Too Much Information, Professor

Neuroscientist Sebastian Seung talks about his feelings in the TED Talk “I am my Connectome”. The sum total and pattern of synaptic connections between our neurons (of course this ignores other non-neuronal mental activity) is a huge and complex graph. (Billions of neurons with thousands of connections each … he mentions some stats.) At the … Continue reading “Too Much Information, Professor”

Terry Eagleton

Just read my first Terry Eagleton prompted by the Laurie Taylor interview referred to by Sam, and a number of earlier references on MoQ Discuss. First “The Meaning of Life” followed immediately by “Reason, Faith and Revolution” In the former, his Alexei Sayle-esque stand-up routine targets every variant of the use of the words meaning and … Continue reading “Terry Eagleton”

What a Difference 4 Years Make

Talking of Australian intellectals as we were very briefly in the previous post, by some spooky coincidence, I’ve been reading Bennett & Hacker “Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience” for the last couple of days. Hacker is P M S Hacker the Oxford philosopher, whereas M R Bennett is chair of physiology in Sydney. Where to start … Continue reading “What a Difference 4 Years Make”

Religion Does Pollute Science

Thanks to PZ Myers for the links to this Jerry Coyne piece on Francis Collins (Obama’s choice for NIH Director) lecture at UC Berkeley. (And a review by Sam Harris.) Dr. Collins will have more responsibility for biomedical and health-related research than any person on earth, controlling an annual budget of more than $30 billion. … Continue reading “Religion Does Pollute Science”

Enlightened MBA ?

It’s fair to say that doing an MBA back in the late 1980’s was instrumental in developing my focus on the psychological aspects of the question, “What, why and how do we know?” I’ve referenced my dissertation once or twice before and acknowledged the input from the tutors in the “organizational behavioural” subjects. Of course … Continue reading “Enlightened MBA ?”

Zeitgeist Update

This is a (near) verbatim copy of a MOQ Discuss forum post of mine from a month or so ago. I caused some offence last year when I dissed Zeitgeist (2007) without having seen this Zeitgeist Addendum (2008). I have since seen this version too. It is pretty comprehensive and on the money 😉 as you say. I still … Continue reading “Zeitgeist Update”

Who Built The Simulation ?

This New Scientist article on the Intelligent Design crowd reinforcing the dualism of mind stuff distinct from material stuff, as part of a theism vs Darwinism debate passed me by in my recent move a couple of months ago. I’m pretty clearly a physicalist, a non-reductive materialist … both material-stuff and meaning-stuff arising from the … Continue reading “Who Built The Simulation ?”

Blog and Dennett Update

As mentioned in the previous post, I’ve had an enforced hiatus from blogging due to the relocation to Oslo. Two things to note: (1) After doing some essential overhauls just before going offline in the US, I had added a “simpler” previous posts & archives link to the side-bar, and noted slowness in the rendering … Continue reading “Blog and Dennett Update”