Walden Pod: Recent Episodes
Emerson Green
Walden Pod is a philosophy, science, and culture podcast hosted by Emerson Green (Counter Apologetics Podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counter-apologetics/id1273573417) ).
Philip Goff and Graham Oppy discuss finite theism and naturalism!
You can now buy the paperback of Why? The Purpose of the Universe here
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I was graciously invited on the Young Apologists Podcast to discuss my backstory, apologetics, atheism, aliens, the simulation hypothesis, the LDS religion, panpsychism, religious experiences, what would convert me to Christianity, and what I would ask God if I had the chance.
Young Apologists - Substack
Worldviews - YouTube
Music by Joseph Nied
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Crashing out over a tweet about the moral argument.
Moral Argument Debunked (Playlist) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg...
Linktree https://linktr.ee/emersongreen
Micah Edvenson and I have a reasonable discussion about Bigfoot, the no body argument, the difficulty of finding remains in the woods, footprint casts, the Patterson-Gimlin film, the comparison with gorillas and chimpanzees, the compatibility of the volume of eyewitness sightings and the supposed elusiveness of Bigfoot, and many other topics. We also touch on eyewitness reports of ghosts, different types of apparitions, and whether a materialist can credit certain ghost sightings as veridical.
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My appearance on Otherworld about my experience with a cryptid.
YouTube https://youtu.be/bBU8vXNmyFw?si=VD98PzHdcD26nK-a
Substack post going into more detail: https://emersongreen.substack.com/p/t...
Linktree https://linktr.ee/emersongreen
Episode 113: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 1 https://www.otherworldpod.com/blogs/e...
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2 https://www.otherworldpod.com/blogs/e...
Does philosophy of language give us reason to think that God, if he exists, is more like us than classical theists expect? I’m joined by philosopher of language Joseph Lawal to discuss an argument from his paper, 'God An Alien or An Alien God?' His argument aims to push us away from the strongest versions of divine simplicity and aseity, but is also potentially a problem for theistic personalists who affirm God's timelessness. The argument, which focuses on the otherness of God (on non-finitist views), leads us to the conclusion that ordinary theological language is either false or meaningless on classical theism. (E.g., “God loves you” would either be false or meaningless.) This poses a major problem for the religious theist and destroys their ability to make predictions and inferences about God based on his attributes. This would not only undermine natural theology, but also harm the sorts of inferences we make about God in ordinary life.
In the conversation, I use the word “prediction” at a few points where it probably would have been clearer to use the word “inference” instead.
There is a lot of information packed into this episode; it may be beneficial to listen more than once.
Joseph's channel
SPECIAL THANKS TO JOSEPH NIED FOR THE MUSIC FOR THIS EPISODE
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Ralph Stefan Weir and Ben Watkins debate whether there is a sound argument from mental causation to materialism. Is the interaction problem for substance dualism fake or fatal?
My interview with Dr. Weir on substance dualism: • You Are A Soul — w/ Ralph Stefan Weir
Dr. Ralph Stefan Weir is the author of The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics: An Argument from Consciousness to Mental Substance. He teaches philosophy at the University of Lincoln and is an Associate Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford.
Ben Watkins is the co-host of the excellent philosophy of religion podcast, Real Atheology / @realatheology
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I respond briefly to Alex O'Conner's free will skepticism, specifically to an objection attributed to Schopenhauer: You can do what you will, but you can't will what you will. While I agree that we can't have ultimate responsibility for our actions, I think we can be responsible for our actions. Being the author of one's actions doesn't require anything magical, just that we are (in some sense) the source of what we do and that we (in some sense) could have done otherwise. As long as we have sourcehood and the ability to do otherwise, I think we have free will; and I think determinism is fatal to neither of these criteria. In defense of alternative possibilities, I appeal to Kadri Vihvelin's dispositional compatibilism, the thesis that "the most fundamental free will facts are facts about our causal powers (for instance, our power to decide on the basis of deliberation) and that our causal powers differ in complexity but not in kind from dispositions like fragility, elasticity, and flammability."
Kadri Vihvelin on Dispositional Compatibilism
Interview with Kadri Vihvelin
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Durham University hosted a conference about panpsychism, pantheism, and panentheism last November, and I was graciously given the opportunity to respond to Joanna Leidenhag and Tim Mulgan. Professor Leidenhag and Professor Mulgan both spoke about alternative models of theism, and I offered a few thoughts and objections to their respective models of God.
On Durham's website, you can listen to all the full lectures from the event: https://sites.google.com/view/panpsychismandpanentheism/project-events/durham-workshop?authuser=0
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00:00 Emerson Green
15:40 Joanna Leidenhag
23:37 Tim Mulgan
31:00 Q&A
We explore the nature of dreams. We discuss Daniel Dennett's cassette theory, which questions whether dreams are genuine experiences that occur during sleep, instead suggesting that dreams are spontaneous memory insertions at awakening. This theory contrasts with the common view that dreams involve phenomenal states in real time. However, lucid dreaming challenges the cassette theory. We also question the reality of "dreamless sleep" and examine prophetic, precognitive, and shared dreams.
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We explore Paul Draper's "psychological aether theory" or "aetherism". In addition to gravitation, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak interactions, there is a fifth fundamental interaction: A field of consciousness, a world-soul or mental aether that interacts with our brains.
"How does the brain produce the mind? It doesn't. Instead, mentality exists quite independently of the brain."
Draper's recent work on aetherism is a refinement of a view proposed by William James in his 1898 Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality. James doesn't deny that thought is a function of the brain. Rather, he challenges the assumption that the function in question is one of production. He defends what he calls the "transmissive function" view over the theory that thought is produced by the brain. For James, consciousness pre-exists, with our brain giving finite human shape to experience, like the pipes of an organ shape the trembling air as it escapes from the organ's air-chest. Aetherism can explain the tight correlation between mental and physical states while allowing for their conceptual and ontological distinction, and dispensing with the need for any spontaneous production of consciousness de novo by the brain.
Both Draper and James recognize that aetherism leaves the door open to an afterlife, as well as certain psi phenomena. As Draper puts it, "perhaps William James was right to challenge the confidence that most philosophers and scientists have that there is no life after death. For if we don't know that aetherism is false, then we don't actually know that the subject of our psychological properties does not continue to exist after our bodies are destroyed.”
William James - Human Immortality
Paul Draper - Psychological Aether Theory
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Monistic Idealism's video
Both Sides Brigade - Interacting with the Interaction Problem
My dualism playlist
Majesty of Reason on the interaction problem
You Are A Soul w/ Ralph Stefan Weir
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We dive into the philosophy of personal identity, exploring whether a consistent "self" persists through time despite physical and mental changes. Is there an essential core that endures transformations? We examine the Ship of Theseus, the deadly and murderous teletransporter which murders people, the “no self” view associated with Hume, mind uploading, Ralph Stefan Weir’s dilemma for transhumanists, and whether Socrates could have been an alligator.
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Explore zombieland with Philip Goff and I as we discuss type-b physicalism, the link between conceivability and possibility, Goff’s differences with David Chalmers, and much else related to the conceivability argument against materialism.
First Zombie Argument Video
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Ralph Stefan Weir joins me to discuss his book, The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics: An Argument from Consciousness to Mental Substance. We talk about the myth of the interaction problem, the connection between theism and the soul, the implausibility of property dualism, substance dualism in Eastern thought, the causal closure argument and energy conservation, a posteriori necessities, modal rationalism, panpsychism and idealism, personal identity, transhumanism, mind-uploading, split brain cases, whether souls are eternal, and much else.
Dustin Crummett's interview with Dr. Weir
. . .
For reference, here are the two arguments from the book we spent the most time on:
DISEMBODIMENT ARGUMENT
(i) The phenomenal facts do not a priori entail the existence of anything physical.
(ii) If the phenomenal facts do not a priori entail the existence of anything physical, then they do not necessitate the existence of anything physical.
(iii) Therefore, the phenomenal facts do not necessitate the existence of anything physical.
PARITY ARGUMENT
(i) If you accept the conceivability argument, you must accept the phenomenal disembodiment argument.
(ii) If you accept the phenomenal disembodiment argument, then you must accept the existence of nonphysical substances.
(iii) Therefore, if you accept the conceivability argument, then you must accept the existence of nonphysical substances.
. . .
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I am once again begging apologists to stop treating atheism and materialism as interchangeable concepts. It's intellectual laziness at best and dishonesty at worst.
This was originally a short video posted on my youtube channel.
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Today, we explore the privacy of consciousness, a feature of the mind rejected by qualia antirealists.
(summary of the arguments begins at 43:45)
A few of the papers and books referenced:
Is Mental Privacy Defensible? Jaffer Ahmed
Explaining Mental Privacy - Colin McGinn
Other minds are neither seen nor inferred - Mason Westfall
Understanding Knowledge - Michael Huemer
Illusionism As A Theory of Consciousness
Galileo's Error - Philip Goff
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Today we discuss three skeptical arguments from Wang Chong, a first-century Chinese philosopher who railed against the belief in ghosts. Although the skeptics who initially presented these arguments to me seemed to think they were decisive, I was unimpressed and wanted to explain why I think they miss the center of the spectral target.
As summarized on Wang’s IEP entry:
(1) Argument from physical shape: The death of a person is the result of the body losing the animating qi (vital essence), and once the qi is separated from the body, the body decays. All will admit to this. If this is so, however, and the person’s qi is still existent, how can this qi itself manifest in the form of a physical shape? It is not a body, it is qi. But when one sees a ghost, one sees a body. But if the person has died, they no longer have a body, so where could they get another one? They cannot take over another living body, which will already possess its own qi. Thus, the view that people when they die become ghosts is nonsensical.
(2) Argument from population: If people become ghosts when they die, there should be more ghost sightings than living people, as the number of people who have lived in the past and died is far greater than the number of people now living. This is not true — ghost “sightings” are rare. Thus it cannot be that people when they die become ghosts.
