2. Is the whole truth inaccessible? A case for invincible ignorance
Outline:
1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3 A sceptical hiatus?
4. Consciousness and introspection
5. The computational approach to mind
6. From solipsism to body, soul, God and world
7. Does the scientific method save epistemology?
8. Discussion
9. Conclusion
1. Abstract
Rene Descartes stood at the boundary between Christian Scholastic philosophy and the secular philosophy of subsequent ages. Scholasticism still enjoys standing in the Roman Catholic Church. It sees philosophy as the search for truth by the “pure light of human reason”. This notion may have grown from Aristotle’s notion of the “active intellect” and Christian appeal to God as the ultimate epistemological guarantor (Shields 2016, Descartes 1641, Lumbreras n.d.). Christopher Shields (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): The Active Mind of De Anima III 5, Manley, D. B., & Taylor, C. S. (1996): Descartes Meditations - Trilingual Edition, P. Lumbreras: The Twenty-Four Fundamental Theses of Official Catholic Philosophy [Sacred Congregtion of Studies, 24 July 1914]
Scholasticism relies heavily on a priori methods. In his Meditations Descartes tried to break out of the Scholastic mould. He turned to the evidence of consciousness, but still discounted sense knowledge. The advent of science introduced evidence and a posteriori methods into the epistemological mix. Many scientists feel that this expansion promises to enable us to understand “everything” so that some talk of “theories of everything”.
I argue in this essay that there is a logical limit to our knowledge of the world which is implicit in the scientific method of hypothesis and testing. We make hypotheses about what is happening in regions where we cannot see, and test them by exploring their consequences to see if they correctly predict phenomena that we can see. A successful test does not necessarily guarantee a correct hypothesis but a failed test tells us that the hypothesis must be revised.
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2. Introduction
In his Meditations, Descartes (1596-1650) took an introspective approach to assuring himself that he exists, a position usually summed up in the Latin phrase cogito ergo sum. The actual statement of this position in Meditation II reads Ego sum, ego existo, quoties a me profertur, vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum, which has a “real time” connotation absent in the standard expression. Cogito (the present first person indicative of the verb “to think”) may mean “I think” as well as “I am thinking”. The longer Latin phrase may translate “It is necessarily true that I am, I exist, as often as this is said or conceived by me”.
The question then arises: Can Descartes both think that he exists and reflect on his existence simultaneously. I argue, by analogy with a computing machine, that this may not be possible. I then go on to suggest that there are fundamental processes in the universe permanently hidden from us because they are in effect fully occupied sustaining the observable world and have no spare resources to explain to us how they do it.
As an example of the difficulty of knowing what is happening in the invisible world, I quote the “cosmological constant problems” which arises because cosmological observations and quantum computations of a parameter known as the cosmological constant differ by a huge factor, suggesting that there are processes in the universe that are inaccessible to us and our hypothetical reconstruction of them is still a long way from reality.
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3. A sceptical hiatus?
Sceptical philosophy seems to have fallen into two discrete periods, ancient and modern. The foundation of ancient scepticism is attributed to Pyrrho (c. 350 - 270) (Bett 2018). We have no literary remains of Pyrrho, but he established a strong tradition laced with many anecdotes about his eccentric behaviour. Pyrrho himself may or may not have been a “Pyrrhonic” sceptic. He visited India with Alexander the Great, and it was probably there, in contact with Indian philosophers, that he acquired two characteristics of the skeptic way, epoche, avoiding specific opinions, and its (hopeful) consequence, ataraxia, equanimity, perhaps analogous to the Buddhist nirvana. Richard Bett (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): Pyrrho
Skepticism seems to have gone quiet after the second century CE (Vogt, 2018). Bolyard nevertheless suggests that many thinkers in the medieval period has skepticism on their minds. One reason, perhaps, for the lack of overt skeptics was the sheer political power of Christianity whose dogma dominated opinion from the time of Constantine until the Enlightenment, more than a thousand years of complacent certainty. Descartes and many other early thinkers had to be very careful not to upset the Inquisition which periodically promoted orthodoxy by torturing and killing the unorthodox. Katya Vogt (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): Ancient Skepticism
In this period the institutional Church became very wealthy, powerful and inevitably, corrupt, creating the conditions for the conflagration ignited in 1517 when Luther published 95 theses about indulgences with the intention of starting a disputation rather than a revolution. Theological uncertainty spread and Descartes, an educated Christian, was motivated to apply controlled scepticism in a program to reestablish certainty based not on faith but on a philosophy not yet sharply distinguished from science. This project continued, taking in Galileo, Newton, and all the thinkers and artists who contributed to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and remains a live issue in philosophy.
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4. Consciousness and introspection
The organ of animal mind is a nervous system which typically comprises billions of input and output transducers coupled through a hierarchical information processing system concentrated in the brain. This system is an extremely complex electrochemical process executed (in the human case) by trillions of functioning units comprising proteins and other molecules: neurons, synapses (programmable junctions between neurons), axons (wiring), and many types of support cells. The details of this system are only accessible with electron microscopy and modern biochemical methods. Until the advent of modern technical means in the last century or so, our only access to mental function was through individual introspection and reporting.
We now have a good grip on neurophysiology and computational methods have been devised to model small patches of neural function so there is little doubt about the basic neurophysiological mechanisms of mind. The enormous detail involved means that the largest existing computational models still perform quite poorly on specifically human tasks like the production and interpretation of language. Linguistic communication is now understood to be one of the most characteristic functions of the human mind and to involve a large proportion of the brain (Heyes 2018). Much philosophy is concerned with the nature of language. Cecilia Heyes: Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking
The central focus of modern cognitive science appears to be consciousness, and there is continuing debate about whether or not it can be explained by neurophysiology as we know it (Dennett 1992, Damasio 1999, Jaynes 2000, Koch 2004, Revonsuo 2017). Early arguments against the possibility of the empirical study of consciousness include Nagel’s What is it like to be a bat? (Nagel 1974) and Jackson’s Epiphenomenal Qualia (Jackson 1982). Daniel Dennett: Consciousness Explained, Antonio Damasio: The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Jaynes: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Koch: The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, Antti Revonsuo: The Foundations of Consciousness
Before the invention of modern technical means, conscious introspection was the principal method of philosophical psychology. One of its skilled early modern practitioners was William James who bases his Principles of Psychology and Psychology: The Briefer Course on introspection supplemented with early laboratory work on perception (James 1890, 1892). William James: The Principles of Psychology, volume 1
From a cybernetic point of view, consciousness is a feature of our ability to control ourselves, and insofar as all living creatures owe their survival to self-control, that is to some form of intentionality, I assume that it is an ubiquitous feature of life. Even though we are the only ones who philosophise about it, close observers of other animals are often convinced that they are conscious. Self interaction seems even more widespread, causing serious problems to both classical and quantum physicists through infinities associated with the self interaction of fundamental particles. (Branson 2013). Jim Branson: Electron Self Energy Corrections
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5. A computational approach to mind
Here I comment on Descartes search for certainty is his Meditationes de Prima Philosophia in qua Dei existentia et anima humana a corpore distincta demonstratur, first published in Latin in 1641 (Manley and Taylor 1996, op. cit.). This work is a sequel to his Discours de la Méthode Pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences, published in 1637 in French. Here he first wrote the expression Je pense, donc je suis. He repeats this in the Latin Cogito ergo sum in his Principles of Philosophy (1644).
