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Mathematicians are machines that are unable to recognize the fact that they are machines
I am reading a Russian book about the “no computer thesis” based on the Gödel theorem. In the book there was a nice quote – see below – that somewhat close to what Bruno says. “And if such is the case, then we (qua mathematicians) are machines that are unable to recognize the fact that […]
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Can a Robot Have Free Will?
Keith Douglas Farnsworth. Can a Robot Have Free Will? Entropy 19, no. 5 (2017): 237. http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/19/5/237 “Using insights from cybernetics and an information-based understanding of biological systems, a precise, scientifically inspired, definition of free-will is offered and the essential requirements for an agent to possess it in principle are set out.” “The only systems known […]
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Mathematics as the result of natural selection
“In the past decades, recent paradigm shifts in ethology, psychology, and the social sciences have given rise to various new disciplines like cognitive ethology and evolutionary psychology. These disciplines use concepts and theories of evolutionary biology to understand and explain the design, function and origin of the brain. I shall argue that there are several […]
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Self-explaining Game of Life?
A question sent to the everything-list. https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/EjV8Bsq9_wU/discussion I have listened to Sean Carroll’s Big Picture. His world view is actually similar to the Game of Life, well, the rules are a bit more complicated. Below is the link to the equation that he proposes. Carroll claims that his equation describes human beings as well. He […]
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Panpsychism, the Standard Model and Metaphysics
My comment to the discussion on panpsychism http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/electrons-dont-think.html Panpsychism belongs to metaphysics. Yet, the standard model is also based on metaphysics, but some other kind of metaphysics as compared to panpsychism. The metaphysics of modern physics is made in the 17th century and it did not changed much since that. There is a nice book […]
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Love for the Truth
Jean-André Deluc to Christoph Lichtenberg (1798): “I told you, mon cher Monsieur, that there is no one I prefer to talk physics with than you; because I’ve always seen that like me (if I dare say so) you love physics for itself; which is true of very few people. Some do physics to talk about […]
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What are atheists for?
Dominic Johnson, What are atheists for? Hypotheses on the functions of non-belief in the evolution of religion, Religion, Brain & Behavior, Vol. 2, No. 1, February 2012, 48-99 http://dominicdpjohnson.com/publications/pdf/2012JohnsonWhatAreAtheistsFor.pdf “An explosion of recent research suggests that religious beliefs and behaviors are universal, arise from deep-seated cognitive mechanisms, and were favored by natural selection over human […]
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Bad Theory as a Bad Tragedy
A quote from Bas C Van Fraassen, Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective: p. 266 ‘Aristotle himself seems to see the parallelism very well. When in the Physics he comes to what he considers a bad theory (the theory of evolution by natural selection and chance variation, as it happens!) he make fun of it. It […]