Fernando Romero |
| From May 5 |
05 May 2009
28 April 2009
27 April 2009
25 March 2009
Pharaoh's Snake
Mercury Thiocyanate on fire. -don't do it at home because it lets off some nasty mercury gasses in the process.
24 March 2009
17 March 2009
09 March 2009
07 March 2009
06 March 2009
Gustav Klimt. Philosophy, 1899 - 1907. Oil on canvas.
This painting has always fascinated me. I think it expresses how many people, including may students of philosophy, feel about philosophy. Klimt is best known for his The Kiss -which for some reason you see in dorm rooms across America- and, tangentially, there is a surprisingly terrible movie about him called "Klimt": (he's played by John Malkovich who I love, but I couldn't even finish the thing -my art history teacher said the same thing-.)
Anyway, this painting is just uncertainty packed into paint. Western Philosophy still works hard every day to get around uncertainty, you can see an example of that in the Philosophy Bites post I just did with the scientific realist, in large part, I think, because it leads them to psychologically uncomfortable places. A very smart friend of mine expressed this as 'feeling the void.' I don't think uncertainty leads to this generalized philosophical ennui -seems to me like one of the many odd orthodoxies which plague philosophic education- but Klimt captured something true here. If I could retitled the work it would be "sociology of philosophic malaise."
(a side note, Klimt is known for his colors and their amazing texture - so the work doesn't really come across from this image... or so I assume since the work was burnt in 1945.)
05 March 2009
Philosophy Bites on Scientific Realism
Philosophy Bites usually has interesting interviews on any number of interesting philosophical ideas; this one is on scientific realism and is quite good. I don't agree with David Papineau's form of realism and it seems as though his arguments are obviously flawed, but that is besides the point.
02 March 2009
28 February 2009
26 February 2009
The Most Depressing TED
This is got to be the most depressing TED I've ever seen: it is only a little over 10 minutes and is a must see.
25 February 2009
Mind/Brain and the idiocy of NPR
This is one of the worst NPR articles I've ever had the misfortune of listening to (and then reading again because I was so worked up). NPR "Science" article or listen to it here.
I was going to write out my thoughts but they are much too long. I'll just say two quick things:
First off, the mind/body problem is nonsense. There is no mind body problem, though for some reason most philosophers will tell you there is one. Most scientist will tell you there isn't and then proceed to give a nonsense answer about how there are only bodies. Newton killed the idea of the actual existence of physical bodies and no one has altered that empirical concept since: "a purely materialistic or mechanistic physics, impossible", he says. Not that I think you should just take his word for it; what he meant is that there's no proof a physical objects in light of action at a distance (what we now call the Theory of Fields and what he called Forces). This is again said by John Locke as "[god] annexed effects to motion which we can in no way conceive motion able to produce." (I'm almost positive that Locke didn't believe in God.) All this remains the case, there is no evidence for the existence of bodies -that is, of anything physical being ontologically substantive-. The Buddha and especially Nagarjuna's interpretation of the theory of emptiness, did the same much before either Newton or John Locke, but that is incidental.
For some reason one of the surgeons interviewed thinks this might amount to proof of God's Intelligent Design. What hogwash. This is just the argument from ignorance: basically it is an argument of this type (or so it was given in this NPR piece), if Evolution is correct then it should be able to explain complex systems. Evolution cannot explain complex systems, therefore Intelligent Design is true.
You see how the fact that Evolution is said, erroneously, not to be able to account for complex systems is in no way connected to the theory of Intelligent Design! That is, disproving one theory does not in itself provide support for any other theory. The logical form is If A then B, not B, therefore C. You can see that this mode of thought is fallacious.
(Image from SEED.COM)
"There is nothing about neurons that scientifically would lead you to infer consciousness from them. They're masses of gelatinous carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen, just like other kinds of flesh. And why would flesh have first-person experience? So, even logically, it doesn't hang together."