Here I begin with the “extended” version of the Cogito from the Second Meditation, Ego sum, ego existo, quoties a me profertur, vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum. This statement is more consistent with his use of the present participle in the distinction between spirit and matter, res cogitans versus res extensa.
This brings us to a key question: Can Descartes both think that he exists and reflect on his existence simultaneously. Here I argue, by analogy with a computing machine, that this is not possible. The argument goes like this:
1. I ask Descartes Do you exist? He answers: I am thinking, Yes.
2. I ask him what are you thinking. He hesitates. We can imagine that he thinks: What am I thinking? What do I think I am thinking? Am I thinking that I exist? or am I thinking about sitting warm in front of the fire? The situation is fluid until he comes up with a “clear and distinct idea”.
3. Because it is too difficult to deal with a fluid conscious human mind, let us seek clarity by an old cognitive science trick and model Descartes with a digital computer.
4. So I ask the computer by typing: what are you computing?
5. This question, like any other input, interrupts whatever the computer is doing, maybe downloading an email. This happens, for instance, whenever I hit a key on my laptop. The current process is put aside (“stacked”), and taken up again when the machine has dealt with the keystroke, printed a letter on the screen, for instance.
6. Now any action by a computer, such as dealing with my question, is itself a computation. It cannot begin to compute the answer to my question until it has finished the computation necessary to input the question itself.
7. At this point the true (but invisible) answer to my question is 'I have read your question'.
8. The computer will now make this answer visible by writing 'I have read your question', but once this process is complete the true (but invisible) answer to my question is 'I have written “I have read your question” '. This answer will now be made visible by the computer printing it out, but now the true answer to my question will be " I have written ‘I have written “I have read your question” ’ ".
9. The upshot of this is that the computer will never get round to telling me that it was reading an email because it has become involved in an endless process of telling me the details of processing my question.
Clearly this is true for a machine with only one processor, but what if there are two processors? The second processor can watch the first and report on what it is doing. But if we want to know what the second processor is doing, we get caught in the same loop.
10. So neither the machine, nor Descartes, nor myself can say exactly what we are thinking at any moment because we can really only do one thing at a time.
I am sure somebody has said all this before. For want of a name I call it an “invisibility theorem” and would like to imagine that something like this explains why we cannot see the “wave functions” of quantum theory or really read our own minds without expressing our thoughts in “clear and distinct” words.
Is the Cogito still valuable? I think so. Personally I am convinced that I exist. The computer has to deal with its problem “instantaneously”. We have very complex minds and can “multitask” to a certain extent, although texting while driving has often proven fatal. William James discussion of Consciousness and the Self draws attention both to the narrowness of our attention and to the “fringes” which connect our consciousness into a steam (James 1892, pp 151-216). James might say, supporting Descartes, the every conscious thought carries a fringe of I exist. Our thought processes are much more complex than any computer. James (1892): Psychology: The Briefer Course
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6. From solipsism to body, soul, God and world
Let us assume that Descartes’ cogito works so I exist, Descartes is convinced that he exists, and every other conscious being can reach the same conclusion, although the Descartes “proof” has raised many problems for philosophers ever since (Hintikka 1962). But what about the rest of the world? Descartes still has a few steps to go before he has conquered scepticism, first to show that he has a body distinct from his soul, second to show that God exists, and third to show that God takes care of epistemology. Jaako Hintikka: Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?
The pleasure he expresses in the second meditation shows that he thinks he has found a universal first principle for epistemology but unfortunately, from a public empiricist point of view, his principle is effectively hidden.
This problem with consciousness was later made very clear by Nagel with his bat (Nagel 1974). A bat, presumably, knows what it is like to be a bat, just as I know what it is like to be me, but I cannot experience the bat’s consciousness of itself, any more than you can experience my consciousness of myself. Thomas Nagel: What is it like to be a bat?
The leading idea in empirical science is that the data is public, so that everybody in the community can share it and share their conceptions of what it means. The private data of consciousness cannot, in principle, be shared in this way. We can all talk about our consciousness, however, and convince one another that we exist, but here the Meditations tend to fade away from the high point of the cogito and become weak. By thinking about the weakness, however, I hope to point to interesting consequences of the invisibility theorem.
Having established the cogito, Descartes takes what appears to a modern empiricist to be a step in the wrong direction by launching a sceptical attack on sensation with the wax story (Morris 2011). Katherine J. Morris: The Second Meditation: Unimaginable bodies and insensible minds
He concludes:
We must then grant that I could not even understand through the imagination what this piece of wax is, and that it is my mind alone which perceives it. . . .
But what must particularly be observed is that its perception is neither an act of vision, nor of touch, nor of imagination, and has never been such although it may have appeared formerly to be so, but only an intuition of the mind, which may be imperfect and confused as it was formerly, or clear and distinct as it is at present, according as my attention is more or less directed to the elements which are found in it, and of which it is composed.
The purpose of the wax story it to claim the primacy of intellect, a very Scholastic move. This, he believes, supports his claim that clear and distinct ideas must be true, and further, that his clear and distinct idea of God proves to him that God exists (Meditation III).
This seems reminiscent of Anselm’s ‘ontological’ argument (Oppy & Scott 2010, pp 67-81). Finally he assumes that God is benevolent and not an ‘evil demon’, so that we can expect God to guarantee the truth of our ideas. Like most Christians, he overlooks the fact that God also created Satan, the evil deceiver that caused the fall of humanity, so his appeal God as guarantor of epistemological integrity may also be considered weak. Oppy & Scott: Reading Philosophy of Religion
This does not sit well with he earlier contention that he has been frequently deceived. He goes into a long discussion of the relationship between intellect and will to explain the fact of error and deception (Mediation IV). His argument leaves the way open for scepticism to be a live epistemological issue until the present. Certainly by the time of Hume and his contemporaries the issue was far from resolved (Hume 2000, Book I Part 4). David Hume; A Treatise on Human Nature
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7. Does the scientific method save epistemology?
The question then arises: do Descartes mediations carry us forward from Scholasticism? Although consciousness cannot be observed in a public empirical way it nevertheless has “psychological publicity” insofar as a psychological researcher could ask any number of people if they experience consciousness and the vast majority would say yes.
