What, Why & How do we Know ?
Progress on Priorities A strangely productive week since my previous “Resolution” post – I’m obviously focussed on the right priorities at last. Namely getting my “technical content” better organised for review. Started using free versions of Academia.edu and Orcid.org – posting some of my key (older and/or half-drafted pages and pdf’s – mostly just testing … Continue reading “Attention as a Moral Act”
(Just a holding page for content starting Nov 2023 on establishing a properly skeptical freethought environment. Note a page, not a post, and no public link yet.) My (relevant) bio: Born 1956 / raised NE England – Cultural Christian (naïve atheist) from childhood. Humanist from age 22/23 (Humanist wedding aged 25 in 1981, etc.) 45+ … Continue reading “Freethought Project”
That damn meme again. “Dennett denies consciousness”. No he doesn’t. (I already part reviewed Dennett’s memoir recently and added links to a few other sympathetic reviews which all naturally included summaries of his important works. Apart from one footnote of my own on a reconciliation of his physicalist determinist compatibilism with informational subjective pan-proto-psychism (*), … Continue reading “The Illusion of Dennett’s Illusion – Again.”
#EMFAMBE Last couple of days – Sarah Freiesleben – “Shaping Human Centered Progress” – posted a recommendation on LinkedIn for the thinking of Iain McGilchrist (of whom I’m a big fan, as you know) and it drew a lot of flak in reaction to the old left-right-brained-people suggestion (though of course she never actually said that). … Continue reading “Snowden and McGilchrist”
I’ve considered the idea of Physics as Information Processing as central to my work for as long as I can remember [As early as Jan 2002 this post on “Quantum Computing” makes reference to information processing as fundamental.]. The last few years, my “Systems Thinking” – thinking of anything as a system, in terms of functional … Continue reading “Chris Fields – Physics as Information Processing”
No, he’s not. He does not say that “Consciousness is an Illusion”. End of. In short: Dennett’s position is that: Consciousness and conscious will are as real and evolved as anything else in the world. The powerful (useful, but misleading) ILLUSION is the Cartesian theatre / video screen with the homunculus viewer / user as … Continue reading “Is Dennett an Illusionist?”
I’ve already documented my take that there really is no longer any mystery behind consciousness and our conscious (free) will – my simplest single reference being Mark Solms “Hidden Spring”. Surely, massively valuable in its own right to have solved that long-standing human riddle? And, more importantly, it takes away a massive source of confusion … Continue reading “Free Energy Principle Explains Consciousness”
Picking up from the previous post, where I’d picked-up an apparent mapping between Pirsig and a model combining Vervaeke and Henriques, I’ve been looking at some specific recommended sources – what is it they specifically bring to the party? Vervaeke I know in so far as he has a whole Patreon-sponsored YouTube series called “Awakening … Continue reading “Vervaeke and Henriques”
A post from @Kubbaj on The Active Inference Discord Server described as “a combo of Vervaeke, Henriques and Friston” In that “C-B-L-M” axis I couldn’t fail to see a version of Pirsig’s levels of static patterns (of value or quality) – not to mention the participatory / perceptual starting point “into” the system at its … Continue reading “Mapping Vervaeke to Pirsig in Active Inference?”
It’s a book I borrowed from Dennis Finlayson, so I scanned the summary pages before returning: James R Simms “A Measure of Knowledge- Ch8 Epilogue” I’d not heard of Simms or his work before (Copyright 1968) but it contains lots of the stuff I’ve been using these last 20 years. The references include Bohr, Ashby, … Continue reading “James R Simms – A Measure of Knowledge”