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| Philosophy | type: Thematic count: 132 |
It became known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect — our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence. But just how prevalent is this effect?
Posted: 07.28.10 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Why do we exist and what are we supposed to do about it? What started the Universe and was it a mistake? Does God exist and why does he seem so interested in our sex lives?
Posted: 05.30.10 | 1 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
In this seamless translation, author and French biology professor Morange (The Misunderstood Gene) addresses the question "What is life?" by looking at answers from Aristotle to the atomic age and "bringing out the various points of agreement and contradiction hidden among them." After addressing definitions of life proposed by others, Morange outlines "three essential characteristics" of life: reproductive ability, complex molecular structures and the metabolic replication of those structures. From there, Morange discusses a range of current inquiries, among them astrobiology research, genome studies and adaptation in extreme conditions.
Tags: Philosophy, Science
Posted: 04.28.10 | 0 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Philosopher and Le Monde columnist Droit's strange and delightful little volume explores some of the biggest questions in philosophy with exercises instead of terminology-laden tracts, by encouraging readers to discover the ways in which small or familiar acts-fasting, prowling, playing, telling a stranger she's beautiful-can become "the starting point for that astonishment which gives rise to philosophy." Each of the 101 exercises is carefully, even lovingly explained, with duration, necessary props and intended effect listed first. Exercise #31, for example, instructs readers to "Watch dust in the sun": it should take about 15 minutes, a room and sunlight are needed, and its effect is "reassuring." When a ray of sunlight enters a dark room, an "invisible world" of sparkling dust reveals itself-a symbol of the "stratum of existence that is both invisible and present" always.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 11.02.09 | 0 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far, and the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers’ differing choices with reactions ranging from envy to contempt.
Posted: 10.15.09 | 1 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
This used to happen to me a lot more often when I was younger, but it still happens from time to time.
Tags: Philosophy, Humor
Posted: 10.12.09 | 1 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Mitch Horowitz is a writer and publisher of many years' experience with a lifelong interest in mans search for meaning. The editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin in New York, he is the author of Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation
Posted: 09.29.09 | 0 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
Koren's philosophy is laid out in what is probably his best-known book, "Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers," which was published in 1994. The book explains the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which celebrates earthiness, chance, unpretentiousness and intimacy of scale. It isn't about perfection, slickness, mass production or fabulousness. "Things wabi-sabi have no need for the reassurance of status or the validation of market culture," Koren writes. He calls wabi-sabi's simplicity "the state of grace arrived at by a sober, modest, heartfelt intelligence. The main strategy of this intelligence is economy of means."
Posted: 09.15.09 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
"But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful." -Alan Watts
Tags: Philosophy, Alan Watts
Posted: 09.07.09 | 1 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
In Conversations with God: Book II, Neale Walsch and God resume their discussion and move on to larger topics than the personal issues addressed in their previous dialogue in Volume 1. For an "unedited transcript" of a conversation, Book II is remarkably well organized and articulate, as if Walsch anticipatd our "but what about" questions before we asked them. The peculiar pair discuss time, space, politics, and even kinky sex, but Conversations with God: Book II isn't here for just shock value. It is an honest look at some of the broad issues important to all of us on the planet, and a suggestion of how things might go if we are all willing to open our minds and have our own conversations with divinity.
Posted: 08.25.09 | 3 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
hilosophers have never been touchstones for the millennial generation. Baudrillard, Barthes, and de Beauvoir may still be de rigueur in Intro to Philosophy courses, but they seldom emerge in the casual conversation of young urbanites. At the Greenwich Village IFC Center on a cold weekday in early March, tonight’s screenings of director Astra Taylor’s new philosophical documentary, Examined Life, is sold out. No one in the long line looks particularly like an academic. Most are well under 35 and outfitted in tight jeans, plaid shirts and ironic glasses. Is philosophy suddenly trendy?
Tags: Philosophy, Astra Taylor
Posted: 07.17.09 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Welcome to IdeasProject, an entirely new way to connect with some of the most visionary and influential thought leaders in communications technology and their disruptive ideas. A project of Nokia, hosted at www.ideasproject.com, IdeasProject brings together these important big thinkers to contemplate the big ideas that matter most to the future of communications, joining them up through video clips, links, articles, podcasts and dynamic maps to push the boundaries of Web navigation and the thought process itself.
Posted: 06.02.09 | 5 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history.
Tags: Philosophy, Emotion
Posted: 06.01.09 | 4 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Welcome to John Baez, David Corfield and Urs Schreiber. Their brand-new blog, The n-Category Caf, will focus on that heady interface between Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy.
