Brian Iverson

A city council in a provincial town has decided to add a large amount of traffic lights to a moderately used street in a neighborhood. Several children have been hit by cars recently. A clerk who knows about the topic but isn’t responsible for any of those decisions is debating whether to advise the people responsible on the subject. She knows…[Read more]

The trolly experiment isn’t rubbish at all. It’s an important study in ethics for so many reasons and the conclusions are applicable in many situations, one countless professionals have to made…ones made by several people every day, even in very abstract ways. The trolly problem forces you to deal with several issues all at the same time…[Read more]

I don’t think it’s particularly crazy to “test your faith” in dangerous ways if you truely honestly believe that a man in the sky controls everything and will protect you if that is his will. It’s the belief in the man in the sky that is crazy. Of course…she shouldn’t be allowed to have a license or perhaps be left with children. But its,…[Read more]

@Simon

I really don’t think we disagree much on the issue. All I do is urge caution on not taking the “alpha male spreading the seed”  and “female cowering for protection” to the extent that many do in the popularization of human sexuality. Yeah many species of canines and felines do and some primates but most mammals are actually quite solitary…[Read more]

Yeah Reg. He doesn’t really touch on exactly what we are talking about in the Naked Ape or the Human Animal but yeah, I’d say, how many decades later now? They are still extremely worth the read and very relevant to today. It’s amazing how little of it has yet disseminated into public consciousness. He does go into early humans in “The human zoo”…[Read more]

For the sources I’ll have to look them up next time I’m at the philosophy library in Leuven, Belgium. One was a book by Desmond Morris and another was a book by Dennis Dutton. If you’re seriously interested in reading these titles (covering early humans) I’ll look up the titles for you.

@Simon

We’re terribly lacking in data on the topic of sexual assault. It does happen by women but its so uncommon each case is very notable. The problem is rape is barely even reported in many societies (and is even partially serialized in a couple cultures like in a tribe in Papua New Guinea where boys felate adults to “gain the essence of…[Read more]

You cannot say one is the study of this and one is the study of that. You can only say the methods that they use to study their subjects. Both the sciences and philosophy deal with ideas (to different degrees) and mostly science but in many methods of inquiry by philosophers deal with “things”.

In some sciences they use the scientific method…[Read more]

There is absolutely NO doubt that there are terrible disaster branches of philosophy. Especially post-modernesque writers. Some (and only SOME) who deal with feminist/LGTB/colonialist/black studies can also defy comprehension. While you certainly don’t find as much stupid writing…you still find it in psychology and economics and even in the…[Read more]

 They [philosophers] just seem to talk crap, in other words.

This is something you regularly have to put up with in the study of philosophy. Think of people who say this, as the sort of “far-right” loud mouth know it alls of the hyper-rationalists. It doesn’t matter…you know…that it was philosophers who very well set up the whole concept of…[Read more]