Nonsense, there are plenty about neurons that would lead you to infer consciousness: this is as much nonsense as saying I wouldn't get tired if I walked up a hill because the hill doesn't have any substantive ontological status. But of course, that isn't even what the man is arguing... he is arguing that there is something special about PEOPLE that makes us different from all other things: that is a claim not born out by any facts. Understanding that bodies are not truly existing does not lead to the conclusion that what we call a body and what we call a mind are separable -they're not. They are dependently arising phenomenon; not real in themselves which arise only together: they are dependent, as in any subject/object relationship. That is again to say that just because bodies don't exist doesn't mean or imply anything about Intelligent Design or Evolution. And if these antievolutionists want to know something about how complex systems come about, they might look into Systems Biology or Complexity Theory.
I was going to write out my thoughts but they are much too long. I'll just say two quick things:
First off, the mind/body problem is nonsense. There is no mind body problem, though for some reason most philosophers will tell you there is one. Most scientist will tell you there isn't and then proceed to give a nonsense answer about how there are only bodies. Newton killed the idea of the actual existence of physical bodies and no one has altered that empirical concept since: "a purely materialistic or mechanistic physics, impossible", he says. Not that I think you should just take his word for it; what he meant is that there's no proof a physical objects in light of action at a distance (what we now call the Theory of Fields and what he called Forces). This is again said by John Locke as "[god] annexed effects to motion which we can in no way conceive motion able to produce." (I'm almost positive that Locke didn't believe in God.) All this remains the case, there is no evidence for the existence of bodies -that is, of anything physical being ontologically substantive-. The Buddha and especially Nagarjuna's interpretation of the theory of emptiness, did the same much before either Newton or John Locke, but that is incidental.
For some reason one of the surgeons interviewed thinks this might amount to proof of God's Intelligent Design. What hogwash. This is just the argument from ignorance: basically it is an argument of this type (or so it was given in this NPR piece), if Evolution is correct then it should be able to explain complex systems. Evolution cannot explain complex systems, therefore Intelligent Design is true.
You see how the fact that Evolution is said, erroneously, not to be able to account for complex systems is in no way connected to the theory of Intelligent Design! That is, disproving one theory does not in itself provide support for any other theory. The logical form is If A then B, not B, therefore C. You can see that this mode of thought is fallacious.
(Image from SEED.COM)"There is nothing about neurons that scientifically would lead you to infer consciousness from them. They're masses of gelatinous carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen, just like other kinds of flesh. And why would flesh have first-person experience? So, even logically, it doesn't hang together."
Nonsense, there are plenty about neurons that would lead you to infer consciousness: this is as much nonsense as saying I wouldn't get tired if I walked up a hill because the hill doesn't have any substantive ontological status. But of course, that isn't even what the man is arguing... he is arguing that there is something special about PEOPLE that makes us different from all other things: that is a claim not born out by any facts. Understanding that bodies are not truly existing does not lead to the conclusion that what we call a body and what we call a mind are separable -they're not. They are dependently arising phenomenon; not real in themselves which arise only together: they are dependent, as in any subject/object relationship. That is again to say that just because bodies don't exist doesn't mean or imply anything about Intelligent Design or Evolution. And if these antievolutionists want to know something about how complex systems come about, they might look into Systems Biology or Complexity Theory.
24 February 2009
Phenomenological Fields
Queer ideas, these Phenomenologists have. But, it maintains the particularities of experience and the interdependence of knowing: though, the interdependence is not of subject/object, but of the community of knowers. The academic article is attached: " Intersubjectivity and Humanities-Based Psychology: Some Thoughts on Cleaning Up Our Language."In my very humble opinion, these people have very mistaken ideas about the purpose and function of language; which does not need to, and cannot, be 'cleaned up.'
Blog Ethic and Bailiwick
(Image shamelessly stolen from RevelationArt: check them out, the work is quite good.)"Many blog readers will form opinions based on very simple things," says Wager. "Like words such as 'voodoo correlations.' There's no reason to use such loaded words when making a statistical argument. The argument should be able to stand on its own."
(This from a recent Seed article entitled "That Voodoo That Scientists Do.")
Tor Wager -quoted above-, a cognitive neuroscientist from Columbia University, is quite right about one thing (even if he is very wrong about what he wants to be right about). For all of you who read Seed, or who've been following the controversy through other media, you'll know that Dr Wager is objecting to a forthcoming paper titled "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience" (Ed Vul & Nancy Kanwisher, MIT, and Hal Pashler,UCSD). While I think Vul, et al, are basically correct in their assessment of some recent neuroscience, the more important point, at least for me as it concerns me, is that Bloggers pass themselves off as experts.