They could then be asked if they trusted their senses and most would say yes, although sceptical epistemologists could point out how often we are deceived. A strong non-theological argument for the trustworthiness of the senses did not emerge until evolutionists could say that creatures with defective senses would be disadvantaged in the struggle for existence.
For Descartes, God created the world and ultimately becomes the guarantor of truth in the Meditations. From the scientific point of view, evolution created the world, which might give us some sympathy with Descartes’ argument, since we presume selection works against those who have a false view of the world.
Clarity and distinctness serve as a bridge between the cogito, truth and the existence of God. Descartes writes:
I am certain that I am a thing which thinks; but do I not then likewise know what is requisite to render me certain of a truth? Certainly in this first knowledge there is nothing that assures me of its truth, excepting the clear and distinct perception of that which I state, which would not indeed suffice to assure me that what I say is true, if it could ever happen that a thing which I conceived so clearly and distinctly could be false; and accordingly it seems to me that already I can establish as a general rule that all things which I perceive very clearly and very distinctly are true.
This brings us back to the discussion at the beginning if this essay where we replaced Descartes with a digital computer. A digit is a clear and distinct object, and the whole point of digital computation is that the digital states in the machine are clearly distinguished and almost never confused with one another. There is of course some error rate in modern machinery, approximately one bit in a billion billion. This can, where necessary, be taken care with the method of coding prescribed in the mathematical theory of communication invented by Shannon (Shannon 1949). Clarity and distinctness are essential for the communication of information, the opposite of a “whiteout” with no discernible information content. A true unmodulated continuum carries no information. Communication error occurs when symbols are confused. Claude Shannon: Communication in the Presence of Noise
From a modern point of view, clarity and distinctness do not guarantee truth, but Descartes had hit in a very important feature of the world which lies at the foundation of all knowledge and technology: all the observable features of the universe are digitized or quantized, that is they are distinct entities.
Most physicists, from time immemorial, assume that the world is continuous. This seems obvious to the naked eye observer of motion. Even the atomists imagined a continuous background, perhaps ‘a void’. Wherever we look , at all scales, we see distinct objects. Perhaps the most radical modern paradigm change in physical science to date began with Planck’s realization that the interface between matter and radiation is quantized. At the empirical level, attempts to describe the universe in continuous terms failed. Continuity was relegated to the study of probability, although it remains a powerful heuristic technique in science (Kolmogorov 1956). A. N. Kolmogorov: Foundations of the Theory of Probability
This digitization, Descartes’ clear and distinct ideas on the one hand and the physicists quanta of action on the other suggest grounds for an analogy between the world and the mind which is implicit in Kuhn’s idea of scientific paradigm change (Kuhn 1996). We may see the emergence of the scientific method as an epistemological paradigm change, adding a posteriori empirical observation to the a priori Scholasticism that is very evident in Descartes work. It is perhaps no accident that his true genius emerged in mathematics, which is built by deduction from sets of hypothetical axioms all expressed n discrete symbols. Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
A paradigm change is a complete reframing of a question. The next most significant change after the redefinition of science was Darwin’s replacement of creation by divine fiat with a very long and detailed process of evolution (Darwin 1998a, 1998b, 2004). From this change followed the next, the replacement of the immaterial res cogitans with the physical embodiment of mind in the central nervous system. Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species, Darwin: The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Darwin: The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
We all experience consciousness and we all experience the phenomenon commonly known as insight, that is the sudden awareness of the meaning of a body of data. The paradigmatic example of this phenomenon is Archimedes’ establishment of the foundation of hydrostatics when he noted the rise in water level and his loss of weight as he immersed himself in the bath (Lonergan 1992). Each insight is in effect a local paradigm change. Bernard Lonergan: Insight: A Study of Human Understanding
An important question for cognitive science is how such changes occur. How does a neural network create the subjective phenomena of consciousness and insight? Some might argue, along the lines of Dennet, that this question cannot be answered by science. Many others hold out hope that, because the brain is a physical object whose anatomy and physiology are open to study, it must be possible to establish correlates between mental and physical states. Although I have suggested that the invisibility theorem might support this view that consciousness is beyond empirical science, we have, in effect, a “back channel” into conscious mental process, so we might ultimately form and find evidence for neurophysiological hypotheses about the phenomena that Descartes observed in his own mind.
Is this also the case in fundamental physics? Can we look behind the scenes and observe the sources of quanta of action, the physical analogues of clear and distinct ideas? I suggest that we cannot, because here the invisibility theorem is implemented with its full force. Like a computer with a single processor, quantum observations at the fundamental level, like personal observations of ones own consciousness, cannot reach explicit expressions of the underlying process.
Instead we are involved in the guessing game which lies at the heart of the scientific method. We observe the phenomena and try to dream up an explanation. In the case of consciousness, the explanation lies in neurophysiology, and we can observe and test it. Physicists also produce hypotheses and compute their consequences. We have come to trust non-relativistic quantum mechanics because it works so well, even though we cannot observe the complex mathematical formalism that underlies it (Dirac 1983, von Neumann 1983). Paul Dirac: The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, von Neumann; Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
Quantum mechanics laid the foundations for quantum field theory, and physicists are very proud of the progress they have made in proposing plausible explanations of how the world works. There remains an enormous chasm, however, between between particle physics and cosmology. Cosmological observations suggest that a parameter called the cosmological constant is very small. It is so because the overall density of the universe is very small, equivalent to about one hydrogen atom per cubic metre.
Quantum field theorists also calculate a parameter which they call the cosmological constant, and many of their their answers differ from the cosmological observation by a factor of the order of 10100, a number that suggests that that the density of the universe is enormously greater than one hydrogen atom per cubic metre. This must be a contender for the biggest scientific mismatch between observation and theory ever conceived. Hobson et. al. (2006, page 187) see it as "the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics." Something is happening that we cannot see, a challenge which is motivating much research at the interface between quantum theory and cosmology (Weinberg 2000, Wilczek 2008, page 109, Martin 2012). Hobson, Efstathiou & Lasenby: General Relativity: An Introduction for Physicists, Frnk Wilczek: The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces, Jerome Martin: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Cosmological Constant Problem (But Were Afraid To Ask)
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8. Discussion
The cosmological constant problem suggests that the scientific method remains open to scepticism. Building on the enormous political success of physics applied to military problems, the physics community has been awash with money for the last few centuries and has been able to spend freely on instrumentation and employment, but the dream of a comprehensive and consistent cosmology appears to remain out of reach. Some sort of paradigm change is seems necessary.
Descartes started with scepticism, and rightly judged his cogito to be an epistemological step forward. But then, like the ancient sceptics, unable to achieve natural certainty, he returned to theological dogma.
