I added a comment on Brian Boyd on the post below; just before going to bed, I took one last look at the net and see that Denis Dutton (A&L Daily) has linked to a new article by Boyd. Since I don’t really have the background and right now also don’t have the time to do either justice, this is just a link:
A) Boyd’s article: “The Purpose-Driven Life” is in The American Scholar and argues: “Evolution does not rob life of meaning, but creates meaning. It also makes possible our own capacity for creativity.”
B) Speaking of art & evolution, I haven’t linked yet to Dutton’s book itself: The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Evolution. Dutton enriches all of our lives with A&L Daily. The Amazon entry includes a lengthy and somewhat critical review by that witty youngster, Jonah Lehrer. I feel immense gratitude to Dutton – I think he dermonstrates on a daily basis the usefulness of the internet and a genial wide-ranging intellectual curiosity. I suspect his work is richer than Lehrer implies, but must admit this has been an over-committed year and we’ve been moving his book around from table to table in the livinig room. If no one else here gets around to talking about it, I promise a discussion in a few months (but not sooner).
By the way, does anyone out there belong to the Czech organization, SVU?
The new PM also said that if the US did not take care of Iran, Israel would. Hardly a way to endear himself to a nation trying to bring peace to the region. If the Israeli PM believes, as do many of us, that Iran ought not have the nuke bomb,are we (America) to attack Iran now? If yes, please say so. If not, what then. What if we tell Israel that we do not favor or support a strike against Iran (Pat this time), do we support Israel if they attack without our consent/support? We all know that history shows us lots of bad people who should have been stopped etc etc but specifically, what do YOU think we should do about Iran and Israel?
I think that Fred Lapides needs his own blog and not to make irrelevant posts on my posts. His sense that he is intelligent is undercut by repeated proofs he can not read; his sense that he is civil by the rudeness of off topic & antagonistic comments.
I’ve never been big on deleting comments, but will start if anything else like this appears.
I heard Dutton lecture about his book. He cited various studies, many cross cultural showing that people seem to have art preferences that are independent of their culture. It sounded like a very intesting book.