Now, lest it seem as though I'm one of the many people constantly maligning Bloggers and Blog Readers, I also think that New York Times writers pass themselves off as experts when the very often are not: (often with much more devastating consequences.) What I very blandly recommend is that you, the reader, come to your own conclusions. The good thing about blog posts is that they usually link to primary sources: if you want to have an informed opinion, read them. I am also of the opinion that a sound Science Education greatly helps critical analysis. I'll quote Chomsky, who makes this point more eloquently than I can:
"I think studying science is a good way to get into fields like history. The reason is, you learn what an argument means, you learn what evidence is, you learn what makes sense to postulate and when, what's going to be convincing. You internalize the modes of rational inquiry, which happen to be much more advanced in the sciences than anywhere else. On the other hand, applying relativity theory to history isn't going to get you anywhere. So it's a mode of thinking."
I feel obligated to qualify myself as vastly under-qualified; yet in the fields that I do feel qualified to have an opinion, I give my opinion: (generally that translates into areas concerning the History and Philosophy of Science & Technology, Astronomy, Physics -at least conceptually-, Geology, Philosophy, Linguistics, and just a little bit of Evolutionary Science.) I have my bailiwick and I try to stick too it. My intellectual honesty will hopefully translate into something usefully for you and I am always happy to debate and be corrected: (that's what the "Syndicate" part is about.)
NeoLamarckianism and Child Abuse
I have a School Friend, whom I quote below, who researches Neo-Lamarckian ideas which I find quite interesting: (especially since Lamarck is so put upon in public education; rightly so in most respects.) In that vane, the Times had an article today on the effect of early childhood abuse on your biology and it, in my opinion, falls into this NeoLamarchian category.
A quick example of a neolamarckian idea: the act of breastfeeding imparts the mother's immune system on her child and that immune system is a trait that mom acquired by interaction with her environment. In other, better, words "parents acquire immunological resistance to certain pathogens, and then transmit the resistance to their children via breastfeeding." There are other examples concerning bacteria mutation and the remarkable way "viruses infect gametes with useful characters [which] cause[s] offspring to have those new traits."
The Times article sites evidence recently published in the Journal Nature Neuroscience by Dr. Michael Meaney, working out of McGill University in Montreal; the study was on human suicide, the thrust of which being that gene expression changes in abused children, making them more likely to commit suicide (as well as suffer from other mental disorders).
From the Abstract: "We examined epigenetic differences in a neuron-specific glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1) promoter between postmortem hippocampus obtained from suicide victims with a history of childhood abuse and those from either suicide victims with no childhood abuse or controls.... These findings translate previous results from rat to humans and suggest a common effect of parental care on the epigenetic regulation of hippocampal glucocorticoid receptor expression."
The moral, be a good parent: apparently there are books on the subject now: (actually, I think that Alfie Kohn is the person to go to in this last respect; or at least, with respect to early childhood education.)
A quick example of a neolamarckian idea: the act of breastfeeding imparts the mother's immune system on her child and that immune system is a trait that mom acquired by interaction with her environment. In other, better, words "parents acquire immunological resistance to certain pathogens, and then transmit the resistance to their children via breastfeeding." There are other examples concerning bacteria mutation and the remarkable way "viruses infect gametes with useful characters [which] cause[s] offspring to have those new traits."
The Times article sites evidence recently published in the Journal Nature Neuroscience by Dr. Michael Meaney, working out of McGill University in Montreal; the study was on human suicide, the thrust of which being that gene expression changes in abused children, making them more likely to commit suicide (as well as suffer from other mental disorders).
From the Abstract: "We examined epigenetic differences in a neuron-specific glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1) promoter between postmortem hippocampus obtained from suicide victims with a history of childhood abuse and those from either suicide victims with no childhood abuse or controls.... These findings translate previous results from rat to humans and suggest a common effect of parental care on the epigenetic regulation of hippocampal glucocorticoid receptor expression."
The moral, be a good parent: apparently there are books on the subject now: (actually, I think that Alfie Kohn is the person to go to in this last respect; or at least, with respect to early childhood education.)
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