What, Why & How do we Know ?
A strange month – more like 6 weeks – with only a single post, thanks to some new exciting work I’ve been getting into, and in which I will continue to be buried for some months if not years to come. I’ll share what I can – confidences permitting. [Aside – Last weekend, Sat and … Continue reading “Rushdie’s Windmills – All Too Real?”
Often cast in the physicalism vs pan-psychism sense, it’s an argument I’ve left long behind for my “information realism”. Many reacting recently to Kastrup’s Idealism / Pan-psychism as the kind of stuff “only stoned hippies could contemplate as real”. Myself, I get why he’s contemplating (promoting) it, but it’s really just word-play in the end … Continue reading “Realism vs Idealism Saga Continues”
I first mentioned “the baloney generator” back in May 2003 – actually in this hand-crafted-html (!) review of Steven Pinker’s Blank Slate in December 2002. “The conscious mind — the self or soul — is a spin doctor, not the commander in chief.” The accusation being that the rational mind generates narratives – any old … Continue reading “Baloney Generator #2 – The Most Stunning Result.”
Fascinating Aeon article from 2016 by Huw Price (someone I really ought to read more) and Ken Wharton. (Hat tip to Judy Stout for re-sharing and editor Corey Powell.) I’ve probably read and been influenced by this piece before, but it’s fairly long (5300 words) and I did a thorough read through this morning. First … Continue reading “Superdeterminism Sucks”
Iain McGilchrist’s film “The Divided Brain” was released last week. The film one half of your brain doesn’t want you to see. An hour and a quarter of anyone’s time well spent. [Full disclosure: I have written positively about McGilchrist’s work before, and contributed to crowdfunding of the film project.] “The halves of our brain … Continue reading “The Divided Brain – a Director’s Cut”
Quite a few of my recent posts have been focussed on the idealism <> realism relationship – from the original reality and appearances saga, where we discover truth vs seeming goes back as far as pre-Socratic Parmenides – to Hegel/Bradley vs Russell/Moore in the late 19th C / early 20th C. One reason for it … Continue reading “Taking Idealism for a Spin”
Below is the introductory section taken from Bobby Matherne’s web pages on “Doyletics” the would-be science he named after Doyle Henderson. Doyletic’s focus is the processes of learned behaviour – and a self-help therapy called “speed tracing” to unlearn perceived problems – with little effort spent on defining the objects of our attention. These objects … Continue reading “Introduction to Doyletics”
An interesting edition of The Sacred Podcast with @TheosElizabeth inteviewing @SethAnzisca about his book “Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo” Tweeted a few responses as I listened – it resonated with so many of my own agenda items. This one merges the opening and closing thoughts: “Skepticism of (the content of) … Continue reading “Sacred Scepticism”