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Reasononline has a brief article titled "Anarchist Philosopher Does Not Consent to be Governed!" with links to interview with Crispin Sartwell (Dickinson).

There was an absurd story about a mathematical forumla to determine the indency of a bust line in the British Tabloid 'The Sun' on 12/6. It's really just an excuse to print pics of Britney Spears and other 'endowed' celebrities, but it is a good example of the bullcrap appears credible when you throw some numbers at it. Here's the link: How to tell if the boobline is too low... use this equation 0=NP(20C+B)/75

There is an excellent critique of the story at badscience.net:  read more »

From Scientific American: Selmer Bringsjord at RPI (who made news last spring with an artificially intelligent agent in second life) has created a ‘purely sinister person’:
Are You Evil? Profiling That Which Is Truly Wicked

Douglas Todd at the Vancouver Sun has an interesting blog post about a new book The Book of Dead Philosophers that covers what some famous philosophers said about death: Bravest philosophers faced death to learn how to live . I could be used as backbone for an interesting First Year Seminar, Jan Term, or even intro class.

The Book of Dead Philosophers

Simon Critchley. Granta Books 2008, Hardcover, 256 pages, $22.83

In the Baltimore Sun, thanks to Stephen Kiehl: Bingo! Another Fallacy. The bingo cards we generated, along with our cheat sheet, are also available via the Sun: Play ‘Debate Fallacy Bingo’ during final presidential debate.

What is the likelihood of another 9-11?

Presidential Debate 1, Question 8 Static Link

Russia.

Presidential Debate 1, Question 7 Static Link

What is your reading of the threat from Iran?

Presidential Debate 1, Question 6 Static Link

Afghanistan - do you think new US troops should be sent? How many and when?

Presidential Debate 1, Question 5 Static Link

A 59-year old Home Depot employee from West Linn, OR won the Great American Thinker contest last month. I am not familiar with the contest, but it looks essentially like an oratory / essay contest. The web site (linked previously) has the finalist essays - which certainly should be usable in a CT course.

Much has been said about the lessons of Vietnam. What do you see as the lessons of Iraq?

Presidential Debate 1, Question 4 Static Link

What are you going to have to give up as a result of the financial rescue plan?

Presidential Debate 1, Question 3 Static Link

Using your word ‘fundamental’ - are there fundamental differences between your (McCain) approach and Senator Obama’s approach to get us out of the financial crisis?

Presidential Debate 1, Question 2 Static Link

I’ll be posting these as they come out. We’re playing fallacy bingo around here, which is great fun. I may post the bingo cards at some point.

Where do you stand on the financial recovery plan?

Presidential Debate 1, Question 1 Static Link

I haven’t noted all the fallacies yet, but feel free to comment and point them out!

• When McCain begins, he does so by sending his best wishes to the ailing Ted Kennedy (who famously endorsed Obama, and sat next to Obama at the State of the Union last year). This may be used to demonstrate both an appeal to friendship / kindness. Plausibly, if Kennedy is a good friend of Obama, one would expect Obama to mention his concerns, not McCain! We feel friendly towards those who are concerned about their friends - and we worry about the character of one who does not show such concern. See Aristotle Rhetoric Book 2, Ch 4: Friendship and Emnity.

A  famous blog in philosophy circles recently called for philosophers to be more engaged in pointing out fallacies in presidential debates. Um…. This is new?

I’m trying to collect as many of these speeches for analysis in my CT courses as possible, and I’ve done so for years. If anyone is interested in making comparisons between the rhetoric of the debates in 2008 and 2004, here is my ‘debate browsers’ from 2004:

Debate 1 (Foreign Policy) Static Link

Debate 2 (Foreign & Domestic Policy) Static Link

Debate 3 (Domestic Policy) Static Link

Textbook torrents. It is a site that allows users to share scanned-in versions of their textbooks via peer-to-peer networks.  This really was just a manner of time. There are a number of other attempts out there to fix the textbook marketplace, including my own Inquiry site , Wikibooks, OpenTextBook, TextBook Revolution and (one I didn’t know of until today) Scribd.

Regular readers of this blog will remember my grant proposal from last spring. (FIPSE denied the grant proposal - in fact, they only awarded 6 grants this year! In most previous years, they awarded around 60. I think they are playing hard-ball with congress).

Check out the usedbook Blog for more comments: http://usedbooksblog.com/blog/textbook-torrents/

Really? The organization that awarded Darwin the Copley medal in 1864 (albeit, famously *not* for the Origin, at least, that is what General Sabine claimed. Huxley had a different view) now thinks that creationism should be taught in schools?

Well, this story: Leading scientist urges teaching of creationism in schools in the Times makes that claim. Actually, the story glosses over a number of details. The teaser claims that the claim was made ‘according to the royal society’, but if you read further, the claim was made by Rev Michael Reiss, who is the current director of education. The society could confirm that “Professor Reiss’s views did represent that of its president, Lord Rees of Ludlow, and the society”, but there is no mention of a resolution being passed by the membership or any such general consensus.

Moreover, the article hasn’t clearly distinguished between teaching creationism as a scientific theory (whatever that may mean) and teaching it merely “as a world view.” After all, one could teach astrology “as a world view” without making claims to its veracity.

Later in the article, Reiss is quoted as saying “Just because something lacks scientific support doesn’t seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from a science lesson.” Again, the problem here is what we mean by ‘lesson’. Sure, I can (and do) include Bill O’Reilly’s tirade on Katrina in my lessons on Critical Thinking, and his views lack support (any, not just scientific). But I make no claims as to the veracity of his assertions, just the structure of his reasoning.

All of this ambiguity in the article appears to have caused a stir over in Carlton House. The Royal society issued this retraction earlier today (9/16):  read more »

New worlds for thought Businesses hiring Phil majors in Oz, from Sydney Morning Herald.

Individual profiles of Philosophy student - An accidental path to philosophy From Sydney Morning Herald

An interesting story here from the Times (UK).

I’ve been hard at working building the American Association of Philosophy Teacher’s members-only website for the past two weeks, and hence haven’t had the chance to post. This blog will be moving there in some capacity, once I figure out precisely how - i.e. via XML-RPC or just an RSS feed. If you’re not a member of the AAPT in good standing: Become one! Really. It is a great organization, and the site we’re building will have blogs, forums, archives, news updates and social networking - all in all, it should be a really useful resource for all Philosophy teachers.

Anyway, a colleague of mine, Anne, was looking for good examples of arguments from analogy. Hillary Clinton’s new stump speech contains a line something like:

“sending the Republicans back to the White House is like asking the iceberg to save the Titanic” - see the Orlando Sentinel: Hillary on the stump for Obama

Here are the two that I use frequently:

From AAPT-Shared

It is from the Washington Post in 2004, but I appear to have lost the specific date. I’ll try to recover it. The other is the famous Apple 1984 ad:  read more »