticizes President Obama's performance so far , for pretty goot reasons. * Wendy Grossman explains why Karen Armstrong's take on religion and morality is frankly annoying, although hard to criticize too loudly. * Earl Blumenauer, the author of the ...

* xkcd's take on the vacuousness of some academic specialties... * One more from xkcd , on the meaning of life, if you will. * A New York Times article about the possible physiological function of dreams . * In defense of metaphysics (though not entirely in a convincing way). * A UK judge ...

Attentive readers of this blog may have noticed that those who post comments to my entries often show two interesting and complementary attitudes: a fundamental distrust of (if not downright contempt for) philosophy, coupled with an overly enthusiastic endorsement of science. Take, for instance, ...

* How to build secular communities, by Emily Cadik , published in the New Humanist. * My review of " Understanding Philosophy of Science ," by James Ladyman. * An absolutely brilliant satire by Jon Stewart of news networks' punditry. * Philosopher's pick: Anthony Appiah . * A somewhat ...

David Chalmers is a philosopher of mind, best known for his argument about the difficulty of what he termed the “hard problem” of consciousness, which he typically discusses by way of a thought experiment featuring zombies who act and talk exactly like humans, and yet have no conscious thought ...