Hey all, this month’s Philosopher’s Carnival (#152) is now online! This month it is hosted over at Siris, one of the better philosophy blogs out there. Brandon has come up with something quite special this month, and it’s well worth a gander.
Category Archives: Announcements
Philosophy Carnival #151
Posted by BLS Nelson
on May 18, 2013
No comments
Is now online, over at Camels with Hammers. Check it out here.
A Six-Gun for Socrates in Print
Posted by Mike LaBossiere
on March 25, 2013
5 comments
This short book presents a series of philosophical essays written in response to gun violence in the United States. While the matters of guns, violence and rights are often met with emotional responses, my approach has been to consider these matters from a philosophical standpoint. This does not involve looking at them without emotion. Rather, it involves considering them in a rational way and this requires considering how our emotions affect our views of these vital matters.
Moralism and politics
Posted by Rupert Read
on March 23, 2013
1 comment
Colleagues may I think be interested in a controversial book review of mine, just out in PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS.
Have a read, and do comment here with your reactions. I’m interested.
http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/onlineLibraryTPS.asp?DOI=10.1111/j.1467-9205.2013.01483.x&ArticleID=1000795
76 Fallacies in Print
Posted by Mike LaBossiere
on March 19, 2013
1 comment
76 Fallacies is now available in print from Amazon and other fine sellers of books.
In addition to combining the content of my 42 Fallacies and 30 More Fallacies, this book features some revisions as well as a new section on common formal fallacies.
As the title indicates, this book presents seventy six fallacies. The focus is on providing the reader with definitions and examples of these common fallacies rather than being a handbook on winning arguments or general logic.
The book presents the following 73 informal fallacies:
Accent, Fallacy of
Accident, Fallacy of
Ad Hominem
Ad Hominem Tu Quoque
Amphiboly, Fallacy of
Anecdotal Evidence, Fallacy Of
Appeal to the Consequences of a Belief
Appeal to Authority, Fallacious
Appeal to Belief
Appeal to Common Practice
Appeal to Emotion
Appeal to Envy
Appeal to Fear
Appeal to Flattery
Appeal to Group Identity
Appeal to Guilt
Appeal to Novelty
Appeal to Pity
Appeal to Popularity
Appeal to Ridicule
Appeal to Spite
Appeal to Tradition
Appeal to Silence
Appeal to Vanity
Argumentum ad Hitlerum
Begging the Question
Biased Generalization
Burden of Proof
Complex Question
Composition, Fallacy of
Confusing Cause and Effect
Confusing Explanations and Excuses
Circumstantial Ad Hominem
Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
Division, Fallacy of
Equivocation, Fallacy of
Fallacious Example
Fallacy Fallacy
False Dilemma
Gambler’s Fallacy
Genetic Fallacy
Guilt by Association
Hasty Generalization
Historian’s Fallacy
Illicit Conversion
Ignoring a Common Cause
Incomplete Evidence
Middle Ground
Misleading Vividness
Moving the Goal Posts
Oversimplified Cause
Overconfident Inference from Unknown Statistics
Pathetic Fallacy
Peer Pressure
Personal Attack
Poisoning the Well
Positive Ad Hominem
Post Hoc
Proving X, Concluding Y
Psychologist’s fallacy
Questionable Cause
Rationalization
Red HerringReification, Fallacy of
Relativist Fallacy
Slippery Slope
Special Pleading
Spotlight
Straw Man
Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy
Two Wrongs Make a Right
Victim Fallacy
Weak Analogy
The book contains the following three formal (deductive) fallacies:
Affirming the Consequent
Denying the Antecedent
Undistributed Middle
New Philosopher’s Carnival: #149
Posted by BLS Nelson
on March 10, 2013
No comments
It’s up. Check out some of the other blogs in the philosophy blogoverse.
(Then come back here, obviously.)
The Transhumanist Reader
Posted by Russell Blackford
on March 4, 2013
No comments
The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, edited by pioneer transhumanist thinkers (philosopher) Max More and (artist/culture theorist) Natasha Vita-More, is now available for order on Amazon – with an announced publication date of 29 April 2013.
Before I go on, allow me to give the disclaimer that I am one of the authors to have contributed a chapter, in this case entitled “The Great Transition: Ideas and Anxieties.” This is my most concerted attempt to date to explicate the central ideas of transhumanism and suggest how we might best respond to them.
You can click on the image of the cover where it appears on Amazon’s site if you’d like to sample the contents, including the full contents pages. Or it should work if you click here to find the table of contents.
The authors are something of a who’s who of thinkers who have contributed in one capacity or another to the transhumanist movement or to discussion of emerging technologies and human enhancement in general. Many of these people would be widely regarded as coming from different factions or schools of thought, and some may not even like each other all that much, so this is going to be a diverse book. Contributing authors, apart from the two editors (and myself, obviously) include Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Martine Rothblatt, James Hughes, Laura Beloff, Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil, Damien Broderick… and many others of similar calibre, with claims to be intellectual leaders in this area.