(3) Argument from ghostly efficacy: If a living person is harmed, this person will immediately go to a magistrate and bring a case against the party who harmed them. If it were the case that people become ghosts when they die and can interact with living humans, every ghostly murder victim would be seen going to a magistrate, telling him the name of the killer and the means of murder, leading him to the body, and so forth. This is never witnessed (ever).
Wang Chong - IEP
Philosophy on the Fringes - Ghosts and Hauntings
Dale Allison Interview - Encountering Mystery
Greenbrier Ghost - Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World
Twitter thread where I first encountered Wang Chong
Music for this episode was performed by yours truly (except the drums).
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Today we discuss Mary the color scientist, her cousin Fred, and a colorblind Norwegian neuroscientist. Specifically, we talk about why Philip Goff thinks "phenomenal curiosity" threatens the ability hypothesis and the phenomenal concept strategy, ruling out moderate forms of physicalism.
Curiosity and the Knowledge Argument - Philip Goff
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We discuss Philip Goff’s conversion, the online reaction to it, and what his “heretical Christianity” involves. Is he a real Christian? What does he think about the resurrection, the ascension, the miracles of Christ, the virgin birth, the trinity, inerrantism, the atonement, and God’s nature?
Amos Wollen - Conversion Review: Christianity gains a new smart person
Randal Rauser on Goff’s Conversion
Nathan Ormond (DigitalGnosis)- Philosopher CONVERTS to Christianity
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I give three reasons why panpsychism typically strikes us as counterintuitive, and why we shouldn't credit our innate bias against it.
David Papineau: Physicalists who find panpsychism counterintuitive haven’t truly freed themselves from dualist thinking
Jonathan Birch on overconfidence about sentience
This episode was available early to supporters at patreon.com/waldenpod
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Today we continue our exploration of the conceivability argument, covering the best response in the physicalist arsenal, and why it doesn't help physicalists escape the hoard of zombies in the end.
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Today we discuss David Chalmers' conceivability argument against physicalism: the zombie argument.
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The core theory, weak and strong emergence, micro-reductionism, and Sean Carroll’s skeptical argument against everything. Is Dr. Carroll correct in holding that physics has ruled out the afterlife, the soul, fundamental consciousness, parapsychology, and other immaterialist claims?
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Sean Carroll speaking to the Freedom From Religion Foundation https://youtu.be/40eiycH077A?si=xgg4KC0JPYWnH0fU
Philip Goff: Is physics different in the brain? https://www.youtube.com/live/wlyKdirhOa4?si=RRYXSUbW8As7sRLw
Papers:
Carroll: Consciousness and the Laws of Physics (2021) https://philarchive.org/archive/CARCAT-33
Goff’s response to critics: https://philpapers.org/archive/GOFPCF.pdf
The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes (2021) https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07884
Relevant blog posts from Carroll:
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/04/the-world-of-everyday-experience-in-one-equation/
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/23/the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-are-completely-understood/
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/29/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood/
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/10/01/one-last-stab/
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/07/18/the-effective-field-theory-of-everyday-life-revisited/
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/05/23/physics-and-the-immortality-of-the-soul/
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/02/18/telekinesis-and-quantum-field-theory/
I recently asked for your questions, and I posted my responses on YouTube here. We touch on compatibilism, NDEs, aliens, euthanasia, abortion, death anxiety as an atheist, idealism, incest, Islam, Mormonism, subjectivism, psychophysical harmony, and more. (For those listening via podcast, I left the introduction in to preserve the timestamps for those who want to skip around to different sections.)
00:00 Intro
00:46 Atheistic platonism?
01:22 Why are you gay?
01:30 Are you still a naturalist?
05:47 What kind of compatibilist are you?
09:41 If I settle your debt with PragerU, will you become a libertarian?
10:12 What’s your biggest gripe with physicalism?
12:42 On the abortion debate, when do you think personhood / full moral status begins?
17:22 Do twinks make better philosophers?
17:56 Are you agnostic about anything in philosophy?
19:37 Why are you such a sucker for spooky stuff?
30:49 Who makes those guitar transitions?
32:34 Favorite music?
34:30 Who are some of your favorite Eastern philosophers?
35:03 Which religion would you choose to be true?
40:54 Who are your favorite theist and atheist philosophers?
42:18 Arguing for dualism from mereological nihilism?
45:48 Euthanasia?
48:43 What are your thoughts on each general era of philosophy?
55:00 Thoughts on Jordan Peterson?
58:55 Have you looked into Islam?
1:03:57 Does your mother know you spend so much time talking to strangers on the internet?
1:04:04 What is your opinion on the resurrection?
1:08:23 The best argument against veganism?
1:21:18 What is the primary goal of adopting panpsychism?
1:23:20 Best defenses of objective morality?
1:24:34 How would aliens affect theism and atheism?
1:30:53 Are you a dualist or a physicalist?
1:31:31 Isn’t solipsism simpler than panpsychism?
1:33:37 Thoughts on idealism?
1:35:41 Which political system do you think is right?
1:39:34 Thoughts on metaethical naturalism?
1:41:52 Is incest wrong?
1:45:27 When will you have some Mormons back on your show?
1:46:34 Why atheist and not agnostic? Where can I find good philrel content?
1:49:54 Would necessitarianism defeat fine-tuning and psychophysical harmony?
1:57:38 Do you accept physical causal closure?
2:00:00 How do you explain psychophysical harmony?
2:02:34 Kant’s transcendental idealism and free will?
2:07:56 Are we obligated to refute false beliefs even if they’re meaningful?
2:13:01 Is there any profound nugget of wisdom that Christianity has first or exclusive ownership of?
2:15:17 Analytic/Continental divide?
2:18:05 “Emmerson”
2:19:03 Does the phenomenal powers view weaken psychophysical harmony?
2:22:04 Is time necessary for consciousness?
2:28:49 If you did reconvert, would you be a Christian or a generic theist?
2:32:20 Finite theism?
2:36:22 Top three philosophers who are wrong about everything?
2:37:57 Moral subjectivism with normally functioning humans as the (collective) observer(s) morality is stance-dependent upon?
2:48:52 Are you afraid of death? How do you cope with death anxiety as an atheist?
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Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental states have no effect on anything. The feeling of pain, counterintuitively, does not cause your aversion, mentally or physically. Beliefs don’t cause behavior. None of our actions occur in virtue of our thoughts, feelings, or sensations.
Inspired by Matthew Adelstein’s post defending epiphenomenalism, I want to explain my opposition to the view. A few times, he referenced a podcast episode / blog post of mine from 2020, which I hadn’t read since it was first posted. I found a few things to disagree with in my own episode, so I thought I’d respond to Matthew and try to offer an updated critique of epiphenomenalism in the process. While epiphenomenalism is probably less wrong than physicalism, the causal efficacy of our mental states is as evident as anything, so the view should still be rejected in favor of panpsychism or interactionist dualism. As Paul Draper once put it, “wild ideas are needed” to explain consciousness, but I don’t think epiphenomenalism is the right wild idea.
After responding to a few key points from Matthew, I offer a few reasons to reject epiphenomenalism:
- Epiphenomenalism is self-defeating.
- The evidence that supports the causal influence of mental states is the exact same kind of evidence for causal influence in other cases. This not only supports mental causation, but also raises the threat of undermining the epiphenomenalist’s claim that the physical has causal powers.
- The phenomenal powers view as defended by Mørch (2017, 2020) is plausible and entails the falsity of epiphenomenalism. In short, there are plausible examples of causal necessity in the mind.
- Among metaphysical theories of consciousness, epiphenomenalism is the most vulnerable to the problem of psychophysical harmony.
Transcript
YouTube
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Here's my interview on Shannon Q's YouTube channel where we discuss dualism, panpsychism, personal identity, and other topics in the philosophy of mind!
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Dr. Michael Huemer joins me to defend interactionist substance dualism, the view that the mind and body are composed of different substances and can exert causal influence over each other.
Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy
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Wouldn’t aliens manage to avoid crashing their ships, given how advanced they’d have to be? Aren’t the distances between life-supporting planets too vast to feasibly travel? If figures in the government actually knew something, wouldn’t a cover-up involve too many people to keep the secret for long?
I’m joined by Jimmy Akin to answer ten common objections to UFO phenomena and alien visitations. In the wake of recent news stories about unidentified aerial phenomena, I heard the same skeptical talking points trotted out over and over again as if UFO believers had never considered them and had no response to them at all. So I’d like to play whatever small part I can in improving the quality of the discourse by advancing the conversation past the initial thoughts that are commonly offered into more interesting territory. This should make skeptics better skeptics, and help agnostics like myself better appreciate the skeptical position. Right now, the skeptics are not sending their best.
Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World
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Today I’m speaking with Dr. Dale Allison, historian and author of Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age. The subtitle of the book notwithstanding, the unusual experiences we discuss are not explicitly religious. They’re usually interpreted through a religious lens (often without any reflection), but almost all of them needn’t be, which is something we return to quite a bit. Flatly disputing the phenomenon is not the only option available to the nonreligious.
We talk about paranormal and parapsychological phenomena, and two major sources of skepticism towards things that fall into those categories. On the one hand, of course, there’s materialism, conservative naturalism, skepticism (as in, the skeptic community), etc. But Protestant Christianity, I was surprised to learn, has also been a skeptical force in history due to their drive to debunk Catholic miracle stories, or even just extraordinary events documented by the Catholic Church that explicitly or implicitly were used as evidence for Catholicism.
Since we’re exploring new terrain that involves some quite unusual topics (e.g., clairvoyance, levitation, visions of dead loved ones, etc.) there’s a lot more I want to say, even in this little description box, but I’ll save it for the interview.
One thing I forgot to mention during the interview: In addition to Dr. Allison’s book, there are a couple podcasts that regularly discuss cases like the ones that came up today in greater depth. “Otherworld” and “Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World” come highly recommended from me.
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Today, we discuss Agrippa's trilemma and look at our hands.
Epistemology Playlist
Understanding Knowledge - Michael Huemer
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Today, we discuss the idea that understanding a concept is not a matter of knowing a definition. As philosopher Michael Huemer argues, our main access to a concept comes “not through directly reflecting on the concept, but through activating the dispositions that constitute our understanding.”
