Robin Hanson on the Overcoming Bias blog links to Scott Aaronson’s review of The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil (which I’ve read, and whom I watched deliver a speech at the first Singularity Summit).
There’s a lot I could say about that review, and I will, but right now I just want to point out [...]
Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category
Aaronson on technology
Posted in Environment, Philosophy, Science, Technology on 7 September 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Faith that the sun will rise
Posted in Philosophy on 26 July 2008 | Leave a Comment »
When engaging believers, one is often confronted with the one of the following claims: “you have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow,” or “you have faith that your chair will hold you up when you sit on it.” The purpose of these kinds of accusations is to equivocate between two levels of uncertainty, pulling [...]
One last shot at the Argument from Design
Posted in Philosophy, Religion on 25 July 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The most common argument for the existence of God these days seems to be the Argument from Design. Other arguments have come and gone, but the Design Argument remains popular. I want to finally put this argument to rest.
The argument has several variations, but it usually points out that in order for life to exist, [...]
The most unique argument for the existence of God that I’ve ever heard
Posted in Philosophy, Science on 14 July 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Recently, I came across a believer who offered a unique argument for the existence of God. He had been reading about the beam splitter experiments that confirm quantum entanglement. Specifically, he had read about the delayed-choice quantum eraser, where they don’t “observe” the system until some time after the experiment, and the nature of the [...]
On arguments and transubstantiation
Posted in Philosophy, Religion on 12 July 2008 | 2 Comments »
This is the most brilliant exchange on Pharyngula so far:
Phil #306 wrote:
Most of the Email P.Z. received appeared to be well reasoned. I didn’t see any crazy death threats. It is what I expected to see.
Since Phil is a Catholic, he may have a valid point. You see, the substance of the letters was indeed [...]
On the mystery of human consciousness
Posted in Culture, Philosophy, Psychology on 4 July 2008 | Leave a Comment »
To this day many people believe that consciousness is something special. It doesn’t fit within the natural world. It’s mysterious to us, therefore it must have a mysterious source. It seems that everything is magical to ignorant people.
Our forebears believed that an elan vital, a vital force, distinguished living things from nonliving things. It infused [...]
What constitutes evidence
Posted in Philosophy on 25 June 2008 | Leave a Comment »
In my last post I pointed out that evidence gleaned from experiments must be used to arbitrate between the possible explanations of an observation. But what constitutes evidence?
A proper experiment changes one variable in the system, and valid evidence is the observation of the final state of the system after an experiment is performed. If [...]
Evidence for the existence of God
Posted in Philosophy on 25 June 2008 | 2 Comments »
Believers tend to be confused about what constitutes evidence for the existence of God. The believer might say something like, “My mother had advanced-stage cancer and it spontaneously went into remission. How else could that have happened? It must have been God.”
The problem is that his mother’s cancer going into remission is not evidence for [...]
