* Eriksen, Franklin, Duncan, and Powell: And Am I Born to Die?. The words are by Charles Wesley; the tune is Idumea, by Ananias Davisson. One of the things I always like about this tune, particularly with these words, is that it beautifully expresses dissonance in the face of death.
* The Evolution of What We Think About Who We Are at "laelaps". Some of the historical sources are about a jillion years out of date (it will be nice when scientists no longer treat White's work as if it were an up-to-date or even particularly accurate resource, rather than an early and somewhat tendentious attempt to get a grasp on a subject about which we now have a great deal more information), but it is well worth reading nonetheless. (ht: ABAtC)
* Eisley's Invasion, both the video and the song, are quite good.
* Jonah Lehrer gives a good response to Nick Bostrom's simulation argument. A further point to be made is that Bostrom's argument depends on the assumption that "we don’t have any information that indicate that our own particular experiences are any more or less likely than other human-type experiences to have been implemented in vivo rather than in machina"; but, of course, we do all have information to indicate that they have been implemented in vivo, namely, the experience of actually living. To be sure, on the hypothesis of a flawless simulation, it's defeasible, but that doesn't change the tendency of the evidence. Bostrom's argument is basically a slightly modified brain-in-a-vat skepticism argument; like such arguments it makes the crucial mistake of assuming that defeasible reasoning is reasoning that can be ignored. That this is a mistake has long been known; as Newton noted, for instance, recognizing it as a mistake is essential if we are to have room for scientific thought. That's the explicit basis for Newton's Rule IV in the Rules for Reasoning in Philosophy, "that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses." But that's precisely what the simulation argument is, at least prima facie: an evasion of the argument of induction by hypotheses. The supposition of simulation need only be considered to the extent that it is supported by positive proof.
* Allen Wood has a good paper on the history of philosophy, called What Dead Philosophers Mean (Word). Wood's paper gives an excellent account of some issues in what I have previously identified as a key focus in HoP, namely, the problem of the philosophical problem itself.
* Zippy Catholic notes an important feature of the double-effect principle, as it was understood by Anscombe: it preserves exceptionless norms. Perhaps more accurately, it protects morality from ethical versions of realpolitik (the point Anscombe makes about double effect is very similar to a point she makes about just war principles vis-a-vis pacifism and realism).
* Johnny-Dee recently had a post on burden of proof disputes over theism and atheism. Some argue that theism has the burden of proof, others that atheism has the burden of proof. John argues that they both have it. That would be the best response, I think, if I held a view of burden of proof like John's, where there are objective standards. I have a very different view though; burdens of proof are obligations of discourse and therefore always determined by agreement, either tacit or explicit. This is not quite to say that they are arbitrary, since reasons for proposing the obligation may be good or bad, reasonable or unreasonable, appropriate to the type of discussion or inappropriate to it.
ADDED LATER:
* The Al-Ghazali entry is up at the SEP.
* Miriam Burstein gives one the best summaries of Bram Stoker's Dracula that I have seen in a while: "It's as though somebody dropped the characters from CSI into a Freddy Krueger movie."