The Wittgensteinian view of concepts explains how it’s possible that we know how to competently use terms even though it is so hard to successfully analyze them. I can’t provide a perfect conceptual analysis of knowledge (no one can), and yet I have no issue using the term and understanding what it means. Not only can I competently use words that I can’t analyze, I can reject proposed analyses as insufficient, like the justified true belief analysis. That’s because I understand the meaning of the concept, despite the fact that I can’t define it.
“Indefinability of words is perfectly normal," Huemer argues, "since understanding is not constituted by knowledge of definitions. The best way to convey a word’s meaning is through examples.”
Language & Meaning: Crash Course Philosophy
Understanding Knowledge - Michael Huemer
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One note from Huemer on the Wittgensteinian view of concepts and the contrasting Lockean view: "I think what I have to say about concepts is like some stuff that Wittgenstein said, but I don’t actually care how well it matches Wittgenstein’s views. I also don’t care, by the way, whether the 'Lockean theory' matches Locke’s views. You have to add in caveats like this whenever you mention a major philosophical figure, because there are always people who have devoted their lives to studying that figure and who, if you let them, will give you all sorts of arguments that the famous philosopher has been completely misunderstood and never really said the things they’re famous for saying."
What is knowledge? What does it mean to know something? Today, we discuss the defeasibility theory, which adds a fourth condition to the famous "justified true belief" analysis of knowledge. We also touch on Gettier cases, certainty, and what contemporary analytic philosophy is all about (the answer may surprise you!).
For even more epistemology, check out the new series on Counter Apologetics about mistakes atheists often make about epistemology.
Understanding Knowledge - Michael Huemer
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We take a short break from our epistemology series to talk about the hypothesis of indifference, a limited God, natural teleology, pan-agentialism, and how value-orientation in the universe is not binary but rather comes on a continuum.
For reference, Paul Draper (1989) characterizes the hypothesis of indifference as follows: “neither the nature nor the condition of sentient beings on earth is the result of benevolent or malevolent actions performed by non-human persons.”
If the audio sounds different than usual, that's because I recorded this as a video and edited it slightly differently as a result. You can watch the video on YouTube here
Check out the series on atheism and epistemology over on Counter Apologetics here
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This is part one of a series about epistemology, the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge and justification. When does something count as knowledge? How can we be justified in accepting mathematical truths, moral truths, and truths about the external world? Can I trust my perceptual faculties, my memory, my ability to reason? Can I know anything at all?
Today, we're discussing internalism vs. externalism about knowledge and justification. We also touch on the person-based nature of justification, giving others the benefit of the doubt, and empathy on the epistemic landscape.
Understanding Knowledge - Michael Huemer
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Perspective Philosophy and I speak about metaethics, intervening in wild animal suffering, veganism, the toll of working in a slaughterhouse, ethical intuition, moral disagreement, and a few metaphysical questions about contingency and necessity.
Full interview here
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“On panpsychism, how can there ever be unconsciousness, like in the case of dreamless sleep?” As far as objections go, this is a pretty weak one, but I decided to take the opportunity to talk about death, sleep, states of unconsciousness, and how panpsychists see the mind and its place in nature.
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Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here
Transcript
Twitter @waldenpod @OnPanpsychism
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Philip Goff and Dustin Crummett debate psychophysical harmony, God, axiarchism, pan-agentialism, natural teleology, and explore some neglected terrain between theism and the hypothesis of indifference. What are our options in explaining the fine-tuning of consciousness?
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Twitter @waldenpod @Philip_Goff @dustin_crummett
Dustin's Channel
Mind Chat
Music by ichika Nito & Whalers. Used with permission.
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When did consciousness first evolve? If physicalism is true, we’d expect it to have evolved gradually, just as other biological phenomena evolved gradually. The complex physical states produced over the course of biological evolution came about little by little over time, so it’s unsurprising that they admit of borderline states. But how could this be the case with experiences, feelings, and sensations? It’s easy to see how it’d be the case with particular types of experiences, but how could it be the case with experience itself? The transition from feeling nothing to feeling something couldn’t have been gradual. No matter how minimal a conscious experience is, if it’s “like something” to exist – anything at all – it’s not like nothing at all. It might be indeterminate what you’re feeling, but not whether you’re feeling. On reflection it seems hard to imagine anything other than a sharp borderline between wholly non-experiential reality and experiential reality.
On the other hand, complex physical states admit borderline cases. If we remove one atom at a time from a given brain state, it will eventually be vague or indeterminate whether or not the organism is still in that physical brain state. So if consciousness is just a kind of physical state, then we’d expect consciousness to follow suit. But since it seems impossible that there could be a borderline case of consciousness – it’s either like something for a creature or like nothing – then we have reason to think that physicalism is false.
Michael Tye - Vagueness and the Evolution of Consciousness
David Papineau’s review of Vagueness and the Evolution of Consciousness in NDPR
Nino Kadic - Phenomenology of Fundamental Reality
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Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here
Support at patreon.com/counter or patreon.com/waldenpod
Music by ichika Nito and used with permission.
Transcript
Twitter @waldenpod @OnPanpsychism
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/ timestamps /
00:00 The vagueness argument
04:18 Which creatures are conscious?
06:18 The sharpness of consciousness
10:09 The vagueness of biological phenomena
12:41 The sharpness of consciousness (cont.)
20:14 Weak emergence
21:42 The advantage of vagueness arguments
In many ways, I'm the ideal audience for apologists of capital punishment. I believe in free will, I think human beings are responsible for their actions, I’m not opposed to retribution in all cases, I believe there are virtuous qualities to revenge, and I think some people deserve to die. However, none of that is enough to justify the death penalty system.
First, arguing that some people deserve to die is not sufficient to show that any particular institution (e.g. the state) should have the power and legitimacy to carry out executions. Second, capital punishment is not reconcilable with the principle of remedy: when mistakes are inevitably made, the punishment for the wrongly convicted cannot be brought to an end and they cannot be given damages. Third, the application of the death penalty will inevitably be morally arbitrary in some cases – either due to the morally arbitrary nature of the laws themselves, the enforcement of the law, or the imperfect determination of guilt. Since this is unavoidable, we cannot have the death penalty without murdering innocents. And since saving innocent life is far more important than ending the lives of the guilty, this should dissuade us from maintaining a death-penalty system. Finally, the virtuous qualities of revenge are absent in the death penalty system.
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Support at patreon.com/waldenpod & patreon.com/counter
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Transcript
Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here
Music by ichika Nito and used with permission.
Twitter @waldenpod
Upcoming Episodes:
60 - Should we abolish the death penalty?
61 - Reflections on Dualism (Patron Bonus)
Psychophysical Harmony, Physicalism, & God w/ Dr. Brian Cutter
62 - The Vagueness Argument Against Physicalism
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Subscribe on YouTube
Consider supporting the show on Patreon here or Counter Apologetics here
Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here
Music by ichika Nito and used with permission.
Full interview on the Sentientism podcast
Twitter @waldenpod @OnPanpsychism
linktr.ee/emersongreen
Subscribe on YouTube
Consider supporting the show on Patreon here or Counter Apologetics here
Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here
Music by ichika Nito and used with permission.
Full interview on the Sentientism podcast
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Dr. Michael Huemer joins me to discuss moral realism vs. antirealism, ethical intuitionism, phenomenal conservatism, moral disagreement, and much else in moral philosophy.
Ethical Intuitionism
Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy
William Lane Craig vs. Erik Wielenberg
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/ The Five Metaethical Positions /
Noncognitivism/expressivism: Moral statements are neither true nor false. Evaluative predicates do not even
purportedly refer to any sort of property, nor do evaluative statements assert propositions.
Error theory/nihilism: Moral statements (that imply that something has an evaluative property) are all false.
Subjectivism: Some moral statements are true, but not objectively. For a thing to be good is for some individual or group to (be disposed to) take some attitude towards it.
Moral Naturalism: There are objective moral properties, but they are reducible. Evaluative truths are reducible to descriptive truths. Additionally, moral statements can be justified empirically.
Moral Non-Naturalism/Intuitionism: There are objective moral properties, and they are irreducible. Evaluative truths are not reducible to descriptive truths. Additionally, at least some moral truths are known intuitively.
/ Timestamps /
00:00 Introduction
01:05 Objective vs. Subjective
06:45 Five Metaethical Views
36:45 Fictionalism
50:40 Phenomenal Conservatism, Scientism, Skepticism
1:15:00 Moral Disagreement
1:25:00 Theism and Moral Realism
1:41:00 Companions in Innocence
1:46:30 Evolutionary Debunking Arguments
2:00:00 Huemer’s soul is not in Colorado nor is it in Michigan
Is the intellectual tradition of theism evidence in favor of it? What about the atheistic tradition? ... Does atheism sap your moral motivation? Do Christians even believe in ultimate justice? ... Do contingency arguments succeed? What does it mean for something to be necessary?
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I'm joined by two proponents of libertarian free will to discuss determinism, the phenomenology of free choices, how "ought implies can" could prove we have the ability to do otherwise, and much else.
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Darren (Necessary Being) w/ Bread of Life
Necessary Being on Free Will
Critiquing arguments against free will from neuroscience | The Analytic Christian & Dr. Matthew Flummer (of The Free Will Show)
I'm joined by Matthew Adelstein of Deliberation Under Ideal Conditions for Utilitarianism 101. We also talk about a few basic things everyone needs to know to be conversant in moral philosophy.
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Wild animal suffering – is it possible to do anything about it? Should we do anything about it? Even though the general principles that inform our concern for animal welfare shouldn’t be arbitrarily limited to animals outside the wild, I think intervention on any serious scale would be ill-advised. The natural order is deeply interconnected, dynamic, and awesomely complex. Drastic action, such as ending predation, would plausibly cause the system to collapse into nonexistence or end in some other irreversible catastrophe. Sadly, natural evil is inextricably built into the biological order.
“...for practical purposes I am fairly sure, judging from man’s past record of attempts to mold nature to his own aims, that we would be more likely to increase the net amount of animal suffering if we interfered with wildlife, than to decrease it.” - Peter Singer
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Personal identity, the potential evolutionary origins of religion, Bernardo Kastrup and analytic idealism, the Ship of Theseus and substance dualism.
