In the Forum
We welcome Alex Rosenberg back to the Forum. He comes with Final Thoughts of a Disenchanted Naturalist. OTH readers may remember that Alex’s first OTH piece, The Disenchanted Naturalist’s Guide to Reality appeared in November 2009. They probably do not know that that essay has been visited by more than 25,000 readers, provoked more responses than any other of our posts, and helped to launch a highly visible debate on naturalism in our sometime-partner philosophy blog, The Stone at The New York Times. Furthermore, Rosenberg expanded his OTH essay into a book, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions (Norton 2011), that has been reviewed in, among other venues, the Boston Globe and First Things. The book is a recent featured “Pick” of the Village Voice.
Alexander Rosenberg is the Department Chair and R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. Author of more than a dozen books, Rosenberg conducts research in metaphysics with particular interest in causality, in the philosophy of biology, and the philosophy of the social sciences. Here he discusses whether naturalism can save the humanities, arguing that the methods of the mature ideal physical sciences will be better suited to explain the products of human creativity than will any of the methods of the traditional humanistic disciplines. The reason is that scientific explanations are superior to narrative self-understandings; scientific “explanation” and humanistic “understanding” are not complementary—they are rivals. And only the first method provides knowledge; the second only provides pleasure. Will future students of literature, history, philosophy, art, and music have to adopt scientific methods? They will, argues Rosenberg, if they are interested in acquiring true knowledge of their subjects, and if they do not wish to waste time having to explain why they persist in using outdated methods.
Please join the discussion in our Forum.
NOTICE: As we at OTH prepare to close our doors we are delighted to announce that our last essayist will be Geoffrey Harpham, Director of the National Humanities Center and the moving force behind the Autonomy, Singularity, and Creativity project (2006–09). Geoff’s vision and determination started us all on this path. His essay, Science and the Theft of Humanity, was the opening salvo in a critical exchange over the role of the sciences in the humanities that has gone on now nigh a half-dozen years.
Updates
Ray Tallis has posted his final reply to commentors on his essay A Suicidal Tendency in the Humanities.
In the News
In the News is a monthly round-up of recent developments in the study of humans, animals, and machines. We provide links to two references for each story: first, to the scholarly record in the professional literature and, second, to a popular media account illustrating how the research is being presented to the public. Compiled by Curtis Tigges. Read more.
Previous Contributors
Banaji, Mahzarin. The Dark Dark Side of the Mind
Bateson, Sir Patrick. Hunting and Science
Batson, Dan. Empathic Concern and Altruism in Humans
Beer, Dame Gillian. Late Darwin And The Problem Of The Human
Biletzki, Anat. The Sacred and the Humane
Benzon, William L. Cultural Evolution: A Vehicle For Cooperative Interaction Between The Sciences And The Humanities
Bérubé, Michael. Humans, Disabilities, and the Humanities?
Blackmore, Susan. Temes: An Emerging Third Replicator
Blier, Suzanne Preston. Animalia: The Natural World, Art, and Theory
Boden, Margaret. Can Computer Models Help Us To Understand Human Creativity?
Broch-Due, Vigdis. Animal In Mind: People, Cattle and Shared Nature on the African Savannah
Carroll, Joe. The Adaptive Function of Literature and the Other Arts
Carruthers, Peter. Knowledge of our own thoughts is just as interpretive as knowledge of the thoughts of others.
Churchland, Patricia and Christopher Suhler. Control: Conscious And Otherwise
De Waal, Frans. Morals Without God?
Deacon, Terrence. On the Human: Rethinking the Natural Selection of Human Language
Dennett, Daniel. Whole-Body Apoptosis and the Meanings of Lives
Doris, John. Do You Know What You’re Doing?
Gillespie, Michael Allen. Science and the Humanities
Gruen, Lori. The Ethics of Captivity
Hacking, Ian. Commercial Genome Reading
Harnad, Stevan. Doing, Feeling, Meaning and Explaining
Hayles, Katherine N. Distributing/Disturbing the Chinese Room
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. How Humans Became Such Other-Regarding Apes
Kaufman, Les. Loaves, Fishes, and the Human Side of Ecosystems
Knobe, Joshua. Do People Actually Believe in Objective Moral Truths?
Krech III, Shepard. The Nature and Culture of Birds
Leiter, Brian. Moral Skepticism And Moral Disagreement: Developing An Argument From Nietzsche
Lenoir, Tim. Contemplating Singularity
Lycan, William. Qualitative Experience in Machines
MacKinnon, Catharine. Are Women Human?
Marino, Lori. A Trans-Species Perspective on Nature
Marks, Stuart A. Wild Animals and a Different Human Face
McCarty, Willard. Who Am I Computing?
McLennan, Rebecca. When Felons Were Human
McMahan, Jeff. The Meat Eaters: Would the controlled extinction of carnivorous species be a good thing?
Mills, Charles. The Political Economy of Personhood
Moya, Paula. A Story in Two Parts, With An Ending Yet To Be Written
Pippin, Robert. Participants and Spectators
Pogge, Thomas. The Health Impact Fund: A Better Way to Reward New Medicines
Prinz, Jesse. Does Consciousness Outstrip Sensation?
Rabinow, Paul. Biopower, Dignity, Synthetic Anthropos
Railton, Peter. Moral Camouflage Or Moral Monkeys?
Regan, Tom. The Case for Animal Rights
Ritvo, Harriet. Going Forth and Multiplying: Animal Acclimatization and Invasion
Ritvo, Harriet. Humans And Humanists (And Scientists)
Robinson, William. Challenges for a Humanoid Robot
Rosati, Connie S. Narrative and Personal Good
Rosenberg, Alex. The Disenchanted Naturalist’s Guide to Reality
Sandler, Ronald. Enhancing Moral Status?
Sapolsky, Robert. This Is Your Brain on Metaphors
Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue. Human Language—Human Consciousness
Serpell, James. One Man’s Meat: Further Thoughts on the Evolution of Animal Food Taboos
Singer, Peter. Taking Life: Animals
Sober, Elliott. Common Ancestry and Natural Selection in Darwin’s Origin
Sterelny, Kim. The Evolved Apprentice
Stoneking, Mark. Does Culture Prevent or Drive Human Evolution?
Strier, Karen B. The Challenge of Comparisons in Primatology
Suhler, Christopher and Patricia Churchland. Control: Conscious And Otherwise
Tallis, Raymond. A Suicidal Tendency in the Humanities
Tallis, Raymond. Does Evolution Explain Our Behavior?
Tabbi, Joseph. On Reading 300 Works Of Electronic Literature
Turner, Mark. The Scope of Human Thought
Vazire, Simine. Bright Spots and Blind Spots in Self-Knowledge
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