Spooky!

So we just watched a thoroughly enjoyable bit of fluff with Simon Pegg called How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. It was, obviously, right up my alley. It also had a fairly well-rounded soundtrack, which featured this little gem from Dusty Springfield. It's nice to be reminded of the sensuous delights of the world before autotune.

Massimo Pigliucci's New Project

Massimo Pigliucci, the biologist-turned-philosopher and long time author of the Rationally Speaking blog and host of the Rationally Speaking podcast, has recently closed the RS shop and started a new blog venture: Scientia Salon. There's not much there yet, but it's got all the trappings of greatness. Pigliucci's opening post is a manifesto about, in essence, the responsibility of public intellectuals, and names just the sort of people who did, have done, and are doing really top notch work.

I'd urge you to check out the site quite generally, but the manifesto itself (shorn of introduction), is brief and worth quoting in full:

1) Scientia Salon is a forum for academic and non-academic thinkers who do not shy from the label “public intellectual.”
2) We think intellectualism — in the broader sense of a publicly shared life of the mind — is crucial to the wellbeing of our society.
3) We acknowledge — as is clear from research in the cognitive sciences — that human beings navigate the world by deploying a complex mixture of reason and emotion, and that they often engage in rationalization more than rationality.
4) Indeed, we think with David Hume that this is a crucial part of human nature, since emotions are necessary in order to actually care about anything in the first place.
5) But we also think that open and reasoned discourse is fundamental for the pursuit of a eudaimonic life on the part of the individual, as well as for the development of a just and democratic society.
6) Scientia, understood as the broadest range of scientific and humanistic disciplines that positively contribute to human understanding, is an essential tool for pursuing that eudaimonic life and achieving that just society.
7) In order to make an impact, we think that writers concerned with these matters ought to aim at a wide audience, avoid unnecessary jargon, and write clearly and engagingly, even humorously when appropriate.
8) We therefore welcome authors and readers who are willing to contribute honestly and substantively to an open dialogue on all matters of the intellect, especially those of general interest to fellow human beings.

Resurrection

So...tentatively, ever tentatively, I've decided to attempt to resurrect the old blog. Some of the dreams of revisiting posts of days past is somewhat withered, as happens to all dreams too long neglected. That said, as usual, I'd like to keep a steady stream of posts devoted to either interesting readings, with occasional comments, and perhaps a few more orderly proceedings about events in the life.

About that, I've recently started up a small but determined philosophy book club. The eclecticism of the group has been well-matched by the readings so far. We started with the Euthyphro, went directly to Descartes's Meditations, then a two-week foray into Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and next we will treat Aristotle's Poetics. I'd really like to go back and do some posting about the Hume, but for now, I'll probably wind up jotting down some notes about the Poetics in preparation for our next meeting.

Interestingly, our little group features an actually active blogger, who has very thoughtfully posted some content related to our reading. His thoughts, along with my off-the-cuff response, can be found here.