Philosophy & Ethics

Be Afraid!- Be Very Afraid!- Subject To The Following Provisos:

Scientific Hedging A favourite theme in disaster movies is the political figure who tries to keep the local population from being alerted to some impending catastrophe.  Usually, the political figure tries to impede the publication of findings by one or m ...

Article - Patrick Lockerby - Jun 6 2013 - 10:19am

Kuhn vs. Taylor, Taylor vs. World. Anti-Social Engineering and the Bastardization of Authentic Self

 This began as a response to a comment made on my Blog: Conservatism is Unnatural.  It grew.  People look back on the societies of the past with an amused superiority. They wonder how people could ever have been so silly. Without even a consideration of w ...

Blog Post - Brian Taylor - Mar 21 2009 - 10:57am

Quantifiable individually decided worth via scrutinised eudaimonic exemplars a.k.a. "Value"

 Assignee's Prerogative vs. Value:  ...

Blog Post - Brian Taylor - Mar 21 2009 - 5:15pm

Random Noise 2: Conspiracy Theory & Denial

In the former USSR there was a popular joke: When two people sit down to conspire, one of them is a KGB agent and the other is a fool. Behind many conspiracy and denial theories is a common flaw, which I shall attempt to show using the experimental method. ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Mar 22 2009 - 8:34am

Plagiarists Are Just Confused About Whether Copying Without Attribution Is Okay, Says Ethics Panel

Undergraduates are getting another free pass, ethically, and blame is being shifted to educators because apparently confusion about what constitutes plagiarism,  not malicious intent, is the leading cause of plagiarism at the graduate school level, accordi ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 22 2009 - 1:20pm

What is Pragmatics?

What is Pragmatics? This is a very brief introduction to pragmatics, intended to whet your appetite and encourage you to want to know more. Pragmatic investigations cover the fields of both linguistics and philosophy. I shall cover the area of linguistics ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Mar 24 2009 - 3:34pm

Synthetic Biology- A Challenge For Science Policy, Says Report

The safety of early applications of synthetic biology may be adequately addressed by the existing regulatory framework for biotechnology, especially in contained laboratories and manufacturing facilities. But further advances in this emerging field are lik ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 25 2009 - 10:29am

Conflicts Over Conflict Of Interest- JAMA Versus Dr. Leo

The Alliance For Human Research Protection, a non-profit advocacy group for responsible and ethical medical research practices, has called for the suspension of JAMA editor-in-chief Catherine DeAngelis and exec deputy editor Phil Fontanarosa, and for an a ...

Article - Becky Jungbauer - Mar 27 2009 - 10:58am

Intelligence Made Simple

Intelligence Made Simple Part #1 of 2 What is Intelligence? I intend to show how intelligence is best understood by getting well away from ideas based on human intelligence. I shall work from humans down to primitive life-forms and then the atom itself.  ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Jun 5 2009 - 9:39pm

Intelligence Made Simple: Part 2

Intelligence Made Simple: Part 2 Please see also Part 1 Are there other intelligences in the cosmos?   How would we know? By what universal standard can we know intelligence when we see it? A Universal Definition of Intelligence. This is what I call ' ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Mar 29 2009 - 11:19am