‘My mam died but they never told me she died. She died on Christmas Day but they never told me.’… Read the rest
All entries by this author
The Irish Church Knew Abuse Was ‘Endemic’
May 20th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Church officials encouraged ritual beatings; inspectors failed to stop chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.… Read the rest
Ireland: the Horror of Industrial Schools
May 20th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Children lived in ‘daily terror’ of being beaten, the long-awaited Commission into Child Abuse report has found.… Read the rest
Sundays in the Times with Stan
May 19th, 2009 5:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonRussell Blackford also says why Fish is wrong.
… Read the restIt is, of course, true that the grounding of any knowledge claim will eventually run out. If somebody does not accept our basic assumptions about what forms of argument are cogent and what counts as evidence, we can not convince her of anything that she does not want to be convinced of. For that reason, it’s true to say that there is no argument about anything that is effective in persuading all comers, no matter how fanatical or even insane…[W]hile our various chains of inference cannot be justified all the way down to all comers, it does not follow that none are better than others. Chains of inference don’t need to
The Fish files
May 19th, 2009 4:49 pm | By Ophelia BensonMassimo Pigliucci says why Fish is wrong and silly.
… Read the rest[T]he problem lies with Fish’s cheap rhetorical trick: Stanley seems to think that once one has refuted the naive logical positivist view that human beings can adopt a purely objective viewpoint and grasp reality for what it actually is (a position that in philosophy has been abandoned since the 1950s, by the way), voilà, all knowledge has ultimately been shown to be a matter of faith…It is simply not true, as our friend cavalierly maintains, that “once the act of simply reporting or simply observing is exposed as a fiction — as something that just can’t be done — the facile opposition between faith-thinking and thinking grounded in independent evidence
Bible-verses on Defense Memos Inappropriate?
May 19th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Nah. Bush and Rummy ‘appreciated’ them, and that’s the important thing.… Read the rest
Bible-quoting Defense Memos
May 19th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Scary? Horrifying? You be the judge.… Read the rest
Orac on the Hauser Case
May 19th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
It will take time for CPS to find them. Meanwhile, his tumors are growing.… Read the rest
Warrant Issued for Mother of Daniel Hauser
May 19th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The father testified that he doesn’t know the whereabouts of his son and his wife.… Read the rest
Daniel Hauser Fails to Appear at Court Hearing
May 19th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
District Judge John Rodenberg has issued an arrest warrant for Hauser’s mother; the two are missing.… Read the rest
Ed Brandon Reviews Galileo Goes to Jail
May 19th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The important issues on the borders of science and religion are matters of what supports X rather than Y.… Read the rest
How the Light Gets In, Hay, May 22-31
May 19th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Philosophy and music festival: Blackburn, Grayling, Malik, Neiman, Bauman, more.… Read the rest
Massimo Pigliucci on Fish on Epistemology
May 19th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Fish seems to think that once one has refuted the naive logical positivist view, all knowledge has been shown to be a matter of faith.… Read the rest
Russell Blackford on Fish on God
May 19th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
While chains of inference cannot be justified all the way down to all comers, it does not follow that none are better than others. … Read the rest
Piscis ipse dixit
May 18th, 2009 5:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonStanley Fish is back.
Evidence, understood as something that can be pointed to, is never an independent feature of the world. Rather, evidence comes into view (or doesn’t) in the light of assumptions…that produce the field of inquiry in the context of which (and only in the context of which) something can appear as evidence.
Yes yes yes, but it doesn’t follow that any and all assumptions are reasonable and sane and that therefore any old evidence is good evidence as long as it ‘comes into view in the light of’ some assumptions.
Then there is a swerve into a new topic, the fact that some people who commented on his previous musings on God claim that religion is … Read the rest
Martin in the Margins on Fish on God
May 18th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The anti-rational evasions of Eagleton and Fish discredit the very cause they claim to defend.… Read the rest
Brian Leiter Asks a Question
May 18th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Does the NY Times not realize that Stanley Fish is philosophically incompetent?… Read the rest
The Administration Can’t ‘Just Keep Walking’
May 18th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
A major cover-up of corruption took place at the Bush Pentagon just six days before Bush left office.… Read the rest
Russell Blackford on the Arrest of Peter Tatchell
May 18th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Tatchell puts his body on the line for his causes, when that’s what it means to stand up to authority in the name of human rights.… Read the rest
Fish Offers More God Talk
May 18th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘The religions I know are about nothing but doubt and dissent.’… Read the rest