cheapesthostings2

I first wrote about the mysteries of consciousness on this blog back in February 2006 . This prompted me to do some reading on the philosophy of mind, and in March 2006 I wrote more about consciousness. Though I didn't mention it directly in that post, a very compelling argument concerns what are called philosophical zombies . I would put the argument like this. First, ask yourself: Is it conceivable that there could be a thing that appears to be human but in fact has no conscious experience? In other words, a biological machine, identical to a human in every way, except that it has no free will, feels nothing, experiences nothing. To put it bluntly, a zombie . If your answer is no, then I would ask this: How can you know that some of the "humans" around you are not in fact zombies? Is there a device available that will measure consciousness? Granted we have tools that can measure aspects of the complex electrical and chemical activity in the brain. But complex electric...

Recent years have seen a remarkable rise in the popularity of atheism in the English-speaking world. For example, the proportion of respondents to the U.S. General Social Survey who indicate "no religion" as their religious preference (the green line in the figure to the left) has been steadily climbing for about 15 years. Along with this rise has come a spate of Does-God-Exist debates . These debates raise plenty of interesting questions, but I wonder if there is more heat than light. Taking an adversarial approach to an omnibus question is a good way to bring up issues, but perhaps a poor way to clarify them. One thing that does come up in most of these debates is the issue of divine intervention. In a 1995 debate with William Lane Craig, Massimo Pigliucci mentions the kind of God ... that doesn't interfere with the regular everyday life of the world. He may have created the world, but then after that he retired. That kind of God is completely unfalsifiable; science ...

I was at the bookstore the other night and wandered over to the philosophy section. Or should I say, the "and philosophy" section. You see, it was dominated by books with titles like The Simpsons and Philosophy , Metallica and Philosophy , Monty Python and Philosophy , The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy (subtitle: "I Link Therefore I Am")—the list goes on and on, as do the witty subtitles. These are all part of the Popular Culture and Philosophy series. Editor George Reisch writes: Since its inception in 2000, Open Court's Popular Culture and Philosophy® series has brought high-quality philosophy to general readers. The volumes present essays by academic philosophers exploring the meanings, concepts, and puzzles within television shows, movies, music and other icons of popular culture. The first in the series was Seinfeld and Philosophy , edited by William Irwin: How is Jerry like Socrates? Is it rational for George to "do the opposite?" Would Simone...

As I discussed in my last post , the word "lie" is often used to refer to a broad class of deceptions. But there is much to be said for specificity. I like the following definition, which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls the "the most common definition of lying": to make a believed-false statement to another person with the intention that that other person believe that statement to be true. And as I argued a couple of years ago, definitions matter . Someone accused of lying will surely opt for the narrow definition above. The accusation may then actually strengthen their position. If a lie can't in fact be demonstrated, they may appear to be vindicated. It seems to me that politicians often play this game. Indeed the accusation of lying conveniently distracts attention from more important deceptions. There's a kind of objectivity about lies. With appropriate evidence, only a minimal number of assumptions are required to identify a lie. Children...

People in public relations are sometimes accused of being "paid liars". This misses the point. According to communications consultant Peter O'Malley : In all instances, on both practical and legal grounds, effective public relations means not lying or defaming. But when perceived or real culpability is high, damage control inherently requires that engaged PR practitioners not volunteer facts they may know which may be true and may even be important to getting at the "truth" of the matter, but the disclosure of which would be harmful to the client's interest. So lying is out (at least in principle), but that doesn't mean we'll be getting the whole truth. O'Malley continues: And it frequently requires being steadfast in characterizing a "nearly empty" bottle as being "almost full". We may like to call all this "focused messaging", but in plain language, it means being highly selective in the presentation of information...

Today being the (inaugural) Family Day holiday here in Ontario, I took my son and a couple of his friends on an outing. We went to a wonderful exhibition called Secret Riches - Ancient Peru Unearthed at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The exhibition was about the Sicán people, who preceded the Incas by around 400 years. The Sicán developed advanced metallurgical technology, and produced fabulous artwork, such as the headdress on the left. A text panel nearby the headdress referred to a Sicán lord who would wear such a headdress "commanding and receiving respect". Conspicuous consumption continues to this day. I was reminded of the recent news about a UAE business man who paid the equivalent of US$14 million for a vanity license plate (somehow the description seems inadequate). The Abu Dhabi plate bears a single digit: "1". To be fair, the plate was purchased at a charity auction. But still, $14 million? "The price is fair. After all, who among us does...

Two years ago I started thinking about consciousness (my earlier posts are here and here ), and ever since, what's in my mind has been on my mind. First, some of what I've been reading lately. About a year ago, Time magazine published an article by cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker titled " The mystery of consciousness ". Pinker refers to a distinction made by philosopher David Chalmers , between the Easy Problem of consciousness (what are the neural correlates of consciousness?) and the Hard Problem (why do is there such a thing as subjective conscious experience?). Chalmers' ideas are intriguing; see for example his Scientific American piece, " The puzzle of conscious experience ". There's also a fascinating video interview with Chalmers. Now, on to some of my thoughts ... First person very singular I know that I'm conscious (in fact for René Descartes , this was the one thing that could be known with certainty). But there's no way...

A recent article by philosopher Steven Hales is titled " You Can Prove a Negative " (a slightly different version of the article is available as a pdf file ). Hales argues that the "principle of folk logic" saying you can't prove a negative is just plain wrong . He points out that " any claim can be expressed as a negative, thanks to the rule of double negation." So it's easy to come up with examples of proving a negative. Hales goes on to say that "Some people seem to think that you can’t prove a specific sort of negative claim, namely that a thing does not exist." He counters this with an example of a valid proof that something doesn't exist: 1. If unicorns had existed, then there is evidence in the fossil record. 2. There is no evidence of unicorns in the fossil record. 3. Therefore, unicorns never existed. Of course, the difficulty here is with the truth of the premises (1 and 2). In particular, it could be that we just haven...

It has been noted that when trying to explain almost anything , I have a habit of declaring—"It's complicated ..." And of course, it is (whatever it is). But is that just a cop-out? Complexity is particularly challenging when decisions have to be made. There may be many factors beyond our control, that we understand poorly, or that we're not even aware of. And how these factors interact is often unclear. Complexity brings with it uncertainty, and uncertainty is always unsettling. One solution is to do nothing, and sometimes that's the best choice, as expressed in the aphorism " first do no harm ". But, as in the case of climate change , the decision to do nothing ("more studies are needed") is often a poor choice. Coping with complexity Faced with complexity, we simplify. That is, we employ models that make it easier to think about the situation. This comes so naturally to us that we're often completely unaware that's what we...