Blog
June 18, 2012
On the Social Responsibility of Philosophers of Science
By Wayne Myrvold A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science. The title was “On the Social Responsibility of Philosophers of Science.” The idea behind … Continue reading
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June 17, 2012
Beyond Turf Wars: The Facebook comment thread
By Wayne Myrvold I posted a link to my blog post, “Beyond Turf Wars,” on my Facebook page. It resulted in an interest back-and-forth involving myself, philosopher Vishnya Maudlin, and Matt Leifer, a physicist working on the foundations of quantum … Continue reading
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June 14, 2012
New England Journal of Medicine's History of Surgery
Fascinating article from the NEJM entitled “Two Hundred Years of Surgery” which highlights, inter alia, the importance of anesthesia in the development of modern surgical techniques: Surgeons soon found, however, that anesthesia allowed them to perform more complex, invasive, and precise maneuvers than … Continue reading
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June 11, 2012
Beyond Turf Wars
By Wayne Myrvold There has been a bit of squabbling, of late, between physicists and philosophers of science. In 2010, in their book The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. declared that “philosophy is dead … Scientists have become … Continue reading
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June 7, 2012
When Experience Machines Are Obligatory
Nozick’s classic discussion of ‘experience machines’ in Anarchy, State and Utopia attempted to show that, contrary to the ‘hedonistic’ thesis, experiencing pleasure is not all that matters to us. The ‘experience machine’, of course, is a kind of simulated reality … Continue reading
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