Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Looking over a pamphlet produced by the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, William Galvin, concerning 2026 ballot questions. One here is fascinating, and not something of which I have heard in any of the press coverage of the coming vote. Question 7, "Single Family Homes." Apparently, there is a view that local zoning has been too restrictive for the construction of single family residences on small lots, and this is contributing to the housing shortage in general. So, enough yes votes on question 7 will create a new law that will instruct municipalities not to ban, or require a special permit for, the use of land or structures for a single-family residence in any zoning district that allows residences, with some caveats.    The idea is that in affluent suburban communities in general, families with Big Homes and Big Lots of land around them don't want neighbors with smaller homes on smaller lots.  It ruins the property values.   If the zoning ordin...

It is amusing, and sad, that the academic world now has its own variant of the Nigerian Prince scam. You've surely seen the latter, dear reader, "Greetings. I am the widow of a wealthy Nigerian Prince. Please help me unlock my husband's vast fortune, which I will split with you.  All I need is some of your valuable US bank account data...."   Book Carnival seems a lot like that.  For professors.    Scam watch: “Book Carnival” – Leiter Reports

The issue of "free will" is a multi-front forever war in philosophy.  What does the phrase mean?  Do humans have it?  Is it necessary for the coherence of important ideas about moral responsibility to presume that we have it? One of the fronts in the war involves conscious human intentions and their timing.  Do we really form conscious intentions to do X before we do X?  Or are conscious intentions just confabulated after the fact -- after our neurological unconscious has already reached a point of no return? And what notion of free will could survive a "yes" answer to that question?  In 1983, an important paper, by Benjamin Libet at al,  appearing in a scientific journal aptly entitled BRAIN, discussed experiments that seemed to show that humans make decisions before we are even aware of it.  This seemed to destroy any intuitively plausible role for free will, or for the operation of "will" at all.  But of late neurologists have been looking...

  A friend told me this joke sometime in the 1990s. Excuse the techno archaisms.  Various scientists combined their efforts to formulate in proper computer programming form the question "Does a God exist?".  They asked the question to the most sophisticated computer and software available.  The answer came back, "data insufficient."  The team then connected this computer to a lot of other powerful computers and beefed up its data storage. They asked the same question. The answer came back, "data insufficient." Then they combined all the electrical energy available on planet earth with all the knowledge, fed it all in with this computer as the center.  They asked again, "Does a God exist?" Comes the response.  "Yes ... now."    Seemed funny. So How Exactly CAN AI Kill Us All? Experts Explain What That Viral Anthropic Tweet Is Referring To

  No, he appears not to have said that.  A rumor has circulated online in recent days to the effect that President Trump has threatened to turn off the water to Niagara Falls, a natural landmark famously shared by the U.S. and Canada, unless Canada agreed to pay a "100% tariff." The rumor is generally accompanied by an ALLEGED screenshot of the "Truth Social" posting that in turn includes these words,   We have the control. We have the valves. We can reduce the flow, or shut it down completely, and we will if necessary. Canada has been taking advantage of the United States for decades, getting a world-famous natural resource basically for free while insulting our country and making it harder for American businesses.   Snopes has looked into it and has concluded that the screen shot is a fake and the rumor it supports is just false. Perhaps it was an effort at satire gone awry,  Anyway, for the curious, the chief executive of the United Staes does not "have...

  Not surprisingly, the US goes its own way on much journalistic lingo, using terms distinct from those employed in the same context by the rest of the English speaking world. Consider the "sidebar". Often, for a important story, there is material that is pertinent to an understanding of the story but that does not QUITE fit into it. A story, after all, is a narration, not a data dump.  Anyway, the additional material that bears upon a story is often carried separately, by its side, or within a outline (a "box") nearby.   In the US, this is called a "sidebar." In rest of Anglophone, it is a "boxout".  Consider also the "subhead". This is an often italicized bit of material below the headline but before the lead paragraph ("lede graf").  In the US -- subhead.  Rest of world -- standfirst.  And the "copy editor"? This is the last person between the journalist writing a story and the general public about to read it.  Th...