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A few thoughts on what mysterianism is not. Also, why "What is consciousness?" is a bad question.
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My opinionated introduction to mysterianism. Inspired by Noam Chomsky, Colin McGinn, and Eric Schwitzgebel, we explore a version of mysterianism that I think may be true.
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Shane Wagoner - From Physicalism to Mysterianism
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A few scattered thoughts about internet materialists, underdetermination, neuroscience, the evolution of consciousness, qualia microscopes, and the hard problem of consciousness.
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If epiphenomenalism is true, mental causation is an illusion. Even if pain and pleasure were inverted, you’d go on behaving the same way you do now, since your conscious states have nothing to do with determining or motivating your physical behavior. This is counterintuitive, to say the least. But it also leaves us completely unable to explain why our conscious states line up appropriately with our actions. We typically think that natural selection molded our mental profile: that which aids in survival and reproduction is incentivized by experiences with a positive hedonic valence, and vice versa. Thus, we have an evolutionary explanation of harmonious correlations. But on epiphenomenalism, this can't be the right explanation, since experiences play no causal role at all. If they have no causal influence, they can't make any difference to genetic fitness. So how is it that harmonious correlations evolved if experiences are invisible to natural selection?
Argument from Psychophysical Harmony w/ Dustin Crummett
Psychophysical Harmony in a Nutshell
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Ben Burgis recently invited me on his Callin show to speak about the value of “science fiction” thought experiments in applied ethics. I argue that in the realm of applied ethics, thought experiments often confuse more than they clarify. They don’t map on to the real world cases they’re intended to help with (for various reasons), and we shouldn’t be informing action with scenarios that differ in ethically relevant respects. Applied ethics is about what we should do – it’s a uniquely practical subfield of philosophy. Ethical thought experiments commonly provide us with both too much and too little information: they exclude morally relevant detail that we would possess in the real world, and they include morally relevant detail that we would not possess in the real world. So even though we may come to the same conclusion regarding an action or principle in a thought experiment doesn’t mean we’d agree in the real world case, since these two cases differ in morally relevant respects. Consequently, I think it’s often a mistake to inform action in the real world with conclusions drawn from a thought experiment. Ben Burgis - The Joe Rogan Experience Canceling Comedians While the World Burns The Left Should Oppose Censorship by Big Tech Companies Callin - Friendly Debate w/Emerson Green—Do “Science Fiction” Thought Experiments Have Any Value in Philosophy? James Wilson - Philosophy Bites Interview on the value of thought experiments in applied ethics
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Many leaders in the skeptic community have proven themselves to be untrustworthy sources of information on the topics they speak about. They’ve misled me often about what others believe and why. Moreover, genuine skepticism seems to be far less important to the skeptic community than the kind of conclusions one comes to. Failure to adopt the required list of beliefs disqualifies one from being a real skeptic, it would seem. In today’s episode, I talk about how my atheism caused me to gravitate towards the skeptic community, and how the same subject caused me to drift away. We also discuss how skeptics mishandle the subjects of theism, parapsychology, the JFK assassination, 9/11, and aliens. For the record, this should not be seen as a comprehensive treatment of the topics raised (e.g. conspiracy theories). My framework was the following: Skeptics told me conspiracy theorists believed X for reason Y, but they were often wrong on both counts. I used a few examples, but I wasn’t aiming to provide a full account of what 9/11 truthers believe, or what alien abductees think, nor was I trying to defend a rejection of the Warren Commission. I especially shied away from that last topic, since it’s a bit different from the others for me. In the case of the JFK assassination, I’m more solidly on the side of the conspiracy theorists. Along with the majority of Americans, I don’t accept the Warren Commission. Watch on YouTube
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For a more accurate picture of what these common skeptic targets believe and why: / JFK Oliver Stone’s documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass /or/ JFK: Destiny Betrayed [longer version of same doc]
Mark Lane interviewed on JFK assassination (1992) / 9/11 Three-part article in CovertAction Magazine - Peter Dale Scott, Aaron Good, Ben Howard The Road to 9/11 (University of California Press) Peter Dale Scott / Theism
Kenny Pierce defends theism against Graham Oppy (Dialogue)
Joshua Rasmussen defends theism against Felipe Leon (Dialogue) / Parapsychology Mitch Horowitz: A parapsychologist’s take on James Randi / Aliens Nick Pope w/ Michael Shermer on UAPs and UFOs Avi Loeb w/ Michael Shermer on alien life and oumuamua
I’m joined by philosopher Luke Roelofs to discuss the combination problem for panpsychism, split brain cases, vagueness arguments, illusionism, mental privacy, the general and special composition question, mereological nihilism and universalism, and many other topics related to consciousness and composite subjectivity.
Watch on YouTube
Combining Minds: How to Think About Composite Subjectivity (Oxford University Press)
Amodal Mind Perception: Combining Inferentialism and Perceptualism
Luke’s website
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I'm joined by Scott Clifton (Theoretical Bullshit) to discuss free will skepticism, compatibilism, moral responsibility, revenge, and killing coyotes.
Video version - Is free will an illusion?
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I respond to Alex O'Connor's arguments against compatibilism, the view that there is no real conflict between determinism and free will. Is free will skepticism the better view, as Alex claims? Will the British ever learn their lesson?
CosmicSkeptic - Compatibilism Debunked
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After listening to Very Bad Wizards' new episode about panpsychism, I hit record and commented on a few clips that stood out to me.
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An interesting article on panpsychist history by Joe Zadeh
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Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. In other words, a compatibilist is someone who doesn’t have a quarrel with using the term “free will” and who doesn’t think we need to run around with our hair on fire if determinism turns out to be true. By my lights, free will skeptics and libertarians seem to be entirely wrong about the dramatic consequences that would follow from not possessing libertarian freedom. As you may have gathered, I’ve finally migrated from the free will skeptic camp over to the compatibilist camp. Years ago, learning about determinism and moral luck for the first time rocked my world. But as the dust settled, I wondered if I had been too quick to reject the entire notion of free will. How much does it matter that we don’t have libertarian free will? How much has actually changed? Is our ordinary sense of free will really unsalvageable?
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Can we be ultimately responsible for what we do? No one denies that we can be the proximate cause of our actions. I made this episode because I wanted to. But being the proximate cause of an action is compatible with determinism – no determinist in their right mind would deny that I made this episode because I wanted to. So is there a deeper sense of responsibility that can be attributed to human beings? One which absolves God, the world, ancestors, luck, and society of what we choose to do? This deeper kind of responsibility, which Nietzsche disparagingly called “‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense,” and which is often ascribed to human beings by the religious, arguably requires one to be causa sui – to be the ultimate cause of oneself. Since this is impossible, we can be sure that we do not possess the kind of responsibility that so many seem convinced we have. You can’t be radically self-creating in a way that gets you beyond a compatibilist notion of responsibility. It’s unclear whether our lack of ultimate responsibility for our actions is a problem for libertarian free will. Do libertarians unanimously impute this degree of responsibility to humans? No – some do, some don’t. Regardless, the attacks on free will “in the superlative metaphysical sense” from Nietzsche and Strawson convincingly show that our responsibility for our actions is quite limited. Galen Strawson - Your Move: The Maze of Free Will Tamler Sommers & Galen Strawson - You cannot make yourself the way that you are The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast - The Galen Strawson Interview
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"The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Münchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness." Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 21 (tr. W. Kaufmann)
I’m joined today by Jack Symes, editor of the new book, Philosophers on Consciousness: Talking about the Mind. Jack is a Teacher and Researcher of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, UK and is also the co-host of The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast. Follow on Twitter @waldenpod and @OnPanpsychism Follow Jack on Twitter @_JackSymes @ThePanpsycast
Philosophers on Consciousness: Talking about the Mind
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/ timestamps /
00:00 Introduction to the book
15:52 The construction problem
20:23 Why philosophy of mind? Why not just neuroscience?
28:28 Does Emerson misrepresent illusionism?
38:11 The terminological mess in philmind
46:21 Different forms of panpsychism
52:20 Illusionism redux: the metaproblem of consciousness
1:01:53 Practical implications of illusionism
1:14:58 Podcasting
1:18:55 Practical implications of panpsychism
1:41:37 Paganism and panpsychism
1:52:26 Pantheism
1:55:48 Panpsycast stories
2:02:05 LIVE SHOW
2:03:13 Parting thoughts
How can one reconcile the reality of mental causation with the accuracy of “the core theory,” which Sean Carroll hails as explaining all of everyday life? Contrary to Carroll’s intention, his proclamation that the laws underlying the physics of everyday life are completely understood is one of the factors that lead some to adopt Russellian panpsychism. (This episode was recorded as a video, which is available to patrons.)
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Is a brain necessary for experience? Do we have any good reason to limit the attribution of experience to creatures with complex nervous systems? Actually, no. Some materialists claim that consciousness can only exist in brains–sound reasoning, neuroscience, and physics all point in the same direction. We take a closer look at the reasoning that underlies the claim that complex nervous systems are necessary for experience. A quick note on terminology: In this episode, I use physicalism and materialism interchangeably. And by “consciousness,” I’m referring to subjective experience: the what-it’s-like of consciousness. I try to stick to “experience” for clarity, but when I say “consciousness,” or “mind,” unless otherwise specified, experience is what I mean. Swinburne quote Robert Epstein - Your brain is not a computer
Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes - Panpsychism: 3 Reasons Why Our World is Brimming with Sentience
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Recently I learned that H.P. Lovecraft had undergone a surprising and dramatic political transformation in the final years of his brief life. I wanted to read a few of Lovecraft's letters and discuss his views on capitalism, socialism, and the influence of the profit motive on artistic expression. (In the middle part of this episode, I also indulge in a bit of culture war stuff, so consider yourself warned.) In these letters from the last several years of his life, his notorious racism seems to fade, and he explicitly rejects the reactionary political ideology he held prior to 1931. He ruthlessly critiques capitalism, speaks glowingly of Marx, and warns us that our only options are socialism or barbarism. Anyone familiar with the author knows how out of kilter this feels compared to the absurdly reactionary person who most of us know as Lovecraft.
