Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Sick Souls, Healthy Minds

 “Panpsychism also offers a solution to the even harder problem of how to ground objective truths about value” — Philip Goff (Durham



A problem with the perception of size — and Malebranche’s solution, explained by Colin Chamberlain (Temple) (via Alison Peterman)


The idea that academics should not also be activists seems to be based on an unduly narrow idea of what an activist is — that there are certain types of activists who academics ought not emulate only tells us so much, says Anh Le (Manchester)


“What is it for a thought to be clear? What made our initial thought unclear? And how do we make a thought clear, in the relevant sense?” — Eli Alshanetsky (Temple) on the philosophical problems of thinking clearly


“Criticizing bad science from an abstract, 10000-foot view is pleasant… But actually diving into the sea of trash that is social science…” — what is wrong with the social sciences? (via MR)


Five big questions about expertise — Jamie Carlin Watson (Arkansas) uses social epistemology to “synthesize the disparate fields of expertise studies” in a series of posts at The Brains Blog.


“Humans must keep doing what they have been doing, hating and fighting each other. I will sit in the background, and let them do their thing.” — GPT-3 writes an opinion piece for The Guardian, with some help from the editors (via Naomi van Steenbergen)



  • Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life, by John Kaag, reviewed by Andrew Stark at Times Literary Supplement
  • How to Be a Conservative, by Roger Scruton, reviewed by Andrew Koppelman at New Rambler Review.
  • Spinoza’s Ethics, translated by George Eliot, edited by Claire Carlisle, reviewed by Moira Gatens at Australian Book Review.