Tag: Synthese
Self-Plagiarism for Me, but Not for Thee: Wesley Elsberry Replies
Evolution activist and marine biologist Wesley Elsberry hypocritically charges mathematician and ID advocate Granville Sewell with “self-plagiarism” and “deliberate gaming of the [academic publication] system.” What’s hypocritical about the charge? Well, recently in the journal Synthese, Elsberry himself self-plagiarized his own prior work. I don’t care if Wesley Elsberry “plagiarizes” himself, if that’s even the right the word for reworking or repurposing your own writing for different audiences. But as I argued earlier here, it is hypocritical for Elsberry to attack Sewell for doing exactly the same thing that Elsberry himself has done. Now, in his own defense, Elsberry has replied to me. In the context of the Darwin debate, when someone closes a rebuttal by calling your arguments “an Read More ›
New York Times Article Refutes Conspiracy Theories About Why Synthese Opposed the Disrespectful Methods of Intelligent Design Critics
Where conspiracy theories come from . . . and the reality that’s not so hard to believe.
NCSE Tries to Blacklist Synthese for Upholding Civility (Updated)
Because the editors of Synthese stood up for civilty, they are now facing the same punishment that the NCSE has been using on the ID movement for years: They are being blacklisted by the Darwin lobby.
Francis Beckwith Takes on Barbara Forrest in Synthese
“We have a choice. We can take our cue from Forrest, and a few of her compatriots higher up on the philosophical food chain, and continue to escalate and amplify our inflammatory rhetoric . . . Or we can be philosophers.”
Unsophisticated and Outdated Scientific Critiques of Intelligent Design in Synthese
We’ve discussed how articles critiquing intelligent design (ID) in the latest issue of Synthese could not rebut the theory without blatantly misrepresenting what ID says. There are a couple of papers in the issue, however, that discuss scientific matters. In fact, I’d like to start on a positive note and say that the one article in this issue which I found to be highly civil in tone and thoughtful was Bruce Weber’s. He provides a thorough and educational history of arguments involving design and teleology, and he attempts to distinguish between “design” and “teleology” as follows: Although both teleology and design are explanans of the explananda of natural phenomena that exhibit organized, functional complexity, they can be distinguished in the Read More ›