First episode on Lovecraft
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Lovecraft Letters: 1937, Catherine Moore 1936 Arthur Sechrist
1934, Helen Barlow
Lovecraft Audiobooks: Dagon The Call of Cthulhu At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
/ timestamps /
00:00 Introduction
02:53 Flawed Characters, Real and Fictional
09:30 Letter to Catherine Moore (1937)
13:00 Letter to Helen Barlow (1934)
15:32 Letter to Arthur Sechrist (1936)
17:23 Art & the Profit Motive
19:52 The Shadow
Transcript
I was recently interviewed by Zac of Adherent Apologetics on the subject of problems with physicalism. We outline a few arguments against the view, including physicalism’s conflict with realism about phenomenal consciousness and anti-emergentism, as well as a couple different forms of the vagueness argument against physicalism. We also talk a bit about the tradition of atheist non-physicalism, which is almost entirely behind the recent rise in interest in alternatives to physicalism. Other topics include the science of consciousness, the relationship between neuroscience and the metaphysics of consciousness, the standard thinking that motivates physicalism and where it goes wrong, panpsychism, and other subjects related to philosophy of mind.
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Today I'm speaking with Dr. Michael Huemer about phenomenal conservatism, a theory in epistemology that seeks to ground justified beliefs in the way things “appear” or “seem” to the subject who holds that belief. We discuss a wide range of issues in epistemology, including internalism vs. externalism, justified true belief, proper functionalism, the epistemic value of psychedelic experiences, religious experiences, radical skepticism, knowledge, conceptual analysis, intuition, and much else. Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is the author of more than seventy academic articles in epistemology, ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy, as well as several books, including Skepticism and the Veil of Perception, Ethical Intuitionism, Paradox Lost, and Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism, and his new book, Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy. PC: If it seems to S that P, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some justification for believing that P. Michael’s Website Phenomenal Conservatism - IEP Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism
MH YouTube Channel
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YouTube version of this episode
Naturalists, according to David Papinau, author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on naturalism, urge “that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing ‘supernatural’.” Naturalism “has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy” beyond this, along with an emphasis on science as a means to understand the natural world. Naturalism is the view that there is only the natural world. I defend this simple conception of naturalism, ward off a few criticisms, and argue that there’s a kind of parity between the terms “theism” and “naturalism.” In other words, if you don’t have a problem with the term “theism,” you shouldn’t have a problem with “naturalism.” Luke Roelofs - Combining Minds: How to Think about Composite Subjectivity
Is God the Best Explanation of Things? A Dialogue - Joshua Rasmussen & Felipe Leon (this wasn’t mentioned in the episode, but Leon does a wonderful job fleshing out “liberal naturalism” Graham Oppy - The Best Argument Against God Sean Carroll - Poetic Naturalism Galen Strawson - Real Naturalism William Lycan - Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction Naturalism - SEP / / /
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/ / / a few elaborations of naturalism... “By ‘naturalism’ I mean the view that the world contains a single basic type of stuff, whose behavior is governed by a single set of simple, general laws, and that these laws are those revealed by science. The most common version of naturalism among contemporary philosophers is physicalism, the view that the world is entirely made up of matter, and matter is exhaustively described by physics. But some philosophers reject physicalism, even while accepting naturalism, holding that matter is not exhaustively described by physics—there are fundamental aspects of matter that physics is blind to. In particular (they tend to say), there are certain things each of us can know about matter, such as that one particular portion of matter (the one between our ears) sometimes feels and thinks and experiences, which go beyond both what physics itself says and what can be deduced from any physical description, no matter how detailed. Because facts about my consciousness are left out by any purely physical descriptions, these ‘naturalistic anti-physicalists’ infer that consciousness must be itself a fundamental feature of reality, no more derivable from physical properties than mass is derivable from charge.” Luke Roelofs “Naturalism is a philosophy according to which there is only one world -- the natural world, which exhibits unbroken patterns (the laws of nature), and which we can learn about through hypothesis testing and observation. In particular, there is no supernatural world -- no gods, no spirits, no transcendent meanings. I like to talk about a particular approach to naturalism, which can be thought of as Poetic. By that I mean to emphasize that, while there is only one world, there are many ways of talking about the world. "Ways of talking" shouldn't be underestimated; they can otherwise be labeled "theories" or "models" or "vocabularies" or "stories," and if a particular way of talking turns out to be sufficiently accurate and useful, the elements in its corresponding vocabulary deserve to be called real.” Sean Carroll “Naturalism says that causal reality is natural reality: the domain of causes is nothing more nor less than the natural world. Atheism says that there are no gods; in consequence, atheism says that there is no God. Naturalism entails atheism: if causal reality is natural reality, then there is no (supernatural) cause of natural reality, and, in particular, there is no God. But atheism does not entail naturalism: to deny that there are gods is not to insist that causal reality is natural reality. . . . Supernaturalism says that causal reality outstrips natural reality: there are supernatural causes. . . . This ‘minimal’ conception of naturalism relies on a prior understanding of the distinction between the natural and the supernatural (as did our ‘minimal’ conception of theism). We shall proceed on the assumption that we do understand this distinction well enough. If we come to have doubts about whether we do understand this distinction well enough, then we can return to give it more careful consideration. ‘Minimal naturalism’ admits of elaboration in many different – mutually inconsistent – ways. Any suitably elaborated naturalism will hold that some features of the natural world are primitive – not susceptible of further explanation – whereas other features of the natural world are fully explained in terms of those primitive features. Thus, for example, some naturalists suppose that all of the primitive features of the natural world are physical features – i.e. features that lie in the proper domain of the discipline of physics. Other naturalists suppose that there are features of the natural world . . . that cannot be fully explained in terms of the fundamental physical properties. The key point to note is that all naturalists suppose that there are no supernatural causal properties…” Graham Oppy
Aaron is a lecturer in the Rutgers philosophy department (@ETVpod). Emerson is the host of Counter Apologetics and Walden Pod (@waldenpod).
Aaron’s podcast, Embrace the Void https://voidpod.com/
This debate took place on the Right to Reason podcast https://therighttoreason.podbean.com/e/panpsychism-debate/
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Dustin and I discuss vagueness arguments against materialism, phenomenal conservatism, doubt arguments, Phineas Gage, physical causal closure, the core theory, vitalism, ghosts, split-brain cases, occam's razor, panpsychism, idealism, dual-aspect theories, and the problem of psychophysical luck.
Dr. Crummett received a PhD from the University of Notre Dame in 2018, and he is currently working on animal ethics as a postdoctoral researcher at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He specializes in social and political philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of religion.
Dustin’s website http://dustincrummett.com/
Micah Edvenson & Dustin Crummett on Socialism
Dustin Crummett with John Buck & Inspiring Christianity on Dualism
A Deeper Analysis of the Problem of Evil with Dr. Dustin Crummett
Is The Problem Of Evil Worse Than We Thought? Non-Alchemist & Dr. Dustin Crummett
Science, Mind, and the Limits of Understanding - Noam Chomsky
Can physicalism explain phenomenal consciousness?
Luke Roelofs - Combining Minds
Hedda Hassel Morch - The Evolutionary Argument for Phenomenal Powers
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What is philosophy, and who counts as a philosopher? My two favorite answers come from Alvin Plantinga and Arthur Schopenhauer. According to Plantinga, philosophy is just thinking hard about something. Schopenhauer put it a bit more loftily: philosophy represents our attempt to “lay bare the true nature of the world.” (At least, this is true in philosophy’s more ambitious moments.) Additionally, I would submit that philosophy is the intensification of a natural human activity.
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David Egan on Philosophy [Aeon]
Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig on Philosophy [Reasonable Faith]
Transcript [emersongreenblog]
Is philosophy dead? [iTunes]
You’re wrong to hate philosophy [iTunes]
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We discuss poetic naturalism and its nemesis, tunnel vision reductionism. Tunnel vision reductionism takes one description of reality and declares it to be the “real” description of reality to the exclusion of all others. At the very least, the given lower level of description is considered “more true” than higher-level descriptions.
The basic problem with tunnel vision reductionism is that it has a narrow and inconsistent notion of the real. Neurons are taken to be real, but emotions are illusory (or at least, less real than neurons). Both are emergent, higher level phenomena, but for some reason, the former is the true description. But if love isn’t real because it’s a higher level description, then neurons aren’t real either. Neither are chemicals like oxytocin. But of course, higher level descriptions are real. There are many legitimate theories, models, vocabularies, stories, and ways of talking about the world. As poetic naturalist Sean Carroll puts it, “if a particular way of talking turns out to be sufficiently accurate and useful, the elements in its corresponding vocabulary deserve to be called real.” If we describe the biochemical correlates of love, we haven’t described everything there is to know about love, nor have we given the “real” description of love.
“But all this only works if we reject reductive materialism, right?” No! This is true especially if one accepts reductive materialism. On reductive materialism, the feeling of love and oxytocin are both real in exactly the same way.
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Here’s my conversation with John Buck and Craig Reid that was held on Craig’s YouTube channel. I was invited on to discuss atheism and consciousness, two of my favorite subjects. Unfortunately we were having audio issues at different points, but I did a bit of editing to make it more listenable.
Craig’s channel is primarily devoted to Christian apologetics, but here we mostly discuss consciousness. We talk about my religious background near the beginning, and my reasons for being an atheist a bit near the end, but most of the conversation is on physicalism, panpsychism, dualism, and a lot of interesting questions related to those ideas.
Craig's YouTube Channel
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When it comes to the combination problem, there are almost always controversial hidden assumptions about the stuff doing the combining and about the entity being formed by the combining. The assumptions one makes about the self and physical reality alter the difficulty and nature of the combination problem.
As Luke Roelofs has argued in his extensive book, Combining Minds, the combination problem is a much wider problem that doesn’t dissipate if one rejects panpsychism in favor of physicalism. He also convincingly shows that panpsychists are not required to appeal to strong emergence to explain the existence of the self or subject.
