What, Why & How do we Know ?
Discounting the intellectual snobbery that this is about Dan Brown, as indeed the reviewer himself suggests, it is worth a read. The headline is: “Dan Brown’s New Novel Pushes Atheism and Endorses Intelligent Design … Wait …What?“ I’ve not digested the whole yet (and there are secondary references to follow-up) but my own position is … Continue reading “Teleology Without a God”
I was lucky enough to have a piece published in The New Humanist, ostensibly as a review of Dan Dennett’s “Bacteria to Bach and Back” (B2BnB), but majoring on the memetics of argumentation. The focus is Dennett’s bet that despite no longer spending his time arguing with his critics on their terms, his style of … Continue reading “Memes and Cultural Evolution”
A collection of interesting links I’ve had bookmarked for a while: Yaïr Pinto in Aeon: When you split the brain, do you split the person? The Divided Brain is an important topic to understand better, too easily dismissed amid misunderstood myths. Ben Medlock in Aeon: The body is the missing link for truly intelligent machines. … Continue reading “The Tensions Between Science and Psychology – recent bookmarks”
Hearing a news story this morning from BBC’s science correspondent Tom Feilden, apologetically reporting a study finding value in Neuro-Linguistic-Programming (NLP) behind treatment for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME) … [Today] on #r4today: The Lightening Process surprises researchers by appearing to improve outcomes for children suffering from CFS/ME — Tom Feilden (@BBCTomFeilden) September 20, 2017 Here … Continue reading “Neuro-Linguistic-Programming and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”
Sam Harris conversation with Thomas Metzinger in the Waking Up Podcast. Hat tip to Terry Waites for the link as a conversation starter: Brain dump only whilst listening (few sentences / little editing) : In usual “naive” Sam Harris way the conversation skips superficially across many topics, and Metzinger is himself highly politically motivated. These days … Continue reading “Progress in Dialogue – Thomas Metzinger meets Sam Harris”
There was a time when I followed John Brockman’s Edge regularly, it was a great way to pick up relationships between living thinkers you already knew and admired and others you didn’t, from across unlimited intellectual fields. The great thing about the annual Edge Question is that apart from the open question, there is no … Continue reading “Hidden Concepts – Edge 2017 – Let’s play Connections instead of Bulldog”
Here (#3) below is the David Hamill piece from the Free Thought Prophet blog that triggered the two … previous (#1) … posts (#2) as well as a lot of comments and tweets. Most of my earlier thoughts concerned the Jerry Coyne post given as a reference and the linked Dan Dennett Big Think video. … Continue reading “Dennett and the “Little People” #3″
Recasting the arguments from the previous post, it’s comments – and a twitter thread of disagreements. How this started: Public tweet – FTP – recommending “Brother Hamill’s great blog”. Public response – Me – a two word response “[great, but] wrong, though”. All arguments / debates start with a gap or a point of contention. … Continue reading “Dennett and the “Little People” – Round#2″