Some things I’m reading and reviewing, but squeezed for time, so just bookmarking here:
Tom Clark, making a defence of Determinism.
My position (after Dennett) is that the problem is not that physical science is determinist, but that people interpret that fact too narrowly and reductively, to the exclusion of other “emergent” causal chains.
“Super-Determinism Sucks” as we’ve said before [and I see – reminds me -this is the source of my Kevin Mitchell / Tom Clark “debate” I need to write-up also.]
Adam Weisberg on “Ontic Vagueness”
Very interesting on where Ontic vagueness is truly Ontic rather than really always being Epistemic?
Fascinating arguments, on identity (self-identity) and a free universe. but going right back to the basic something-rather-than-nothing or one-thing-not-the-other thinking. Again much used here. [Post Note: See AJ’s comment below and the new post he refers to at Staggering Implications. This review has turned into a bigger exercise … because it’s so related to what I’m already writing … and I’ve been under the weather a couple of days. Ho Hum.]
Katherine Cross “Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (almost) Never Mix”
H/T Ulrike Hahn on Mastodon for the link. Absolutely fits my agenda:
“social media are not fit for producing [healthy] political change [in fact it’s degenerate]”
[Need to Add: Dave Snowden’s recent series of posts]
Thanks for the pointer to Ontic Vagueness. I’ve saved the PDF for later reading. Whitehead often talked about the significance of vagueness, and the question of what “A=A” really means has come up in a paper I’m now reviewing (my blog post about it is almost ready) about Whitehead’s concept of “simple location.” The paper has something interesting to say about dynamical systems theory, so stay tuned!
Ed. Here is that post AJ refers to:
https://staggeringimplications.wordpress.com/2025/01/22/emergentism-dynamical-systems-and-simple-location/
Yes, that “self-identical” A=A had me baffled for a while, but I see now how it fits with those existing thoughts.
I’m about 2/3 through making notes / a review of that paper to respond to the author (on Mastodon)
Shall be fascinated to see what you’re writing too 🙂
Super interesting post AJ – ty & thx for linking @psybertron. It is remarkable seeing Nagarjuna’s rejection of self-identity almost 2k years ago, where we can only say it clearly in Western philosophy now. (Seeing some of your other posts AJ – would you say, the Overton window has been shifted via QM? But there’s also something about needing to work through the history of ideas, to generate the philosophical language that lets us say new things. I’m not a Hegelian, but there’s maybe something to that…) Anyway – the Western path to reject self-identity is different but it’s hard not to feel humbled.
I didn’t write on ANW’s Process & Reality, but I wrote and cut a section on Bergson, perhaps similar in some respects. Bergson has some nice statements on the rejection of identity, esp in Intro to Metaphysics, but since he’s trying to do philosophy positively (experience what reality is), you get somewhere different than my negative approach (reject human ideas that cannot be true of reality, if reality is free of external constraints – and find yourself rejecting so much that it gets interesting – because … what’s left?)
Thanks, Adam, glad you found the post interesting.
I guess you could say that QM has shifted the Overton window, but usually that expression means opening up the ability to say unacceptable things by getting them out there in the public eye and “normalizing” them. I would say that QM has forced a re-think, but in a different way.
I keep hearing about Bergson. Probably I should put him on my reading list.
Hopefully you’ve both noticed that Bergson is big on my agenda recently too.
https://www.psybertron.org/?s=Bergson&sort=newest
And of course Whitehead was very influenced by Bergson.
I had forgotten your recent mention of Bergson; this was before the references to him started piling up. I think it was just at the beginning, before I began to notice. Thanks for the reminder!