Now that France has approved Hydroxychloroquine after Prof Raoult’s second test, it is helpful to go back and roll the tape. We need to understand why we are where we are now, over a month after China — which, unsurprisingly, did a lot of the early work on Covid-19 that we are all relying on Read More…
Ethics
Hydrochloroquine wars, 2: a NY physician speaks of “hundreds” of successful patients, a Governor bans use in Nevada
First, Dr Vladimir Zelenko speaks: While, the Governor blocks: Sisolak signed an emergency order earlier Tuesday barring the use of anti-malaria drugs for someone who has the coronavirus. But Sisolak’s order does not apply to patients who are hospitalized with coronavirus. The order restricting chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine came after President Donald Trump touted the medication Read More…
At MercatorNet: For once, a woke “ethicist” gets shut down by people with disabilities
Message to activists for persons with disabilities: Please fight for Peter Singer’s freedom of speech to display his agenda to the world while there is still a slight chance you can legally fight it. Leave the defense of censorship to those well-heeled woke who would also deprive you of your lives. So many of them will be only too happy to oblige in both cases.
On Sev’s “privileg[ing]” vs liberty as the due balance of rights, freedoms and duties (also, on truth vs warrant)
Sometimes, one of our commenters raises a significant matter that is worth headlining and further analysing. In a recent thread, Seversky dismissies Christian concerns about anti-Christian bigotry, bias, lockouts and the like, with: Sev, 14: ” This doesn’t sound like a crusade against Christianity so much as the faith playing the victim because they are Read More…
But why need a Darwinist care about fairness in hiring?
If so many of us are talking about Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne’s moral philosophy anyway, here’s an illustration of the conundrum it creates. Jerry is concerned about unfairness in diversity hiring. Why?:
Jerry Coyne and the contradictions of Darwinian morality
Being a Darwinist means never having to address inner contradictions. No one who matters asks.
800 Russian journal papers retracted: The most interesting question is undiscussed
To the extent that science is global, tolerated fraud in one milieu taints an entire discipline. Recall the smug people who think that science is an infinitely superior way of knowing, Won’t that be an increasingly harder sell as more people become aware of these tip-of-the-iceberg “bombshell” revelations?
Fancy that! An edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species with a worldview guide
What a good idea! Instead of getting shouted down by Darwinians, anxious to impose the “red in tooth and claw” on school curricula, perhaps we should long ago have adopted the practice of simply providing editions of Darwin’s works, detailing the worldview that lies behind this stuff. Accept or reject it, the worldview goes along with the package.
Dawkins raises an issue without intending to: Can one “outgrow” God without “outgrowing” morality?
Rebecca McLaughlin: To Dawkins’s credit, he comes dangerously close to acknowledging that religious belief is correlated with better moral outcomes—though he would like to think humans are better than that (117). He finds it rather patronizing to say, “Of course you and I are too intelligent to believe in God, but we think it would be a good idea if other people did!” (122).
John Horgan on Jeffrey Epstein and the decadence of science
Horgan: As genuine progress has stalled, hype has surged. A 2015 study of biomedical papers found that between 1974 and 2014 the frequency of terms such as “novel,” “innovative” and “unprecedented” increased 15-fold.
Sean Carroll: “Nowadays, when a more scientific worldview has triumphed and everyone knows that God doesn’t exist . . . ” — really?
Carroll, here, was responding to a Weekly Standard cover article on the reactions to philosopher Nagel’s publication of Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False : What I find particularly interesting in the captioned clip is the laudatory reference to “a more Scientific WORLDVIEW” which is immediately problematic, Read More…
If apes are people, we aren’t (but that’s the point, right?)
One factor that helps diminish awareness of the fact of human exceptionality is the promotion of “buzz” concepts around animal intelligence that are not supported by the histories of disciplines and fall apart under scrutiny. But any time one fails (apes can be taught to talk!), another rises, seamlessly, in its place (elephants can be taught to communicate via high tech!). No one ever calls any of these people to account.
Paper claiming kids’ religiosity decreased altruism retracted
But what was the paper doing in a biology journal anyway? Maybe the underlying assumptions should be unpacked.
BBC swings and misses: “Why is there something instead of nothing?”, pt. 2 ( –> Being, Logic and First Principles, 24b)
The exploration in-the-wild on Heidegger’s pivotal question is turning out to be quite fruitful. Here, we see BBC swing and miss, leading to dancing stumps. Dancing stumps: Video, with one of the greats at bat: First, context, we are discussing here popularised forms of the idea that “nothing” has been defined by physicists to denote Read More…
“Why is there something, instead of nothing?” (–> being Logic & First Principles, 24)
Heidegger famously posed this question, giving it redoubled force as a first question on critical analysis of worldviews: To philosophize is to ask “Why are there essents rather than nothing?” Really to ask this question signifies: a daring attempt to fathom this unfathomable question by disclosing what it summons us to ask, to push our Read More…