reductionism – On the Human https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human a project of the National Humanities Center Thu, 14 Sep 2017 16:39:50 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Participants and Spectators https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/04/participants_and_spectators/ https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/04/participants_and_spectators/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 04:07:16 +0000 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/?p=1015 I

There remains great controversy in philosophy over the issue of how we should make sense of what people do, of their actions, as opposed to explaining what happens to them. Some philosophers believe that if the question is: what distinguishes naturally occurring events like bodily movements in space from metaphysically distinct purposive doings initiated

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]]> https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/04/participants_and_spectators/feed/ 38 Moral Skepticism and Moral Disagreement: Developing an Argument from Nietzsche https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/03/moral-skepticism-and-moral-disagreement-developing-an-argument-from-nietzsche/ https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/03/moral-skepticism-and-moral-disagreement-developing-an-argument-from-nietzsche/#comments Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:24:41 +0000 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/?p=983 By “moral skepticism,” I shall mean the view that there are no objective moral ‘facts’ or ‘truths.’ Moral skeptics from Friedrich Nietzsche to Charles Stevenson to John Mackie have appealed to the purported fact of widespread and intractable moral disagreement to support the skeptical conclusion. Typically, such arguments invoke anthropological reports about the moral views

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]]> https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/03/moral-skepticism-and-moral-disagreement-developing-an-argument-from-nietzsche/feed/ 32 Science and the Humanities https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/01/science-and-the-humanities/ https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/01/science-and-the-humanities/#comments Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:27:19 +0000 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/?p=776 At odd moments, often when I’m distracted, it occurs to me that a song or a piece of music has been repeatedly running through my head. It’s an experience nearly everyone has. Sometimes it’s invigorating to realize that you have been striding through the day to the chords of Beethoven, but it’s often quite irritating

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]]> https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/01/science-and-the-humanities/feed/ 25 The Disenchanted Naturalist’s Guide to Reality https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2009/11/the-disenchanted-naturalists-guide-to-reality/ https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2009/11/the-disenchanted-naturalists-guide-to-reality/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:03:38 +0000 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/?p=595 This is a précis of an argument that naturalism forces upon us a very disillusioned “take” on reality. It is one that most naturalists have sought to avoid, or at least qualify, reinterpret, or recast to avoid its harshest conclusions about the meaning of life, the nature of morality, the significance of our consciousness self-awareness,

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