In the First Meditation, Descartes gives concrete reality to his program of doubting by replacing the good God with some evil genius not less powerful than deceitful, [that] has employed his whole energies in deceiving me. In the second meditation he reveals the cogito and shows that it overcomes any deceiver, because even if thinkers are deceived, they are still thinking and so are still aware that they exist.
The next step was not so easy and seems to require a bit of hand waving. Descartes wants to establish that he is a union of a perishable body and an immortal soul. This is official Christian doctrine, but he wishes to establish it philosophically, the plan he laid out in his Prefatory Note to the Meditations:
I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than theological argument. For although it is quite enough for us faithful ones to accept by means of faith the fact that the human soul does not perish with the body, and that God exists, it certainly does not seem possible ever to persuade infidels of any religion, indeed, we may almost say, of any moral virtue, unless, to begin with, we prove these two facts by means of the natural reason.
His return to dogmatism was not a new move. We had seen it already as a reaction to ancient scepticism. Nor was the reaction to dogmatism new. We had seen it in the work of Lucretius and Empedocles, trying to replace the discredited ancient and capricious Gods with “scientific” hypotheses which established the independence of the cosmos (Sedley 1998). David Sedley: Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom
Since earliest times, thinkers had dreamt that there were a priori answers to all their problems. This feeling lay behind the philosophical attachment to mathematics attributed to Plato, since it was not until the nineteenth century that mathematical systems of axioms like Euclid’s geometry were realised to be hypotheses, not tautologies per se nota. It is perhaps not surprising that Descartes turned to mathematics and earned his greatest posthumous fame by uniting arithmetic, algebra and geometry through the invention of frames of reference.
We see the definitive turn against dogma in favour of science in the work of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, although these were all still believers who struggled, often in fear of death, with the discrepancies they saw between dogma and reality. Newton saw himself as a theologian, and we can see his work through an Epicurean lens as an attempt to explain how God ruled the world. He explained this vision in the General Scholion that he attached to the second edition of the Principia (Newton 1713). Isaac Newton: The General Scholium to the Principia Mathematica
For Newton God played its standard role as the answer to all intractable questions. His law of universal gravitation is very close to perfect in low energy regions like the solar system, but it requires mysterious instantaneous action at a distance which seem impervious to explanation. Beginning with Faraday and Maxwell space filling fields became popular and answered Newton’s action at a distance problem. The unfortunate fact that they filled all space with the high energy phenomena associated with quantum field theory raised the next intractable problem.
Mach and others have speculated that it is the role of philosophy to give guidance to science. Einstein credited Hume with ideas that led him to relativity (Norton 2010). It seems that a paradigm change my be in order in fundamental physics. Zee has suggested that it may be time to leave the harmonic paradigm (Zee, 2003 page 5). John D Norton: How Hume and Mach helped Einstein find special relativity, Zee: Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell
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9. Conclusion
We can forgive Descartes for his epistemological difficulties when we consider subsequent history. Hume argued convincingly that we do not really know how causality works because all we can see are the statistical correlations between events. We can understand causality on the macroscopic scale when we consider things like the chain and gears connecting the pedals of a pushbike to the back wheel, but when we come to deal with the deeper functioning of the world that controls the behaviour of billiard balls, we are in the dark.
The best we can do to explain the mechanisms of the world is to produce hypotheses and study their consequences. These are not guaranteed to be right. The proponents of continuity say natura non fecit saltus. Descartes, on the other hand, saw truth in clear and distinct ideas, suggesting implicitly that there is no information in a continuum. It may be time to abandon continuity as an explanatory mechanism and embrace the discontinuity of logic. Maybe the deepest processes of the Universe are to be explained by logical constructs like computation rather than by the continuous fields currently favoured by physics to lie behind the discrete world. The infinity implicit in continuity seems to the source of many difficulties in physics (Noyes & Van Den Berg 2001). If the world works like a digital computer, maybe the invisibility theorem applies to it strictly, and we shall be forever bound to hypothesize about what we cannot see.
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Further readingBooks
Blackmore, Susan, Consciousness - An Introduction, Oxford University Press 2011 'Now in a new edition, this innovative text is the first volume to bring together all the major theories of consciousness studies--from those rooted in traditional Western philosophy to those coming out of neuroscience, quantum theory, and Eastern philosophy. Broadly interdisciplinary, Consciousness: An Introduction, Second Edition, is divided into nine sections that examine such topics as how subjective experiences arise from objective brain processes, the basic neuroscience and neuropathology of consciousness, altered states of consciousness, mystical experiences and dreams, and the effects of drugs and meditation. It also discusses the nature of self, the possibility of artificial consciousness in robots, and the question of whether or not animals are conscious.'
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Damasio, Antonio R, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Harcourt Brace 1999 Jacket: 'In a radical departure from current views on consciousness, Damasio contends that explaining how we make mental images or attend to those images will not suffice to elucidate the mystery. A satisfactory hypothesis for the making of consciousness must explain how the sense of self comes to mind. Damasio suggests that the sense of self does not depend on memory or on reasoning or even less on language. [it] depends, he argues, on the brain's ability to portray the living organism in the act of relating to an object. That ability, in turn, is a consequence of the brain's involvement in the process of regulating life. The sense of self began as yet another device aimed an ensuring survival.'
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Darwin, Charles, and Greg Suriano (editor), The Origin of Species, Gramercy 1998 Introduction: 'In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species has not been independently created, but has descended, like varieties, from other species.'
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Darwin, Charles, and Harriet Ritvo (Introduction), The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (Foundations of Natural History), Johns Hopkins University Press 1875, 1998 ' "The Variation, with its thousands of hard-won observations of the facts of variation in domesticated species, is a frustrating, but worthwhile read, for it reveals the Darwin we rarely see -- the embattled Darwin, struggling to keep his project on the road. Sometimes he seems on the verge of being overwhelmed by the problems he is dealing with, but then a curious fact of natural history will engage him (the webbing between water gun-dogs' toes, the absurdly short beak of the pouter pigeon) and his determination to make sense of it rekindles. As he disarmingly declares, 'the whole subject of inheritance is wonderful.'.
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Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Penguin Classics 1871, 2004 'No book made a greater impact on the intellectual world of its first Victorian readers nor has had such an enduring influence on our thinking on science, literature, theology and philosophy. In The Descent of Man, Darwin addresses the crucial question of the origins, evolution and racial divergence of mankind, that he had deliberately left out of On the Origin of Species. And the evidence he presents forces us to question what it is that makes us uniquely human.'
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Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Penguin Classics 1874 'No book made a greater impact on the intellectual world of its first Victorian readers nor has had such an enduring influence on our thinking on science, literature, theology and philosophy. In The Descent of Man, Darwin addresses the crucial question of the origins, evolution and racial divergence of mankind, that he had deliberately left out of On the Origin of Species. And the evidence he presents forces us to question what it is that makes us uniquely human.'
