People have a strange capability of believing weird things. Some examples: The world is flat The moon landings were fake Vaccines are harmful and microchips The Earth is only six to ten thousand years old Donald Trump was worth voting for a second time Angels and jinns Karma and reincarnation Afterlife Divine Birth of Jesus … Continue reading Beliefs
Category: free will
Sometimes, I despair when I hear some people describing President Donald Trump as amoral. I can't help thinking what those people mean is, that Trump's actions don't comport with their idea of the right way for a President to behave. To my mind that fits with the concept of immoral rather than amoral. Some might … Continue reading Amorality
Here is a summary of where I think I am. Subject to change. The Chat AI suggested the following "pithy" descriptions:1) Process Monism2) Naturalistic Realism3) Agnostic Pragmatic Realism4) Causal NaturalismI think I will go with Process Monism, as it "Emphasizes [my] belief that everything is part of an unfolding, interconnected causal process rather than discrete … Continue reading My Position
If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect … Continue reading Einstein
DraftJust finished reading Just Deserts by Daniel Dennett and Gregg Caruso. Overall I liked the book. But this very brief review is a draft and subject to change. LikesThe best bit for was the interaction between Dennett and Caruso. So we did not have the typical book, where we have pages and pages of a … Continue reading Just Deserts
A quick interlude on our will. Will, as short words go has a host nuances. Take this short sentence: I have a (the) will to go for a walk … OK it is a bit stilted, but its meaning is clear. The word will could be replaced by any of these words: ambitionanimusaspirationclamoringcravingdesire dreamdrivefancyhankeringhopelonging mindneedobjectivepiningpurposethought … Continue reading Will
It has been argued that the moment now is a mechanism where a possible future is guided to a certain determined past, a constant chain of cause and effect. Plus, because the future can be viewed as probabilistic at the very small and at the large scale. The argument goes on when choosing from a … Continue reading Free Will (I)
Einstein famously said: God does not play dice. That of course does not mean luck is not involved in the way the universe is unfolding. We can see this luck as positive or negative. And our viewpoint is down to a matter of luck too. In his book, The Self Illusion, Bruce Hood describes a … Continue reading Luck
Sometimes I can't help thinking people write nonsense about complexity. They ascribe all sorts of supposedly emergent properties to these complex objects; whether these objects be animate or inanimate. Now we take these objects and think of them somehow independent of their environment. In the vernacular, this sort of thinking is useful. It allows for … Continue reading Complexity
The Big Picture Greg on his blog has added a defence for free will and it is based Sean Carroll's book The Big Picture. Now it's almost three years since I read the book, I thought it a really interesting book. Not that I took everything as gospel, and I did not agree with Carroll's … Continue reading Freedom to Choose
rom's corner 