Archive for December, 2004

Natural-Born Dualists, A Talk with Paul Bloom | Edge.org
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom04/bloom04_index.html
“Our dualistic conception isn’t an airy intellectual thing; it is common sense, and rooted in a phenomenological experience. We do not feel that we are material things, physical bodies. The notion that we are machines made of meat, as Marvin Minsky once put it, is unintuitive and unnatural. Instead, we feel as if we occupy our bodies. We possess them. We own them. Because of this, we talk about my brain, or my body, using the same language of possession that we use when we talk about my car, or my child. These are things that we possess, that we are intimately related to?but not what we are.”

An End to Mediational Epistemology | Charles Taylor
http://goodreads.ca/lectures/taylor/larkin-stuart04.html
“In two consecutive lectures, Prof. Charles Taylor will speak on the modern epistemological tradition, its effect on our thought and culture, and how that relationship is changing today. The first lecture will sketch the features and characteristics of the modern epistemological tradition, and describe its influence. The second lecture will explore how philosophy may offer alternatives to this tradition. ” I went to the lectures and put up my notes with commentary – Timothy