Day: March 19, 2010

How could you show feminist philosophers are daft?

annejjacobson13 Comments

Some people apparently think you don’t need any good argument at all.  You just decide it.

Who could that be?  You might well ask.  However, we have a politeness rule here and we refrain from calling out people who are offensive about us on other blogs.   So my lips are sealed and  my fingers are still.  Sort of.

If you think it is worth finding out, you could look for the pingback on a discussion with a time-stamp after March 12 at 2 pm.  That is, the pingback is on a post after 2 pm on March 12.  There must be about 10 or 12 posts since then.  If you do locate the pingback, which will be in among the comments, and go  to the other blog, you might feel you have really wasted your time.  It is actually pretty bad.

On the other hand, you might discern a person fairly desperately ignorant of things we have pretty thoroughly discussed.  If you decide to comment  to be helpful, do use the opportunity that blog affords.  And if you decide to be unhelpful, please also use that blog.

The Consolations of Philosophy: New Evidence

annejjacobson4 Comments

It’s a small study, the direction of causation is not clear and it’s about thinking with another person, but still:

It may sound counterintuitive, but people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier, said Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who published a study on the subject.

As the authors conclude in their article:

Remarking on Socrates’ dictum that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” Dennett (1984) wrote, “The overly examined life is nothing to write home about either” (p. 87). Although we hesitate to enter such delicate philosophical disputes, our findings suggest that people find their lives more worth living when examined―at least when examined together.