Logic and philosophy Vale Michael Ghiselin 17 Jun 202424 Jun 2024 Michael Ghiselin, who was the originator of (the modern) view that species are individuals, died on 14 June 2024. He was a very generous person with his time for antipodean philosophers. With his passing, the authors of the SAI thesis, as it is called, are both gone: he and his… Continue Reading
Logic and philosophy A quote from Lewis Carroll 11 Jun 202411 Jun 2024 Well, it’s actually from Charles Dodgson’s The Game of Logic 1887: The world contains many Things (such as “Buns”, “Babies”, “Beetles”, “Battledores”, &c.) ; and the Things possess many Attributes (such as “baked”, “beautiful”, “black”, “broken”, &c: in fact, whatever can be “attributed to”, that is “said to belong to”,… Continue Reading
Book Aware updates 20 Feb 202420 Feb 2024 Oops, I forgot to post links to my latest chapters of Aware on Substack: Desires Morals and Values There are perhaps two chapters and a conclusion to come. Continue Reading
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Aware: Free Will 21 Dec 202330 May 2024 Physics and neurons, basically Are freewill and determinism incompatible? Is there even a conflict?See my Substack for further information Continue Reading
Cognition Aware: Upload 9 Nov 202330 May 2024 But, not bit… Why we will never be saved in computers One of the more common posthumanist themes is that we can download ourselves into a computer matrix of some kind (and indeed that we may even be in a matrix) and live forever (or until the matrix dies). As a thought… Continue Reading
Epistemology Aware: Dualism and the onus of proof 2 Nov 20232 Nov 2023 In which I discuss animal breath… One is often told or reads that the natural assumption of human cultures more or less universally is that humanity is composed of two parts – the body and the spirit. But I wonder if this is actually the case. There is evidence of… Continue Reading
Metaphysics Aware: A Matter of Perspective 22 Oct 202322 Oct 2023 The next installment.:So, what is the explanatory target with the mind’s consciousness? What is it we physicalists cannot explain that needs the feels to account for? What, exactly, is missing from any possible physical account? Continue Reading
Cognition Aware: Information and Physics 13 Oct 202313 Oct 2023 This one has robots, sort of… Continue Reading
Epistemology Who invented worldviews? 5 Feb 20235 Feb 2023 As a young man/teenager, I heard a lot about worldviews, and didn’t think much of it. The philosophers talked about them, the theologians talked about them, and the gurus talked about them. It was always a choice between worldviews. But it was at best only vaguely communicated by these great… Continue Reading
Epistemology My Absent Career 10: Contra Quality 1 Jan 20231 Jan 2023 So, taking this extreme parsimony approach leads me to sharply distinguish between things that are and things we think there are. A good many of our most favoured ideas are projective. Qualia are the primary example for me (because I first learned of them as an undergraduate). For those who… Continue Reading