Columns

(List of articles that appeared in regular columns I have written.)

• Go to Ask-a-Philosopher
• Go to Philosophy Now
• Go to The Philosophers’ Magazine
• Go to Skeptical Inquirer

Ask-a-Philosopher

Here are my contributions to the wonderful site Ask a Philosopher, coordinated by Geoffrey Klempner. (Most recent on top. If you are a professional philosopher and wish to lend a bit of your time to the initiative, contact Geoffrey directly).

• Where does theology end and philosophy begin?
• Do scientists need help from philosophers?
• Do philosophers agree on the nature of philosophy?
• Is it possible to add into a naturalistic philosophy (naturalism) the existence of immaterial things?
• Why do we exist? What is our purpose? What happens after death?
• How different might the laws of nature have been (in some other logically possible but nomologically impossible world)?
• For the philosopher, ‘because God said so’ is an unsatisfactory answer to the question ‘why is act X moral (or immoral)?’ Why?
• ‘A philosopher’s words are empty if they do not heal the suffering of mankind.’ (Epicurus). Agree, or disagree?
• Existentialism and Stoicism are two well known philosophies of life. Are there any others you can think of? What makes a philosophy ‘practical’?
• What is love? Have philosophers anything useful to add to Plato’s discussion of this question in the ‘Symposium’?
• Today, we think that slavery is wrong and barbaric although once it was considered perfectly acceptable. Is it possible that in the future something we think is OK now will be judged in the same way?
• Besides logical flaws, what are the criteria for evaluating a philosophical hypothesis?
• Is it acceptable in today’s post-postmodern society to lack a passion?
• Give three examples of how academic philosophy is useful in the contemporary world.
• Is there free will?
• Do philosophers still believe in the analytic-synthetic distinction?
• What are the various ways in which one could go about trying to demarcate science from pseudoscience?
• What is holism?
• What is relevant data that supports the inferences about “Do we use 10 per cent of our brain?”
• If the universe was created in a Big Bang, before light, matter, and time; if there was no time how can there be a before?
• Please tell me, are objectivity, rationality and universality necessary requirements for all philosophical truths?

Philosophy Now

A collection of my articles for the excellent Philosophy Now magazine. (Most recent on top. Please note that many of these articles are behind paywall; you can either subscribe to the magazine or send me an email to obtain a copy.)

• The Philosopher, The Priest, & The Painter
• Philosophy and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Are There ‘Other’ Ways of Knowing?
• What Hard Problem? (of consciousness)
• The Ajax Dilemma
• On Naturalism
• Testing My Own Morality
• Reflective Equilibrium
• Doctor Who and Philosophy
• Mathematical Platonism
• What Darwin Got Wrong (not much)
• On Xenophobia
• The Evolution of Evolutionary Theory
• (scientific) Hypotheses? Forget About It!
• Crossing The Divide (between the Two Cultures)
• The Old and The New (in the study of philosophy)
• Is Science Going To End?
• A Transcendental Philosophy of Science?
• Philosophy, Science, And Everything In Between
• Fieldnotes From The Borderlands (between science and philosophy)
• What is a Thought Experiment, Anyhow?
• Is Ethics a Science?
• Wittgenstein Solves (Posthumously) the Species Problem
• What is Philosophy of Science Good For?
• The Alleged Fallacies of Evolutionary Theory
• Philosophizing about the Mind
• The Ethics of Tit-for-Tat
• Design, Yes. Intelligent, No.

The Philosophers’ Magazine

Entries in my column at The Philosophers’ Magazine Online, confusingly entitled “Footnotes to Plato.” (Most recent on top.) TPM is one of the best publications devoted to public understanding of philosophy, and well worth the price of subscription.

