Musings on Gettier and the definition of knowledge

by Coel Hellier Philosophers have traditionally defined knowledge as a belief that is both true and justified, a definition that sufficed until, 50 years ago, Edmund Gettier pointed out that the conditions could be fulfilled by accident, in ways that didn’t amount to what we would intuitively regard as knowledge. Gettier pointed to scenarios such …

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Virtue Ethics: an ancient solution to a modern problem

by Peter D.O. Smith Introduction This article is neither a defense of nor an attack against either religion or secularism. It treats them as well established sociological facts and no more than that. I take them as given and argue that a greater moral good can be achieved if the two belief systems find common …

Why you shouldn’t make naturalism a tenet of secular humanism

by Stephen Law Introduction I recently wrote a blog post titled “Secular Humanism: DON’T define it as requiring naturalism” [1] in which I suggest that it is a strategic mistake for secular humanists (such as myself) to make naturalism a tenet of secular humanism, so that signing up to naturalism is a requirement, rather than …

Stephen Law on humanism and naturalism

by Massimo Pigliucci This is going to be one of my “a colleague said this, I disagree, and I’m going to invite him to respond” sort of essays. This time the focus is on a recent short piece by Stephen Law, entitled “Secular Humanism: DON’T define it as requiring naturalism” [1], in which Stephen — …

What can evolutionary biology learn from creationists?

by Joanna Masel You might expect a professional evolutionary biologist like myself to claim that my discipline has nothing to learn from creationists. And I certainly do find all flavors of evolution-denialism sadly misguided. But I also find it reasonable to assume that any serious and dedicated critic should uncover something interesting about the object …

Farewell to determinism

by Marko Vojinovic Introduction Ever since the formulation of Newton’s laws of motion (and maybe even before that), one of the popular philosophical ways of looking at the world was determinism as captured by the so-called “Clockwork Universe” metaphor [1]. This has raised countless debates about various concepts in philosophy, regarding free will, fate, religion, …

Logic, Buddhism, and all that

by Graham Priest In “Graham Priest on Buddhism and Logic” [1]  Massimo Pigliucci recently commented on a piece I wrote on logic and Buddhist metaphysics, “Beyond True and False” [2]. In this, he explained why he was not persuaded. In an admirable spirit of open-mindedness, he invited me to comment on his thoughts. So, in …

Philosophy, science and expertise

by Mark English Let me make a very simple — and, I hope, uncontroversial — point about expertise and authority before looking at some questions pertaining to the current (increasingly bitter) debate about the nature and status of philosophy and its relation to the sciences. Expertise implies epistemic authority: the expert — by definition — …

The intuitional problem of consciousness

by Mark O’Brien Could a computer ever be conscious? I think so, at least in principle. Scientia Salon has seen a number of very interesting discussions on this theme which unfortunately have failed to shift anybody’s position [1]. That much is to be expected. The problem is that the two sides seem to be talking …