Official Website for Amitabha Palmer
IntroductionCritical thinking sounds fancy but it’s something most of us do everyday. In fact, most of us are quite good at it…so long as we are properly motivated. Unfortunately, we absolutely suck when the motivation is wrong–and I’m not talking about money. What do I mean by all this talk of correct and incorrect […]
Read More Critical Thinking: The Secret Technique Professors Don’t Want You to Know!Over the last several years I’ve pretty much covered every meaningful piece of advice on how to get in shape. http://missiontotransition.blogspot.ca/2013/01/annual-fitness-advice-post-using-social.htmlhttp://missiontotransition.blogspot.com/2012/01/no-nonsense-fitness-guide.html. http://missiontotransition.blogspot.com/2010/10/nutrition-rant-simple-vs-complex-carbs.html http://missiontotransition.blogspot.com/2010/06/i-was-planning-on-attacking-some-recent.html http://missiontotransition.blogspot.com/2010/07/health-and-nutrition-part-2.html http://missiontotransition.blogspot.com/2010/07/health-and-nutrition-part-3-hopefully.html This year I’m going to cover how to prevent injury. I’d say that this is probably the most difficult lesson for former competitive athletes to learn because the most significant […]
Read More Annual Fitness Post: Injury Prevention with Breathing TechniqueBack in the pre-internetz days, there were fewer media outlets. Nowadays, there is no shortage of websites that have news that is tailor-made for your biases interests. Of course, having only a few media outlets is a double-edged sword. I probably don’t have to list all the disadvantages of there being only a few media […]
Read More How To Evaluate a Scientific Study: The Actual Study Vs How a Study is ReportedMill would might respond to Arnold one of 2 ways. First, he might say that while pain might sometimes be an instrumental good, it is not a good in itself (unlike pleasure). Therefore, pain cannot be pleasure. Second, he might respond that Arnold is confused. He seems to be saying that, for him, growing is […]
Read More Mill: On UtilitarianismIntroduction and ContextKant is considered to be one of the most important philosophers ever…EVER! Therefore, everything he says it true. The end. Well, not quite. Lets avoid appeals to authority and look at the arguments ourselves, shall we? As I mentioned in earlier posts the difference between the 3 main ethical theories (virtue, deontology, consequentialism) […]
Read More Kantian Ethics: A SummaryIntroduction and ContextSo far it looks like if we’re moral realists (i.e., we believe there are objective moral facts) we are in deep doo-doo. In Why Be Moral, Glaucon and Adeimantus compellingly argue that it’s better to appear moral than to actually be moral. The Euthyphro dilemma shows that appealing to God can’t, on its […]
Read More The Moral Problem: Michael SmithPlato: Introduction to Why Be Moral (aka Glaucon’s Challenge) The first question of philosophy is “how should I live?” Implicit in this question is a similar question: “what does living a good life entail?” Amongst other things, over the course of The Republic, Plato tries to answer this question. One of the central issues to […]
Read More Why Be Moral? Plato, The Republic Book IIIntroductionWelcome to one of my favorite topics: meta-ethics. Rather than describe what meta-ethics is, it might be easier understood by listing some of the questions it tries to answer:(a) What does it mean for something to be morally “good” or what is it that makes something “good” or “bad”?(b) What does it mean for something […]
Read More Intro to Meta-EthicsIntroduction and Context: How do you think we “decide” to act? The common sense (and our experience) explanation is we (1) make a conscious decision to do something (2) our brain activates whatever neuro-pathways are required for the action, the (3) we perform the action. Libet’s famous experiments give strong evidence showing that this is […]
Read More What Does Neuroscience Tell About Free Will? The Libet and Other Experiments, and InterpretationsIntroduction and ContextSo far in the free will vs determinism debate we’ve looked at the two major positions (libertarian free will and causal determinism), two interpretations of the debate (compatibilism and incompatibilism), and two positions on the relationship between the free will debate and moral responsibility (Strawson’s Basic Argument and Frankfurt’s compatibilism). All the positions […]
Read More X-Phi and The Freewill Determinism Debate: Are We Natural Compatibilists or Incompatibilists?
Wrestling with Philosophy 