What, Why & How do we Know ?
Dean’s BA Dissertation “Pragmatism and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: A study of Robert Pirsig’s contribution to the Pragmatism of Peirce, James and Dewey.” is excellent. It points out explicitly how Pirsig’s MoQ adds constructively to Peirce, Dewey and James’ “American Pragmatism”, and more than that reminds us how far the “anything you like” caricature … Continue reading “Dean Summers Pragmatism”
Having finished Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, it was a toss-up between more Dennett or David Chalmers (or something completely different like Barbara Tuchman, still unread). Chalmers name-drops an impressive list of acknowledgments, but is brave enough to point out that Hofstadter (his original mentor) and Dennett largely disagree with him. I think he overhypes the exciting … Continue reading “David Chalmers Consciousness”
I’m trying to draft a couple of “considered” posts for here and for MoQ-Discuss. I’ve just about finished Dennett’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”. It’s so good that perversely I’ve made almost no annotations, because it’s all note-worthy and in need of re-reading in future. I’ve blogged a number of points already, but there are some important … Continue reading “Important But Jumbled Thoughts”
Recently I commented on Owen Barfield labouring his point about the mental illusion of seeing an intangible rainbow, when his real point was that “seeing” a tree was no less a mental trick of “representation”, as is even the additional mental picture we create from the other sensory perceptions available to us for the apparently … Continue reading “An Illusion is Nevertheless Real”
Sad given how good Dennett’s writing is, that he has to devote almost a third of “Darwin’s Dangreous Idea” to refuting doubts about Darwinism created by Gould and Lewontin’s original paper and Gould’s high profile public views on evolutionary mechanisms. Burgess Shale – the boy who cried wolf, etc. Gould was someone I read ten … Continue reading “Stephen Jay Gould”
After skimming Dennett’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”, I suggested earlier that I already knew it from secondary sources. Well actually no, there is lots of new material for me with fresh links to my threads. Something Rather Than Nothing – as a pan-Darwinist I never had any trouble with the evolutionary explanation of life the universe … Continue reading “Spoke Too Soon”
Completed Hofstadter and Dennett’s “The Mind’s I” on the way back to Perth, Oz. Although it peters out a bit, with Hofstadter’s “Conversation with Einstein’s Brain” there are still more gems in there. After Lem’s excellent “Non Serviam” mentioned previously, we still have Ray Smullyan’s “Is God a Taoist”, John Searle’s “Minds, Brains and Programs”, … Continue reading “Mind’s I – Round-up”
Still reading Hofstadter and Dennett’s “The Mind’s I” collection when I get free moments. There are several extracts from the work of Stanislaw Lem, of whom I’d never previously heard, which actually pre-date Hofstadter’s own “Godel, Escher, Bach”. One “book”, “Non Serviam” taken from Lem’s 1971 work “A Perfect Vacuum – Perfect Reviews of Non-Existent … Continue reading “Stanislaw Lem”