Polarized By Ambiguity

Group polarization may be less puzzling than I often treat it, since it's usually a natural result of topics in which we mostly only have ambiguous evidence.

Map Ain't Territory Reminder

Scientific models like causal DAGs are probably much cruder instruments for understanding real-life complex phenomena than I have been hoping recently.

Science is 'Kaleidoscopic'

Science is collaborative in a variety of ways: many individuals working on the same or related problems, and those individuals employing several distinct methodologies to attack those problem clusters.

Scaffolding

One way to address my worry that philosophy classes inadvertently teach students that reasoning skills are useless is to better scaffold courses, beginning with puzzles that are clearly solvable using reasoning.

Keeping Students in College

I've learned a lot about things that help retain college students this past year as a first-year advisor.

Paucity of Evidence for Causal Closure

The widely-held assumption of causal closure of the physical world may not have much evidence supporting it.

Natural Law's Broader Project

One way of understanding natural law is that its project is less about defining ‘law’ than about considering the legal system’s role within social, practical reasoning.

Fake-Data Simulation

Fake-data simulation is an extension of abductive reasoning, specifically exploring the implications of various competing hypotheses.

Indexicals & the Origins of Language

 A crucial step between one-dimensional communication that animals and computers can do and the "speech triangle" of human language may be utilizing indexicals, literally pointing to focus joint attention.

Contingent Racial Capitalism

 One way Marxists and critical race scholars may talk past each other is in conflating whether capitalism and racism are necessarily linked and whether they are merely actually, historically linked.