Posted: 06.01.09 | 4 | BLOG | GO TO LINK
Based on the Short Stories of Etgar Keret, and adapted for the screen by Etgar Keret and Director Tatia Rosenthal, $9.99 is a stop motion animated feature which offers slightly less than $10 worth about the meaning of life. Have you ever wondered “What is the meaning of life? Why do we exist?” The answer to this vexing question is now within your reach! You’ll find it in a small yet amazing booklet, which will explain, in easy to follow, simple terms your reason for being! The booklet, printed on the finest paper, contains illuminating, exquisite colour pictur ...
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 05.08.09 | 17 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Now, I still think there is a very large accumulation of evidence supporting the after-death survival of the individual's personality. I'm not disputing that evidence or the most parsimonious conclusion to be drawn from it -- namely, that personal survival is a reality in many (possibly all) instances. I'm just wondering how much it really matters.
Posted: 05.06.09 | 16 | BLOG | GO TO LINK
A blog dedicated to philosophical musings.
Tags: Consciousness, Philosophy
Posted: 04.22.09 | 20 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Ronell's major works include The Telephone Book, Crack Wars and Test Drive. The author's deconstructive approach (wherein close reading of texts unveil hidden power structures) is informed by Derrida, who was a close friend of Ronell's.
Tags: Philosophy, Avital Ronell
Posted: 04.13.09 | 22 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
It was then that he heard of Bertrand Russells work on logic and decided to study with him in Cambridge. Russell found him to be a tormented soul, unsure of his own abilities and unsure whether to be an engineer or a philosopher. Russell soon decided that Ludwig was the most perfect example of genius he had ever known, and persuaded him not to continue with engineering. We expect the next big step in philosophy to be taken by your brother,
Posted: 04.12.09 | 24 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Sitting in his office at the New School, professor and author Simon Critchley is laying out the crux of his latest book. “To learn how to die is to learn how to live—that’s the argument in a nutshell,” the 48-year-old writer says with enthusiasm and a British accent (he was raised in Liverpool). “It seems odd, but if you don’t accept mortality, life becomes meaningless—a flat line.”
Posted: 04.12.09 | 21 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Examined Life takes philosophy out of the darkened corners of academia and into the hustle and bustle of the everyday, a visual reminder that great ideas are born through profound engagement with the world around us.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 02.21.09 | 17 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
WHEN the documentary filmmaker Astra Taylor speaks of a cinema of ideas, she means it more literally than most. Her first film, Zizek! (2005) accompanied the Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek on a lecture tour. Her second, Examined Life, opening Wednesday at the IFC Center, recruits a wide array of thinkers and theorists to muse out loud about the role of philosophy in our lives, playing off the Socratic observation that the unexamined life is not worth living.
Tags: Philosophy, The New York Times
Posted: 02.21.09 | 23 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Existential psychotherapy is partly based on the existential belief that human beings are alone in the world. This feeling of aloneness leads to feelings of meaninglessness which can be overcome only by creating one's own values and meanings. Existential psychotherapy suggests that in making our own choices we assume full responsibility for the results and blame no one but ourselves if the result is less than what was desired. The psychotherapist helps his or her patients/clients along this path: to discover why the patient/client is overburdened by the anxieties of aloneness and meaninglessness, to find new and better ways to manage these anxieties, to make new and healthy choices, and to emerge from therapy as a free and sound human being.
Posted: 02.14.09 | 29 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
Hailed by many viewers as a "life-transformational film," Flight from Death uncovers death anxiety as a possible root cause of many of our behaviors on a psychological, spiritual, and cultural level
Posted: 02.14.09 | 24 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
This popular synthesis of a technical field in neuroscience explores how the brain constructs its models of the body. Entangled with the perception of self, these maps are multitudinous and dynamic, as experimenters have discovered. The Blakeslees ground the idea of mental maps in the work of Wilder Penfield, a 1940s researcher whose probes on the brains of living people localized which areas of the brain represent which parts of the body. Subsequently, scientists have refined the concept of body maps, a history that binds the Blakeslees' informative explanations of specific maps, case studies, and psychic disorders. Expressed in an amiable, we're-all-in-this-together manner, their tour describes one's personal space and its extension to one's clothes, tools, instruments, and sports gear. The body in motion generates its own set of changing mental maps, distinguishing the graceful from the clumsy. Maps are plastic, report the Blakeslees, yet they also have permanence: successful dieters may still feel overweight, and amputees retain a map of the missing limb. Varied and revealing, this will intrigue readers interested in the clinical perspective on self-perception
Posted: 09.20.08 | 136 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Buddhist Geeks is a weekly audio show that presents ground-breaking interviews and discussions with Buddhist teachers, scholars, and advanced practitioners. Combining ancient wisdom with modern technology, Buddhist Geeks aims to catalyze a community of practice committed to awakening. Discover the emerging face of Western Buddhism.
