Scottish Nous

Footnote Three

From Manuel Vargas' (2005) "Compatibilism Evolves?: On Some Varieties of Dennett Worth Wanting" in Metaphilosophy 36(4): 461:

In a Dennettian spirit we could call Dennett’s view DDAMN, for Dennett’s DArwinian Materialist Naturalism. But if Dennett’s view is DDAMNed, then its critics who are Generally Opposed to Dennett’s Darwinian Materialist Naturalism would end up being GODDAMNed. So, I’ll just leave these acronyms alone.

A Ridiculous Way to Say Nothing

From the most recent NDPR article by Herbert Gintis on J. McKenzie Alexander's The Structural Evolution of Morality:

It is refreshing indeed to find a moral philosopher capable of expressing such elementary, yet widely ignored truths as "our moral beliefs are simultaneously relative to our evolutionary history and our cultural background, but at the same time objectively true" (p. 291). Why objectively true? Because our moral beliefs are just as much a material force in the world as our capacity to metabolize nutrients, and truth in this case means exists.

This is utter gibberish.  Let me paraphrase:

It's wonderful that some philosophers still have the capacity to record the obvious but often overlooked fact that people have moral beliefs and sometimes act in accordance with them.

Nothing was lost in translation. [via Leiter]

Your Average American Voter...

... is in favor of ruining as many people's lives as possible.  If you want to learn more about just what kind of sick pervert your average voter is, go read this series of articles at Mother Jones.

Batshit Crazy

No further comment.

Fundamentalist Irrationality - Birthday Edition

Ok, so I know I've been blogging a bit frequently of late about the wicked and irrational Bill Dembski.  The reason for this is that I've added Uncommon Descent to my blogroll.  Yes, I still like to keep my finger on the pulse of the community of religious zealots.  Dembski is the best target here, since he's something of their ringleader, a result he has acheived mostly by continually publishing loads of trash that appeals to fundies who can't think clearly.  Also, it's his birthday.  But this will be the last Dembski post for awhile.  I take it that I'll have done a sufficient job of discrediting the kook for the time being.

Consider his latest bit of lunacy.  The title of the relevant post is "So much for the 'scientific consensus' regarding man-made global warming".  He there follows his usual strategy of pasting lots of material without saying almost anything (a strategy designed to give him plenty of snakelike wriggle room), and in this case, what gets pasted into the body of his post is a blog post which references an editor's remarks published in a newsletter (not peer reviewed) of the APS. The post, which Dembski certainly appears to be endorsing, begins:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming.

This is, of course, wildly false.  If you go to the APS website, you will find a statement which reads:

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007: "Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS.  The header of this newsletter carries the statement that "Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum."

Dembski seems to believe anything he reads on a blog.  In this case, the paper with which the APA is alleged (by the crazy blogger Dembski cites) to be opening it's debate on climate change was written by a bonified loon - some "Lord Monckton of Brenchley" who appears to have degrees in classics and journalism and who doesn't understand basic physics.  For evidence of the latter two claims, read a 2006 Guardian article on this global warming denier.  The fact is that if you are rational, you won't care what some fringe blogger reports about an inconsequential editor's statement in an inconsequential newsletter which is publishing material by bonafide loons.

But then, you shouldn't expect Dembski to be rational.  If something fits with his irrational beliefs, he adopts it, evidence be damned.  The fact is, the consensus of the experts is that global warming is taking place, and furthermore, that it has a significant human cause.  Dembski is simply not in a position to disagree with the experts.  He is not a careful thinker.  He is not a serious academic.  He is not a mathematician.  He does not care about truth.  He is not a philosopher.  And he is not a good writer.  Go read the Wikipedia article on him if you'd like to be given numerous reasons to vomit in your mouth.  Or drop back into the archives here at Scottish Nous.

Think Stupid, Not Candid

Yet again, McCain makes a poor attempt at pleading ignorance:

What does he know?

With Some Misgivings...

... I will be celebrating the 4th.  Presumably like Rad Geek, who paints the 4th as a day celebrating the death of an empire (rather than the rise of a new one), I will be telling myself that I am honoring revolutionaries as I set off the $70 worth of fireworks we bought last night.  I will be reminding myself, as will many of those I'll be grilling out with, of a people willing to take up arms and sacrifice their lives to fight the government employed thugs and armed henchmen of despots.  I will think fondly of the men who plunged the tips of their bayonets into the overfed bellies of idiotically attired members of a military force designed to return British subjects to their appropriate place, that is, place them squarely beneath the iron fist of insane George.

But it will be bittersweet.  As I remind myself of these facts, I will nevertheless be quite aware that our neighbors, looking over the fencerow approvingly, will silently applaud what they perceive to be our patriotism and nationalism.  They will perhaps thank a god they blindly worship that they live next to people who worship, like themselves, the apparatus of the American State.  A feeling of solidarity will well up in their breast, they will turn towards their flag and fireworks, and with hearts ablaze, proclaim their devotion to a band of robber barons, namely, their congressmen, senators, judges and presidents.  Perhaps they'll offer me a beer.  Perhaps I'll even share it with them.