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Dennett, Daniel C., Consciousness Explained, Back Bay Books 1992 'Consciousness is notoriously difficult to explain. On one hand, there are facts about conscious experience--the way clarinets sound, the way lemonade tastes--that we know subjectively, from the inside. On the other hand, such facts are not readily accommodated in the objective world described by science. How, after all, could the reediness of clarinets or the tartness of lemonade be predicted in advance? Central to Daniel C. Dennett's attempt to resolve this dilemma is the "heterophenomenological" method, which treats reports of introspection nontraditionally--not as evidence to be used in explaining consciousness, but as data to be explained. Using this method, Dennett argues against the myth of the Cartesian theater--the idea that consciousness can be precisely located in space or in time. To replace the Cartesian theater, he introduces his own multiple drafts model of consciousness, in which the mind is a bubbling congeries of unsupervised parallel processing. Finally, Dennett tackles the conventional philosophical questions about consciousness, taking issue not only with the traditional answers but also with the traditional methodology by which they were reached.'
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Dirac, P A M, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (4th ed), Oxford UP/Clarendon 1983 Jacket: '[this] is the standard work in the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, indispensible both to the advanced student and the mature research worker, who will always find it a fresh source of knowledge and stimulation.' (Nature)
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Heyes, Cecilia, Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking, Belknap Press: Harvard University Press 2018 “Cecilia Heyes presents a new hypothesis to explain the one feature that distinguishes Homo sapiens from all other species: the mind. Through lucid, compelling writing, this masterly exegesis proposes that the key features of the human mind, termed ‘cognitive gadgets,’ are the products of cultural rather than genetic evolution. It will stimulate its readers to think deeply, as Heyes has done, about what it means to be human.”―Lord John Krebs, University of Oxford
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Hobson, M P, and G. P. Efstathiou, A. N. Lasenby, General Relativity: An Introduction for Physicists, Cambridge University Press 2006 Amazon Editorial Reviews
Book Description
'After reviewing the basic concept of general relativity, this introduction discusses its mathematical background, including the necessary tools of tensor calculus and differential geometry. These tools are used to develop the topic of special relativity and to discuss electromagnetism in Minkowski spacetime. Gravitation as spacetime curvature is introduced and the field equations of general relativity derived. After applying the theory to a wide range of physical situations, the book concludes with a brief discussion of classical field theory and the derivation of general relativity from a variational principle.'
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Hume, David, and David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (editors), A Treatise on Human Nature (Oxford Philosophical Texts), Oxford University Press 2000 ' The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of truly practical and accessible guides to major philosophical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world up to modern times. Each book opens with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist which covers the philosopher's life, work, and influence. Endnotes, a full bibliography, guides to further reading, and an index are also included. The series aims to build a definitive corpus of key texts in the Western philosophical tradition, forming a reliable and enduring resource for students and teachers alike.
David Hume's comprehensive attempt to base philosophy on a new, observationally grounded study of human nature is one of the most important texts in Western philosophy. It is also the focal point of current attempts to understand 18th-century philosophy The Treatise first explains how we form such concepts as cause and effect, external existence, and personal identity, and how we create compelling but unverifiable beliefs in the entities represented by these concepts. It then offers a novel account of the passions, explains freedom and necessity as they apply to human choices and actions, and concludes with a detailed explanation of how we distinguish between virtue and vice. The volume features Hume's own abstract of the Treatise, a substantial introduction that explains the aims of the Treatise as a whole and of each of its ten parts, a comprehensive index, and suggestions for further reading.'
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James, William, The Principles of Psychology, volume 1, Henry Holt & Co 1890 ' I have kept close to the point of view of natural science throughout the book. Every natural science assumes certain data uncritically, and declines to challenge the elements between which its own ‘laws ’ obtain, and from which its own deductions are carried on. Psychology, the science of finite individual minds, assumes as its data (1) thoughts and feelings, and (2) a physical world in time and space with which they coexist and which (3) they know. 'back |
James (1892), William, Psychology: The Briefer Course, Henry Holt & Co 1892 ' In preparing the following abridgment of my larger work, the "Principles of Psychology, my chief aim has been to make it more directly available for class-room use. For this purpose I have omitted several whole chapters and rewritten others. I have left out all the polemical and historical matter, all the metaphysical discussions and purely speculative passages, most of the quotations, all the book-references, and (I trust) all the impertinences, of the larger work, leaving to the teacher the choice of orally restoring as much of this material as may seem to him good, along with his own remarks on the topics successively studied.'back |
Jaynes, Julian, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Mariner Books 2000 Jacket: 'At the heart of this book is the revolutionary idea that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but is a learned process brought into being out of an earlier hallucinatory mentality by cataclysm and catastrophe only 3000 years ago and still developing.'
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Khinchin, Aleksandr Yakovlevich, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.'
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Klein, Richard G, The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins, University of Chicago Press 2009 ' Since its publication in 1989, The Human Career has proved to be an indispensable tool in teaching human origins. This substantially revised third edition retains Richard G. Klein’s innovative approach while showing how cumulative discoveries and analyses over the past ten years have significantly refined our knowledge of human evolution. . . .
In addition to outlining the broad pattern of human evolution, The Human Career details the kinds of data that support it. For the third edition, Klein has added numerous tables and a fresh citation system designed to enhance readability, especially for students. He has also included more than fifty new illustrations to help lay readers grasp the fossils, artifacts, and other discoveries on which specialists rely. With abundant references and hundreds of images, charts, and diagrams, this new edition is unparalleled in its usefulness for teaching human evolution.'
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Koch, Christoph, The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, Roberts and Co 2004 Preface: Francis Crick: ". . . Consciousness is the major unsolved problem in biology. That is there is no present consensus on the general nature of the solution is made clear by Christoph in Chapter 1. How do what philosophiers call "qualia". the redness of red and the painfulness of pain, arise from the concerted action of nerve cells, glial cels, and their associated molecules? Can qualia be explained by what we now know of modern science, or is some quite different kind of explanation needed? And how to approach this seemingly intractable problem. . . . "
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Kolmogorov, Andrey Nikolaevich, and Nathan Morrison (Translator) (With an added bibliography by A T Bharucha-Reid), Foundations of the Theory of Probability, Chelsea 1956 Preface: 'The purpose of this monograph is to give an axiomatic foundation for the theory of probability. . . . This task would have been a rather hopeless one before the introduction of Lebesgue's theories of measure and integration. However, after Lebesgue's publication of his investigations, the analogies between measure of a set and mathematical expectation of a random variable became apparent. These analogies allowed of further extensions; thus, for example, various properties of independent random variables were seen to be in complete analogy with the corresponding properties of orthogonal functions . . .'