Posted: 09.02.08 | 55 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
In the successor to his provocative bestseller The Mind of God, the cosmologist Paul Davies tackles another big question: Why does the universe seem so well suited for life? One popular explanation is the "multiverse theory," which sounds like it came straight from a science fiction plot. It posits that our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes--each slightly different. Only in those rare universes where things are accidentally "just right" for life could observers emerge to puzzle over the fact. In The Goldilocks Enigma, Davies ponders this and other seemingly bizarre answers to the grand question of existence. He offers lucid descriptions of the science behind these theories and delights in their philosophical implications. Once again, Davies invites us to think about the cosmos and our place within it in new and thrilling ways.
Tags: Philosophy, Science
Posted: 08.21.08 | 56 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
This time Davies (coauthor of The Matter Myth , LJ 3/1/92) takes on the big philosophical questions raised by our increasing understanding of how the universe works: How did it all start? Why is there a universe at all? Is there a God and, if so, has He/She any limitations? That is, could the laws of physics have been different? Who made the laws? Why are we here? Could there be a universe devoid of life? Many people feel that these issues fall into the realm of religion, not science. The message of Davies's book is that most of these questions are unanswerable but only people with an appreciation of modern science can understand how deep they really are. Davies is an excellent writer about science per se and its philosophical implications. A worthwhile acquisition for all science collections.
Tags: Philosophy, Science
Posted: 08.21.08 | 40 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
A holon (Greek: holos, "whole") is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part.
Tags: Philosophy, Memes
Posted: 08.06.08 | 36 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
It may be that what is practised as philosophy in most of the language and literature departments . . . has come to constitute the meaning of 'philosophy,' and so the discipline of philosophy must find itself strangely expropriated by a double. And the more it seeks to dissociate itself from this redoubled notion of itself, the more effective it is in securing the dominance of this other philosophy outside the boundary that was meant to contain it.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 08.02.08 | 43 | BLOG | GO TO LINK
Neuroanthropology is a collaborative weblog created to encourage exchanges among anthropology, philosophy, social theory, and the brain sciences. We especially hope to explore the implications of new findings in the neurosciences for our understanding of culture, human development, and behaviour.
Posted: 05.16.08 | 46 | BLOG | GO TO LINK
From neuroscience to Nietzsche. A sobering look at how man may perceive himself in the future, particularly as ideas about genetic predeterminism takes the place of dying Darwinism.
Posted: 05.15.08 | 35 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The Infinite Mind is a weekly, public radio program focusing on the art and science of the human mind and spirit, behavior, and mental health. The series is hosted by Dr. Fred Goodwin, formerly the nation's "top psychiatrist" as director of the National Institute of Mental Health, and the world's leading expert on manic depression.
Posted: 05.07.08 | 57 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
A remarkable autodidact, Wilber's books range across entire fields of knowledge, from quantum physics to developmental psychology to the history of religion. He's steeped in the world's esoteric traditions, such as Mahayana Buddhism, Vedantic Hinduism, Sufism and Christian mysticism. Wilber also practices what he preaches, sometimes meditating for hours at a stretch. His "integral philosophy," along with the Integral Institute he's founded, hold out the promise that we can understand mystical experience without lapsing into New Age mush.
Posted: 04.30.08 | 68 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
What is AskPhilosophers? This site puts the talents and knowledge of philosophers at the service of the general public. Send in a question that you think might be related to philosophy and we will do our best to respond to it. To date, there have been 1905 questions posted and 2505 responses. via mymindonbooks
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 03.31.08 | 42 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
Rather, Buddhism teaches that people should become aware of their thoughts and examine them so as to understand their true nature, namely that they are empty. When that is realised, the suffering caused by the mind ceases. It is a question of dissolving rather than control, and though much more subtle an approach, it is far more efficacious in the long term.
Posted: 03.21.08 | 52 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
Metapsychology features in-depth reviews of a wide range of books written by our reviewers from many backgrounds and perspectives. We update our front page frequently and add more than forty new reviews each month.
