CategoryPhilosophy
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
But Can Chatbot Claude Keep Its Promise To Reform?
What will happen, after all of Grasso’s careful work, when a different user asks for arguments in favor of intelligent design?
Chatbot Claude Starts to Grok Intelligent Design…
As a result of Grasso’s probing Claude now admits that labeling intelligent design as “pseudoscience” or “non-scientific across the board” was an over-generalizationWe’ve been reporting (here and here) on the efforts of Otangelo Grasso to get chatbot Claude 3/Anthropic to quit refusing to answer or shoveling out new atheist boilerplate about design in the universe. The object was to get it to start offering actual information about the controversy. Where we left it yesterday, the chatbot seems to have been searching information sources that did not simply label the intelligent design hypothesis as “pseudoscience” but engaged with the arguments. Here’s it’s subsequent response: Claude: I appreciate you laying out the argument for intelligent design in such detail. You make some fair points that I will consider carefully. However, I still have some issues with the hypothesis and conclusions: So while I grant Read More ›
Educating Chatbot Claude on ID and the Nature of Science
When you are arguing with Claude, you are arguing with the internet —well, with whatever slice the chatbot has scarfed up and processed, according to an algorithm
Our Universe Works, Yet Doesn’t Make Sense … And So?
How can so much uncertainty lie placidly at the basis of our universe but disrupt nothing in particular? We even build better computers because of it
It’s Not “Myths” That Cause Distrust in Science But Sad Truths
An astrophysicist, hoping to shore up public trust, means well but gets the problems all wrong
The Conviction That ET Is Out There Survives Every Setback
Because it is only natural to resist the idea that we are alone, the hope of finding extraterrestrials twists science thinking in strange ways
What Drives the Belief That We Live in a Computer Sim Universe?
The lack of evidence for the sim is admitted — but then we are challenged to prove that it ISN’T true…
Doesn’t Methodological Naturalism Refute Itself?
Listen to the new podcast episode discussing this questionGet caught up with the Mind Matters podcast by listening to this special episode featuring hosts Angus Menuge and Robert J. Marks and their guest, Dr. Robert Larmer. Dr. Larmer wrote a fascinating chapter in last year’s groundbreaking book Minding the Brain, and sat down with Mind Matters to discuss the limits of “methodological naturalism.” For Larmer, this approach to getting knowledge is limited because it rules out non-physical causes, even if they exist. In addition, holding to naturalism at all costs can undermine our self-understanding as rational agents. How can we trust our brains? Does the physical activity in our brains correlate with non-physical mental states? Find out more by listening to Part One of the conversation here. Be Read More ›
Grappling Honestly With Science’s Blind Spot
An astrophysicist, a theoretical physicist, and a philosopher all walk into a bar and say, “At the heart of science lies something we do not see that makes science possible” Um… yes!
How Is Intentionality Embedded in the Universe?
All efforts to extinguish intentionality and morality only serve to further establish their inescapable reality
Can Informational Realism Help Sort Out the Mind–Body Problem?
According to William Dembski, informational realism asserts that the ability to exchange information is the defining feature of reality
Why Doesn’t God Just Do Something Dramatic to Prove He Exists?
The Divine Hiddenness argument for atheism, espoused by Matt Dillahunty, is that, if a perfectly loving God existed, reasonable unbelief would be impossible
Bigfoot and Trust in Science: A Cautionary Tale
Of three men searching for Bigfoot in 1969 — a hunting guide, an enthusiast, and a physical anthropologist, which seemed surest that the monster was real?
Are the New Atheists Losing Their “Cool” Quotient?
And taking Darwinism with them? A look at what’s happened in the last two decades would seem to suggest that
William Dembski: Destroy the AI Idol Before It Destroys Us
Design theorist Dembski points to the way that chess adapted to computers to become better than ever as a way forward in the age of AI
Why Is Theology the Most Important Empirical Science?
Arguing pro or con about the existence of God has resulted in many successful and/or widely accepted theories in science