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Kuhn, Thomas S, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, U of Chicago Press 1962, 1970, 1996 Introduction: 'a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man, and never overnight.' [p 7]
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '. . . Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding'
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Neuenschwander, Dwight E, Emmy Noether's Wonderful Theorem, Johns Hopkins University Press 2011 Jacket: A beautiful piece of mathematics, Noether's therem touches on every aspect of physics. Emmy Noether proved her theorem in 1915 and published it in 1918. This profound concept demonstrates the connection between conservation laws and symmetries. For instance, the theorem shows that a system invariant under translations of time, space or rotation will obey the laws of conservation of energy, linear momentum or angular momentum respectively. This exciting result offers a rich unifying principle for all of physics.'
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Noyes, H. Pierre, and J. C. van den Berg, Bit-String Physics: A Finite and Discrete Approach to Natural Philosophy, World Scientific 2001 'We could be on the threshold of a scientific revolution. Quantum mechanics is based on unique, finite, and discrete events. General relativity assumes a continuous, curved space-time. Reconciling the two remains the most fundamental unsolved scientific problem left over from the last century. The papers of H Pierre Noyes collected in this volume reflect one attempt to achieve that unification by replacing the continuum with the bit-string events of computer science. Three principles are used: physics can determine whether two quantities are the same or different; measurement can tell something from nothing; this structure (modeled by binary addition and multiplication) can leave a historical record consisting of a growing universe of bit-strings. This book is specifically addressed to those interested in the foundations of particle physics, relativity, quantum mechanics, physical cosmology and the philosophy of science
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Oppy, Graham, and Michael Scott, Reading Philosophy of Religion: selected texts with interactive commentary, Wiley-Blackwell 2010 'Reading Philosophy of Religion combines a diverse selection of classical and contemporary texts in philosophy of religion with insightful commentaries.
Offers a unique presentation through a combination of text and interactive commentary
Provides a mix of classic and contemporary texts, including some not anthologized elsewhere
Includes writings from thinkers such as Aquinas, Boethius,Hume, Plantinga and Putnam
Divided into sections which examine religious language, the existence of God, reason, argument and belief, divine properties,and religious pluralism.'
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Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Viking Adult 2011 Amazon book description: 'A provocative history of violence—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Stuff of Thought and The Blank Slate
Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world.'
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Revonsuo, Antti, The Foundations of Consciousness, Routledge 2017 ' Foundations of Consciousness provides an essential introduction to the scientific and philosophical approaches to consciousness for students in psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy. It will also appeal to those interested in the nature of the human soul, giving an insight into the motivation behind scientist’s and philosopher’s attempts to understand our place as conscious beings in the physical world.'
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Sedley, David, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, Cambridge University Press 1998 ' Introduction: The old quarrel between poetry and philosophy may have simmered down, but in Lucretian studies the two do not always manage to be as willing allies as they ought to be. Lucretius used poetry to illuminate philosophy. My aim in this book is to use philosophy to illuminate poetry.'
Lucretius' achievements as a poet to a large extent lie in his genius for transforming Epicurean philosophy to fit a language, a culture and a literary medium for which it was never intended. In order to understand how he brought about this transformation, we need to know all we can about what he was transforming and how he set about his task.'
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von Neumann, John, and Robert T Beyer (translator), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 1983 Jacket: '. . . a revolutionary book that caused a sea change in theoretical physics. . . . JvN begins by presenting the theory of Hermitean operators and Hilbert spaces. These provide the framework for transformation theory, which JvN regards as the definitive form of quantum mechanics. . . . Regarded as a tour de force at the time of its publication, this book is still indispensable for those interested in the fundamental issues of quantum mechanics.'
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Wilczek, Frank, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces, Basic Books 2008 ' In this excursion to the outer limits of particle physics, Wilczek explores what quarks and gluons, which compose protons and neutrons, reveal about the manifestation of mass and gravity. A corecipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, Wilczek knows what he’s writing about; the question is, will general science readers? Happily, they know what the strong interaction is (the forces that bind the nucleus), and in Wilczek, they have a jovial guide who adheres to trade publishing’s belief that a successful physics title will not include too many equations. Despite this injunction (against which he lightly protests), Wilczek delivers an approachable verbal picture of what quarks and gluons are doing inside a proton that gives rise to mass and, hence, gravity. Casting the light-speed lives of quarks against “the Grid,” Wilczek’s term for the vacuum that theoretically seethes with quantum activity, Wilczek exudes a contagious excitement for discovery. A near-obligatory acquisition for circulating physics collections.' --Gilbert Taylor
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Zee, Anthony, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, Princeton University Press 2003 Amazon book description: 'An esteemed researcher and acclaimed popular author takes up the challenge of providing a clear, relatively brief, and fully up-to-date introduction to one of the most vital but notoriously difficult subjects in theoretical physics. A quantum field theory text for the twenty-first century, this book makes the essential tool of modern theoretical physics available to any student who has completed a course on quantum mechanics and is eager to go on.
Quantum field theory was invented to deal simultaneously with special relativity and quantum mechanics, the two greatest discoveries of early twentieth-century physics, but it has become increasingly important to many areas of physics. These days, physicists turn to quantum field theory to describe a multitude of phenomena.
Stressing critical ideas and insights, Zee uses numerous examples to lead students to a true conceptual understanding of quantum field theory--what it means and what it can do. He covers an unusually diverse range of topics, including various contemporary developments,while guiding readers through thoughtfully designed problems. In contrast to previous texts, Zee incorporates gravity from the outset and discusses the innovative use of quantum field theory in modern condensed matter theory.
Without a solid understanding of quantum field theory, no student can claim to have mastered contemporary theoretical physics. Offering a remarkably accessible conceptual introduction, this text will be widely welcomed and used.
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Links
Ataraxia - Wikipedia, Ataraxia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Ataraxia (ἀταραξία, literally, "unperturbedness", generally translated as "imperturbability", "equanimity", or "tranquillity") is a Greek term first used in Ancient Greek philosophy by Pyrrho and subsequently Epicurus and the Stoics for a lucid state of robust equanimity characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry. In non-philosophical usage, the term was used to describe the ideal mental state for soldiers entering battle.
Achieving ataraxia is a common goal for Pyrrhonism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism, but the role and value of ataraxia within each philosophy varies depending their philosophical theories. The mental disturbances that prevent one from achieving ataraxia vary among the philosophies, and each philosophy has a different understanding as to how to achieve ataraxia.' back |
Charles Bolyard (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Medieval Skepticism, ' Overarching surveys of the history of philosophy often leave the impression that philosophical skepticism—roughly, the position that nothing can be known—had many adherents in the Ancient and Hellenistic Periods, disappeared completely as a topic of intellectual interest during the Middle Ages, and returned as a viable position in the Renaissance and Early Modern Periods.
