Paul-Henri Thiry (Baron) d’Holbach Read the SEP entry on Holbach, per which I base the following: Biography: This Frenchman (1723-1789) has been categorized as a materialist and atheist, and was known in his time for his “parties” (for want of a word, although they are described in terms of their guests who were famous intellectuals of all sorts). Despite the revolutionary...
Readings in Scaruffi So I’ve been reading the third chapter of Scaruffi’s book on consciousness, concerning (quote-unquote) machine intelligence. More than the previous chapter, I feel like I’m being presented with a list of relevant facts upon which a narrative is being implied but not explicitly argued. Instead of re-stating a summary of the chapter, I’ll attempt a...
Epiphenomenalism: The thorn of dualism is to bridge two things that have been defined in opposition. Recognized approaches towards tackling this gap include interactionism (there is a third thing that unites), supervenience (mind manifests from matter), and epiphenomenalism (mind exists as an effect of matter without being a cause itself). Epiphenomenalism is the least intuitive of this triad, as...
Meta: I have written about epiphenomenalism on the 28-29th October, and will continue to do so here in parallel with my reading of the IEP article on the subject (beginning at section 4 therein). The 18-19th centuries assumed dualism and scientific naturalism, but given the observation that there was no need (for instance) to postulate the mental in order to explain neurophysiology (i.e. material...
Epiphenomenalism[I] is a brand of dualism in which mind and matter are two different manifestations of existence, but holding mind to be ontologically inferior to matter, and there is some form of logical flow – not necessarily causality per se – from matter to mind. The term as used in the late 19th century provides another analogy through its definition: a secondary symptom of a...
The first question is, “What is the mind”. I agree with Socrates that to begin we need to understand the question. “Mind” is a loose term that includes different phenomenon that are (seemingly) associated. I am not discarding this paltry scrapheap of words because at least it includes a reasonable philosophical strategy, and that is in itself worthy of further application...
Editorial notes: Early in August 2013, Shai joins a site called “750 Words” which encourages members to submit a daily post consisting of roughly 750 words, approximately three pages. The site explains its purpose as: “The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day.” If you are in a...
A pseudo-essay informed and inspired by Condillac’s philosophy, that aims to describe a monadology of experience as a paradigm underlining autodidacticity and an autodidactic method: I’ve been active and interested in creating what I’ve tongue-in-cheek been referring to as the monadology of experience, which I’ve used to mean, “the independent units from which we...
This is Nature October 10 2013, Vol. 502, Iss. 7470, Pp. 141-264. Big weapons have little downside. Secrets of trial data revealed. Earth science: The timing of climate change. Quantum physics: Watching the wavefunction collapse – – I’m not reviewing this article (but bookmarked) because I simply do not have a strong enough foundation in QM. Cell biology: Molecular clearance at...
Things I’ve done today include reading Scaruffi, I made a little progress in chapter 2 but soon became bogged down in details and paradigms that I must admit were a challenge. Not beyond comprehension, but requiring a slow studious read that inevitably results in a loss of perspective as regards the bigger picture, even if it does strongly assist an understanding of the content on a smaller...
