I’m about to give a keynote… in Poland 4 Jul 20124 Jul 2012 This is a brave new world. I’m about to give a keynote address to the Naturalizing Religion conference in Kazimierz Dolny in Poland. Or I would be if their internet hadn’t just died completely. Stay tuned for further news of the way things go wrong at the very last moment (people were filing into the room!). I think the gods haven’t forgiven me for disbelieving. I should add: I’m in Wollongong Australia. But it’s no go today. The entire town’s internet just died. I swear it wasn’t me. Epistemology Philosophy Religion
Biology Downward Causation 9 Aug 201122 Jun 2018 The final claim for there being an ontological sense to emergence is “downward causation“, a phrase coined by the evolutionary epistemologist Donald Campbell in the 1970s. The idea here is that emergence is real because higher-level (or bigger, composite) entities cause changes in the properties and dynamics of their parts…. Read More
Philosophy My Absent Career 8: A second chance 22 Dec 20221 Jan 2023 So, at this point I am now 50 or so, doing my postdoc at UQ with Paul Griffiths, and living with my family just pre-separation (the divorce came a few years later). Two things happened. The first is that I started to gain confidence, Now, this may shock those who… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design Teacher, there’s a god in my evolutionary soup… 12 Dec 200818 Sep 2017 … shh, not so loud or everyone will want one. Here’s a piece by Darksyde at Daily Kos in which he reports the outgoing EPA chair (who has overseen all manner of bad science and decisions, although that may not be his own fault) as saying “It’s not a clean-cut… Read More
That’s hilarious. I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Poland, and the internet dies quite a lot, along with many other technologies. They are trying so hard to shake that “backwards Eastern European” image, and I love them for it, but the results are mixed at best. For example, when my vehicle broke down, my Polish mechanic tried to fix it by jamming cardboard into the engine, which proceeded to catch on fire. True story.
Well, I’ve got more bad news. PZ has declared you a “kind” of atheist (shades of Henry Morris!). http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/07/04/what-kind-of-atheist-are-you/