Philosophy & Ethics

If you're the family member of a critical care patient, you prefer doctors to keep their opinions on life support decisions to themselves, according to new research that challenges a long-held belief…

Inquiry is fundamentally different from stated conclusions, even when those conclusions can be legitimately qualified as knowledge (which is to say, as the products of valid inquiry). One can…

Bertrand Russell was frequently abused as a child by his parents and elders with the titling piece of snark to this blog entry. While not a particular Russell fan (though he was a spectacularly clear…

Individualism is the political philosophy or ideology that emphasizes independence and self-reliance. Individualists advance the idea of realizing one's goals and desires, while opposing most…

On the Big Ideas Blog there is a post about the different types of reasoning, Analytic vs. Synthetic, and their relevance to the existence or non-existence of God.  But, my favorite passage was…

"Non ho mai chiesto di occuparmi di mafia. Ci sono entrato per caso. E poi ci sono rimasto per un problema morale. La gente mi moriva attorno" (I never asked to work on mafia. I got to do it by…

The main stream media (“MSM”)[1] frequently treat us to dramatic stories of “scientific controversies” supposedly playing themselves out before our eyes. However, while such stories might make for…

Allow me, if you will, to stray from my usual posts about computers, Internet technology, and mathematics. In the mid-1980s I saw a musical on Broadway called The Tap Dance Kid. I enjoyed it a lot…

The Voynich Manuscript : An Enigma, Part #3 The Voynich manuscript, Beinebecke Library's MS 408 is a handwritten parchment codex of about 240 pages measuring 225 x 160 mm.   The manuscript…

The Voynich Manuscript : An Enigma, Part #2 It is nearly 100 years since the Voynich manuscript arrived in America.  In that time, not one person or group has managed to decode even a single…