Of course, you can’t have science without flesh-and-blood scientists. Yet, in broad terms, it can still be said that science is an abstraction which has been derived from the work of many individual scientists over hundreds of years. Science is science. And scientists are scientists. So it’s wise not to confuse what an individual scientist states — or believes — with science itself. The evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis once said that Richard Dawkins is “arrogant” and “solipsistic”. Richard Dawkins, in turn, said that Margulis is an “extremely obstinate” person who “doesn’t l ..read more

  [The word “things” is used to refer to objects, entities, particulars, individuals, etc.] “Relationism” and “relationalism” are terms which denote two different philosophical positions. The following is one account of both terms: “For relationalism, things exist and function only as relational entities. Relationalism may be contrasted with relationism, which tends to emphasize relations per se.” Relationism is said to simply emphasise the relations between things: it doesn’t deny that things exist. With relationalism (i.e., with an added “al”), on the other hand, “things exist ..read more

  (i) Introduction (ii) On the Liar Paradox as a Language Game (iii) The Liar Paradox Was Created, Not Found The following passage offers us a short account of the Liar Paradox: “[T]he classical liar paradox [] is the statement of a liar that they are lying: for instance, declaring that ‘I am lying’. If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth, which means the liar just lied. In ‘this sentence is a lie’ the paradox is strengthened in order to make it amenable to more rigorous logical analysis. [] Trying to assign to this statement, the strengthened liar, a classic ..read more

  (i) Introduction (ii) David Lewis on Intrinsic Properties (iii) Philip Goff on Intrinsic Nature (iv) Did Bertrand Russell Reject Intrinsic Properties? “An intrinsic property, as David Lewis puts it, is a property ‘which things have in virtue of the way they themselves are’, as opposed to an extrinsic property, which things have ‘in virtue of their relations or lack of relations to other things’.” — Ted Sider (see source here). “An extrinsic (or relational) property is a property that depends on a thing’s relationship with other things. For example, mass is an intrinsic property of a ..read more

According to Owen Flanagan, Daniel Dennett happily accepted that there is a way things seem to us. However, is that the same thing as accepting the philosophical notion of qualia? Despite the general view, the philosopher Daniel Dennett believed (or accepted) that “qualia are for real”… at least according to the American philosopher Owen Flanagan. Flanagan wrote the following: “Qualia are for real. Dennett himself says what they are before he starts quining. Sanely, he writes, ‘‘Qualia’ is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways thing seem to u ..read more

This essay tackles the notion of information as it’s used by physicists. The science writer Philip Ball stresses the importance of what he and others call information. Ball allows the physicist Christopher Fuchs to express his own informationalist view when he writes: “[Christopher Fuchs’] approach argues that quantum states themselves — the entangled state of two photons, say, or even just the spin state of a single photon — don’t exist as objective realities. Rather, ‘quantum states represent observers’ personal information, expectations and degrees of belief’, he says.” According to t ..read more

 The English philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) believed that when it comes to definitions of the word ‘philosophy’ (as well as to descriptions of the actual practice of philosophy), one can’t help but be metaphilosophical about these issues. In his Wisdom of the West, Bertrand Russell wrote: “Definitions may be given in this way of any field where a body of definite knowledge exists. But philosophy cannot be so defined. Any definition is controversial and already embodies a philosophic attitude. The only way to find out what philosophy is, is to do philosophy.” [As far as I know ..read more

This essay is about Owen Flanagan’s naturalist account of phenomenology. More specifically, it tackles various phenomenological accounts of how things seem to us. Flanagan is an American philosopher. Strictly speaking, Flanagan’s use of the word “phenomenology” doesn’t square too well with many other accounts of phenomenology. Particularly, it doesn’t square with those mainly found — to generalise — in continental philosophy. Flanagan’s usage, instead, is more in tune with the actual etymology of the word - as in this account: “The term phenomenology derives from the Greek φαινόμενον, phain ..read more

This essay is on the importance and relevance of definitions when it comes to debates about consciousness and intelligence. (As mainly found in Anil Seth’s book Being You.) More specifically, it focuses on definitions when it comes to the relation of intelligence to consciousness, and vice versa. Philosophers and laypeople can use the same terms in very different ways. What’s more, not all people define or explain their terms in the first place. Nor do they always explain how and why such terms almost entirely flow from their very particular philosophies. The British neuroscientist Anil Seth ..read more

The theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli writes: “The world is full of people who say that they have The Truth. [] There is always someone with his own real Truth.” This essay is about those critics of science who yearn for (to quote Rovelli again) “some prophet dressed in white, uttering the words, ‘Follow me, I am the true way’”. (i) Introduction (ii) David Berlinski’s Criticisms of Contemporary Science (iii) Henri Poincaré on the Critics of Science In the book What Is Religion? (published in 1902), the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote the following words: “What we call science today is ..read more