A note I jotted to myself sometime in the past. I don’t recall the circumstances, but the question posed feels universal. The spiritualists cringe and argue against any description of self-conscious life as mechanism, that any mere machine is necessarily only an accumulation of parts and processes that can never…
Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig is a student of history. He has documented that, despite their proclaimed goals, most government regulatory agencies end up promoting "excessive government favors and excessive private monopoly power." In light of this history,) Lessig recommends that we disband the FCC and that we replace it…
It would seem according to this report that University and College presence of Intelligent Design is on its deathbed. Perhaps this is premature, but if true it would signal that the basic inability of ID to support its own conclusions are now becoming evident to all but the thoroughly committed.…
In his 2008 book, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, philosopher Mark Johnson makes a strong argument that "meaning is grounded in the body" (p. 274). That assertion, however, invites the question: "What is a human "body"? Johnson implores us to not slip into mind/body dualism. He…
Topic: Proposed change to comment policy concerning ill-informed comments regarding A) the scientific method and B) evolution by natural selection. At DI, we’ve had a wide-open comment policy. Until recently, I have rarely rejected comments. The ones I have rejected consisted mostly of preaching (see the current comment policy). I’ve…