Posted: 02.20.08 | 42 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
"Qualia" is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us. As is so often the case with philosophical jargon, it is easier to give examples than to give a definition of the term. Look at a glass of milk at sunset; the way it looks to you--the particular, personal, subjective visual quality of the glass of milk is the quale of your visual experience at the moment. The way the milk tastes to you then is another, gustatory quale, and how it sounds to you as you swallow is an auditory quale; These various "properties of conscious experience" are prime examples of qualia. Nothing, it seems, could you know more intimately than your own qualia; let the entire universe be some vast illusion, some mere figment of Descartes' evil demon, and yet what the figment is made of (for you) will be the qualia of your hallucinatory experiences. Descartes claimed to doubt everything that could be doubted, but he never doubted that his conscious experiences had qualia, the properties by which he knew or apprehended them.
Tags: Philosophy, Qualia
Posted: 02.19.08 | 70 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The Hidden Pattern presents a novel philosophy of mind, intended to form a coherent conceptual framework within which it is possible to understand the diverse aspects of mind and intelligence in a unified way. The central concept of the philosophy presented is the concept of "pattern": minds and the world they live in and co-create are viewed as patterned systems of patterns, evolving over time, and various aspects of subjective experience and individual and social intelligence are analyzed in detail in this light
Tags: Philosophy, Pattern
Posted: 02.17.08 | 56 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Ignorance and Imagination advances a novel way to resolve the central philosophical problem about the mind: how it is that consciousness or experience fits into a larger naturalistic picture of the world. The correct response to the problem, Stoljar argues, is not to posit a realm of experience distinct from the physical, nor to deny the reality of phenomenal experience, nor even to rethink our understanding of consciousness and the language we use to talk about it. Instead, we should view the problem itself as a consequence of our ignorance of the relevant physical facts. Stoljar shows that this change of orientation is well motivated historically, empirically, and philosophically, and that it has none of the side effects it is sometimes thought to have. The result is a philosophical perspective on the mind that has a number of far-reaching consequences: for consciousness studies, for our place in nature, and for the way we think about the relationship between philosophy and science.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 02.17.08 | 54 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Lloyd, a professor at MIT, works in the vanguard of research in quantum computing: using the quantum mechanical properties of atoms as a computer. He contends that the universe itself is one big quantum computer producing what we see around us, and ourselves, as it runs a cosmic program. According to Lloyd, once we understand the laws of physics completely, we will be able to use small-scale quantum computing to understand the universe completely as well. In his scenario, the universe is processing information. The second law of thermodynamics (disorder increases) is all about information, and Lloyd spends much of the book explaining how quantum processes convey information. The creation of the universe itself involved information processing: random fluctuations in the quantum foam, like a random number generator in a computer program, produced higher-density areas, then matter, stars, galaxies and life.
Tags: Philosophy, Quantum Physics
Posted: 02.17.08 | 67 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
BioShock may have been conceived as a study in nuance, a place for gamers to discover and explore at their own pace, but its dip into the ethical morass of Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophies has brought her beliefs back into the mainstream spotlight and even piqued the interest of the Ayn Rand Institute's president, Yaron Brook.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 02.15.08 | 51 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
It is drawn from the idea, common to many science fiction stories, that a mad scientist might remove a person's brain from the body, suspend it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid, and connect its neurons by wires to a supercomputer which would provide it with electrical impulses identical to those the brain normally receives. According to such stories, the computer would then be simulating a virtual reality (including appropriate responses to the brain's own output) and the person with the "disembodied" brain would continue to have perfectly normal conscious experiences without these being related to objects or events in the real world.
Tags: Philosophy, Brain in a Vat
Posted: 02.13.08 | 75 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
It's probably fair to say that most philosophers of mind still ignore neuroscience and think they can get away with it. It's up to us to show them how outdated they are.
Tags: Neuroscience, Philosophy
Posted: 02.10.08 | 52 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
What are the most fundamental features of the world? Do minds stand outside the natural order? Is a unified picture of mental and physical reality possible? The Mind in Nature provides a staunchly realist account of the world as a unified system incorporating both the mental and the physical. C. B. Martin, an original and influential exponent of 'ontologically serious' metaphysics, echoes Locke's dictum that 'all things that exist are only particulars', and argues that properties are powerful qualities.
