Philosophy & Ethics

I met Makana in August 2005, where an old lava flow meets the ocean in a series of ledges and tide pools on Kauai, one of the Hawaiian Islands. He was a “local” of about my age who got his name (Hawaiian for “gift”) from the old volcano that formed the bac ...

Article - Holly Moeller - Nov 9 2011 - 5:08pm

A Tax on Einstein?

In his recent article Should We Trust Scientists?, Paolo Ciafaloni wrote: The words I chose in my articles might seem simple, and possibly they are. But I think they reveal something of the impressive predictive power and the inner beauty of the Theory of ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Nov 10 2011 - 7:11am

Individualism And The Concept Of Rights

Well over a year ago, someone asked for a response to the following quote from Ayn Rand. I suspect this was largely due to the idea that such a view of individualism would be difficult to refute and consequently establish its legitimacy. So, here's ...

Article - Gerhard Adam - Dec 12 2011 - 1:57am

The Future of Memetics

Science and politics are incomplete systems. We live in a linear timestream. Social Experiments as well as self-referential climate science are not science yet. This was affirmed to me personally by a top climatologist studying global warming and oceanogra ...

Blog Post - Delian Valeriani - Dec 1 2011 - 5:12pm

The Meme Meme, The Self-Reflexive Meme and the New Dawn of Memetics

Excerpts from “The Empires of the Mind” and $ Memetics is the study of memes, but a meme is not just any idea, though; memes are ideas that behave as life. The word meme is a contraction of mind gene, a concept developed by Richard Dawkins to describe idea ...

Blog Post - Delian Valeriani - Jan 23 2012 - 2:11am

What About Infinity?

Infinity is a useful concept but it is often used inappropriately by being assigned as a trait to some object or another. Briefly, nothing can be infinite, since in order for something to "be", it must be defined and measurable. If it isn' ...

Article - Gerhard Adam - Dec 9 2011 - 7:44pm

Regress Type Arguments Are The Single Biggest Problem In All Of Fundamental Science And Philosophy

Those who somewhat grasp Einstein’s general theory of relativity are proud to be elevated over the folk-philosophical level. They understand that the Big Bang did not explode to expand space outwards into some “ meta-space ” that contains space. There is ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Dec 13 2011 - 5:44am

Science As Rationalization And Ultimate Religion

The main observation here is that rationalization on the social level is rationalization on the personal level performed by macro-systems (social systems from our point of view). Scientism is the ultimate religion. Calling this a dangerous anti-science pos ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Mar 20 2013 - 10:08am

Gladstone and Macaulay

William Macaulay, in a review (1839) about the recently-published book by William Gladstone, The State in its Relations with the Church, wrote: Mr Gladstone conceives that the duties of government are paternal; a doctrine which we shall not believe til ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Jan 16 2012 - 7:26am

Bioethics

The intersection of medical technology, medical practice and ethical principles has long been an important field of study but the rapid advance of medical technology has made it perhaps the most important field of study. Rapid advances in medical technolo ...

Blog Post - Ebin Abraham - Jan 31 2012 - 12:56pm