What, Why & How do we Know ?
Mentioned Thomas Metzinger a few times before, so was interested in his new book. Sadly expensive as a book, so initially on the unbought as well as unread library list, but in fact MIT Press Direct has a free online copy: [Love that version of the image of the blind men getting to grips with … Continue reading “Metzinger’s – Elephant and the Blind”
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”
Anil Seth’s Faraday Lecture has generated a fair bit of chat. I was initially a bit too unimpressed, not enough originality – probably turned off previously by his use of “hallucination”. In fact he is synthesising many of the same sources I am. Nothing new under the sun again (from my perspective). The notes below … Continue reading “Seth is OK”
Posting to capture this link to presentations from the 2022 “Tucson” science of consciousness conference – in particular this one on various “dual-aspect monisms” by Harald Atmanspacher. I think what I’m proposing is similar to his psychophysically neutral monism involving a third neutral layer underlying both the mental and physical. He calls it Unus Mundus. … Continue reading “Unus Mundus”
This year’s Edge question 2012 is: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION? Many of the responses don’t really answer the question, but there are hundreds of responses on many subjects. These are a few that caught my eye – almost all mean further reading! Some are just interesting to see in this … Continue reading “The Edge 2012 Q&A”
Some important threads on giving serious consideration to anthropocentric views of physics, rather than simply being dismissive of “fine tuning” arguments and the like. [Previous posts, Goldilocks, Island links … etc.] Saw these quotes in the preface to Thomas Metzinger’s “The Ego Tunnel – The Science of Mind and the Myth of the Self” “Any … Continue reading “Intuition is Anthropocentric”
The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. A CalTech based group I’d not noticed before. I see Dennett is president-elect, and Chalmers and Metzinger are members at large, Ned Block and Christof Koch are past presidents. Next conference is June 2006, St Annes College Oxford.