Do we? How? Anyway, I am not going to argue for or against the laws of nature. If you believe that conscious beings are outside any general order of t...
Depends on how one defines miracles. If we assume the popular Humean view of miracles as violations of the laws of nature - which already implies that...
I am still trying to understand where (if anywhere) you are leading with these requirements for programs that spring into existence fully formed out o...
Yes, that's what evolutionary algorithms do: they modify part of their own code (the other part you may think of as the environment, which is subject ...
First of all, most computer programs are algorithms that process data, so it is not just an algorithm that you put in - it is algorithm plus data, and...
Trump hijacked the expression "fake news" without even understanding (or giving a shit about) its meaning - he just calls anything in the media that h...
Sounds like he is working out a purely internalist concept of truth. Internalism as such is not an unusual position, although it is more commonly depl...
The idea is that the simulation is a simulation of (a part of) the actual world under representative conditions. So yes, evidence is simulated, but if...
I think Russell's lecture notes (which were recommended above) actually aren't a bad choice if you just want to stimulate someone's interest in philos...
I am not bothered by distasteful associations (egad! Theology!) I believe that we should judge ideas on their own merit. Besides, in all likelihood, t...
What I would call reductive physicalism envisions a unique (but so far only hypothetical) Theory of Everything, usually identified with fundamental ph...
I am not really seeing the opposition that you are setting up here. I can understand you pitting reductionist physicalism against non-reductionist phy...
Of course it does. (Scientific) explanation is nothing other than abstracting a general rule/regularity/model out of concrete material instances. All ...
Reading your examples, I thought of another from the same stock: Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, where he points to material factors, such as ...
You seem to be articulating the principle of locality, which says that all interaction is mediated by local, i.e. immediate contact, and Einstein's re...
I looked that up, and no, I was thinking of something else. Not Huxley then. Too bad, it was a lovely passage, but I can no longer locate it. As for e...
One problem with that line of argument is that we can easily imagine states of affairs that are nomologically and even logically impossible. Being abl...
I think it was T. H. Huxley (though I cannot find the quote), while critiquing vitalism, compared it to the belief that there is some essential "train...
I was wrong, and your (a) is right. But your (b) is not quite right: Chalmers (following Kripke) stipulates that zombies are identical to humans in al...
I don't think that's a fair analogy. Perhaps Chalmers would suggest this as a better analogy: It is conceivable that something looks and feels exactly...
I had a colleague who was a manic-depressive. He did seem to feel great in his manic phase, but as far as job performance, it's hard to say whether it...
It's not even some unique genius of humans. Dogs don't actually eat dogs (not as a rule), nor do bats nor bees nor any number of social animals. In fa...
I understand your argument as being premised on the general principle that one should take seriously any claim that attaches high stakes to your futur...
Trying to guess what evolution would favor based on a naive first guess is a losing proposition, especially for something as complex as psychology. Ev...
Pascal claims that you have everything to gain if God is and nothing to lose if God is not. So it is clear that he considers a very specific God: one ...
That would be quite a useless and unnecessary premise, since it is a trivial tautology. And my point was exactly that Pascal was not considering every...
No, I think it's fine. High stakes serve as a lever, and infinitely high stakes, as Pascal argued, should overwhelm any doubt you might have when cons...
Why do you think that subjective opinions are wrong or misguided? And what do you mean by subjective/objective, anyway? I would say that a statement i...
Speaking of impotence... Using a parallel argument we conclude that god created masturbation and masturbation cannot exist outside of God. So indeed, ...
The human body cannot function without the liver either, but that doesn't mean that every process in the body is controlled and directed by the liver....
If you mean that the fact that our mind has some control over our body has implications for eliminative materialism, then the placebo effect would not...
Look, first you say that the placebo effect is interesting because it evidences brain's (and thus mind's) control over the body. Then you say that the...
Lawyers have a saying: "If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have neither on y...
Are we talking about the same thing here? The placebo effect suggests that the mind has slightly more influence over the body than most of us had cred...
Most such sayings are neither true nor false. They require some (or a lot of) unpacking before we can make an informed judgment. And much will then de...
I don't really understand why the placebo effect is regularly trotted out in the context of the philosophy of mind. What is it that calls for a philos...
What makes you think there must be some happy alternative? If you are told that you've got an untreatable cancer, you will, of course, have to "adapt"...
Fucked in the way climate science forecasts. I am not going to paraphrase it here for you - go read about it if you really want to know (or fuck off i...
Good reading skills must help too. I too set aside some reading time, usually more than one hour per day, but there is no way I could get through an a...
The reason why market forces won't help us avert the catastrophe is simple: the time scale of climate changes is much longer than any business cycle, ...
This story is a fake. First, the vote happened over a year ago. Second, the article, and especially the scandalous title, misrepresents the content of...
You need to remember that most science is about spherical cows in a vacuum. If you are modeling the Solar system in Newtonian mechanics (or even in re...
You keep using this word "intelligent." What do you think it means? At one point you say "organized/intelligent." So does "intelligent" simply mean or...
OK, I think I understand. The way you tell it, you seem to think that bodies are driven entirely by their internal processes. And yet you have also me...
Well, what I am trying to understand is why you are framing the problem in mereological terms. You say that "without component parts, it is hard to im...
I am not sure why you think that "irreducible particles" in particular present a difficulty with respect to interaction and complex behavior. How do y...
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