Over the past decade there has been a sea change in the way we assess moral reasoning, judgment, and behavior. The old view, developed and championed largely by introspective philosophers, was that people actually reason about choices before making decisions that have moral or ethical impacts. While some decisions are in fact made this way, [...]
Tags:ethics·evolution of morals·innate morality·intuitive morality·John Rawls·Jonathan Haidt·Kant·moral judgment·moral psychology·moral reasoning·prosociality
A place for everything and everything in its place. This is not just a mantra for those with obsessive tendencies. It also describes the drive that some have toward a system: a unified theory of everything.
Before the Enlightenment, there was no need for such a theory. God served this purpose and everything was explained by [...]
Tags:Darwinian monism·David Sloan Wilson·dualism·EO Wilson·Ernst Haeckel·Hegel·Kant·metaphysics·metatheory·monism·Neil deGrasse Tyson·Nietzsche·Niles Holt·science as religion·systematization·theory of everything·unified theory
In less than a month, we will be able to lay our hands on Robert Bellah’s much anticipated Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age.
It will be the latest in a string of books over the last decade which purport to explain the origins and development of what we today call [...]
Tags:axial age·brain evolution·group size·Hegel·Kant·metaphysical idealism·Neolithic Revolution·Nietzsche·Religion in Human Evolution·Robert Bellah·Robin Dunbar·Templeton Foundation
In a rare moment of clarity, Immanuel Kant penned these unforgettable words:
Time was, when she (Metaphysics) was the queen of all the sciences; and, if we take the will for the deed, she certainly deserves, so far as regards the high importance of her object-matter, this title of honor. Now, it is the fashion of [...]
Tags:agenda·empiricism·evolution of religion·Hume·Jack Templeton·John Templeton·John Templeton Foundation·Kant·metaphysics·research funding·research grants·Sunny Bains·Templeton Foundation
Few books in the history of anthropology are better known (but never read) than James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. First published in 1890 (2 volumes), Frazer published a second edition in 1900 (3 volumes), and a rolling third edition between 1911 and 1915 which ballooned to 12 volumes.
Though [...]
Tags:Cambridge Ritualists·comparative mythology·Diana·folklore·James George Frazer·JG Frazer·Kant·magic·myth·Nemi·primitive religion·resurrection·ritual·ritual murder·Robert Ackerman·sacred grove·The Golden Bough·Ur-religion
How we perceive the external world is a fascinating subject that has long attracted the attention of great thinkers from Kant to Nietzsche. Kant knew that we possessed some sort of interior filter that enables us to perceive the world and Nietzsche knew that this filtered perception was always an interpretation of the world. Modern [...]
Tags:aesthetics·Altamira·altered states of consciousness·American Indian·Ansel Adams·cave paintings·color symbolism·dichromatic·Edge of Perception·Edward Curtis·exteriority·external world·Greg Boustad·interiority·internal world·Kant·Lascaux·Luke Jerram·Nietzsche·perception·perspective·plant acoustics·scientific constructions·scientific perceptions·sensory perception·the art of science·tobacco·tobacco shamanism
