Philosophers’ Carnival #39

Welcome to the new edition of Philosophers’ Carnival!
I’m very happy to host this edition as philosophy bloggers submitted wonderful posts. I mean really, really good ones! Check out the list of great things we have on offer here. We will start with few Meta-Philosophy and Philosophy of Science posts, then go over couple of Philosophy of Mind posts. After that we will delve deeply into few Logic and Epistemology issues, get back on the surface for some Ethics and atheistic pondering on religion, and finish with couple of insults. Let’s start…

Philosophy as Stance – What happens as scientists become more and more desperate in their search for a new theory which unifies Standard Model and General Relativity? What is the place of emotions in shifts in our approaches to science and philosophy? David Corfield talks about Van Fraassen’s idea of philosophical stance over at The n-Category Café.

Is the world mathematical? – Thinking about Eugene Wigner’s question about the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences, Phil Thrift over at Philosophical Bits ponders over possibility that there isn’t duality at all, that stuff of the world is mathematics.

Rat poison – Over at Hell’s Handmaiden blog, they discuss the “disease shared by much of modern academia” – the tendency to redefine language – to use words which have some more or less accepted meaning to refer to something else, and the consequences of this practice. Also you will get to know what Santiago Theory is, as that is a particular example on which they analyze the situation.

Continuity between Science and Common Sense – At Brains, there is a discussion between Gualtiero Piccinini and Joshua Knobe. They talk if Joshua succeeds in his argument that the results of experimental philosophy show that “there is certain kind of fundamental discontinuity between science and common sense”.

Hyperbolic Mary – Pete Mandik over at Brain Hammer, makes an unexpected twist on the Jackson’s monochromatic Mary story. Now she gets less surprised from certain phenomenal color experience than Larry who has had normal color vision all along.

Holism, Reductionism and Consciousness – A Dialogue – Here at A Brood Comb, I posted a dialog between Neo (proponent of reductionism) and Zeo (proponent of holism). Are mental phenomena fully accountable by what happens on micro-level, or should we consider wholes as having essence on their own?  I play the role of Zeo, and Neo is my internet chat acquaintance.

Quine and the deduction theorem – Andreas Stokke at Plurality of Words wonders whether Quine was himself as confused about the distinction between implication and logical consequence as the predecessors to whom he rightly attributed  the mistake.

Functionalism and Meaning – Is Lynch’ functionalism regarding truth compatible with the view that to know the meaning of a declarative sentence is to know its truth conditions? Michael Horton at Nothing but the Truth-in-L analyzes what can come out from uniting those two views.

Meaning Scepticism and its Implications for the Interpretation of Policy – Samuel Douglas at Philosophy Hurts Your Head discusses the Kripke’s paradox – is there such thing as meaning something by a word? What is meaning scepticism, can the paradox be solved by rule following account or dispositional account? What kind of consequences are there if we accept meaning scepticism – how can one justify interpreting a law one way or the other?

The Virtue of Virtue Ethics – Do consequences of action/policy make it right, or is it right because it conforms to a particular principle? Colin Farrelly over at In Search Of Enlightenment tells us why he finds both positions problematic.

Is Global Poverty a Crime? – Thom Brook, over at The Brooks Blog gives us an abstract of his paper (and a link to the paper for those interested) in which he addresses Thomas Pogge argument that global poverty is a crime, and that wealthy states have responsibility to help poor countries not just because they have the resources, but because in not helping they are violating the human rights of the poor.

Economics and Morality – What is the connection between economic and moral value? How does ignorance, dishonest trade, and difference of incomes enter the equation? Alonzo Fyfe analyzes those issues at Atheist Ethicist.

The Tempter – How can an atheist affect other people to live moral and good lives? Can one? Aren’t people inherently selfish? If the odds are not good, maybe one could use religion even without believing it? The Tempter raises those issues to the author of the post over at Daylight Atheism.

The Four Stages Of Truth – Francois Tremblay over at Check Your Premises discusses the four stages that social acceptance of “new truths” goes through. An example he works on is atheism. Ignoring the issue if atheism is new, and if it is truth, the post is analysis of the social/emotional stances towards others’ beliefs as they gain more and more support, which can go from non-confront, aggression, trivialization to attempts of integration and co-option.

And last, but not least, here is something to cheer you up…

Philosophical Insults – Bryan Frances, over at Knowability blog discusses the examples of insults between philosophers in contemporary literature, and people in comments pick up where he stops, and provide further examples.

That’s all for this edition, the next carnival will be at The Brooks Blog in three weeks.