TagEdward Feser
What would Plato Say About Antifa? Or Darwin?
A careful reading of Plato and Arendt goes a long way toward explaining the current scene—but it is unsettling readingIn college, I hated Plato. We read his Republic, and, as a patriot and an idealistic young (small “d”) democrat, I was appalled at the hegemony of the Guardians and at Plato’s disdain for democracy. It seemed to me that his Guardians were the archetypal totalitarians, and that it was a fundamental human right — enshrined in the Constitution — to be ruled only by consent of the governed. In my dotage, I am more sympathetic to Plato — it’s remarkable how much smarter the old philosopher has gotten in the past 40 years! I am still uncomfortable with Guardians, at least of the secular sort. But I think John Adams got it right when he observed that “our Constitution…
An Oxford Neuroscientist Explains Mind vs. Brain
Sharon Dirckx explains the fallacies of materialism and the logical and scientific strengths of dualismIt’s good to see a growing response to the materialist superstition about the mind and the brain from the neuroscience and philosophy community.
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If Computers Are Intelligent, Climbing a Tree Is Flying
That, says Edward Feser, is the take-home message from Gary Smith’s book, The AI DelusionThe book’s message is that “the real danger of artificial intelligence is that it will remain dumber than we are,” but we will think it is smarter.
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A simple triangle can disprove materialism
Conventional descriptions of material processes do not help much when we are trying to account for abstract thought
Computers Are No Smarter Than Tinkertoys
Philosopher: You may as well believe that Penn and Teller really do magicPhilosopher Ed Feser wrote a great post recently on why it is irrational to believe that artificial intelligence is really intelligent. He begins with Arthur C. Clarke’s famous observation that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s assertion, he points out, can be taken two ways: people can be fooled into thinking that advanced technology is magic and, as a metaphysical assertion, that advanced technology really is magic. He defends the first assertion and, of course, denies the second: There are, however, many people who believe a claim that is analogous to, and as silly as, the metaphysical thesis that sufficiently advanced technology really is magic — namely the claim that a machine running a sufficiently advanced computer…
