Philosophy & Ethics

The Community Of Reason, A Self-Assessment And A Manifesto

I have been an active member of the self-described Community of Reason since about 1997. By that term I mean the broad set encompassing skeptics, atheists and secular humanists (and all the assorted synonyms thereof: freethinkers, rationalists, and even br ...

Article - Massimo Pigliucci - Aug 19 2012 - 11:30am

Okay, Let’s Talk About Abortion

PZ Myers is not exactly known for the timidity of his statements (or for the mildness of his tone when he disagrees with someone, even a fellow atheist). On August 1st he posted a brief statement on his blog, presumably as a commentary on the recent Republ ...

Article - Massimo Pigliucci - Aug 25 2012 - 4:30am

Transparent Transparency

Transparency is the slogan of a new, heterogeneous movement. The demand for transparency unites very different orientations. Many conservatives feel that transparency is similar to anarchy. However, transparency is not primarily there to make it difficult ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Jun 3 2014 - 3:33am

Peter Singer, Group Selection, and the Evolution of Ethics

In 1981 the philosopher Peter Singer published a book titled The Expanding Circle – Ethics, Evolution and Moral Progress. The book was inspired by EO Wilson’s Sociobiology – The New Synthesis, because although Singer claimed to find fallacies in Wilson’s b ...

Blog Post - Steve Davis - Aug 22 2012 - 2:40pm

Group Selection And Altruism Among Humans

There is little doubt that there is an abundance of evidence regarding the role of cooperation among social animals and it is mentioned here as a precondition for the discussion of group selection and altruism; specifically in humans. While many of the ele ...

Article - Gerhard Adam - Nov 6 2012 - 8:01pm

Inclusive Fitness Is Group Selection

Despite the intent in biology to eliminate group selection, it invariably turns up as the only reasonable explanation for the cohesion of species and the behavior of large groups of animals. Additionally, the struggle to explain altruism using kin selectio ...

Article - Gerhard Adam - Oct 14 2012 - 10:16am

Should Robots Be Tickled?

“Under what conditions can we engage in a meaningful, expressive interaction with an electronic device?” Say, for example, by ‘tickling’ a robot? This question is examined in a recent article by Patrizia Marti, assistant professor and senior lecturer at t ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Sep 8 2012 - 10:41am

On Mathematical Platonism

Recently I have been intrigued by James Ladyman and Don Ross’s ideas about naturalistic metaphysics and in the course of my discussion of their book, Every Thing Must Go, I pointed out that those ideas (as the authors themselves recognize) are compatible w ...

Article - Massimo Pigliucci - Sep 21 2012 - 9:53pm

Intelligence, Uplift And Our Place In A Big Cosmos

A balanced and well-researched  Wired article by Jason Kehe  reveals the latest  "yoo-hoo transmission to aliens"   stunt.  Of course I consider these things to be, at best, dopey, with a small but significant chance of being thoughtlessly dange ...

Article - David Brin - Sep 23 2012 - 12:23pm

Jerry Coyne Vs. John Dupré On The Status Of Evolutionary Theory

I read two interesting commentaries on evolutionary theory recently. One was by philosopher John Dupré, the other by evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. Actually, the latter was a commentary on the former, and it had a typical Coyne-style title (“Another p ...

Article - Massimo Pigliucci - Oct 1 2012 - 5:00pm