A chart of the “History of Eastern Philosophy”

Most readers will have already noted this chart of “Eastern Philosophy” at Superscholar.

Now, I have already commented about it at DailyNous, but the staff of Superscholars has written to me twice to advertise the map, so that I feel compelled to repeat my comment and some further ones here. I would also like to ask readers: Do you think these maps have some use at all? If so, for whom? Beginners or Advanced scholars?

169th Philosophers’ Carnival

The 169th Philosophers’ Carnival is online! Among several other interesting things, it has some lines on the interpretation of an alien Philosophy and on the Skholiast‘s contribution to the “doing philosophy in a polycentric world” debate (about which see also this post on the Indian Philosophy Blog).

For personal reasons, I am also happy to see also a link to Gabriele Contessa’s plea for a more inclusive policy of inclusion of philosophers who do not have English as their first language. Why should this be important? Apart from the fact that it is fair to include everyone, independent of their (race, gender, sexual preferences… and) native tongue, inclusion of different perspectives is part of the enterprise of ideodiversity, which is what we (=scholars of non-Western philosophies) are all engaged with, isn’t it?

The 168th Philosophers’ Carnival

The 168th version of the Philosophers’ Carnival, with a link to Anand Vaidya’s blogpost on modality in Indian philosophy at the Indian Philosophy Blog, can be read here. Thanks to the reader(s) who pointed to Anand’s post! Keep on alerting the philosophers’ carnival website about interesting blogposts, especially about ones which might escape the editors’ attention because they do not deal with mainstream philosophy.

Philosophers’ Carnival No. 167

The 167th edition of the Philosophers’ Carnival can be found here! It includes also a post by Eric Schwitzgebel on the unavoidability of studying Chinese philosophy and a post by Amod Lele on the “double standard” we adopt while looking at re-readings of the tradition by contemporary or ancient authors. I am grateful to the compiler of this edition of the Carnival (D. Papineau) and to the readers who signalled these posts. May the discussion of philosophical blogs always be broad enough to reach beyond traditional geographical and disciplinary boundaries!

You can signal your favorite posts of September for the October’s Philosophers’ Carnival here. Don’t forget to include some non-mainstream philosophy in your recommandations!

Relying on instruments

I should have noticed it before, but here am I. At the link above you can read a thought-inspiring blog entry by Helen De Cruz reporting Elizabeth Fricker’s arguments on how we rely on the “testimony” of GPS, googlesearch and so on and have lost the skill to read maps, sum up numbers and so on. This is closely related to a further problem I have dealt with in the past, namely whether thermometers, GPS devices and other tools can be said to be testimony-bearers. You can read more about this controversy at this post (and in the article it refers to).

Physicists Should Stop Saying Silly Things about Philosophy

Finally an interesting blog-post saying some basic things about the relation between philosophy and physics, explaining that “being useful” is not tantamount to “being useful to my current calculations” and that, accordingly, many physicists criticising philosophy are just misunderstanding their target.
I would have added something more regarding the epistemology of the issue, but for that have a look at the interesting comments (e.g., one says that philosophy is useful for asking questions, but lousy for answering them…).