In Korsgaards’s “The Sources of Normativity” she makes the case that in modern moral philosophy the challenge has been to ground the ought; if morality argues that we ought to behave a certain way, then what is it about the nature of morality that it can command our behaviour? If...
Ingold in his “An Anthropologist looks at Biology” draws inspiration from physics, developing a “Quantum Field Theory”-like prism through which we can analyse life, whatever that may be. He offers a critique on Neo-Darwinism. From the text, he seems to be referring to the theory that was popularised under Dawkins’...
Ingold in his “An Anthropologist looks at Biology” draws inspiration from physics, developing a “Quantum Field Theory”-like prism through which we can analyse life, whatever that may be. He offers a critique on Neo-Darwinism, the Dawkins “Selfish Gene” model and argues convincingly that that is a theory that is not...
Not uniquely among animals, humans are a tool using animal. We seem to be very efficient at tool use, and also very efficient at teaching/learning how to use tools. Tooling about is something that we do. At a fundamental level toolmaking precedes us as a species. Toolmaking is something that...
With “Perceptual decision making: drift-diffusion model is equivalent to a Bayesian model” (2014) Blitzer et al. have taken the Bayesian approach to the problems that exist when we approach the world as a percepting decision maker. Their target of attack with this paper is the drift-diffusion model of perception, or...
In this piece I use Gelman and Shalizi’s (subsequently GS) “Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics” (2012) to look at the difficulties involved in the interpretation of statistics, what it means for the falsity and falsification of statistical models. I develop upon the consequences of the authors insight regarding...
Honneth (1995) constructs a constrained model of autonomy, based upon strong claims regarding linguistic determinism and also the nature of the unconscious. His claims about the unconscious are presented as empirical facts. Research which precedes Honneth’s “Decentered Autonomy” held that these were not uncontested facts. Should Honneth’s claims regarding the...
The circumstances under which neuroplasticity may occur and its impact on cognitive functioning. It was Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s great intuition to notice that the spines that appeared to be upon the neurons of cortical matter were not merely artefacts of the staining method but structural features of the neurons...
Politics is a particularly contested domain when it comes to our processes of cognition. Political opinions can define our personalities, our social status, our familial relations, our employment, and sometimes our freedom. Those from the political science domain have gotten as far as agreeing that we do not act in...
Implicit bias is a phenomenon which is problematic in terms of what it means to be rational self-aware beings, and also with how we look at ourselves as individuals. It is relatively trivial to spot the biases of others, that your mother always decides to walk another block if the...