• On human races
• If you endorse GMOs, get the science straight
• Mike, don’t listen to Bill Nye about philosophy
• Virtue epistemology, anyone?
• The proximate-ultime distinction and evolutionary developmental biology
• The philosophy of irony and sarcasm
• The problem with cognitive and moral psychology
• Has philosophy lost its way?
• Richard Dawkins
• In Defense of Accommodationism: On the Proper Relationship Between Science and Religion
• Pseudoscience and Continental Philosophy
• Biology vs Physics: Two Ways of Doing Science?
• Should Academics Stay Out of Political Activism?
• Turns out, utilitarians are not psychopaths
• Are Races “Real”?
• The Trouble with Cultural Evolution
• Ancient Philosophers: how many? How influential?
• String Theory vs the Popperazzi
• God and the Source of Morality — Part II
• God and the Source of Morality — Part I
• On Wisdom
• The Nonsense-On-Stilts Conclusion, Part II
• The Nonsense-On-Stilts Conclusion, Part I
• What Do Philosophers Think? — Part II
• What Do Philosophers Think? — Part I
• Female Orgasm and the Logic of Evolutionary Hypotheses
• On the Uselessness of (Much) Academic Philosophy
• Developing a Philosophy of Life — Part III
• Developing a Philosophy of Life — Part II
• Developing a Philosophy of Life — Part I
• Introducing Footnotes to Plato

Skeptical Inquirer

A collection of my articles for the excellent Skeptical Inquirer magazine. (Most recent on top. Please note that many of these articles are behind paywall; you can either subscribe to the magazine send me an email to obtain a copy.)

• The virtuous skeptic
• Artistic provocations from skeptical inquirers: an exhibit.
• Science and Skepticism, the Big Picture
• Futurology
• Evidence in Science
• The Epistemology of Thought Experiments
• The Epistemology of Thought Experiments
• Demarcation and Pseudoscience
• Truth, Part II
• Truth, Part I
• Mathematical Explanations and Degrees of Impossibility
• Whose Burden of Proof?
• The Proper Role of Sociology of Science
• Physicists against Philosophers
• Singularity As Pseudoscience
• What’s So Bad about Ad Hoc Hypotheses?
• Explanations in Search of Observations
• Being Reasonable about Neuroscience
• Psychoanalysis and Social Constructivism
• Human Nature
• Turing Test for Human Beings
• Hume vs. Rousseau: The Limits of Human Reason
• The Hopeless War against Intelligent Design Creationism
• On Miracles–Again
• Personal Genomics: The Fine Line between Science and Narcissism
• Popper vs. Kuhn: The Battle for Understanding How Science Works
• The Science of Unique Events
• The Problem with Neurosexism
• On Time Travel
• Climate Denialism
• Is There a Difference between Basic and Applied Science?
• The Moral Duty of a Skeptic
• Logophobia
• On the Moon
• Hard and Soft Science: Physics vs. Psychology
• The Tree of Life
• Experimental Philosophy, an Oxymoron?
• The Brain on Justice
• Alternative Science
• Creationist Peer Review
• Toward a Consilience of Sciences and Humanities?
• Is Intelligent Design Creationism?
• Beyond Selfish Genes
• The Trouble with Memetics
• Is Dawkins Deluded? When Scientists Talk About Religion
• Can There Be a Science of Free Will?
• Is There Such a Thing as Macroevolution?
• Evolutionary Epistemology, Anyone?
• The Neuro-philosophy of Regret
• One More Take on Reductionism vs. Holism
• When Philosophy Matters
• Is Physics Turning into Philosophy?
• Is Evolutionary Psychology a Pseudoscience?
• Planet X and the Issue of Definitions in Science
• Just the Facts, Ma’am: Empirical vs. Rationalist Approaches to Understanding
• The Power and Perils of Metaphors in Science
• Are the Historical Sciences Sciences?
• The So-called Gaia Hypothesis
• Do Extraordinary Claims Really Require Extraordinary Evidence?
• Piltdown and How Science Really Works
• And the Mechanism Is …
• Design Yes, Intelligent No: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory and Neocreationism