Author Archives: Jesús Zamora Bonilla
Caplan’s ‘case against education’ (& 2)
In a recent entry, I provided a summary of Brian Caplan’s views (in his book The Case against Education) about the main evils of our contemporary education system. In a nutshell, the main problem is, in the first […]
Why emergent levels will not save free will (& 2)
In the first entry of this series, I briefly explained Christian List’s attempt to vindicate the ontological and scientific reality of intentional action as a real emergent phenomenon. In a nutshell, intentional, deliberate and often ‘rational’ action is not […]
Caplan’s ‘case against education’ (1)
It’s a pitty that Bryan Caplan’s extremely interesting book The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money , published in 2018, has not deserved more careful attention in the public and permanent […]
Why emergent levels will not save free will (1)
Christian List, a German professor in the London School of Economics, is one of the most prolific and intelligent authors in the new generation of philosophers of social science. He has authored and co-authored a formidable number of extremely interesting […]
The Italian coffee pot, a dialog on values in science (3): Science doesn’t do it itself, it has to be done
[Read Part 1 & Part 2]
VIOLETA: You know the shape of the classical Italian coffee-pot, like the one Faustino has just braught. It consists of two truncated cones or pyramids, joined by their narrowest parts. I claim that […]
The Italian coffee pot, a dialog on values in science (2): From value pluralism to the unity of scientific values
[Read the first part here]
LORENZO: Alright, Violeta, we may admit that the members of a scientific discipline may agree to assess the conjectures and models each of them is proposing according to some consensual rule, and we […]
The Italian coffee pot, a dialog on values in science (1): Individualism, values and preferences
LORENZO: We are very thankful to you, Faustino, for your invitation to see today’s football match in your home. This morning, in the Philosophy of Science Congress, you have been one of the few recalling that our national team plays […]
The limits of animal ethics
One of the most important ethical debates of the next decades will be, no doubt, the one about our moral obligations towards non-human beings, and in particular, towards the members of other animal species. Very likely, not only philosophical discussions, […]
Why people believe in the soul (& 3): How does the brain perceive itself?
In the past entries we have examined three types of ‘abnormal’ psychic experiences that have surely had an important role in the creation and diffusion of the idea of an ‘immaterial soul’ that contains our personal identity, and that can […]
Why people believe in the soul (2): near-death and mystical experiences
In the past entry we examined how “out-of-body experiences” (OBEs) might have an influence in the belief in a “soul” separated from the body. Now we shall take a look to the other two types of “abnormal” psychological experiences […]