Beginning to Exist and the Kalam Cosmological Argument
Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence….
Category: Philosophy
Free Will: Libet’s Experiment
Libet’s free will experiment is perhaps the most famous experiment in neuroscience.
Will Transhumanism Lead to Greater Freedom?
A friend emailed me to say that he believed that transhumanists should strive to be free, if free will doesn’t currently exist, or strive to be freer, if humans currently possess some small modicum of free will.
Neuroscience and Free Will
This discovery — that our brains ‘make us do it’ and that ‘we’ don’t — is thought to have a number of significant social implications, particularly for our practices of blame and punishment.
The Philosophical Importance of Algorithms
In the future, every decision that mankind makes is going to be informed by a cognitive system like Watson…and our lives will be better for it. (Ginni Rometty commenting on IBM’s Watson) I’ve written a few posts now about the...
Video Friday: Transhumanism and Christianity – N.T. Wright, Peter Thiel, and Ross Douthat
New testament scholar and retired bishop N.T. Wright, billionaire Peter Thiel, and moderator Ross Douthat share a discussion of hope, technology, politics, and theology at the Veritas Forum.
Notable Paper: The Formal Darwinism Project
Our new pick for a “notable” paper is “The formal darwinism project in outline” by Alan Grafen, published in Biology and Philosophy on 25 January 2014.
Head Transplants and Personhood — Who Are You Really?
Wheelchair-bound Valery Spiridonov, who has the muscle-wasting Werdnig Hoffman disease, has volunteered to have his head transplanted onto a healthy body in a day-long operation.
Science and the Meaning of Life
All the truths of modern science are at least somewhat relevant to considerations of meaning.
Heritability
a handy guide to what it means, what it doesn’t mean, and that giant meta-analysis of twin studies