Posted: 01.29.08 | 97 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
This is not a linear book. It is a complex book. Wimsatt begins with the fact that humans are limited beings confronted with a complex world. This has an array of implications for our understanding of our understanding of the world, and also for our understanding of the world. These are the broadest themes running through the book. They are reflexive. Begin with our understanding of our understanding of the world. We are limited beings and that means we must deploy reasoning strategies suited to our limitations, constructing models that are subject to a variety of idealizations. This in turn has implications for our understanding of the world, which will be piecemeal and approximate. Wimsatt aims to reform philosophical practice in a way that reflects our ways of understanding the world we live in, and also informs us about how we should conduct our science. [ via mymindonbooks ]
Tags: Philosophy, William C. Wimsatt
Posted: 01.16.08 | 34 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
My worry is that the experiments of modern science, both in physics and neuroscience, are becoming increasingly detached from the empirical actuality of everyday life. Our sciences are turning themselves into immaculate abstractions, unable to reduce or solve or even investigate the only reality we will ever know. Instead, that reality is disregarded as an "illusion". That hardly strikes me as a satisfying answer.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 01.15.08 | 48 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy. When God changes your mind, that's faith. When facts change your mind, that's science.
WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?
Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?"
WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?
Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?"
Posted: 01.01.08 | 91 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
God has always been a puzzle for Scott Atran. When he was 10 years old, he scrawled a plaintive message on the wall of his bedroom in Baltimore. God exists, he wrote in black and orange paint, or if he doesnt, were in trouble. Atran has been struggling with questions about religion ever since why he himself no longer believes in God and why so many other people, everywhere in the world, apparently do.
Posted: 12.20.07 | 109 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Some postmodernists speak of the end of philosophy, since it supposedly can no longer tell us anything about the world independent of its relation to us about that which exists out there and derives, as Taylor puts it, from a power which is beyond me. At present, he writes, we live in a condition in which we suspect our own beliefs as having been influenced by sources other than the self and its reasons, with the human subject the mere effect of forces alien to our being. We cannot help looking over our shoulder from time to time, he writes, looking sideways, living our faith also in a condition of doubt and uncertainty. Has religion, then, come to end in doubts about ourselves?
Posted: 12.16.07 | 87 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Its part of a recent movement known as experimental philosophy, which has rudely challenged the way professional philosophers like to think of themselves. Not only are philosophers unaccustomed to gathering data; many have also come to define themselves by their disinclination to do so... But now a restive contingent of our tribe is convinced that it can shed light on traditional philosophical problems by going out and gathering information about what people actually think and say about our thought experiments.
Posted: 12.09.07 | 105 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally. This is another major feature of thought: Thought doesn’t know it is doing something and then it struggles against what it is doing. It doesn’t want to know that it is doing it. And thought struggles against the results, trying to avoid those unpleasant results while keeping on with that way of thinking. That is what I call ’sustained incoherence’.
Tags: Philosophy, David Bohm
Posted: 11.27.07 | 58 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
In Grays telling, the doctrines of Soviet Communism, Nazi racism, Al Qaedas technophile fundamentalism and the Bushian war on terror are various forms (however incompatible) of an essentially utopian impulse derived from an Enlightenment notion of progress. That notion is misguided: scientific knowledge and technological power increase over time, but there is no reason to think that politics or morality can progress in the same way. The belief in progress is just a secularized form of Christian theodicy, infecting even those minds that otherwise seem combatively atheistic. Apocalyptic impulses are coded into every ideological genome.
Tags: Philosophy, The New York Times
Posted: 11.26.07 | 60 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A large, rambling collection of philosophical discussions.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 11.23.07 | 71 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
Steve Esser, Location: Villanova, Pennsylvania, United States
I am a layperson interested in philosophy and science (my career is in investment management). This blog centers on my efforts to identify and develop an improved philosophical worldview.
I am a layperson interested in philosophy and science (my career is in investment management). This blog centers on my efforts to identify and develop an improved philosophical worldview.
Posted: 11.23.07 | 79 | BLOG | GO TO LINK
wrote more than twenty-five books and numerous articles on subjects such as personal identity, the true nature of reality, higher consciousness, and the pursuit of happiness, relating his experience to scientific knowledge and to the teachings of Eastern and Western religions or philosophies.
Posted: 11.12.07 | 79 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
The question of free will is whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions and decisions. Addressing this question requires understanding the relationship between freedom and cause, and determining whether the laws of nature are causally deterministic.
Tags: Philosophy, Free Will
Posted: 11.09.07 | 62 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
The letters page of this week's New Scientist contains a lively debate about the neuroscience of free will, inspired by neuropsychologist Chris Frith's recent article on the topic
Posted: 11.09.07 | 62 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?
Posted: 11.09.07 | 63 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
If God does not exist, then what does? Is there good and evil, and should we care? How do we know what's true anyway? And can we make any sense of this universe, or our own lives? Sense and Goodness answers all these questions in lavish detail, without complex jargon. A complete worldview is presented and defended, covering every subject from knowledge to art, from metaphysics to morality, from theology to politics.
