Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
My anime binge continues. I just recently finished the second season of Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These. The second part of the title means "The New Thesis". This series is a remake of an older anime series which itself was an adaptation of a series of novels and short stories by Yoshiki … Continue reading Legend of the Galactic Heroes: The New Thesis
I've been on something of an anime binge lately. When I was a kid, I enjoyed anime, but as an adult, for some reason, it ceased being appealing. I'm not sure why, but I developed an aversion to it. I made a few attempts over the years to power past the aversion, but with limited … Continue reading Catching up on anime
I've only recently discovered Ricardo Lopes and his interviews of all kinds of interesting people. Here is one from a couple of years ago of Keith Frankish, the most prominent contemporary champion of illusionism, the idea that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion, that it doesn't exist, and much of this is him giving the standard … Continue reading The necessity of weak emergence
The second season (err, volume) of Love Death & Robots was released yesterday, so naturally I ended up binging it last night. Not that it took long. Each episode is less than 20 minutes (one is less than 10) and there are only eight of them this time around. One of the episodes was written … Continue reading Love Death and Robots, Volume 2
The other day I did a post on structural realism. If you found that interesting, you might find this interview of James Ladyman by Sean Carroll worth listening to (or reading, since there's a transcript). Ladyman is the author of the SEP article on structural realism I linked to, and seems to be a major … Continue reading Interviews of James Ladyman on metaphysics
It's been a while since I listed good sources to learn about neuroscience and the brain. I think anyone interested in consciousness and the mind should get a grounding in the basics. It's a bit of work, but the introductory accounts aren't anything unmanageable for someone who can parse philosophically dense material. And it enables … Continue reading Sources of information on neuroscience
Daniel Issing has an interesting article at Quillette on the hard problems of vegetarianism. Vegetarianism, and its more pure form, veganism, are often seen as the obvious moral thing we should all be doing, but that most of us aren't. Issing, himself a vegetarian, explores the messy details that make this a more complicated proposition … Continue reading The scope of animal wellbeing
Julia Galef is the host of the podcast Rationally Speaking (which I've listened to for years and recommend). She's a rationalist concerned with improving the way she and others think. As a result, she often puts out material critiquing typical reasoning mistakes. As Sean Carroll pointed out recently when interviewing her, this tends to put … Continue reading The Scout Mindset
(Warning: neuroscience weeds) Some years ago, I reviewed Antonio Damasio's theory of consciousness, based on his book, Self Comes to Mind. (He has a newer book, The Strange Order of Things, which I haven't read yet, so this may not represent his most current views.) In that book, Damasio makes a distinction between two types … Continue reading Perceptions are dispositions all the way down
Philosopher Jonny Thompson has an article up on RealClearScience profiling the views of Mary Midgley: The Three Myths of Scientism. (Warning: the RealClearScience site is pretty ad intensive.) Midgley was a famous critic of views she regarded as scientism, and often sparred with atheist and antitheist Richard Dawkins. As someone who usually takes the scientific … Continue reading The relativity of scientism
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