There are two articles in Biblical Archaeology Review about Israelite origins by Anson Rainey: "Inside, Outside: Where Did the Early Israelites Come From?" and "Shasu or Habiru: Who Were the Early Israelites?"
Since the Israelites, according to the Bible, are supposed to have spent time in Egypt, it is appropriate to be able to point to a number of posts about Egypt, too. Ferrell Jenkins has a post on temples along the Nile. Sepher Ha-Bloggadah is up to the first plague. Toothface has an amusing cartoon that features Egypt. Claude Mariottini has a post on the tenth commandment (supposed to have been picked up on the way from Egypt). And Irenic Thoughts has a thought from a fourth-century Christian in Egypt.
There's also interesting science news. New Scientist has a piece on creationists moving their battle to the brain. Jesus Creed has an entry on evolution and fundamentalism. Nina Munteanu has a post on artificial intelligence. Greenflame is seeking recommendations of movies about religion, science and technology. Chet Raymo muses about mysticism. John Pieret blogs about brain drain.
Last but certainly not least, Bob MacDonald has a round up of recent blogging about resurrection.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
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2 comments:
James,
Thank you for calling my attention to Rainey's article. I enjoy reading what he writes. And thank you for the link on my post on the tenth commandment.
Claude Mariottini
Ok, so creationists and anyone else with an interest in teleology are interested in philosophy of mind. So what else is new? While this article in New Scientist provides a good example of whipping up the community ethos to safegaurd community boundaries, I feel compelled to ask "where's the beef?" Ok, so they've basically said of the mind-body problem "Ok everyone, don't worry, someday we'll find natural mechanisms for all this data." Maybe, or maybe not, it's hard to tell when you don't actually have the data sufficient for said naturalistic explanation. But in the meantime, as philosophers we must appeal to the best explanation for the body of evidence we currently have.
The author says "From such experiments, Schwartz and others argue that since the mind can change the brain, the mind must be something other than the brain, something non-material. In fact, these experiments are entirely consistent with mainstream neurology - the material brain is changing the material brain." But this is basically like saying one wants to have their cake and eat it too. If a mind is a material object physically deterministic like other material objects, then consciousness too should be physically deterministic. If so, then by implication we have made the hypothesis that physical causation is capable of affecting conscious states, but consciousness itself cannot change physical causation. If so, then we would expect that in spite of our mental illusions of causally effacious intentionality and "changing one's mind," these states are, in fact, causally ineffacious. But here in Scwartz's data we have clear evidence of quite the opposite - states of intentionality directly altering brain chemistry at will, showing conscious states to be amply caually effacious. If this is true, then we have refuted the hypothesis that the mind is physically deterministic, and hence completely derived and made up of material causes. But if we have rejected this hypothesis, then in it's place we must posit the only other possible hypothesis, that the mind is irreducible to more fundamental components, but instead exists in it's own ontological category. But it is just this that the dualist has posited all along, so they are quite justified in appealing to this data as support for their position.
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