Ruse claims evolution often operates as a worldview that competes with religion.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Irreconcilable Divide Between Science and Religion 
Oct 6th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
One side sees matter and energy, the other side wants Something Extra.… Read the rest
Sartre and Beauvoir, Authenticity and Lying
Oct 6th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
How did Sartre justify deceptions? By resorting to ‘a temporary moral code.’… Read the rest
Investigating Happiness
Oct 6th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Tragic legacy of Freud: many are bitter about the past, passive about the future.… Read the rest
Not the Edsel of Social Science After All?
Oct 6th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Maybe questions about sexuality and homosexuality are central to diagnosing authoritarianism.… Read the rest
It Once Was Lost, But Now It’s Found
Oct 6th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
A stunning jazz concert in 1957 was thought lost forever, but then…… Read the rest
Vatican Restricts Media Briefings
Oct 6th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Several bishops said too much information was getting out. … Read the rest
Desolation Row
Oct 5th, 2005 7:51 pm | By Ophelia BensonHave things changed, or did we (I, you, they) get them wrong in the first place? It can be hard to tell, sometimes. Or perhaps I mean always. It can be hard to sort out misunderstanding from wishful thinking, confirmation bias from overcorrection, too much suspicion from not enough suspicion, too much suspicion of X from not enough suspicion of Y – and so on.
From Open Democracy:
… Read the restSome of my friends and relatives tell me I’ve changed – that my politics aren’t as “leftwing” as they used to be during the anti-nuclear movement in Britain back in the 1980s. In a way, they are right. My core politics haven’t changed, but it seems to me that the world
Good News: Darfur Genocide Nearly Over
Oct 5th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Because there’s almost no one left to kill.… Read the rest
Ever-stupider Questions, Ever-wickeder Answers
Oct 5th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The fanatics look at Bali and see a load of Hindus selling drinks to a load of Christians.… Read the rest
So How Should Mass Murder be Stopped?
Oct 5th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘The left didn’t argue then that fascists needed to be “understood” and placated.’… Read the rest
Blogs as a Carnival of Ideas
Oct 5th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Blogs let academics reach a wider public.… Read the rest
Long Alan Bennett Interview on Front Row [audio]
Oct 5th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
You don’t want to be in anyone’s pocket, that’s what it is.… Read the rest
Look Inside: Just More Machinery
Oct 5th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Our sense of who we are and our feelings are a product of biological processes in the brain. … Read the rest
The Movie in Your Head
Oct 5th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Is consciousness a seamless experience or a string of fleeting images?… Read the rest
There Were Giants in the Earth in Those Days
Oct 4th, 2005 8:48 pm | By Ophelia BensonTime for some legend-tweaking, some myth-interrogating, some eye-poking in the.
But while millions of colonists were accepting of slavery if not relaxed about it, millions of Britons back in the old country really were disgusted by it. And when slaves could choose whom to trust, they trusted Britannia.
So in the end it’s a poke in the eye for America?
“Yup. In the interests of truth,” he says.
Simon Schama, this is. He’s written a new book on – well, what it sounds like.
… Read the restHe’s grateful, he says, for Americans thirst for popular history – a thirst that can make “doorstoppers such as Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton beach reading for the summer”. But there’s a but, and
Ossification on the Left
Oct 4th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Paltry interpretive frameworks for political fissures from cold war days.… Read the rest
Ronald Dworkin on John Roberts
Oct 4th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Unlikely Roberts would often hold that the law is contrary to what a conservative would wish it to be.… Read the rest
Mary Midgley on Not Getting a PhD
Oct 4th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Is it possible to teach and learn philosophy in an atmosphere that is dominated by competition?… Read the rest
Norm Geras and Eve Garrard on Joanna Bourke
Oct 4th, 2005 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Bourke’s views deploy the very moral opposition she is complaining about.… Read the rest
