Prof. Ron McClamrock's vaguely academic web home

New machinery

I’ve put up new springs and weights to hold up the virtual facade of profron.net.  Things might be funky here and there while I get everything tweaked and balanced.

Science in the media

New poll: 10 "Most Important" Early Modern Philosophers

Another of the polls from Leiter: The 10 “Most Important” Philosophers of the Early Modern Period. Not bad, although I gotta put Descartes over Hume, myself:

1. Immanuel Kant (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)
2. David Hume loses to Immanuel Kant by 421–232
3. Rene Descartes loses to Immanuel Kant by 443–201, loses to David Hume by 335–314
4. John Locke loses to Immanuel Kant by 576–85, loses to Rene Descartes by 508–136
5. Gottfried Leibniz loses to Immanuel Kant by 586–76, loses to John Locke by 351–272
6. Thomas Hobbes loses to Immanuel Kant by 596–64, loses to Gottfried Leibniz by 371–247
7. Baruch Spinoza loses to Immanuel Kant by 589–70, loses to Thomas Hobbes by 321–292
8. George Berkeley loses to Immanuel Kant by 625–31, loses to Baruch Spinoza by 377–230
9. Adam Smith loses to Immanuel Kant by 612–32, loses to George Berkeley by 337–247
10. Francis Bacon loses to Immanuel Kant by 603–39, loses to Adam Smith by 302–252

I laughed harder than I should have

Just kidding. Really.

Time travel cheat sheet

Just in case you get thrown back into the past by a time machine:

"The End of Philosophy" in the NYTimes

Chaospet gives David Brooks a well-deserved spanking on “The end of philosophy”

Collective unconscious

xkcd reaches into our collective unconscious:

Causation and correlation

From the web comic xkcd: Correlation

Zombie theodicy!

From Chaospet, the best solution ever to the traditional problem of evil: The Zombie Solution:

Skimming PhD student work

Not that I would ever do anything like this. It would be, um, wrong. I’ve just heard rumors.