Reading Time: 5 minutes Inspired by a recent post on Philosophy, et cetera, I want to talk a little about zombies and what they imply for a materialist theory of the mind. When I say “zombie,” I don’t mean the shambling, flesh-eating undead of horror films. This thought experiment is about philosophical zombies, which are a different beast altogether. […]
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On the Possibility of Perfect Humanity
Reading Time: 4 minutes Last month, in “An Impoverished Infinity“, I wrote about the strange limitations that many Christian believers impose on God. These theists believe that God was not wise or powerful enough to create a world with intelligent beings that did not also include earthquakes, diseases and other disasters – as if the infinite space of possible […]
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An Impoverished Infinity
Reading Time: 3 minutes In Christian theology, God is presented as the omnipotent creator, able to bring about literally any world it is possible to imagine. His power has no limits, he never suffers from weakness or fatigue, and he possesses the omniscient knowledge necessary to shape the world according to his overarching plan. Or so Christian apologists say, […]
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Eternal Moments
Reading Time: 3 minutes Without an eternal soul our existence is truly meaningless in the long run which is all that matters. Eventually your effect on others, nations and the world subsides, even if you are Alexander the Great. The earth will cease to exist, the universe will eventually cease to support any life. It will be as if […]
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The Moving Light of Time
Reading Time: 6 minutes “In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time — for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.” —C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters In the above excerpt, C.S. Lewis expresses […]
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Blockbuster
Reading Time: 5 minutes A Response to Ned Block’s “Blockhead” In a classic 1981 paper titled “Psychologism and Behaviourism“, the philosopher Ned Block proposed a thought experiment that has been dubbed “Blockhead” in his honor. Block’s experiment has to do with the Turing test, itself a classic proposal on how to test for the presence of intelligence in a […]
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The 29th Philosophers' Carnival
Reading Time: 3 minutes The great Library at Daylight Atheism has been outfitted for an auspicious occasion. Merry bunting drapes the tall shelves of books, balloons congregate near the ceiling, and waiters quietly circulate bearing trays of drinks. Already the symposium is in full swing, and philosophers from every era and society in human history are circulating around the […]
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On Free Will V: Moral Responsibility
Reading Time: 6 minutes The last and arguably most important question of free will, one that is closely intertwined with the nature of choice, is the issue of moral responsibility. What is it that makes us responsible for what we do? Most traditional views, especially dualist views, hold that for a person to be morally responsible for an action […]
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On Free Will IV: The Nature of Choice
Reading Time: 6 minutes What does it mean to make a choice? This question is at the heart of many of the debates over free will, and justifiably so. It may seem simple initially, but the more deeply one considers it, the knottier it becomes. The basic dilemma seems to be this: Every event that occurs either had sufficient […]
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On Free Will III: Outsmarting the Prediction Machine
Reading Time: 8 minutes Clearly, what is immaterial in the human mind can influence the physical world, or our acts of will and understanding would be without effect. If our will is free these physical effects are not wholly predictable. — Stephen M. Barr, The Atheism of the Gaps A merchant in Baghdad sent his servant to the market. […]