As a survey, this is quite understandable, since no thinker from the Middle Ages professed an active allegiance to a systematic philosophical skepticism. But a closer examination of Medieval Philosophy shows that despite skepticism’s disappearance as an overt philosophical movement, it continued to swirl in the thoughts of many of the best philosophers of the period.' back |
Christopher Shields (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), The Active Mind of De Anima III 5 , ' After characterizing the mind (nous) and its activities in De Animaiii 4, Aristotle takes a surprising turn. In De Anima iii 5, he introduces an obscure and hotly disputed subject: the active mind or active intellect (nous poiêtikos). Controversy surrounds almost every aspect of De Anima iii 5, not least because in it Aristotle characterizes the active mind—a topic mentioned nowhere else in his entire corpus—as ‘separate and unaffected and unmixed, being in its essence actuality’ (chôristos kai apathês kai amigês, tê ousia energeia; DA iii 5, 430a17–18) and then also as ‘deathless and everlasting’ (athanaton kai aidion; DA iii 5, 430a23). This comes as no small surprise to readers of De Anima, because Aristotle had earlier in the same work treated the mind (nous) as but one faculty (dunamis) of the soul (psuchê), and he had contended that the soul as a whole is not separable from the body (DA ii 1, 413a3–5). back |
Christopher Shields (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), The Active Mind of De Anima III 5, 'After characterizing the mind (nous) and its activities in De Anima iii 4, Aristotle takes a surprising turn. In De Anima iii 5, he introduces an obscure and hotly disputed subject: the active mind or active intellect (nous poiêtikos). Controversy surrounds almost every aspect of De Anima iii 5, not least because in it Aristotle characterizes the active mind—a topic mentioned nowhere else in his entire corpus—as ‘separate and unaffected and unmixed, being in its essence actuality’ (chôristos kai apathês kai amigês, tê(i) ousia(i) energeia; DA iii 5, 430a17–18) and then also as ‘deathless and everlasting’ (athanaton kai aidion; DA iii 5, 430a23). This comes as no small surprise to readers of De Anima, because Aristotle had earlier in the same work treated the mind (nous) as but one faculty (dunamis) of the soul (psuchê), and he had contended that the soul as a whole is not separable from the body (DA ii 1, 413a3–5). back |
Claude Shannon, Communication in the Presence of Noise, 'A method is developed for representing any communication system geometrically. Messages and the corresponding signals are points in two “function spaces,” and the modulation process is a mapping of one space into the other. Using this representation, a number of results in communication theory are deduced concerning expansion and compression of bandwidth and the threshold effect. Formulas are found for the maximum rate of transmission of binary digits over a system when the signal is perturbed by various types of noise. Some of the properties of “ideal” systems which transmit at this maximum rate are discussed. The equivalent number of binary digits per second for certain information sources is calculated.' [C. E. Shannon , “Communication in the presence of noise,” Proc. IRE,
vol. 37, pp. 10–21, Jan. 1949.] back |
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, back |
Frank Jackson, Epiphenomenal Qualia, ' I am what is sometimes known as a "qualia freak". I think that there
are certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes. Tell me everything physical there is to tell about what is going on in a living brain, the kind of states, their functional role, their relation to what goes on at other times and in other brains, and so on and so forth, and be I as clever as can be in fitting it all together, you won't have told me about the hurtfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches, pangs of jealousy, or about the characteristic experience of tasting a lemon, smelling a rose, hearing a loud noise or seeing the sky.' back |
George Couvalis, Hume's Lucianic Thanatotherapy, The eighteenth century philosopher David Hume was much influenced
by Greek philosophy and literature. His favourite writer was the satirist Lucian. What is David Hume’s thanatotherapy (therapy of the fear of death)? Is he an Epicurean or Pyrrhonian thanatotherapist? I argue that, while he is in part an Epicurean who is sceptical about his Epicureanism, he is primarily a Lucianic thanatotherapist. A Lucianic thanatotherapist uses self and other deprecating irony as a form of therapy. He also ruthlessly satirises religious consolations. I use Hume’s deathbed allusions to Lucian’s Kataplous (floating downwards) and the Dialogues of the Dead to explain my view.' back |
Isaac Newton, The General Scholium to the Principia Mathematica, 'Published for the first time as an appendix to the 2nd (1713) edition of the Principia, the General Scholium reappeared in the 3rd (1726) edition with some amendments and additions. As well as countering the natural philosophy of Leibniz and the Cartesians, the General Scholium contains an excursion into natural theology and theology proper. In this short text, Newton articulates the design argument (which he fervently believed was furthered by the contents of his Principia), but also includes an oblique argument for a unitarian conception of God and an implicit attack on the doctrine of the Trinity, which Newton saw as a post-biblical corruption. The English translation here is that of Andrew Motte (1729). Italics and orthography as in original.' back |
Jaako Hintikka, Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?, ' COGITO, ERGO SUM as a problem. The fame (some would say notoriety) of the adage cogito, ero sum. makes one expect that scholarly industry has long since exhausted whatever interest it may have historically or topically. A perusal of the relevnt literature, however, fails to satisfy this expectation. After hundreds of discussion of Descartes famed principle we still do not seem to have any way of expressing his alleged insight in terms that would be general and precise enough to enable us to judge its validity or its relevance to the consequences he claims to draw from it.' back |
Jerome Martin, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Cosmological Constant Problem (But Were Afraid To Ask) (2012), Abstract: 'This article aims at discussing the cosmological constant problem at a pedagogical but fully technical level. We review how the vacuum energy can be regularized in flat and curved space-time and how it can be understood in terms of Feynman bubble diagrams. In particular, we show that the properly renormalized value of the zero-point energy density today (for a free theory) is in fact far from being 122 orders of magnitude larger than the critical energy density, as often quoted in the literature. . . . ' back |
Jim Branson, Electron Self Energy Corrections, 'If one calculates the energy of a point charge using classical electromagnetism, the result is infinite, yet as far as we know, the electron is point charge. One can calculate the energy needed to assemble an electron due, essentially, to the interaction of the electron with its own field. A uniform charge distribution with the classical radius of an electron, would have an energy of the order of mec2. Experiments have probed the electron's charge distribution and found that it is consistent with a point charge down to distances much smaller than the classical radius. Beyond classical calculations, the self energy of the electron calculated in the quantum theory of Dirac is still infinite but the divergences are less severe.