Tags: Philosophy, Atheism
Posted: 11.07.07 | 95 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
This book consists of six chapters, four of which are versions of material that can be found elsewhere. For three reasons, however, the book is essential reading for any philosopher with a serious interest in the metaphysics of mind: first, after several decades of often rather diffident reflection on the mind-body problem, Kim, our most distinguished metaphysician of mind, finally tells us, courteously but firmly, his considered view of the matter.
Posted: 11.03.07 | 69 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
By Jaron Lanier. The concept of “VR so good you can’t tell” can mean different things. It might mean that a person who started off in natural reality can be fooled by a simulation, or it might mean that a being who was created as part of a simulation can become conscious.
Tags: Philosophy, Jaron Lanier
Posted: 10.28.07 | 105 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Now we know that the brain is a finite physical object, containing roughly 100 million neurons and 100 billion synapses linking the neurons together. But by consciousness being finite, I mean something stronger: that there are only finitely many lives that could possibly be lived; and that therefore free will, if it exists, must at some level be simply the selection of an element from a finite set.
Posted: 10.28.07 | 44 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Massive oversimplification: Consider that there are approximately 1 trillion neural connections in the human brain. For simplicity sake, assume that any given instant, each connection is either "on" or "off" (firing or not firing). Then the number of possible states is two raised the power of one trillion.
Tags: Neuroscience, Philosophy
Posted: 10.28.07 | 50 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
Behaviorism (also called learning perspective) is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors.
Posted: 10.22.07 | 75 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
Review quote: "Science tells us that we're imperfect products of biological trial and error, reconstituted remnants of exploded stars, and likely to be gone in the time it takes the Universe to make a cup of coffee. Some people find this unsettling, but Flanagan thinks we can handle it." [ via mymindonbooks ]
Tags: Philosophy, Mind/Body
Posted: 10.17.07 | 122 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Although I shy away from 'top lists', the TED conference always has amazing speakers and here is a list of ten solid videos that definitely are worth watching.
Posted: 10.17.07 | 113 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
From the New Yorker: "Three years later, after a protracted divorce, Elizabeth Gilbert embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure; an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for "balancing." These destinations are all on the beaten track, but Gilbert's exuberance and her self-deprecating humor enliven the proceedings: recalling the first time she attempted to speak directly to God."
Posted: 10.09.07 | 40 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Humanist intellectuals have argued that, far from being independent points of departure, we are in the grip of forces that are largely hidden from us.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 10.09.07 | 47 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A new "experimental philosophy" movement is pushing philosophers to be more like economists, by relying less directly on personal intuition.
Posted: 10.09.07 | 81 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
From a review of the book, "I can heartily recommend this book for others who retreat into eliminativism in order to make life simpler. I can understand the selection of a title that draws the attention of precisely the readers who make the mistake of pretending the mind does not exist."
Posted: 10.08.07 | 108 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Fleshes out the definition more and goes into the 'folk psychology' aspects of the theory.
Posted: 10.08.07 | 62 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Interesting entry about an interview with Tim Crane and an overview of the classic mind/body problem.
Posted: 10.08.07 | 44 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Modern versions of eliminative materialism claim that our common-sense understanding of psychological states and processes is deeply mistaken and that some or all of our ordinary notions of mental states will have no home, at any level of analysis, in a sophisticated and accurate account of the mind.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 10.08.07 | 42 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Researchers are unearthing the roots of religious feeling in the neural commotion that accompanies the spiritual epiphanies of nuns, Buddhists and other people of faith
Posted: 10.08.07 | 75 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
An short entry with an extended conversation about whether natural language is an effective philosophical tool due to it's quirky and vague construction. Should the pursuit of philosophical answers conform to more rigid scientific tools.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 09.27.07 | 64 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
A well written and informative blog combining philosophy and brain science.
Posted: 09.27.07 | 79 | BLOG | GO TO LINK
A review of a book about why the separation of church and state is so difficult and so unique to the West. It also talks about Hobbes' perspective of man being a frightened ignoramus which leads to religion.
Posted: 09.26.07 | 58 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
This is a classic article, a little blurb from a wire service about possibly on of the most important developments in science history. Can't figure out where the actual study exists though. "In Everett's "many worlds" universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe."
Posted: 09.24.07 | 75 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A classic thread about does evolution and Darwinism lead to atheism.
Posted: 09.19.07 | 52 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
But why demand that theists provide evidence, if, whatever the circumstances, there couldn't be enough evidence. If "God did it" explanations are really verboten, then it hardly makes sense to complain that theists haven't provided evidence for their position. By definition, that's the one thing they can't do.
