Category: Scientism
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Jerry Fodor’s Idiosyncratic Understanding of ‘Scientism’
Jerry Fodor's "Is Science Biologically Possible?" (in Beilby, ed. Naturalism Defeated? Cornell UP 2002, pp. 30-42) begins like this: I hold to a philosophical view that, for want of a better term, I'll call by one that is usually taken to be pejorative: Scientism. Scientism claims, on the one hand, that the goals of scientific…
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Something and Nothing Again: Krauss Takes Another Stab at Defending His ‘Bait and Switch’
In the pages of Scientific American, Lawrence M. Krauss writes: As a scientist, the fascination normally associated with the classically phrased question “why is there something rather than nothing?”, is really contained in a specific operational question. That question can be phrased as follows: How can a universe full of galaxies and stars, and planets…
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Why Something Rather Than Nothing? The Debate Goes On
Ah yes, these big questions never get laid to rest, do they? Man is indeed a metaphysical animal as Schopenhauer said. Here are some links courtesy of Alfred Centauri: John Horton, Science Will Never Explain Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing. Horgan and Krauss have at it in the ComBox. Victor Stenger contributes a…
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A Universe From Nothing? Krauss Reviewed
I had fun back in January pilloring the scientistic nonsense Lawrence M. Krauss propagates in his recent book, A Universe From Nothing. Meanwhile the book has shown up at the local library and tomorrow I will borrow it. I would never buy a piece of crap like this, though, to be fair, I will first…
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Can God Break a Law of Nature?
This is the fourth in a series of posts on Plantinga's new book. They are collected under the rubric Science and Religion. In the third chapter of Where the Conflict Really Lies, Plantinga addresses questions about divine action and divine intervention in the workings of nature. A miracle is such an intervention. But aren't miracles logically…
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More on Jerry Coyne on Free Will
This is a sequel to an earlier discussion. You should read it first. Coyne writes, There's not much downside to abandoning the notion of free will. It's impossible, anyway, to act as though we don't have it: you'll pretend to choose your New Year's resolutions, and the laws of physics will determine whether you keep…
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Tim Maudlin: Hawking “Just Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About”
In this Atlantic article on the philosophy of cosmology, Tim Maudlin states: Hawking is a brilliant man, but he's not an expert in what's going on in philosophy, evidently. Over the past thirty years the philosophy of physics has become seamlessly integrated with the foundations of physics work done by actual physicists, so the situation…
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Can Consciousness Be Explained? Dennett Debunked
To answer the title question we need to know what we mean by 'explain' and how it differs from 'explain away.' 1. An obvious point to start with is that only that which exists, or that which is the case, can be explained. One who explains the phenomenon of the tides in terms of the gravitational…
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Jerry Coyne on Why You Don’t Really Have Free Will
It does not inspire much confidence when a writer begins his piece with a blatant confusion. But that is what Jerry A. Coyne does in Why You Don't Really Have Free Will: Perhaps you've chosen to read this essay after scanning other articles on this website. Or, if you're in a hotel, maybe you've decided what…
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It’s Nonsense, but it’s True Nonsense!
Lawrence Krauss writes: Classical human reason, defined in terms of common sense notions following from our own myopic experience of reality is not sufficient to discern the workings of the Universe. If time begins at the big bang, then we will have to re-explore what we mean by causality, just as the fact that electrons…
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Why Do Some Physicists Talk Nonsense about Nothing?
Sam Harris poses the following question to physicist Lawrence M. Krauss: One of the most common justifications for religious faith is the idea that the universe must have had a creator. You’ve just written a book alleging that a universe can arise from “nothing.” What do you mean by “nothing” and how fully does your…
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Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism: Notes on the Preface
I now have Alvin Plantinga's new book in my hands. Here are some notes on the preface. Since I agree with almost everything in the preface, the following batch of notes will be interpretive but not critical. Words and phrases enclosed in double quotation marks are Plantinga's ipsissima verba. 1. Plantinga is concerned with the…
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The ‘Brain’ Brain and the ‘Gut’ Brain
Connie Francis's heart had a mind of its own, but apparently our guts have minds of their own. Literally!
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Could Intentionality be an Illusion? A Note on Rosenberg
Could intentonality be an illusion? Of course not. But seemingly intelligent people think otherwise: A single still photograph doesn't convey movement the way a motion picture does. Watching a sequence of slightly different photos one photo per hour, or per minute, or even one every 6 seconds won't do it either. But looking at the…
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Plato’s Cave and the Garden of Eden
An archeologist who claimed to have uncovered the site of Plato's Cave would be dismissed as either a prankster or a lunatic. There never was any such cave as is described in the magnificent Book VII of Plato's Republic. And there never were any such cave-dwellers or goings-on as the ones described in Plato's story. …