Centre for Inquiry Canada (CFIC)
Your humanist community for scientific, skeptical, secular, and rational inquiry.
Items that have appeared in CFIC’s monthly Critical Links newsletter https://centreforinquiry.ca/critical-links/
Mark Maharaj The philosopher Judith Jarvis Thompson died on November 20, 2020. She was 91. Known for her work on a variety of issues in normative ethics, applied ethics, meta-ethics, and metaphysics, Thompson was professor emerita at MIT. She was the originator of the “Violinist” thought experiment used to demonstrate the concept of bodily autonomy…
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Sandra Dunham In my home, the dialogue about COVID-19 and the rapidly increasing case numbers follows the narrative of “Why can’t people just do the right thing? Don’t people realize that their behaviour is making this worse?” And yet, when carefully examined, our own behaviour is, at times, less than stellar. So, why, when the…
Read More “How Human Behaviour is Driving the COVID-19 Case Numbers” »
On November 1, Daylight Saving Time ends (with the exception of Yukon, most of Saskatchewan, and parts of British Columbia and Quebec, where they are sensible enough to stay on Central Standard time all year round). In Ontario, a recent Private Members’ Bill to eliminate semi-annual time changes (moving permanently to DST) has passed second…
Keith Douglas All of the words from last time’s list are technical terms within various scholarly fields. They are also homophonous with similar words in ordinary language. I bring this to everyone’s attention because situations where this homophony exists is a source of many contentious debates. It is also interesting to consider how the ordinary…