Atran on Coyne

Jerry Coyne recently posted a piece called 'Once again, Scott Atran exculpates religion as a cause of terrorism', complaining about Scott Atran's apparent apology for religion in a recent article in the Guardian. A typical taste of Coyne's complaints: When I read Atran’s brand of Islamic apologetics, and when I think of the terrorists’...

Read more »

Knowledge, Testimony and Reductionism

Does reductionism - the notion that testimonial evidence simply reduces to facts derived from memory and experience - succeed in explaining how we can know things on the basis of testimony? I shall consider two problems in reductionism that Jennifer Lackey highlights to show that reductionism does not succeed in explaining how we can know...

Read more »