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
Tag: consciousness
Scientism is used as a pejorative. I could argue it is a reaction of philosophy to science, in a similar way that Luddites react to technology. Generally, scientism is seen as a use of science that is in some way inapplicable to a phenomenon or circumstance. ScienceBut first, what is science? Well, it is a … Continue reading Scientism
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
I have not posted in a while, so I thought I'd post this brief interaction with ChatGPT on the subject of consciousness as an epiphenomenon. The program, I have to say, is a smooth-talking bastard, but in a good way (a way that I like).Incidentally, the image is created by ChatGPT (DALL·E 3) I asked: … Continue reading Epiphenomenon
In his book Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, the Self Etc. Galen Strawson gives some of his fellow naturalists a hard time. The book is a collection of essays and two of them deal with consciousness is some shape or form. The interesting thing is in the second of the two essays Strawson argues … Continue reading Real Naturalism
I am going to tackle a difficult problem here. I am not an expert here, not even an expert on my own experience of consciousness. Quite often it is described as The Hard Problem. Some pundits don’t see it as a problem at all. Problem or not, all is not well in the house of … Continue reading Consciousness
A little while after James died, I got into discussions on what is sadly now the defunct AgnosticForums website. More than one of its threads touched upon free will. Initially, I thought the discussions trite, I believed I had free will, and even if I did not have free will, the whole thing was pretty … Continue reading Free Will