CategoryPhilosophy
After Dawkins Is Canceled, What Comes Next? Not Better Science!
As the National Academies of Science try to blend traditional lore into science findings, the concept of truth that atheists and theists clash over is irrelevant
New Atheism Is Shrinking and It’s Not Entirely Clear Why
Now, there is an eerie unfashionable silence that fashionable media are beginning to notice. For one thing, it is affecting Richard Dawkins
Canada’s Residential Schools: A Saga of Journalistic Wrongdoing
Even as the story is collapsing for lack of evidence, there is a move afoot to criminalize doubt about what happened (denialism).
Is True Artificial Intelligence Possible? A Science Perspective
Many will conclude that true AI — AI that thinks like humans — must be possible because we hear so much about it from so many sources
Engineer Explains Why AI Bots Always Lean Left
ChatGPT kept insisting on scientific consensus as the most important factor in what to believe regarding global warming and similar issues
Haidt: Beauty and Awe Help Us Escape the Phone-Based Life
The question is: why are we drawn to beauty?
If Materialism Is Failing, What Replaces It Might Not Be Better
If panpsychism prevails, we may need to get used to the politics of Insect Rights and of Rocks' Lives Matter. Also, panpsychists may have little of consequence to say about freedom of thought
Biology Needs a Fresh Look — But Is It Afraid of What It’ll Find?
A science writer’s musings make clear that intelligent design is the only reasonable explanation for the human genome’s ordered complexity
“Plant Philosophy” Denigrates Human Uniqueness
Much contemporary advocacy is obsessed with deconstructing human exceptionalism
Physicists: Perhaps Life Is a Unique State of Matter
A physics gathering next week at the University of Rochester will explore the significance of the fact that life, unlike non-life, needs and uses information
Dembski Asks the Chatbot: Is Intelligent Design Testable?
ChatGPT4o’s tour through the internet on the topic suggests that there may be some improvement in rational discussion out there
What Is Pseudoscience? A Philosopher Tries To Sort It Out
Finding little to go on, Massimo Pigliucci suggests relying on popular skeptic sites and, er, … himself
Bill Dembski: Einstein’s Advice to Bright Young University Grads
His advice, bellowed in parting, may seem obvious but it is challenging in a world that often protects sacred cows over evidence
Can AI Replace Science? Gary Smith and Jeffrey Funk Say No
At Fast Company, they explain some of the real problems with mistaking hype for results
Wanted: A Theory of Everything Based Only on Science Findings
The philosopher who expressed that wish is probably still looking… he could not find a naturalist theory that worked that way
Roger Scruton on AI and the Human Soul
Is something missing in the discussion on AI and human exceptionalism? Back in the 1980s, Roger Scruton thought so
How Do We Know If Something in Nature Is Purposeful?
Jonathan Bartlett considered the question recently in Cambridge’s Behavioral and Brain Sciences journal
How Ancient Philosophers Can Help Design Better Computers
The Kubernetes program, for example, steers groups of computers the way, in the ancient image, a navigator steers a ship