Tags: Philosophy, Religion
Posted: 09.19.07 | 55 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
A Christian blog filled that intellectually defends the existence of God. The author also wrote 'C.S. Lewis Dangerous Idea'. This is the typical of the thinking: "The butler did it" is a bad explanation unless, well, the butler did it.
Tags: Philosophy, Religion
Posted: 09.19.07 | 75 | BLOG | GO TO LINK
Hasker begins by mounting a compelling critique of the dominant paradigm in philosophy of mind, showing that contemporary forms of materialism are seriously deficient in confronting crucial aspects of experience. (Hasker is a religion PhD and a Christian Intellectual.
Tags: Philosophy, Religion
Posted: 09.19.07 | 90 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
The Astonishing Hypothesis is that "You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.
Posted: 09.19.07 | 73 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Highly rated book on the philosophy of self. "Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator."
Posted: 09.05.07 | 88 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
An interesting group of reviews of books concerning philosophy, consciousness and religion.
Tags: Philosophy, Amazon Reviewer
Posted: 09.04.07 | 54 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A short interview from Wired with a nice quote about AI.
Tags: Philosophy, Doiuglass Hofstadter
Posted: 09.04.07 | 61 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A page long interview with Hofstadter, some very poignant and sad comments about the death of his wife.
Posted: 09.04.07 | 78 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me.
Posted: 09.04.07 | 79 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
The lastest video from Richard Dawkins.
Posted: 08.31.07 | 57 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
An interesting article on what books influence CEO's thinking.
Tags: Philosophy, The New York Times
Posted: 08.31.07 | 60 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A very short entry on Metzinger.
Posted: 08.31.07 | 57 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
Schrödinger concludes this chapter and the book with philosophical speculations on determinism, free will, and the mystery of human consciousness. He is sympathetic to the view, common in Indian mysticism, that each individual's consciousness is only a manifestation of a unitary consciousness pervading the universe.
Tags: Consciousness, Philosophy
Posted: 08.31.07 | 60 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
A monster 700 page book by Metzinger that some call one of the most important books on consciousness and first person subjectivity of this decade.
Tags: Consciousness, Philosophy
Posted: 08.31.07 | 121 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
A fantastic video lecture by Thomas Metzinger about the nature of the self.
Tags: Consciousness, Philosophy
Posted: 08.31.07 | 71 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
A journal that brings together diverse fields including cognitive science, neurophysiology and philosophy.
Tags: Consciousness, Philosophy
Posted: 08.31.07 | 47 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
Excellent blog covering philosophy of the mind and science.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 08.31.07 | 55 | BLOG | GO TO LINK
An excellent entry about thoughts on dualism and alternative philosophical perspectives on the matter.
Tags: Philosophy, Dualism
Posted: 08.31.07 | 58 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
Some interesting quotes from 'The Monk and the Phliosopher' which highlight, for me, the tension between self and not self.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 08.28.07 | 26 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
Hofstadter blends a surprising array of disciplines and styles in his continuing rumination on the nature of consciousness. Eschewing the study of biological processes as inadequate to the task, he argues that the phenomenon of self-awareness is best explained by an abstract model based on symbols and self-referential "loops," which, as they accumulate experiences, create high-level consciousness. Theories aside, it's impossible not to experience this book as a tender, remarkably personal and poignant effort to understand the death of his wife from cancer in 1993and to grasp how consciousness mediates our otherwise ineffable relationships. In the end, Hofstadter's view is deeply philosophical rather than scientific. It's hopeful and romantic as well, as his model allows one consciousness to create and maintain within itself true representations of the essence of another.
Tags: Consciousness, Philosophy
Posted: 08.22.07 | 203 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Follow up comments to the 'Life is a Simulation' article in the NY Times. Test.
Tags: Philosophy, The New York Times
Posted: 08.21.07 | 72 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A short but well thought out article about the history and future of theology and politics and different theories about how to mix the two. There crosses over into personal philosophy particularly with quotes like, "the idea decides in one way or another, despite itself, and prefers being mistaken to believing in nothing."
Posted: 08.20.07 | 77 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A site devoted to thinking about the 'Matrix' possibility of living in a simulation. WIth a lot of other links to similar thinking.
Tags: Philosophy, Alternative Theories
Posted: 08.17.07 | 43 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
If we create simple life simulations, what is to say that we aren't trapped in a massive simulation right now ala The Matrix? We are just patterns inside a bigger pattern.
