Upcoming lectures
As I announced last month, next week I’ll be in Oxford speaking on the theme “Aquinas and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought,” as part of the Blackfriars Aquinas Seminar.On Saturday, March 2 I’ll be...
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Stan Lee meets F. A. Hayek
Recently I’ve been reading Sean Howe’s terrific Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. The broad outlines of the history of the company -- its origins in 1939 as part of Martin Goodman’s pulp magazine...
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Around the net
I’m a bit “Nagel-ed out” at the moment, but before long I’ll be writing up at least one or two more installments in my series of posts on Nagel’s Mind and Cosmosand its critics. In the meantime, The...
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New ACPQ article
My article “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought” appears in the latest issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly. Here is the abstract:James Ross developed a simple and...
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The limits of eliminativism
Eliminativist positions in philosophy are a variety of anti-realism, which is in turn typically contrasted with realistand reductionist positions. A realist account of some phenomenon takes it to be...
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Back from Blackfriars
Back from Oxford, and exhausted. I thank Bill Carroll and the Dominicans at Blackfriars for their warm hospitality. (And thanks to Brother James of Blackfriars for taking the photo, elsewhere in...
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Noë on the origin of life etc.
UC Berkeley philosopher (and atheist) Alva Noë is, as we saw not too long ago, among the more perceptive and interesting critics of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos. In a recent brief follow-up post,...
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Forgetting nothing, learning nothing
Lawrence Krauss’s book A Universe from Nothing managed something few thought possible -- to outdo Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in sheer intellectual frivolousness. Nor was my First Things review...
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Back from Lafayette
Back today from Lafayette, Louisiana, where I gave a talk (available for viewing via Vimeo) at Our Lady of Wisdom Church and Catholic Student Center, adjacent to the University of Louisiana at...
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A Christian Hart, a Humean head
Note: The following article is cross-posted over at First Things.In a piece in the March issue of First Things, David Bentley Hart suggests that the arguments of natural law theorists are bound to be...
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Philosophy on radio
I’ll be appearing later today on Catholic Answers Live, at 4:00 pm (Pacific time). Today’s show is billed as an “Open Forum for Atheists,” so have at it. Links to some previous radio interviews can...
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Spare not the Rod
David Bentley Hart’s First Things article on natural law, which I criticized a few days ago, got some positive responses elsewhere in the blogosphere. One of its fans is Rod Dreher at The American...
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The whole man
My recent review of Michael Gazzaniga’s Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brainis now available online at the Claremont Review of Books website. And while you’re on the subject of...
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Capital punishment lecture
This Friday, March 15, I’ll be speaking at California State University, San Bernardino on the topic “Is Capital Punishment Just?” Details here.(The short answer, as my longtime readers know, is “Yes.”...
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Ferguson on Nagel
In the cover story of the current issue of The Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson reviews the controversy generated by Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos. Along the way, he kindly makes reference to what he...
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Review of Kurzweil
My review of Ray Kurzweil’s recent book How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed appears in the April 2013 issueof First Things.
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Nagel and his critics, Part VII
Let’s return to our look at the critics of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos. New commentary on Nagel’s book continues to appear, and to some extent it repeats points made by earlier reviewers I’ve...
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EvolutionBlog needs better Nagel critics
EvolutionBlog’s Jason Rosenhouse tells us in a recent post that he hasn’t read philosopher Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos. And it seems obvious enough from his remarks that he also hasn’t read the...
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Rosenhouse keeps digging
Here’s a conversation that might occur between grown-ups:Grown-up #1: I haven’t read Nagel’s book or much of the positive commentary on it, but based on what I’ve seen in the popular press it all seems...
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Nagel and his critics, Part VIII
Resuming our series on the serious critics of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, let’s turn to Simon Blackburn’s review in New Statesman from a few months back. Blackburn’s review is negative, but it is...
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