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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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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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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…
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On the difference between man and all other animals
J. B. S Haldane, Julian Huxley, Animal biology, 1927 “The one great difference between man and all other animals is that for them evolution must always be a blind force, of which they are quite unconscious; whereas man has, in some measure at least, the possibility of consciously controlling evolution according to his wishes.” I…
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Making Mind Matter More
The last paragraph from the paper: Jerry A. Fodor, Making Mind Matter More Philosophical Topics, Vol. 17, No. 1, Philosophy of Mind, 1989, pp. 59-79 http://www.jstor.org/stable/43154039 “So, then, perhaps there’s a route to physicalism from stuff about mental causation that doesn’t require the claim that ceteris paribus laws can’t ground mental cases. If so, then…