I have not read the whole book – though I’ve read some of the reprinted material in earlier forms – so I can’t give it anything like an actual review. Also, at this stage it’s not possible to review it on Amazon, so you won’t find much guidance there (if you pay a lot of attention to Amazon reviews). But I’ve read a prospectus as well as the ToC, and I’m confident that this will be a very authoritative book, showing the depth of historical and current thinking in the field. If you’re interested in transhumanist thought, or more generally in debates over emerging technologies and the prospects of human enhancement, this is a volume that you probably should get your hands on.
99 Books 99 Cents
Posted by Mike LaBossiere
on February 26, 2013
3 comments
The purpose of the 99 Books 99 Cents project is, shockingly enough, to publish 99 books for 99 cents. It is now live on Kickstarter, awaiting the generosity (or lack thereof) of the people.
The video alone is worth the trip….
Fortunately, the project does not require too much generosity-the rewards for contributing match the contributions closely. For example, if a generous soul (or body) contributes $100, she will be able to download all the current books and all the future books as they are actualized.
The books will be from my two main writing areas: philosophy and gaming. Assuming the Kickstarter pans out, the books will be available in Kindle, Nook and iBook formats.
I’ve set up the 99 Books 99 Cents site here. All the current books are described and some have links to their free PDF versions.
I’ll shamelessly announce the philosophy books here as they become available.
A Six-Gun for Socrates
Posted by Mike LaBossiere
on February 23, 2013
12 comments
This short book presents a series of philosophical essays written in response to gun violence in the United States. While the matters of guns, violence and rights are often met with emotional responses, my approach has been to consider these matters from a philosophical standpoint. This does not involve looking at them without emotion. Rather, it involves considering them in a rational way and this requires considering how our emotions affect our views of these vital matters.
The book contains the following essays:
- Gun Control
- Costas & Guns
- When is it Time to Discuss Gun Violence?
- High Capacity, High Powered Semi-Automatic
- Mental Illness, Violence & Liberty
- God and Sandy Hook
- Mental Illness or Evil?
- Video Games, Movies & Violence
- Background Checks
- Dr. King & Guns
- Gun Rights & Tyranny
- Is the denial of gun rights, in and of itself, a tyranny?
- Is there an Obligation of Self-Defense?
- On Not Being Ant-Gun
- The Founders, the Future, the First & the Second
- Are Cars Analogous to Guns?
- Conclusion
Rolling out some announcements
Posted by Russell Blackford
on February 18, 2013
5 comments
It’s been a busy couple of months at my end, and indeed a busy couple of years – but I have some announcements about the pay-off (back before Christmas I was talking on my personal blog about a roll-out of announcements on the way; well, here’s some of the roll-out). This will enable the world (if it, or some small component of it, is interested) to catch up with my doings.
The biggest news is that my co-authored book with Udo Schuklenk, 50 Great Myths About Atheism, is now complete and in the pipeline for publication in September. We’ve gone through the initial copyedit and have even settled on a cover (which we both love) with the good folks at Wiley-Blackwell. The book explores many libels, lies, half-truths, and distortions that relate to atheism and atheists, trying to give them their due whenever we spot a grain of truth or an aspect that is plausible. Udo and I also provide a long chapter about the rise of atheism and why we think it is now the most plausible answer to the God question.
Meanwhile, I have delivered the manuscript for Humanity Enhanced to MIT Press, where it is under contract. Stay tuned for more about this. I can’t, for example, as yet give you a planned date of publication. The book deals with the ethical and (more particularly) legal/political issues surrounding the emerging technologies of genetic choice. In doing so, it examines in detail many of the misgivings about these technologies based on such ideas as harms to autonomy, violations of the natural order, problems of distributive justice, and much, much more.
I am at earlier stages with a couple of other books, though it looks like I’ll soon be signing a contract for at least one of them. In both cases, much of the work is done, but there’s also a lot more to go (and let’s face it, many a slip so I won’t say more about that for now).
Over the (southern hemisphere) summer I’ve also had new pieces published in The Philosophers’ Magazine and Free Inquiry. Currently I’m working on a long book chapter about religion and politics, plus acting as one of the jurors for the Norma K. Hemming Award.
Upcoming speaking engagements include a couple (one already announced, one to be announced soon) at the forthcoming inaugural Newcastle Writers’ Festival (in which I am also somewhat involved in my role as chair of the Hunter Writers Centre)… and, hot off the presses, a talk at The Amazing Meeting 2013 in July.
The line-up of speakers for The Amazing Meeting has only just been announced, but from my viewpoint it looks fantastic. I say a bit more about it over here.
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