Philosophy & Ethics

Saving Science For The Non-Believers?

Ken Miller vs. Jerry Coyne: Can you believe in God and evolution? Many creationists say no. But so does Jerry Coyne, as well as a fair number of other non-believing scientists active in the blogosphere. If you follow the science blogging community, you ...

Article - Michael White - Jun 23 2009 - 10:38pm

NY Stem Cell Committee Approves Payment to Egg Donors

State "laboratories of democracy" at work: ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Jun 24 2009 - 3:41pm

Aquinas would have loved genes

Some of this is just too much: (from  The Guardian): ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Jun 24 2009 - 10:47pm

Harry And Louise, Meet Rogerio And Bosso

The president wants to transform healthcare with new laws and new technology, but once upon a time, a moral bond ruled between patient and physician. Recently, I experienced something so rare in American medicine that it often catches people up short when ...

Article - Greg Critser - Jun 28 2009 - 11:30pm

Should We Peer Pressure Kids Into Environmental Awareness?

There's a reason religious cults do things in groups; peer pressure and mutual awareness keeps them on message.   Likewise, young people are more likely to participate in conservation if their peers do- a tendency that should be exploited when it come ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 30 2009 - 10:44am

The Power of Genetics

I watched a television program the other night called the "Power of Genetics".  Although it was obviously a few years old, just listening to it set my spider senses to tingling. There was the talk about cloning (animals and people), the gene ther ...

Blog Post - Gerhard Adam - Jul 2 2009 - 2:29pm

Logic As Inquiry

For some thousands of years “logic” was viewed as the “theory of inquiry” – “inquiry into inquiry” if you will. This was almost certainly the case with Plato, definitely the case with Aristotle, and by and large true throughout the history of Western thoug ...

Article - Gary Herstein - Jul 3 2009 - 12:05am

Take Politics Out Of Science- A Call For A Real Debate On Stem Cells

If you read internet science in 2006, you'd have thought former president George W. Bush's limitations of use of embryonic stem cell lines had killed science.  In reality, embryonic stem cell research only received $15 million in US funding when ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 4 2009 - 2:01pm

Freedom and Free Will

Despite the glib use with which people invoke the idea of freedom. Freedom is a scary concept. The ability to do absolutely anything one wishes is simply overwhelming. Of course, in practice this isn’t really what we mean by freedom. Instead we immediately ...

Blog Post - Gerhard Adam - Jul 4 2009 - 7:58pm

What Formal Logic CAN Do

Philosophers have the embarrassing habit of apologizing for formal logic. Mathematicians don’t bother because they don’t care-- they’re just interested in the pretty pretty symbols and waste no part of their lives checking to see if their activities actua ...

Article - Gary Herstein - Jul 5 2009 - 12:25pm