There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.—Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 1995
The real danger, I think, is not that machines more intelligent than we are will usurp our role as captains of our destinies, but that we will over-estimate the comprehension of our latest thinking to...
Some philosophers can't bear to say simple things, like Suppose a dog bites a man. They feel obliged instead to say, Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t, thereby demonstrating their unshakable com...
One cannot learn all about what it’s like to run a marathon by interviewing only those who drop out—but one can learn something.
No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.
I didn’t plan to become an atheist. I didn’t even want to become an atheist. It’s just that I had no choice. If I’m being honest with myself.
But as Descartes observed, even an infinitely powerful evil demon couldn’t trick him into thinking he himself existed if he didn’t exist: cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am.
[...] нормалното положение на нещата за всяка живо същество, което се размножава, е такова, че при всяко поколение се ражда по-многобройно потомство, отколкото е възможно да се възпроизведе. Иначе каз...
We have a better product than soap or automobiles. We have eternal life. —Reverend Jim Bakker8
Not all historians of philosophy have the same goals and attitudes, and I for one see no good reason for disqualifying any of the contenders. Some insist on placing their thinkers in the historical co...
It’s not an intellectual exercise. It’s not an academic pursuit—it sort of masquerades as one, but at its core it’s a test of trust in each other. Are you or aren’t you one of us? And woe to the one w...
It turns out that all the magic of cognition depends, just as life itself does, on cycles within cycles of recurrent, re-entrant, reflexive information-transformation processes
It is worth recalling that it took brave pioneers many years to overcome the powerful taboo against the dissection of human cadavers during the early years of modern medicine. And we should note that,...
It is not scientism to concede the objectivity and precision of good science, any more than it is history worship to concede that Napoleon did once rule in’ France and the Holocaust actually happened....
Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things—that takes religion. —Steven Weinberg, 1999
As the comedian Emo Phillips once said, When I was a child, I used to pray to God for a bicycle. But then I realized that God doesn’t work in that way—so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness!
As Dawkins goes on to say (p. 316), The one thing that makes evolution such a neat theory is that it explains how organized complexity can arise out of primeval simplicity. This is one of the key stre...
A mountain climber foolishly climbing alone slips off a precipice and finds himself dangling at the end of his safety rope, a thousand feet above a ravine. Unable to climb the rope or swing to a safe...
F you can approach the world’s complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only just scratched the s...
We can now expose perhaps the most common misunderstanding of Darwinism: the idea that Darwin showed that evolution by natural selection is a procedure for producing Us. Ever since Darwin proposed his...