Science shows that though a person accused of discrimination may sincerely deny harboring any kind of prejudice, their choices and actions may have been modulated by implicit biases operating below the level of conscious intention. Are people morally responsible for such acts and attitudes?
Evolution is Rigged! A Review of Thomas Nagel’s “Mind and Cosmos”
Thomas Nagel, a famous philosopher if there is such a thing in America, has written a book a bold title: Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. The main title invites you to settle into your armchair for an evening of speculative meditation; the subtitle orders you to the barricades, in preparation for Continue Reading …
Not School Digest Nov-Dec 2012: A Bonus Quasisode
Excerpts of discussions about David Chalmers’s The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, and Paul Auster’s City of Glass.
Not School: Thomas Nagel’s “Mind and Cosmos”
Featuring Wes Alwan, Neil Earnshaw, and Jon Turner. Recorded on 12/9/12.We discuss our dissatisfaction with Nagel’s argument that evolutionary naturalism fails to explain consciousness and therefore must be supplemented by teleology.
Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos
[Editor’s Note: Here’s a post by Getty from our Hume/Smith on ethics episode. Incidentally, Getty will be leading a Not School Reading group on Harry Frankfurt’s The Reasons of Love. Go join.] Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy and law at NYU, is notorious for his heterodox philosophical positions (this was discussed a bit on PEL here). He is a scientific Continue Reading …
Episode 21: What Is the Mind? (Turing, et al) (Citizens Only)
Discussing articles by Alan Turing, Gilbert Ryle, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and Dan Dennett. What is this mind stuff, and how can it “be” the brain? Can computers think? What is it like to be a bat? With guest Marco Wise.
End Song: “No Mind” by Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio (1998)
PREVIEW-Episode 21: What Is the Mind? (Turing, et al)
Discussing articles by Alan Turing, Gilbert Ryle, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and Dan Dennett. What is this mind stuff, and how can it “be” the brain? Can computers think? What is it like to be a bat? With guest Marco Wise.
Episode 13: What Are the Metaphysical Implications of Quantum Physics?
On Werner Heisenberg’s “Physics and Philosophy” (1958), and talking about it with an actual former particle physicist, Dylan Casey.
What weird stuff about reality does quantum physics imply? Is Heisenberg (of the Uncertainty Principle fame) right that we need to reject “metaphysical realism” based on this very well established scientific framework? The discussion ranges over the uncertainty principle, relativity, wave/particle duality, Pre-Socratic metaphysics, why Kant is wrong about space, and lots of very weird things.
Episode 13: What Are the Metaphysical Implications of Quantum Physics?
On Werner Heisenberg’s Physics and Philosophy. Dylan Casey’s first appearance (as a guest).