Author: Evgenii Rudnyi

  • 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…

  • Can a Robot Have Free Will?

    Keith Douglas Farnsworth. Can a Robot Have Free Will? Entropy 19, no. 5 (2017): 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 to…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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 “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 my…

  • Understanding ‘Understanding’

    Quotes from Addy Pross, What is Life? How Chemistry becomes Biology Chapter Understanding ‘Understanding’ “In the scientific world we strive to achieve understanding of phenomena in the world around us through application of the scientific method.” “At the very heart of the scientific method is the process of induction, a way of reasoning whose roots…

  • Hinshelwood, bacteria and biologists

    Hinshelwood is a famous chemist (Nobel price for kinetics of chain reactions). He also spent the considerable time on research of the growth of bacterial cells. From his biography: “Shortly before the 1939-45 war, Hinshelwood began work on the growth of bacterial cells. For some time he had been thinking about applying kinetic measurements and…