Since deficit limits in the Euro zone are indexed to GDP, Italy will "boost" its economy by including drugs, prostitution and smuggling in the calculation of its gross domestic product.   Story here.  

I may be missing something, but I really cannot see much out there about the virtue ethics as informed by Sextus Empiricus. I find this at least a little surprising since it would not be terribly controversial to suggest that we can look at Montaigne or Nietzsche as contributors to virtue theorist in ethics; and equally…

I find much to agree with in Wayne's post.   I particularly agree with the point that "Our educational system isn’t particularly well suited for training philosophers who can engage seriously with the sciences."  I don't, of course, know what can be done about this, since I don't think the solution can be to spend less…

Over on Facebook, I invited Wayne Myrvold, philosopher of physics at The University of Western Ontario, to post his thoughts about Tyson and the responses Tyson has gotten from philosophers.   In another post to follow, I will post my reaction to Wayne's post. What Neil de Grasse Tyson got right Wayne Myrvold, Department of…

This piece in the Gaurdian argues that it is.   So does the  the Congressionally-funded US Institute for Peace. "…poor responses to climatic shifts create shortages of resources such as land and water. Shortages are followed by negative secondary impacts, such as more sickness, hunger, and joblessness. Poor responses to these, in turn, open the door to…

Not very well, claims a study recently published in Nature.   The principle claim is that "laypeople interpret IPCC statements as conveying probabilities closer to 50% than intended by the IPCC authors."  In other words, if the IPCC uses a term to convey that a hypothesis is 90% likely, people intepret it to mean that the…

There appeared this morning a very interesting review of Craver and Darden’s recent book In Search of Mechanisms: Discoveries across the Life Sciences by the biologist Stuart Newman.   Among the points he makes is the claim that it will no longer do for philosophers to define the function of some mechanism (or anything else) as…

There were news reports indicating that an Oklahoma affiliate did this in March, when there was brief mention of human evolution.   Some claimed it was an accident.   There are now rumors (I don't have an internet link for this) that they did this again last night in Louisiana.   Can any Louisiana viewers confirm or…

According to some big names in linguistics and evolutionary biology (Hauser, Lewontin, Chomsky, etc.) not very much.   Two things to talk about here: 1.  The claims of the article, which I find very well argued for, but not (at least to me) very surprising. 2. Is it surprising to anyone that Mark Hauser is collaborating…

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