Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
In the history of discussions about consciousness, there have always been ideas that some aspects of human experience are irreducible to physics. Colors have long had a special place in these discussions. During the scientific revolution, colors lost their status as objective properties in the world, with people like Galileo relegating them to secondary qualities … Continue reading The function of color
Matt O'Dowd is starting to look at a question I find extremely interesting. What is the ontology of spacetime? A lot of physicists have begun to wonder whether its fundamental, or emergent from something else. Quantum entanglement is the one I'm familiar with, but I understand there are other possibilities. (This video is 26 minutes … Continue reading Is the question whether spacetime is real, or whether it’s fundamental?
This week the latest Mind Chat episode focused on whether regular people actually perceive a hard problem of consciousness, or if it's an issue largely created by philosophers. Keith Frankish and Philip Goff interview Michelle Liu and Edouard Machery. (The video is a bit over two hours. You don't necessarily need to watch it to … Continue reading Do regular people see a hard problem of consciousness?
For much of human history, most people thought the seat of the soul was in the heart. There were some ancient thinkers who managed to figure out the role of the brain, but widespread acceptance of it is an early modern development from the scientific revolution. But it seems like something a lot of people … Continue reading The urge to downplay the brain
This week I read (actually listened to) The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight by Thomas Suddendorf, Jonathan Redshaw, and Adam Bulley. I was alerted to the existence of this book by Sean Carroll's interview of Bulley on his podcast, which provides a good overview of their overall thesis. People have long struggled … Continue reading The Invention of Tomorrow
(Warning: spoilers) Back in November I watched the first season of The Peripheral on Amazon. It's science fiction based on a book by William Gibson. If you're familiar with Gibson's works then you'll have an idea of what to expect, a work of cyberpunk, a genre he basically pioneered. I find Gibson's writing difficult, but … Continue reading The Peripheral
Well, we've almost got another one on the books. 2022 was a year where work kept getting busier, which has had further suppressive effects on my blogging frequency. I also had some personal issues. One I alluded to with the security post in October, and with which I'm still dealing with some aftereffects. Another has … Continue reading Merry Christmas
In the last post, I pondered the idea that the real difference between a realist and anti-realist stance toward a scientific theory is about how broad or narrow the scope of the theory might be, about it's domain of applicability. An anti-realist takes a narrower view on scope; such as that the theory can be … Continue reading The debate between phenomenal realism and illusionism, and the scope of perceptual properties
I've been thinking again about the realism vs anti-realism debate, about what scientific theories actually tell us about the world. Historically in the philosophy of science, the debate is between realists, who see scientific theories being at least an approximate representation of reality, and instrumentalists or anti-realists, who see those theories as mere prediction frameworks … Continue reading The debate between scientific realism and anti-realism seems like it’s about theory scope
Thought I'd give an update on my experience with Mastodon. There have been few more lessons learned since the first post. On Saturday, after thinking about it for several days, I decided I needed to try a new server. Many of the servers in the Mastodon space are experiencing growing pains due to the influx … Continue reading Mastodon: an update
SelfAwarePatterns 