At this point we must take the unpleasant position that this (constant) infinite energy should just be subtracted when we consider the overall zero of energy (as we did for the field energy in the vacuum). Electrons exist and don't carry infinite amount of energy baggage so we just subtract off the infinite constant.' back |
John D Norton, How Hume and Mach helped Einstein find special relativity, ' Abstract
In recounting his discovery of special relativity, Einstein recalled a debt to the philosophical writings of Hume and Mach. I review the path Einstein took to special relativity and urge that, at a critical juncture, he was aided decisively not by any specific doctrine of space and time, but by a general account of concepts that Einstein found in Hume and Mach’s writings. That account required that concepts, used to represent the physical, must be properly grounded in experience. In so far as they extended beyond that grounding, they were fictional and to be abjured (Mach) or at best tolerated (Hume). Einstein drew a different moral. These fictional concepts revealed an arbitrariness in our physical theorizing and may still be introduced through freely chosen definitions, as long as these definitions do not commit us to false presumptions. After years of failed efforts to conform electrodynamics to the principle of relativity and with his frustration mounting, Einstein applied this account to the concept of simultaneity. The resulting definition of simultaneity provided the reconceptualization that solved the problem in electrodynamics and led directly to the special theory of relativity.' back |
Katherine J. Morris, The Second Meditation: Unimaginable bodies and insensible minds, This essay on the Second Meditation (M2) takes its cue, very loosely, from Descartes’ recommendation for reading Principles of Philosophy – that is, to read it once quickly, “like a novel,” and then two or three times more carefully, so that by the third or fourth reading the reader should discover “solutions” to any “difficulties” encountered earlier. The essay consists of three readings of the second half of M2, which includes Descartes’ famous consideration of the piece of wax. The first section provides an initial analysis which raises a number of questions. The second section suggests some answers to these questions and attempts to reconstruct the main arguments that Descartes is offering. The third section reflects on the larger Cartesian methodologies and strategies that appear to be in play. ¶10 constitutes a bridge between the two halves of M2. Descartes confesses to an obsessive or highly tempting thought – “I cannot stop thinking this” – which persists even after his meditation thus far, namely that the corporeal things of which images are formed in my thought, and which the senses investigate, are known with much more distinctness than this puzzling ‘I’ which cannot be pictured in the imagination. It is the combating of this thought which dominates the second half of M2; I will refer to it as “the Thought.” Descartes suggests, without quite asserting it here, that the Thought is false – it is outside “the bounds of truth” – but he also seems to think that showing that the Thought is false is not enough to extirpate it. The strategy he announces for extirpating it is to give his mind “completely free rein, so that after a while, when it is time to tighten the reins, it may more readily submit to being curbed.”' back |
Katya Vogt (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Ancient Skepticism, ' The Greek word skepsis means investigation. By calling themselves skeptics, the ancient skeptics thus describe themselves as investigators. They also call themselves ‘those who suspend’ (ephektikoi), thereby signaling that their investigations lead them to suspension of judgment. They do not put forward theories, and they do not deny that knowledge can be found. At its core, ancient skepticism is a way of life devoted to inquiry. back |
Kenan Malik, Einstein got it - philosophy and Science go hand in hand, Last week it was revealed that Edinburgh University’s David Purdie had discovered a letter from Albert Einstein in which the great scientist notes the importance of 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume in developing his theory of special relativity.
Without having read Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, Einstein wrote: “I cannot say that the solution would have come.” ' back |
Manley, D. B., & Taylor, C. S. (1996), Descartes Meditations - Trilingual Edition, ' The publication of this English-Latin-French edition of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is quite simply an experiment in electronic scholarship. We decided to make this edition available and to encourage its free distribution for scholarly purposes. The idea behind the experiment is to see how others involved in electronic scholarship might put these texts to use. We have no predetermined ideas of what such use may be when transformed from this origin. The texts have no hypertext annotations except for those used for navigation. We invite others to download this edition and to create their own hypertext annotated editions and then to publish those additions on their own Web servers for everyone to use.' back |
P. Lumbreras, The Twenty-Four Fundamental Theses of Official Catholic Philosophy [Sacred Congregtion of Studies, 24 July 1914], ' In our preceding paper we proved by documents of recent Popes that the Church, in exercising her right, has adopted the scholastic philosophy as her official philosophical teaching, that by scholastic philosophy the Church understands not only chiefly but exclusively the philosophy of St. Thomas, and that St. Thomas' philosophy stands for at least the twenty-four theses approved and published by the Sacred Congregation of Studies.' back |
Richard Bett (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Pyrrho, ' Pyrrho was the starting-point for a philosophical movement known as Pyrrhonism that flourished beginning several centuries after his own time. This later Pyrrhonism was one of the two major traditions of sceptical thought in the Greco-Roman world (the other being located in Plato’s Academy during much of the Hellenistic period). Perhaps the central question about Pyrrho is whether or to what extent he himself was a sceptic in the later Pyrrhonist mold.' back |
Ruuf Veenhoven, Life is Getting Better: Societal Evolution and Fit with Human Nature, 'Human society has changed much over the last centuries and this process of ‘modernization’ has profoundly affected the lives of individuals; currently we live quite different lives from those forefathers lived only five generations ago. There is difference of opinion as to whether we live better now than before and consequently there is also disagreement as to whether we should continue modernizing or rather try to slow the process down. Quality-of-life in a society can be measured by how long and happy its inhabitants live. Using these indicators I assess whether societal modernization has made life better or worse. Firstly I examine findings of present day survey research. I start with a cross-sectional analysis of 143 nations in the years 2000–2008 and find that people live longer and happier in today’s most modern societies. Secondly I examine trends in modern nations over the last decade and find that happiness and longevity have increased in most cases. Thirdly I consider the long-term and review findings from historical anthropology, which show that we lived better in the early hunter-gatherer society than in the later agrarian society. Together these data suggest that societal evolution has worked out differently for the quality of human life, first negatively, in the change from a hunter-gatherer existence to agriculture, and next positively, in the more recent transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society. We live now longer and happier than ever before.' back |
Steven Weinberg, The Cosmological Constant Problems [Talk given at Dark Matter 2000, Marina del Rey, CA, February 2000], 'Abstract. The old cosmological constant problem is to understand why the vacuum energy is so small; the new problem is to understand why it is comparable to the present mass density. Several approaches to these problems are reviewed. Quintessence does not help with either; anthropic considerations offer a possibility of solving both. In theories with a scalar field that takes random initial values, the anthropic principle may apply to the cosmological constant, but probably to nothing else.' back |
Suzanne Obdrzalek, Living in Doubt: Carneades Pithanon Reconsidered, 'In my opinion, no satisfactory response has been found for scepticism about external reality. None the less we continue to behave as though we have access to certainty, or at least probability. What is initially alluring about Carneades’ theory is that it promises to explain how we can be sceptics on the street as well as in the office. Upon closer examination, I believe that the real interest lies in its revelation of our epistemic hypocrisy.' back |
Thomas Nagel, What is it like to be a bat?, ' The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Oct., 1974), pp. 435-450Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183914 . back |
William James, Psychology: The Briefer Course, 'The definition of Psychology may best be given in the words of Professor Ladd, as the description and explanation of states of consciousness as such. By state of consciousness are meant such things s sensations desires emotions cognitions, reasonings, decisions, volitions, and the like. Their 'explanation' must of course include the study of their causes, conditions, and immediate consequences, as far as these can be ascertained. back |
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