But Is Determinism True?
Does science show that we fated to want whatever we want?Modern science—both theoretical and experimental—strongly supports the reality of free will.
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How Can Mere Products of Nature Have Free Will?
Materialists don’t like the outcome of their philosophy but twisting logic won’t change itAlthough most compatibilists have a more or less materialist view of nature, they find it impossible to shake the conviction that free will is real.
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Could Your Computer Be Transgender?
A shift in basic philosophy can account for the new dogma that biological sex is a matter of culture and choice
How the Internet Turns Coffee Klatches into Mobs
A philosopher sheds light on how the Covington high school kids became America's Most Hated
The Creative Spark
An information theory justification for the intrinsic value of human beings
Has Science Shown That Consciousness Is Only an Illusion?
Using clever analogies, Philosopher Daniel Dennett argues that consciousness is all smoke and mirrors
How Can Consciousness Be a Material Thing?
Maybe it can’t. But materialist philosophers face starkly limited choices in how to view consciousness
Consciousness Studies Is a “Bizarre” Field of Science
The question of whether machines can be conscious is bound up with attempts to study immaterial things while denying their existence
In One Sense, Consciousness IS an Illusion…
We have no knowledge of the processes of our consciousness, only of the objects of its attention, whether they are physical, emotional, or abstract
What Do Thoughts Weigh?
Robert Marks thrashes out with Michael Medved why our minds are neither meat nor softwareIn a wide-ranging conversation, Robert Marks and Michael Medved tackle questions like what it means for something to be not just unknown but “unknowable.”
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Is Salad Murder?
A Darwinian biologist wrestles with the significance of plant intelligenceIf plants can sense things and communicate with each other, even though they lack a mind or brain, should they have rights? In an age of sometimes violent animal rights activism, that’s not an idle question. Plant physiologist Ulrich Kutschera, author of Physiology of Plants. Sensible Vegetation in Action (January 2019, German), talked about it in a recent interview: This is a serious issue which is related to plant intelligence. In April 2009, the Swiss Parliament discussed the topic of “plant ethics” and proposed to attribute to plants a kind of “Würde”, which can be translated as “dignity” (3). As a consequence, some radical plant ethics-activists have distributed T-shirts and other propaganda material with the slogan “Salad is murder”. Despite Read More ›
The Human Mind from a Computer Science Perspective
The Blyth Institute’s new journal will offer a focus on artificial intelligence and philosophy as well as philosophical questions in mathematics and engineering
How is Human Language Different from Animal Signals?
What do we need from language that we cannot get from signals alone?
Quantum Randomness Gives Nature Free Will
Whether or not quantum randomness explains how our brains work, it may help us create unbreakable encryption codesWhen I was boy, my father explained free will and predestination to me: I dig a fence post hole. · Did I create the hole because of my own free will? · Or was the hole already there and I simply removed the dirt? If true, the hole was predestined. The question cannot be answered by examining the evidence. In philosophy terms, it is “empirically unanswerable.” That is the sort of stuff that philosophers debate. Religious people might point to scripture to support one conclusion over the other.1 In physics, however, quantum randomness offers a definitive answer to the question of predestination vs. free will—for subatomic particles. In the world of classical physics (Isaac Newton’s physics), it can be argued Read More ›
Stephen Hawking and the AI Apocalypse
Can doomsday headlines, chasing fame, stand in for deep knowledge of a subject?
Has Neuroscience Disproved Thinking?
A philosopher argues that Nobel Prize-winning research shows that the theory of mind is just another illusion, useful for survival and success
Do Quasars Provide Evidence for Free Will?
Possibly. They certainly rule out experimenter interference.
Tom Stoppard’s New Play Tackles Consciousness Itself
Consciousness is a hard problem for science, principally because no one quite understands what makes us the subjects of our experiences.
Yes, the Placebo Effect Is Real, Not a Trick
But the fact that the mind acts on the body troubles materialists. Such facts, they say, require revision