Category: Mark Lance
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I have nothing particularly interesting to say on the topic, but this account of recent science on the migration of people to the Americas is fascinating. What is most cool is the way that three distinct scientific routes – genetics, archeology, and linguistics – are converging on an account.
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Jonathan Martin – the player for the Miami Dolphins who left football, at least temporarily, as a result of relentless locker room bullying – has prompted some voluminous soul-searching. (Whether it leads to meaningful action remains to be seen.) I want to suggest that there have been two profoundly wrong assumptions made in most coverage…
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Dear readers: there have been lots of questions raised about our comments policy regarding the recent accusations of sexual misconduct in the profession. We think we have made some wrong calls along the way. In this brief post we want to explain how our thinking evolved over the last hectic 36 hours, and more importantly…
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Georgetown, like many Jesuit schools, requires philosophy of all undergrads – two courses. Since most of these students are not going to go on in philosophy, some of us spend a fair bit of time reflecting on what best to aim for in such a class. I don't really think the first steps of professional…
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There have been a number of discussions here at Newapps on various things that philosophical writing can legitimately aim for other than simply tell some truth or other. Here, I want to reflect on a distinction between telling and showing. In the simplest case, this distinction arises when we contrast being told some fact and seeing…
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This is just a short note to express my hope that all the celebrities and ordinary folks celebrating the two former members of pussy riot will recall that there are political prisoners rotting in US prisons as well. This is not to criticize TFMPR – I don't really understand the issues behind the split, but that aside,…
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Is an African American political prisoner in the US. He was convicted of killing a police officer in the course of resistance work with the armed wing of the New African Liberation Army. He has been held in solitary confinement for the last 30 years, in violation of numerious international agreements, and under conditions that…
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He is gone. When someone is 94, you can't call it a surprise. But when someone has always been there as a part of just about everything you cared about politically your entire life, it somehow is. We are much the poorer.
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In a recent blog entry, Laurie Santos and Tamar Gendler very nicely lay out the idea that explicit propositional knowledge is only a small part of the sort of understanding that guides action. As they say “Recent work in cognitive science has demonstrated that knowing is a shockingly tiny portion of the battle for most…
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There was a story in today's NYT about a number of colleges that are lowering tuition, sometimes drastically. The argument is that they can do this without loss of revenue, since so few pay full tuition anyway. Thus, they are lowering tuition and cutting financial aid and making a splash vis a vis the current concern…
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