While the combination problem does not deter me from taking panpsychism seriously, it’s nonetheless an interesting research program that warrants thoughtful study. The distinction I’m trying to draw here is between a problem that should dissuade one from adopting a view, and a puzzle that should inspire one to keep thinking about the view.
Luke Roelofs on Consciousness Live! with Richard Brown
Nino Kadic on the Combination Problem and Phenomenal Routing
Galen Strawson on the subject-experience-content identity view
The Subject of Experience - Galen Strawson [Oxford University Press]
Panpsychism’s combination problem is a problem for everyone - Angela Mendelovici [PDF]
Combining Minds: How to Think about Composite Subjectivity - Luke Roelofs [Oxford University Press]
/ / /
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We discuss the ideas that have led me away from physicalism. Specifically, realism about phenomenal consciousness, phenomenal precision, nonemergence (that there is only weak emergence, no strong emergence), monism, the objective/subjective divide, and the explanatory gap.
David Chalmers - Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness [text]
Galen Strawson - Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism [doc]
Thomas Nagel - Panpsychism [PDF]
Nagel - What is it like to be a bat? [PDF]
Nagel - Subjective and Objective [philpapers]
Philip Goff - Orthodox Property Dualism+The Linguistic Theory of Vagueness=Panpsychism [Springer]
Hunter Ash - The Argument from Vagueness
Galen Strawson & Philosophy Bites - Panpsychism
William James - Principles of Psychology [text]
Panpsychism [SEP]
. . .
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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We discuss the metaphysical views of pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, as elaborated in his magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation. Schopenhauer developed a fascinating dual-aspect monism, according to which from outside, the world appears as representation, but from inside, it appears as will: ontological monism and epistemological dualism. To Schopenhauer, desire-driven will is what we are from inside, and he goes on to argue that we should think of the underlying reality of all appearance in the same way. You represent my will as a body, but I know that there’s an underlying reality to your representation that’s experiential in character. Schopenhauer thinks the basis of this dual-aspect character of reality pervades the natural world, organic and inorganic. Why? Because this is our only form of insight into—or acquaintance with—anything as a thing in itself.
“[O]n the path of objective knowledge, thus starting from the representation, we shall never get beyond the representation, i.e., the phenomenon. We shall therefore remain at the outside of things; we shall never be able to penetrate into their inner nature, and investigate what they are in themselves…So far, I agree with Kant. But … we ourselves are the thing-in-itself. Consequently, a way from within stands open to us to that real inner nature of things to which we cannot penetrate from without. It is, so to speak, a subterranean passage, a secret alliance, which, as if by treachery, places us all at once in the fortress that could not be taken by attack from without.” - Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer on Will and Representation - Academy of Ideas
Peter Sjöstedt-H - Noumenautics: Metaphysics - Meta-Ethics - Psychedelics [Amazon]
Schopenhauer and the Philosophy of Mind - Peter Sjöstedt-H [Philosopher.eu]
Hedda Hassel Mørch - Argument for Panpsychism from Experience of Causation [PDF]
Nietzsche’s Metaphysics? - Galen Strawson
Idealism - Schopenhauer [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Arthur Schopenhauer [SEP]
Arthur Schopenhauer [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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I would like to introduce what may be a new argument, the f-inductive argument from consciousness for panpsychism. (Scroll to the bottom of these shownotes for some helpful detail about the argument.) Panpsychism entails the existence of consciousness, whereas most competing views do not. The evidence—consciousness, in this case—is not surprising on the hypothesis of panpsychism, but is surprising on the hypothesis of physicalism, as well as many of panpsychism’s rivals. The probability that consciousness would exist on panpsychism isn’t just high—it’s 1. The probability that we would find this evidence in a physicalist universe is less than that. In fact, it’s unexpected. So other evidence held equal, panpsychism has a notable edge here.
Jeffery Jay Lowder | F-Inductive Arguments: A New Type of Inductive Argument [Patheos]
Jeffery Jay Lowder | An F-Inductive Argument from Consciousness for Theism, Revisited [Patheos] Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
My Discord
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/ / /
Let B=background information or evidence; E=the evidence to be explained; H=an explanatory hypothesis; Pr(|H|)=the intrinsic probability of H; and Pr(x|y)=the epistemic probability of x conditional upon y. C-inductive: Pr(H | E & B) > P(H | B) F-inductive: Pr(E | H2 & B) > Pr(E | H1 & B) P-inductive: Pr(H | E & B) > ½ Here is the F-inductive argument from consciousness for panpsychism: Let E in this case be consciousness. (1) E is known to be true, i.e., Pr(E) is 1. (2) Panpsychism is not intrinsically much less probable than Physicalism, i.e., Pr(|Panpsychism|) is not much less than Pr(|Physicalism|). (3) Pr(E | Panpsychism & B) > Pr(E | Physicalism & B). (4) Therefore, other evidence held equal, Panpsychism is probably true. Pr(Panpsychism | B & E) > 0.5.
Here’s a very short overview of my version of panpsychism. Please keep in mind that this contains some technical language and assumes some background knowledge in philosophy of mind.
@waldenpod on Twitter and @OnPanpsychism
Transcript
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Happy Halloween 😈 This is my review of the most overrated horror movie in cinematic history, Ari Aster's Hereditary. This was originally released about a year ago as a patron bonus. For access to all bonus episodes, early releases, and monthly livestreams, you can support the show at patreon.com/waldenpod
Positive (incorrect) review of Hereditary
Summary - The Strange Thing About the Johnsons
80s Horror Synth
/ / /
Good horror movies with a similar vibe:
The Witch The Blackcoat’s Daughter It Follows
My Top 25 Horror Movies [Letterboxd]
/ / /
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Micah Edvenson is here to corrupt the youth and spread communist propaganda with me today as we discuss socialism, why the kids are doing it, and much more. We talk about egalitarianism, inequality, the Soviet Union, the skeptical movement, libertarianism, taxation, whether socialists should support open borders, and answer several common anti-socialist canards. Videos and Articles (in the order they’re mentioned):
On Anarchism - Noam Chomsky [Amazon]
Rob Larson - Philanthropic Giving [Jacobin]
Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) - Elizabeth Anderson [Amazon]
When did everyone become a socialist? [NY Mag]
Defining Capitalism and Socialism - Thomas Metcalf [1000 Word Philosophy]
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell [Amazon]
George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London [Amazon]
Ownership and Control [Current Affairs]
Requiem for the American Dream - Noam Chomsky
Capitalism vs. Freedom: The Toll Road to Serfdom - Rob Larson [Amazon]
What We Owe Each Other - T. M. Scanlon’s Egalitarian Philosophy (Review from Martin O’Neill) [Boston Review]
What's Wrong with Inequality? - T.M. Scanlon [PhilosophyBites]
What is the Point of Equality? - Elizabeth Anderson [PDF]
Dustin Crummett - In Defense of Socialism
Introduction to the Left and Right - Dustin Crummett (Micah’s favorite paper) [PDF]
Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut [PDF]
Healthcare - Science Vs [Apple Podcasts]
Rubin Report - Peterson, Weinstein, Shapiro
Marx: Overcoming Alienation - Plastic Pills
Ben Burgis - Taxation is Theft?
The Myth of Ownership - Thomas Nagel & Liam Murphy [Amazon]
The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality - Bhaskar Sunkara [Amazon]
Richard Wolff - Democracy at Work [Amazon]
Rutger Bregman - Utopia for Realists [Amazon] / / / Clips (in order of appearance): Business Insider - Billionaires and Coronavirus Why Millennials Don't Have Any Money - Robert Reich Richard Wolff & Chapo Trap House Richard Wolff Defines Socialism and Capitalism Carl Sagan - “Are you a socialist?” Trent Horn - Can a Catholic be a socialist? Bernie Sanders: "Open borders? That's a Koch brothers proposal” / / /
Crusade Against Ignorance Videos:
Socialism: What it is and isn’t - CAI
Socialism and Economics - CAI
Abortion & Philosophy - CAI
Interview with Graham Oppy - CAI
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Nino Kadic is a third year PhD student at King’s College, London. I recently saw Nino deliver a presentation at the Science of Consciousness Conference called Dynamic Selves: An Outline for a New Type of Panpsychism, and I reached out to him to talk more about it. We discuss the combination problem for panpsychism, Leibniz, phenomenal routing, supervenience, strong vs. weak emergence, the phenomenal concept strategy, continental vs. analytic philosophy, Star Trek, and many other related subjects.
A Short Solution to the Hard Problem - Tim Bollands [PDF]
ninokadic.com
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Is materialism compatible with the reality of phenomenal consciousness? I argue no. If one wishes to remain a materialist, they will eventually have to give up the reality of phenomenal consciousness and join the eliminativists. The logical result of materialism is illusionism. So if one wishes to remain a realist about phenomenal consciousness, they must abandon materialism.
Some important definitions for our purposes today: Phenomenal consciousness: Phenomenal consciousness is that which mental states have when it is like something to be/have those mental states. Roughly, experience. Materialism: The view that phenomenal consciousness is either identical to or reducible to material states. Fundamental material reality is essentially non-experiential. If consciousness emerged, it was an instance of “weak emergence,” not “strong emergence”. Illusionism: A form of materialism (more specifically, a form of eliminative materialism) that claims phenomenal consciousness is illusory. Illusionists don’t claim to have explained why we have phenomenal states; they purport to explain why we think we have phenomenal states, and argue that this is sufficient to explain phenomenal consciousness. Nonreductive physicalism: The view that materialism is true, and that phenomenal consciousness is real and irreducible. Phenomenal consciousness is concretely real, but it’s not emergent, nor is it reducible to material states, nor is it identical to material states. (I think this view is incoherent.) Emergentism: Emergentism is synonymous with “strong emergence,” as contrasted with “weak emergence”. Emergentism is the view that phenomenal states are not identical to, reducible to, or deducible from material states. I think this is a species of dualism, though not necessarily substance dualism. Dualists believe that phenomenal states are not identical to material states, and that they are not reducible to material states; and that one could know all the material states and still not be able to deduce the mental states. Panpsychism: The view that experience is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. Mysterianism: The view that humans will never solve the hard problem of consciousness. This position can be arrived at by several mutually exclusive motivations. In today’s episode, I consider all philosophers who take this position “mysterians”, even though they don’t all dub themselves mysterians.
