This post is going to be a sort of a review of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, but also partially a review of John Dupré’s review of the book and some of my commentary/thoughts. I’ll be using Dupré’s review as a segue in explaining Nagel’s position, for reasons that will soon be obvious (https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/mind-and-cosmos-why-the-materialist-neo-darwinian-conception-of-nature-is-almost-certainly-false/). Since I have so many thoughts of my own on the topic Nagel covers, I can’t say that this is properly a review, as I won’t be sticking so closely to the text, in analysis.
Category Archives: Philosophy of Science
The Time Problem in “Cosmology from Quantum Potential”
Ahmed Farag Ali and Saurya Das recently published a paper in Physics Letters B, “Cosmology from Quantum Potential,” in which they discuss the reasonableness of a liquid quantum potential contra big bang. You can imagine something like this:
I whole-heartedly believe a number of their “interpretations” in the paper are correct. However, I also find some of their thoughts extremely puzzling, in light of drawing certain interpretations to their logical conclusion, as one philosopher, Kant, has hundreds of years ago. I will give a little technical breakdown of the paper —just bear with me through the math/math-speak, which I only include for the sake of the clarity that my colleagues in the sciences would prefer—, and then discuss issues I see. Given that I have been, for a long time, working with another philosopher of physics on a scientifically-technical philosophical paper that forcefully argues some of the same points, I will not comment on those items I agree with, so as not to give anything away from unpublished work.
Continue readingFiled under Cosmology, Philosophy, Philosophy of Physics, Physics, Science, Speculative Realism
A Response to “The Brain on Trial”
I want to take a look at an article published in the Atlantic a few years ago, called “The Brain on Trial” by David Eagleman. (The link to the original article can be found here by clicking on this sentence.) I will not critique the general legal conclusion that Eagleman pushes for, because I largely agree with him, i.e., the conclusion that neuroscience can be used to determine whether some temporary abnormality can and should exculpate an alleged criminal offender.[1] What I will address is the sloppy philosophy that Eagleman performs. I do appreciate that Eagleman is well aware of the intellectual domains of which he speaks, but his craft in each varies widely —his philosophy, in particular, needs critiquing.
Filed under Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Science
There May Be No Such Thing as Quantity in Nature, with an Example from Physiology
Some time ago, I was discussing the qualitative-quantitative divide with a friend, a medical doctor, who happens to be very interested in the philosophy of science. The discussion became a debate, where we trying to get to the bottom of whether it was as I said, that the world is a qualitative entity, wherein the mind supplies quantity; or as he said, that the world has a mathematical ontology, something like the worldview championed by Meillassoux or Galileo. To be clear, I was just arguing that it could be either way, with some slightly greater likelihood that the world may not have quantity in it, apart from that supplied by the mind. By contrast, my colleague, the M.D., did not understand how it could be that there is no such thing as quantity in the world, in the sense that he could not envisage as scenario in which number does not inhere in the world. Between us was the barrier of language and experience, which was constituted in the difference between education of a physicist —though I did do a pre-med track and have interests in the philosophy of medicine— and that of a physician. We ended up settling on an example that is grounded in physiology. I will set up the groundwork for the discussion, then, give the example, and, finally, provide the resolution that has come to me only recently.
Thoughts on a Fractured Reality
There is some discussion going on in the blogosphere (and youtube) about whether the world we live in is pluralistic or monistic. Critical Animal’s blog (click here) contains a list of some of these blog posts. As with most ideas, I am of many minds about the issue. While I think I would prefer a world that is as envisioned by the zeitgeist of the Enlightenment, axiomatically and formally structured from the bottom up, it is becoming very difficult to see how the world could be anything other than pluralistic. What I will do in the following is lay out why it seems to me that the world is pluralist, and then lay out why I think the human mind has such a natural bias toward mosism. On the latter point, I think most readers will agree with me that the commonsense disposition —the disposition of any ole jane or joe on the street— is one inclined toward a single truth, possibly slightly more nuanced, in the axiomatic manner I described; and so I will spend some time explaining why this is probably the case.
Teleology and Immaterial Substance after the Physico-Chemical Turn in the Life Sciences
I am posting a paper (click here) I have been playing with for a little while. I generally don’t post anything that I might publish, but, with some added input and further vision in formulating it, I may be able to turn this into something worth publishing. The essence of the paper is on vitalism and how teleology has not been stripped out of the original nascent formation (i.e., romantische Naturphilosophie) of the biological discipline. The paper grew out of my reading of Timothy Lenoir’s The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in nineteenth-Century German Biology. Continue reading
Examining and Thinking Through “The Simplest Possible Universe”: Part II
This is the second in a series of blog posts about a work done by Dr. David Lee Cale, professor at West Virginia University. Cale, a polymath, is chiefly a philosopher, trained in physics, political science, mathematics, economics, and numerous other disciplines, holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, an M.B.A., a B.A. in political science, and is ABD in economics, and is a notable ethicist. The work of his being examined is “The Simplest Possible Universe,” a monograph that synthesizes ancient Greek and Scholastic styles of thinking with modern physical insight. The work is striking, in that its brand of creativity is not common in modern intellectual enterprises. Retaining the good sense and substance of modern physics, Cale employs modes of thinking that are on loan from times nearly forgotten. The objective of this blog series is to deconstruct the monograph, examine its components, and assess the merits of each, redoubting where possible. At the end, if efficacious, an attempt at resynthesis of the project, consequent upon the conceptual retooling, will be made. Continue reading
Examining and Thinking Through “The Simplest Possible Universe”
This is the first in a series of blog posts about a work done by Dr. David Lee Cale, professor at West Virginia University. Cale, a polymath, is chiefly a philosopher, trained in physics, political science, mathematics, economics, and numerous other disciplines, holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, an M.B.A., a B.A. in political science, and is ABD in economics, and is a notable ethicist. The work of his being examined is “The Simplest Possible Universe,” a monograph that synthesizes ancient Greek and Scholastic styles of thinking with modern physical insight. The work is striking, in that its brand of creativity is not common in modern intellectual enterprises. Retaining the good sense and substance of modern physics, Cale employs modes of thinking that are on loan from times nearly forgotten. The objective of this blog series is to deconstruct the monograph, examine its components, and assess the merits of each, redoubting where possible. At the end, if efficacious, an attempt at resynthesis of the project, consequent upon the conceptual retooling, will be made. Continue reading