What, Why & How do we Know ?
I previously devoted a whole post and made several other references to a new book by A T Bollands “Life the Universe and Consciousness“. Although addressing many of the same issues, problems with physical science, which are driving other current philosophers in the direction of panpsychism, Bollands is a “Universal Lifer”. In his book we … Continue reading “Life the Universe and Consciousness #2”
Prompted to post this morning thanks to the click-bait statement “Schrödinger spread the misconception that life works against entropy” in this tweet: Schrödinger spread the misconception that life works against entropy, but there is a way of thinking at biological process as efficient entropy machines, see this dream-team paper 👇 @carlorovelli @drkjjeffery #BobPollack https://t.co/okJq99TR1A — … Continue reading “Life Versus Entropy”
I’m into the final third of Smolin’s “Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution” – his summary of lessons learned from his thesis. As Sabine Hossenfelder’s review points out, scientifically, the tone is speculative, suggesting more work and experimentation needed to complete the job. That’s true, he’s not making wild claims. “He deserves applause for also mentioning the Montevideo … Continue reading “Smolin – Hoping for the Reality of Particles?”
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”
Part of my slow working through Mumford’s “Russell on Metaphysics“, I have flipped back to recap the first 5 chapters. Having been left with even deeper nagging doubts that I was right to leave Russell behind after all, I need to check my thinking by capturing the key thoughts. A sanity check. To be clear, … Continue reading “Idealism & Russell’s Metaphysics”
Interesting set of unrelated conversations throwing-up unexpected connections in the past week. After the recent exchange on pan-psychism ended with Massimo Pigliucci conceding …. I like res informatica. a bit less speculative than panpsychism. — Massimo Pigliucci (@mpigliucci) January 6, 2019 …. I found in my reading of Mumford in connection with Russell’s metaphysics as … Continue reading “Dual Aspect Monism”
I said, when reading Aldous Huxley back in 2007, that I was having trouble seeing the wood for the trees – what specific points Huxley was making – even though it was already a given that some kind of perennial philosophy is what we are dealing with in real life. Since before then my approach is … Continue reading “Perennialism”
Quite normally these days, headlines deliberately mislead – it’s called click-bait – and so often these days “Multiverse” is that click-bait. Total bollox, but it sells clicks. Trouble is, when it’s the headline, it’s very hard to tell if the piece itself is saying anything useful that may or may not depend on any multiverse … Continue reading “More Multiverse Bollox”
This is just a holding post. Already in my previous post on Carlo Rovelli, I was overdue a fuller review. Since then I’ve been reading Sean Carroll, and finding myself reading backwards, from the index of key topics and chapter headings. The reality is that every current philosophical physicist I read, I find enormous implicit … Continue reading “The Matrix Cometh”
I’m reading my way through Carlo Rovelli’s “The Order of Time” (Finished Part 1 of 3) and finding it full of items that resonate. Not least because I already loved his “Reality is Not What it Seems” but also because I have been joining up the dots with the work of David Deutsch and Erik … Continue reading “Well we never! PoPoMo Physics Again.”