Sometimes I spend days trying to figure out what someone means when they use an otherwise common word. I spend even more time trying to the difference between two authors’ use of the same word. It’s a problem. We can call this the meaning problem. In this post I talk about the meaning problem and some solutions. I think the best solutions would be open-source academic lexicons — i.e., lexicons for every academic field edited by academics from the corresponding field. But that’s a big ask, so I will also mention a couple other (partial) solutions as well. Continue reading The Meaning Problem & Academic Lexicons
Author: Nick Byrd
Nick is a cognitive scientist at Florida State University studying reasoning, wellbeing, and willpower. Check out his blog at byrdnick.com/blog
Academic Fake News?
I was just on the I Can’t Believe It’s Not News podcast talking about fake news, academic fake news (e.g., fake conferences, scam publishers), open access publishing, and what it’s like to look like Neil Patrick Harris. I had a great time. The hosts, Beth and Elizabeth, are very fun and resourceful. You can preview and listen to the podcast below.
Listen
You can listen to the podcast in the player below. (In case you care, I join the podcast somewhere around 4:10 and leave around 52:30.)
What Christopher Peacocke means by ‘Reflective Self-consciousness’
Christopher Peacocke’s The Mirror of the World (2014) is largely about self-consciousness. In the book, Peacocke distinguishes “reflective” self-consciousness from other kinds of self-consciousness. In this post, I will try to understand what Peacocke means by ‘reflective’. Spoiler: it is not what I and many other philosphers mean by ‘reflective’. Continue reading What Christopher Peacocke means by ‘Reflective Self-consciousness’
11 Steps Toward WordPress Optimization (for both of us)
This is a WordPress website. And I have done a lot of WordPress optimization in the last 6 months. That optimization correlates with a more than 500% increase in traffic and an almost 50% reduction in webpage loading time. In case you’re interested in how I optimize the website, I’ll tell you how below. Continue reading 11 Steps Toward WordPress Optimization (for both of us)
My Experience with Christian Apologetics
I took a few courses in biblical studies and Christian apologetics as an undergraduate. The courses definitely influenced my thinking, but not in the way that I expected.
0. Context
For years, I intended to study engineering. In my senior year of high school, I was admitted to a public school with a decent engineering program. But late in the summer, I changed my mind. I had recently become a Christian and I was dating someone who was going to a Christian college. And apparently that was enough to convince 18-year-old-me that I should also go to a Christian college and study the Bible. (Aside: Can you believe that 18-year-old-me was allowed to vote and serve on a jury?)
1. Apologetics
I signed up for Christian apologetics courses — as well as biblical studies courses — hoping to find compelling arguments to rationalize my relatively new faith. At first, the arguments seemed compelling. I remember being excited to take the arguments to unbelieving friends back home and see what they had to say.
But the more I thought about the arguments, the less Continue reading My Experience with Christian Apologetics
How To Create A Digital Library
I accumulated over 10,000 hard copy books and papers over the years. But storing and transporting that many items was a nuisance. So I put all my books and papers in the cloud. Now I have them in my pocket, wherever I go. In this post, I’ll talk about how that works.
Related post: how to listen to your books and papers using text-to-speech.
The Basics
If you are thinking about creating or organizing a digital library, then I recommend thinking about 6 things: Continue reading How To Create A Digital Library
Are Atheists More Reflective Than Theists?
On Saturday, I was on the Veracity Hill Podcast talking about the evidence that atheists and agnostics reason more reflectively (i.e., make fewer errors) than theists.
The Discussion
- What do we mean by ‘reflective’? And how do we measure reflection? Who counts as a theist? And how do we measure religiosity?
- What do these findings about atheists and theists tell us about atheism and theism (if anything)? And how might further research answer hitherto unanswered questions about how atheists and theists reason?
- What are some related findings? For instance, what does this have to do with other philosophical beliefs?
The Podcast
How To Write A Philosophy Paper: 4 Criteria, 9 Tips
When my students ask me how to write a philosophy paper, I tell them to aim for three or four criteria—clarity, cogency, concision, and creativity—in that order. And if they want more guidance, I give them writing tips. Below I elaborate on the four criteria and my tips for each criterion.†
1. Clarity
What this means: It should be difficult for me to misunderstand you.††
So don’t waste time crafting long sentences with big words, which often backfires (Oppenheimer, 2005). Instead, aim for a 6th- to 9th-grade reading level. Yes, I know: that’s not how many academics write.††† Do as we say, not as we do.
1st Writing Tip: Continue reading How To Write A Philosophy Paper: 4 Criteria, 9 Tips
What Is Reflective Reasoning?
Last week I was talking about intuition. I think of intuition as — among other things — unconscious and automatic reasoning. The opposite of that would be conscious and deliberative reasoning. We might call that reflective reasoning.† In this post, I want to talk about reflective reasoning. How does it work? And why does it work? And — spoiler alert — why does it sometimes not work? Continue reading What Is Reflective Reasoning?
The Appeal to Intuition: A Fallacy?
You might be familiar with what philosophers call an “appeal to nature“. It is a claim that something is good or bad because of how natural it is. Sometimes an appeal to nature is a fallacy. In this post, I discuss the possibility that an appeal to intuition is that kind of fallacy.