Roger Scruton At The New Atlantis: ‘My Brain And I‘ Interesting take:

‘Yet the real problem for cognitive science is not the problem of consciousness. Indeed, I am not sure that it is even a problem. Consciousness is a feature that we share with the higher animals, and I see it as an “emergent” feature, which is in place just as soon as behavior and the functional relations that govern it reach a certain level of complexity. The real problem, as I see it, is self-consciousness — the first-person awareness that distinguishes us from the other animals, and which enables us to identify ourselves, and to attribute mental predicates to ourselves, in the first-person case — the very same predicates that others attribute to us in the second- and third-person case.’

============== Larry Arnhart At Darwinian Conservatism is skeptical of the Nietzchean influence: ‘Prinz’s Deceptive Silence in His Arguments for Emotivism and Cultural Relativism:’

‘In Beyond Human Nature, Jesse Prinz argues for emotivism and cultural relativism in his account of human morality.  In doing this, he employs the rhetorical technique of deceptive silence.  What I mean by this is that in presenting the research relevant to his topic, he picks out those findings that seem to support his arguments, while passing over in silence those findings that contradict his arguments.  For example, he sets up a stark debate between Kantian rationalism and Humean emotivism in explaining the basis of human morality; and he argues that empirical research supports emotivism by showing that moral judgment is purely emotional and not rational at all (293-95).  This is deceptive in two respects. ‘

===================== I can’t speak to Britain’s Green Party, but neither can anyone else apparently.  Via David Thompson: ‘Incredibly Awkward Interview With Natalie Bennett.’ A train-wreck on the air with a lot of coughing… If some Britons aren’t engaged in the magical and doomsday cult thinking of back to nature utopianism, they’re apparently channeling that magical thinking into the Green Party political platform of free houses and money-tree utopianism. Good to know. From Nigel Warburton’s Site: A Definition of Humanism?…A Debate: Would We Better Off Without Religion?…Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?… Roger Scruton At The WSJ: ‘Memo To Hawking: There’s Still Room For God’ A Brief Review of Jesse Prinz’s ‘The Emotional Construction Of Morals’Red Impulses Gone Green-Tim Worstall At The Adam Smith Institute On George Monbiot