Tag Archives: Philosophy

Don’t trust your intuitions, they will betray you

Posted on May 21, 2019 by

A video at Aeon well worth checking out on what wrapping a rope around the Earth reveals about the limits of human intuition: If you tied a rope tight around the Earth’s equator and then added a single yard of … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , | 38 Comments

Are zombies conscious?

Posted on May 5, 2019 by

This is not a question about philosophical zombies.  I did a post on them a while back.  (The TL;DR is that I find that whole concept ranges from incoherent to dubious, depending on the exact version.) This post is on … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , | 36 Comments

The relationship between usefulness and falsifiability

Posted on April 25, 2019 by

There’s an article by Matthew R. Francis in Symmetry magazine garnering a lot of attention asking whether falsifiability is a useful criteria for scientific theories. Popper wrote in his classic book The Logic of Scientific Discovery that a theory that cannot be … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , | 88 Comments

SMBC on what separates humans from machines

Posted on April 7, 2019 by

Source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (Click through for full sized version and the red button caption.) My own take on this is that what separates humans from machines is our survival instinct.  We intensely desire to survive, and procreate.  Machines, … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , , , | 26 Comments

Probability is relative

Posted on March 2, 2019 by

At Aeon, Nevin Climenhaga makes some interesting points about probability.  After describing different interpretations of probability, one involving the frequency with which an event will occur, another involving its propensity to occur, and a third involving our confidence it will … Continue reading →

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Why are we real?

Posted on February 11, 2019 by

Nathaniel Stein has an interesting article at Aeon, The why of reality: The easy question came first, a few months after my son turned four: ‘Are we real?’ It was abrupt, but not quite out of nowhere, and I was … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , | 76 Comments

Being committed to truth means admitting the limitations of what we can know

Posted on January 30, 2019 by

Michela Massimi has a long article at Aeon defending scientific realism. The time for a defence of truth in science has come. It begins with a commitment to get things right, which is at the heart of the realist programme, despite mounting Kuhnian … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , , | 50 Comments

Consciousness lies in the eye of the beholder

Posted on January 27, 2019 by

There are few things that everyone who ponders consciousness can agree on.  It’s a topic where debates on the very definition of the subject are common.  The only definitions that seem to command near universal assent are the ones oriented … Continue reading →

Posted in Mind and AI | Tagged , , , , , | 93 Comments

What positions do you hold that are not popular?

Posted on January 19, 2019 by

Rebecca Brown has an article at Aeon on how philosophy can make the previously unthinkable thinkable.  She starts with a discussion of the Overton window: In the mid-1990s, Joseph Overton, a researcher at the US think tank the Mackinac Center … Continue reading →

Posted in Zeitgeist | Tagged , | 66 Comments

A qualified recommendation: Consciousness Demystified

Posted on January 13, 2019 by

A couple of years ago I did a series of posts inspired by Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt’s excellent  The Ancient Origins of Consciousness, a book on the evolution of animal consciousness.  Somewhat building on what I had read in … Continue reading →

Posted in Mind and AI | Tagged , , , , , , , | 15 Comments