One of the most commented on segments of Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarelyhi‘s ‘Free Solo‘–the film that details Alex Honnold‘s incredible free solo climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park–is that of the MRI of Honnold’s brain. This MRI is performed in an attempt to solve the mystery of how Honnold is able toContinue reading “That Alex Honnold MRI In ‘Free Solo’”
Tag Archives: explanations
Neuroscience’s Inference Problem And The Perils Of Scientific Reduction
In Science’s Inference Problem: When Data Doesn’t Mean What We Think It Does, while reviewing Jerome Kagan‘s Five Constraints on Predicting Behavior, James Ryerson writes: Perhaps the most difficult challenge Kagan describes is the mismatching of the respective concepts and terminologies of brain science and psychology. Because neuroscientists lack a “rich biological vocabulary” for the varietyContinue reading “Neuroscience’s Inference Problem And The Perils Of Scientific Reduction”
Causation and the Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon
In reviewing Joel Greenberg‘s A Feathered River: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction (Bloomsbury, 2014), and in particular in noting his analysis of the causes of the mass disappearance of the passenger pigeon, Elizabeth Kolbert writes: [G]reenberg isn’t much interested in the mechanics of the bird’s extinction. Even if there was some other contributing factor, he observes,Continue reading “Causation and the Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon”
Does Explanation Constitute Justification? Geras Contra Greenwald and Eagleton
And does it thereby also run the risk of shading into apologia when the event being explained is one that would strike some as a heinous act? In response to the Woolwich killing of a British soldier by machete-wielding assailants, Glenn Greenwald thinks not. Terry Eagleton agrees (in a fashion). Norman Geras disagrees. (As the linksContinue reading “Does Explanation Constitute Justification? Geras Contra Greenwald and Eagleton”
Fish on Eagleton on Religion
Stanley Fish reviews Terry Eagleton‘s Reason, Faith and Revolution in The New York Times and approvingly quotes him contra the excesses of Christopher Hitchens: [T]he fact that religion and theology cannot provide a technology for explaining how the material world works should not be held against them, either, for that is not what they do. When Christopher Hitchens declares thatContinue reading “Fish on Eagleton on Religion”
Samir Chopra 