The Evolution of the Irrational

Image via Wikipedia

While doing my part to keep the print media alive, I read Sharon Begley’s “The Limits of Reason .” Yes, I do see the irony in linking to the online version.
Begley begins her discussion by pointing out the obvious: humans are bad at reasoning. While she notes that psychologists have been documenting this from the 1960s, [...]

Hitchens on Sports

While I am a professional philosopher, I am also an amateur athlete and, as such, found Hitchens’ recent article on sports to be rather…interesting.
Hitchens does make some reasonable and valid criticisms of international sports. To be specific, he does point out that international sporting events have led to serious conflicts and some rather reprehensible behavior. However, he [...]

The Political Brain & Inconsistency

One thing I love about the Daily Show is that Jon Stewart and his fellows take the effort to find videos which show the inconsistency of political figures. A recent episode featured a plethora of examples of such inconsistency.
The first part of the segment featured Karl Rove. When asked about Sarah Palin’s qualifications, he noted [...]

The Value of Philosophy, Yet Again

One of the most annoying things about being a professional philosopher is the fact that I so often am called upon to defend the value of my profession and my discipline. One thing that makes it especially annoying is that so many philosophers have written so much about the value of philosophy (including, of [...]