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This is from the patron livestream (full stream and video link are available on the website). For access to bonus episodes and monthly livestreams, you can support the podcast at patreon.com/waldenpod
Thought experiments have played a crucial role in the development of mathematics, philosophy, and science. As implausible as it may seem, reasoning a priori, comfortably from our armchairs, can actually teach us about the real world and drive progress in our understanding. Even ethical thought experiments have changed the minds and influenced the behavior of those who have been presented with them. Though this is a rare occurrence, it has been known to happen.
Peter Singer - The Shallow Pond
The Hospital Story
James Wilson - Internal and External Validity in Thought Experiments [PDF]
Philosophy Bites - James Wilson [mp3] Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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I’m suspicious of ethical thought experiments. These short hypothetical scenarios are often presented context-free, eliminating morally relevant detail. And in the course of probing our intuitions, they often include detail that we wouldn’t have in the real world. In effect, we end up discussing a world vastly different from our own. The elimination of information that we usually possess and inclusion of information that we don’t ordinarily possess renders many ethical thought experiments worse than useless. They can confuse more than they clarify, derail ethical discussions, and often don’t translate to our lives at all.
James Wilson - Internal and External Validity in Thought Experiments [PDF]
Philosophy Bites - James Wilson [mp3]
The Trolley Problem Problem - Wilson [Aeon] Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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Jacob Bell has written articles on ancient philosophy for Classical Wisdom Weekly, and he manages a popular Facebook page called Philosophy Daily. We discuss what’s become the norm for this podcast, consciousness. We spend a lot of time on neutral monism and structural realism (or as it’s sometimes called, relational metaphysics). We also touch upon emergence, intrinsic natures, causation, and the Aristotelian notion of potentiality and actuality.
Jacob’s Blog [ExistentialismToday]
Philosophy Daily [Facebook]
Neutral Monism [SEP]
Michael Silberstein on Neutral Monism and Structural Realism
Structural Realism [SEP]
Michael Esfeld - Moderate SR [PDF]
Philip Goff on Structural Realism
Review of Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized - James Ladyman and Don Ross [Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews]
Embrace the Void Interview on Emergence [ETV]
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@waldenpod
We discuss three arguments against epiphenomenalism, the view that consciousness has no physical effects.
(I) Plausible Examples of Mental Causation a. Utterances about phenomenal consciousness b. The placebo effect (II) Popper’s Deductive Evolutionary Argument (III) James’s Abductive Evolutionary Argument
Hedda Hassel Mørch - The Evolutionary Argument for Phenomenal Powers [PDF] Mørch’s paper was my primary resource for this episode, and it happens to be one of my favorite papers in philosophy of mind.
A Pill Against Epiphenomenalism - Patrick Spät [PDF]
Epiphenomenalism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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We compare the merits of property versus substance dualism using William Lycan’s paper, “Is property dualism better off than substance dualism?”
William Lycan - Is property dualism better off than substance dualism? [JSTOR]
John Searle - Why I Am Not A Property Dualist [PDF]
Richard Swinburne clip on brain events vs. sensations [Twitter]
And since I mentioned dual-aspect monism a few times, here’s a fascinating exploration of the view: Jiri Benovsky - Dual-Aspect Monism [PDF]
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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We discuss Thomas Nagel's controversial book, Mind and Cosmos. The book has quite a reputation, but I think it's often misunderstood. Intelligent design proponents, happy to be taken seriously for once, hilariously extol the book. They don’t seem to realize that while the book does take them more seriously than they’re used to, it also provides naturalistic answers to all their objections. I guess they only read the subtitle. Naturalists, atheists, and darwinists, on the other hand, seem to perceive this book as a threat, which is mostly Nagel’s fault for his controversial presentation, and failing to make clear that he’s making adjustments to the dominant paradigm and not rejecting it in favor of theism or mysticism. His proposed adjustments are radical to be sure, but it’s flatly untrue to say he’s an evolution denier or anti-naturalist.
We also discuss Nagel's neutral monism, natural teleology, and philosophy of science.
Mind and Cosmos [Amazon]
Nagel - The Core of Mind and Cosmos [NYT]
Sean Carroll on Mind and Cosmos [Preposterous Universe]
Michael Chorost - Mind and Cosmos [Chronicle of Higher Education]
Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder wrote a critique of panpsychism that’s become widely-cited in The Panpsychism Wars. Hossenfelder argues that physics has ruled out panpsychism. Panpsychists simply haven’t attempted to reconcile the massive conflict with the evidence. However, her arguments are deeply flawed, and one doesn’t need to affirm panpsychism to notice. Sabine Hossenfelder “Electrons Don’t Think” Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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Music is by ichika Nito and was used with permission.
“Why do the Deniers ignore a long line of distinguished materialist predecessors and ally themselves with Descartes, their sworn enemy, in holding that experience can’t possibly be physical—thereby obliging themselves to endorse the Denial? The answer appears to be that they share with Descartes one very large assumption: that we know enough about the physical to be certain that experience can’t be physical.” - Galen Strawson
“What a physiologist sees when he examines a brain is in the physiologist, not in the brain he is examining.” - Bertrand Russell
“[M]aterialism ... is the philosophy of the subject who forgets himself in his calculation.”
– Schopenhauer
Is panpsychism the modern élan vital? Though many opponents of panpsychism have drawn the comparison, élan vital is a terrible analogy for consciousness and panpsychism. I’ve noticed that vitalism comes up frequently in discussions about consciousness. I think the lazy analogy that’s often drawn between the panpsychist and vitalist projects needs to be examined.
Thomas Nagel - What is it like to be a bat? [PDF]
Hylozoism [Wikipedia]
David Chalmers on the vitalism analogy: https://twitter.com/mrstevetweedale/status/1320866551583494144?s=21
Transcripts at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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I’m joined by Aaron Rabinowitz of Embrace the Void and Philosophers in Space to discuss his view of consciousness and its place in nature. And to avenge all those who have suffered under his ETV Lightning Rounds, he’s also subjected to his own Realist / Antirealist Lightning Round. Our first discussion on The Right to Reason Podcast: https://therighttoreason.podbean.com/e/panpsychism-debate/
You can listen to Aaron on Embrace the Void here and Philosophers in Space here
I didn’t do justice to Hunter Ash’s argument for panpsychism we mentioned early on, so here’s a brief explanation of the argument from the SEP: “More recently, Goff (2013) has argued that consciousness is not vague, and that this leads to a sorites-style argument for panpsychism. Very roughly if consciousness does not admit of borderline cases, then we will have to suppose that some utterly precise micro-level change—down to an exact arrangement of particles—marked the first appearance of consciousness (or the change from non-conscious to conscious embryo/foetus), and it is going to seem arbitrary that it was that utterly precise change that was responsible for this significant change in nature.” And here’s Aaron’s conversation with Hunter Follow Aaron on Twitter @ETVpod and Emerson @waldenpod Listen to ichika Nito here Rate the show on iTunes here Support on Patreon here Listen to our sister show Counter Apologetics here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
We answer one of the more common challenges issued to panpsychists: some variation of “Show me the evidence.” We discuss whether panpsychism can be tested, our theory of mind module, emergence, Descartes's conception of matter, Occam’s Razor, and the fact that consciousness is always inferred, never observed.
“We can but infer sentience rather than verify it, and people will differ in their guessed inferences: some might stop sentience at the lobster limit, others might stop at the beetle border – but why stop at all? If one demands a stop, the determining criterion must be established.”
- Peter Sjöstedt-H
“How do the combined material objects that make up a human body change from a state of being non-conscious to a state of being conscious? There are three possible answers: i) They don’t. Human beings are not conscious. ii) A miracle happens. A conscious state ‘emerges’ from non-conscious matter. iii) They don’t. Consciousness already exists within the matter our brains are made from.”
- Tim Bollands
Can Panpsychism be tested? - Philip Goff [Conscience and Consciousness]
Emerson Green and Aaron Rabinowitz debate panpsychism on The Right to Reason podcast: https://player.fm/series/the-right-to-reason-2362355/panpsychism-debate
New music used with permission from ichika nito
ichika Nito’s YouTube channel
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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Happy Darwin Day! We discuss geneticist Dimitri Belyaev’s efforts to domesticate the Russian silver fox, and how his experiments shed light on the domestication of grey wolves.
Belyaev's Foxes [Scientific American]
Rats and Foxes [NYT]
The Greatest Show On Earth - Richard Dawkins [Amazon]
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
Intro music
Outro music - Ichika Nito Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Rate the show on iTunes here Support on Patreon here or if you prefer to give a one-time donation, you can do so with Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast) Listen to our sister show Counter Apologetics here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
I am not an antinatalist. It would seem, however, that the idea has been growing in popularity. I hold that 'the asymmetry problem' is a decisive blow to strong antinatalism. I also reject weak antinatalism on epistemological grounds. Environmental antinatalism, arguably the most popular form, can also be rejected since it is not the best solution to the environmental challenges that we face. We also discuss several more issues related to antinatalism, like existentialism, panpsychism, memetics, True Detective, The Walking Dead, suicide, and climate change.
Transcript
David Benatar - We Are Creatures That Should Not Exist [The Critique]
Rust Cohle - clip from True Detective
CosmicSkeptic on Antinatalism
Al-Ma'arri, one of the first antinatalists [Existential Comics]
Procreation - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]
r/antinatalism [reddit]
First Reformed (film recommendation) [Amazon]
“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. . . . This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.”
Bertrand Russell
“[Having children] contributes to problems. It also contributes to progress. If we want to have works of art, for example, or scientific understanding, or technological solutions to the problems around us, they’re going to come from people. If you don’t have the people, you don’t have the contributions.” Noam Chomsky
This episode is a work of fiction. The PDF is available here: Work and Its Own, or In Defense of Those Who Take Really Long Bathroom Breaks
I try to answer the question, "What's the value of philosophy?" This is a sequel to episode one of this podcast, Is philosophy dead?
