It has been fun

Dear Readers, I'm afraid this is going to be the last post here at Scientia Salon. It has been a good, if short, run. From March 2014 to this month we have published 152 articles, received more than 15,000 comments, and have experienced a total of almost 1.5 million views. Nonetheless, several things have prompted …

Does the Atheist have a Theory of Mind?

by Thomas Coleman III Introduction Planet earth appears to be filled with unseen forces that control the behavior of its inhabitants. No, this isn’t the beginning to a cheesy B-movie science fiction film script. This is reality and even the staunchest of skeptics act as if they believe in these invisible forces. That is, we …

Strong Artificial Intelligence

by Massimo Pigliucci Here is a Scientia Salon video chat between Dan Kaufman and Massimo Pigliucci, this time focusing on the issues surrounding the so-called "strong" program in Artificial Intelligence. Much territory that should be familiar to regular readers is covered, hopefully, however, with enough twists to generate new discussion. We introduce the basic strong AI thesis about …

The false dichotomy of nature-nurture, with notes on feminism, transgenderism, and the construction of races

by Massimo Pigliucci This is my third essay on what has become an informal series on socially relevant false dichotomies (the first one was on “trigger warnings” [1], the second one on Islamophobia [2]). On this occasion I’m going to focus again on nature-nurture [3], perhaps the motherlode of false dichotomies (as well as my area of …

Are There Levels Out There?

by Markus Eronen Everything in philosophy seems to come in levels. There are levels of organization, levels of abstraction, levels of being, levels of explanation, levels of complexity, levels of analysis… and the list goes on. For example, British emergentists such as Samuel Alexander and C. Lloyd Morgan believed that there are several levels of …

The Cowboy, the Lesbian, and the Humanist

by Andy Norman A cowboy walks into a saloon. He removes his dusty hat, orders a whiskey, and sinks wearily onto a stool. He downs the whiskey, looks around, and notices that an attractive woman has joined him at the bar. She looks him over and asks, “Are you a real cowboy?”  The cowboy pauses …

The false dichotomy of Islamophobia

by Massimo Pigliucci A false dichotomy is a basic type of informal logical fallacy, consisting in framing an issue as if there were only two choices available, while in fact a range of nuanced positions may be on offer upon more careful reflection. While I have argued together with my colleagues Maarten Boudry and Fabio …

Moral realism

by Massimo Pigliucci New Scientia Salon video featuring a discussion between between Massimo and Dan, this time on the issue of moral realism. This is also being published as part of a new initiative by Bloggingheads.tv, called MeaningofLife.tv. Dan and I have our own channel, called, appropriately enough, Sophia. Anyway, in this video we talk about …

New Scientia Salon collection: Scientistic Chronicles

by Massimo Pigliucci We are happy to announce the release of the first collection of essays published in the online magazine Scientia Salon to see the light, and there will hopefully be many more to follow. Scientia Salon is devoted to bringing both science and philosophy — as they are pursued by professionals — to a …

Jesse Prinz on concepts, part II

by Dan Tippens This is Part II of an interview with Professor Jesse Prinz of City University of New York. In this video, Dan Tippens first asks Prinz about his Proxytype theory of concepts. Dan then raises an objection to Prinz's view; that Proxytype theory might have a problem satisfying the requirement that concepts be …