Minutes after posting a critique of Pope Benedict in which I claimed he needs to develop a stronger appreciation for modern empirical knowledge (see Engaging the Thought of Pope Benedict XVI: The Need for Respectful Criticism), I received a newsletter from the Vatican News Service in which the Holy Father spoke in complimentary terms about … [Read more…]
Pope Benedict has an appropriate respect for the human mind and its products, cultural and intellectual and spiritual. Yet, there’s a big gap in his thought that could be filled only by a proper appreciation for modern empirical knowledge, including in a very explicit way the problem areas of mathematics, physics, and evolutionary biology. I … [Read more…]
Alastair Rae adds a wrinkle to a famous comment by Einstein: When Einstein said that ‘God does not play dice’, Bohr is said to have replied, ‘Don’t tell God what to do!’ [Quantum Physics: Illusion or Reality, Alastair Rae, Cambridge University Press, Canto Edition, 1994, page 22] He notes that there’s some doubt as to … [Read more…]
After discussing a use of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to understand the results of experiments in the fairly straightforward case of the polarization of light-waves and of individual photons, Alastair Rae speculates: [If] we understood properly what the concepts of position and momentum mean on an atomic scale we might find it…illogical to possess definite values … [Read more…]
More than 1500 years ago, St. Augustine of Hippo told us that evil was not a positive force but rather a privation in being. He reasoned that all being comes from God and has to be good. He had, so to speak, a devil of a time justifying the existence of Satan, a being who … [Read more…]
[How Brains Make Up Their Minds, Walter J. Freeman, Columbia University Press, 2000] Intentionality in the doctrine of Aquinas does not require consciousness, but it does require acting to create meaning instead of just thinking. This view is shared by the philosophers Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, J.J. Gibson, and the pragmatists. We sniff, move our … [Read more…]
I continue to write about the insights on human nature and the philosophical system explicated in the book: How Brains Make Up Their Minds, Walter J. Freeman, Columbia University Press, 2000. The examples of the athlete and dancer demonstrate what I consider to be the three main properties of intentionality. The first is unity. Our … [Read more…]
[How Brains Make Up Their Minds, Walter J. Freeman, Columbia University Press, 2000] Professor Freeman and his students made an important discovery in the late 1970s: the brain response to what is seemingly the same stimulus is not always the same. They trained rabbits respond to various odors, using sawdust twice in the experiments, once … [Read more…]
[How Brains Make Up Their Minds, Walter J. Freeman, Columbia University Press, 2000] Intentionality in the doctrine of Aquinas does not require consciousness, but it does require acting to create meaning instead of just thinking. This view is shared by the philosophers Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, J.J. Gibson, and the pragmatists. We sniff, move our … [Read more…]
[How Brains Make Up Their Minds, Walter J. Freeman, Columbia University Press, 2000] In “Meaning and Representation”, Chapter 2 of the referenced book, Professor Freeman has a perceptive and intelligent discussion of the materialist, cognitive, and pragmatic views of the mind and most especially the mind of the self-aware human being. (It’s a matter of … [Read more…]