Tags: Philosophy, The New York Times
Posted: 08.15.07 | 66 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Short essay on the possibility of an afterlife without God involved.
Tags: Philosophy, Atheism
Posted: 08.01.07 | 107 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Why should God be so clear in the Bible and so obscure in the world?" Carl Sagan laments what he calls a "retreat from Copernicus," a loss of nerve, an emotional regression to the idea that humanity must occupy center stage.
Tags: Philosophy, Religion
Posted: 07.26.07 | 81 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Some interesting starting points into the philosophy of ideas.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 07.24.07 | 39 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
Solipsism is the philosophical idea that "My mind is the only thing that I know exists." Solipsism is an epistemological or metaphysical position that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. The external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist. In the history of philosophy, solipsism has served as a skeptical hypothesis.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 07.24.07 | 50 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
In philosophy of mind, Cartesian materialism is the idea that at some place (or places) in the brain, there is some set of information that directly corresponds to our conscious experience.
Tags: Consciousness, Philosophy
Posted: 07.24.07 | 73 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
Daniel Dennett's explanation of consciousness.
Tags: Consciousness, Philosophy
Posted: 07.24.07 | 72 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
A clunky but aspiring web site devoted to large philosophical questions.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 07.24.07 | 43 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
New lie detectors using the fMRI machines are being debated.
Posted: 07.21.07 | 46 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Excellent speech by Douglas Adams addressing evolution, the belief in God and other theories of life.
Posted: 07.14.07 | 74 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
In Radical Nature, philosopher Christian de Quincey explores how mind and matter are related, and he proposes a radical and surprising answer: Consciousness goes all the way down! Recommended by Andy Zink.
Posted: 07.14.07 | 84 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
People are not the result of a cosmic accident, but of laws of the universe that grant our lives meaning and purpose, says physicist Paul Davies.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 07.03.07 | 44 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
An article from the NYTimes reprinted in Dawkin's web site about how science is putting to rest the idea of a soul (in other words, dualism).
Posted: 07.02.07 | 58 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Sam Harris responds to criticism from James Randi about the end of Sam's book where he does not discount research ESP and other alternative fields.
Posted: 07.02.07 | 64 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Dennett's tome on consciousness.
Tags: Consciousness, Philosophy
Posted: 07.02.07 | 103 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
An outstanding source recent developments and thoughts in the the various fields of evolution, consciousness and philosophy.
Posted: 07.02.07 | 55 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
Dawkins answers the simple question, what if you're wrong with ease.
Posted: 06.26.07 | 93 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
A highly intelligent and entertainment talk by Jeff Hawkins about the brain theory and how he is working to develop artificial brain-like intelligence.
Posted: 06.26.07 | 114 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
A solid beginning point for the philosophy of math, in particular that humans didn't invent mathematics, but discovered it. But this goes back to a tree falling in the forest. If there are no humans, is there still math?
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 06.25.07 | 51 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
A surprisingly good overview of how this 'riddle' cuts to the heart of a number of different sophisticated philosophical questions.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 06.25.07 | 56 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
Robert Wright interviews Daniel Dennett about quantum weirdness.
Posted: 06.25.07 | 87 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A wide range of video interviews with many intellectuals about hard philosophical questions.
Posted: 06.25.07 | 77 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
A quote from a Buddhist story about overspeculating on metaphysical questions. Do, don't think about doing sort of thing.
Tags: Philosophy, Buhddism
Posted: 06.19.07 | 71 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
In earlier work, Raymond Tallis defends the distinctive nature of human consciousness against the misrepresentations of many philosophers and cognitive scientists who aimed to reduce it to a set of functions understood in evolutionary, neurobiological, and computational terms. This book continues to investigate these implications of human nature advanced in his earlier works for our understanding of the nature of truth, of language, of the mind, and of the self.
Posted: 06.19.07 | 110 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
An American computer scientist and science fiction author, and is one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement.
Tags: Philosophy, Science Fiction
Posted: 05.28.07 | 77 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
A branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 05.28.07 | 41 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
Rucker's ruminations on life as a computer program.
Posted: 05.28.07 | 242 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Excellent resource for philosophical definitions.
Tags: Philosophy
Posted: 05.28.07 | 23 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
Next Show:
Monday, May 17, 2010 at 10:30pm (PDT)
| Psychology | 184 | |
| Consciousness | 144 | |
| Philosophy | 132 | |
| Religion | 116 | |
| Lucid Dreaming | 105 | |
| Neuroscience | 103 | |
| Science | 88 | |
| Out Of Body Experiences | 74 | |
| The New York Times | 74 | |
| Technology | 66 | |