Bertrand Russell - The Value of Philosophy [pdf]
David Egan on Philosophy [Aeon]
The Panpsycast is a great philosophy podcast, as is Stephen West’s Philosophize This!
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Rate the show on iTunes here Support on Patreon here or if you prefer to give a one-time donation, you can do so with Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast) Listen to our sister show Counter Apologetics here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Is ideology a bad thing? Should we strive to free ourselves from ideology? I think there is a lot of confusion around the concept, and that the word has wrongly fallen into disrepute. Ideology is frequently conflated with dogma, closed-mindedness, and irrational certainty. Ideology, however, is merely a “a system of ideas and ideals,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s a set of descriptive and normative beliefs. Everyone has an ideology, and we would all do well to admit as much and stop using it as a dirty word.
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Rate the show on iTunes here Support on Patreon here or give a one-time donation through Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast) Listen to our sister show Counter Apologetics here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
The conclusion of our series on panpsychism, the view that the what-it-is-like-ness of conscious experience is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. Transcripts of episodes available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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Subscribe on YouTube to Walden Pod and Counter Apologetics
If you would, please rate Walden Pod on iTunes
Become a supporter at patreon.com/waldenpod to unlock all episodes! Galen Strawson
The Wright Show
Philosophy Bites
The Panpsycast Interview [Panpsycast]
Things That Bother Me [Amazon] Thomas Nagel
What is it like to be a bat? [PDF]
Panpsychism [PDF]
Mind and Cosmos [Amazon]
Very Bad Wizards - Thomas Nagel’s Philosophy of Mind [Fireside] Hedda Hassel Mørch
The Panpsycast Interview [Panpsycast]
Panpsychism and Causation: A New Argument and a Solution to the Combination Problem [PDF]
The Fusion View and IIT
Is IIT Compatible with Russellian panpsychism? [MindsOnline] Philip Goff
On Panpsychism
A Post-Galilean Paradigm - Podcast and Transcript [Edge]
Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness [Amazon]
Unbelievable - Does consciousness point to God?
Sean Carroll and Philip Goff
Philip Goff on Galileo’s Error [Panpsycast]
Panpsychism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP] Annaka Harris
Conscious - Making Sense Podcast
Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind [Amazon] William Seagar
Panpsychism vs. Strong Emergence Bertrand Russell
The Analysis of Matter [PhilPapers]
Russellian Monism [SEP] Counter Apologetics CA13 Prayer Studies CA27 Argument from Consciousness CA29 Science vs. the Soul CA58 NDEs pt. II CA66 Atheism, Materialism, and Consciousness
If you’ve never contemplated the philosophy of mind, here are several entry-level episodes that can help put all this into context: https://thepanpsycast.com/episodes-by-category (scroll to ‘Philosophy of Mind’ category)
The Combination Problem is widely considered to be the most serious difficulty facing panpsychism. The exact nature of the problem depends on your view of fundamental reality (the parts that are being combined) and the self (what is being formed through combination). We also discuss Galileo, the fusion view, Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory, and a few other related issues. Subscribe to the feed at patreon.com/waldenpod to unlock the extended version of this episode and others!
The Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness - Hedda Hassel Mørch [Philosophy Now]
Hedda Hassel Mørch - Panpsychism and IIT
Hedda Hassel Mørch - Is IIT Compatible with Russellian panpsychism? [MindsOnline]
Hedda Hassel Mørch - IIT and Panpsychism [The Panpsycast]
Hedda Hassel Mørch - Panpsychism and Causation: A New Argument and Solution to the Combination Problem [PDF]
The Neuroscience of Consciousness - Integrated Information Theory [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy] / / / / / Transcripts of all episodes available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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We discuss a few more common objections to panpsychism, including Dan Dennett’s pan-nifty-ism, mysterianism, the woo accusation, and appeals to neuroscience.
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We address four common objections to panpsychism, argue that a heavier burden falls on the materialist than the panpsychist, and discuss why panpsychism is more Copernican than its competitors.
(1) “The incredulous stare,” or an argument from strangeness, which appeals to our common sense and argues that panpsychism is forbiddingly counter-intuitive.
(2) Falsifiability. Isn’t panpsychism unfalsifiable?
(3) Isn’t physics entirely on the side of materialism?
(4) Wouldn’t panpsychism force us to add a particle to the standard model? Doesn’t panpsychism imply that physics is wrong?
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Sean Carroll - The laws underlying everyday life are completely understood [Preposterous Universe]
Sean Carroll - Atoms and Death
Galen Strawson on Panpsychism
Galen Strawson - Things That Bother Me [Amazon]
"Panpsychism," says Thomas Nagel, “appears to follow from a few simple premises, each of which is more plausible than its denial, though not perhaps more plausible than the denial of panpsychism.” Any non-panpsychist is going to have to deny one of these four premises: (1) Material composition, (2) Realism, (3) Nonreductionism, or (4) Nonemergence. Panpsychism seems to follow from these, and those who don’t accept the view will have to deny one of the four.
Note: I switched premises 2 and 3. Nagel’s second premise is Nonreductionism and mine is Realism (I thought this was the more logical order). So when I’m referencing premises, I’m always referring to my second and third premises, not Nagel’s.
In this clip, we discuss the four basic premises underlying panpsychism. Support Walden Pod for access to the full version on the Patron Feed here: https://www.patreon.com/waldenpod
Panpsychism - Thomas Nagel [PDF]
Moral Questions - Nagel [Amazon]
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Check out the blog at https://emersongreenblog.wordpress.com/
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We discuss two kinds of emergence, our evolved ‘theory of mind’ module, our epistemological foundations regarding the intrinsic nature of matter, élan vital, niftiness, the objective/subjective distinction, and how it all relates to panpsychism and the hard problem of consciousness. The other voice you heard was from Hedda Hassel Mørch of the University of Oslo. You can listen to her interviews on the Panpsycast here
David Chalmers - Strong and Weak Emergence [PDF]
Sean Carroll - Emergence [Preposterous Universe]
Galen Strawson - Real Naturalism and the Silliest Claim [Amazon]
Galen Strawson with Robert Wright
William James [text]
Walden Pod [Patreon]
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In the second episode in our series on panpsychism, we establish a definition of consciousness.
The Mystery of Consciousness - Sam Harris [Blog]
Galen Strawson - Things That Bother Me (contains The Silliest Claim and Real Naturalism) [Amazon]
Moral Questions - Thomas Nagel (contains ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ and other essays) [Amazon]
Today we begin our series on panpsychism.
Panpsychism [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Galen Strawson - Panpsychism [YouTube]
Galen Strawson - Does the Soul Exist? [YouTube]
Annaka Harris - Conscious [YouTube]
In this clip, we discuss natural teleology. Subscribe at patreon.com/waldenpod for the patron feed, where you can hear the full version of this episode and others.
In 1948, Bertrand Russell gave a name to something all propagandists are familiar with: different words and phrases can be factual synonyms, but emotional antonyms. Words can be technically synonymous, but have very different emotional connotations. This can be used to manipulate entirely different responses to the same underlying reality.
“Firmness” is behaviorally identical to “stubbornness,” yet they evoke different emotional connotations. “Death tax” and “estate tax” are two descriptions of the same policy, but support for one is greater than the other. “Socialized medicine” and “Medicare for all” are the same thing, but one polls nearly 25% higher than the other.
This is most consequential in the realm of media, public relations, journalism, politics, and so on, but Russell Conjugations are at work in all of language. Their use isn’t limited to those with a platform, but extends to all human beings -- how we think of each other and ourselves, how we communicate with others, and how we navigate the social landscape.
Russell Conjugation [Edge]
For nerd rage, subscribe at Patreon.com/waldenpod to hear the full episode explaining why Ari Aster’s Hereditary was one of the most overrated horror movies of the decade.
Is western civilization a product of Judeo-Christian values? Religious believers assert that Judeo-Christian values influenced the thinkers of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment so greatly that their religion deserves credit as the foundation of western values. Even if Judeo-Christian beliefs are entirely untrue, could the mythology be a useful fiction that created the west as we know it?
Rationality Rules - Western Civilization is Based on Judeo-Christian Values
Nonstampcollector - Ten Commandments
The Basis of Western Civilization - Jordan Peterson
Western Civilization - Ben Shapiro
Richard Dawkins - Militant Atheism
Ben Shaprio - Ten Commandments
Sam Harris - Ten Commandments
Hitchens on Morality
Stephen Fry on Ten Commandments
Yaron Brook on Judeo-Christian Values
Sam Harris vs. Ben Shapiro
Ben Shapiro vs. Sam Harris — TMM
TMM on Ben Shapiro
Bible Verses on Obeying Governments [KnowingJesus]
The Myth of the Jewish Origins of the Renaissance [PDF]
Bertrand Russell — Why I Am Not a Christian [Amazon]
. . . . .
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Is there any value to philosophy in the modern age? Why does there seem to be a conflict between science and philosophy?
There is no reason for science to be at odds with philosophy, and for the vast majority of western history, the two were not at odds. In fact, science wasn’t considered something separate from philosophy until the past couple centuries. Recently, scientists and philosophers have taken shots at each other publicly. However, both are extremely valuable, and share the same essential purpose: to pursue truth. We use Stephen Hawking’s infamous remark, “Philosophy is dead,” as a jumping off point for discussing this conflict.
I generalize quite a bit in this episode (e.g. “Scientists’ disdain of philosophy,”) but I recognize that there is a wide spectrum of opinion among scientists and philosophers; I’m only criticizing the segment of scientists and philosophers who see a conflict between science and philosophy. I spoke loosely for the sake of time and boredom of listeners, who would otherwise be listening to a caveat-laden episode.
Existential Comics on The Panpsycast [Panpsycast]
Stephen Hawking - The Grand Design [Amazon]
Massimo Pigliucci - Science vs Scientism
. . . . .
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Check out our sister podcast, Counter Apologetics [iTunes]
