“The reality of subjectivity* is [a] primordial datum – the primordial datum par excellence, in fact – that cannot be denied without a swift descent into nonsense.” David Bentley Hart     *By “subjectivity,” Hart means a person’s subjective experience of phenomena as distinct from the phenomena themselves.  The discussion of subjectivity is often tied to the concept of “qualia.”  See, e.g., here.

In recent days, this has been a hotly debated topic here at UD, raised by RDFish (aka AI Guy). His key contention is perhaps best summarised from his remarks at 422 in the first understand us thread: we do know that the human brain is a fantastically complex mechanism. We also know that in our uniform and repeated experience, neither humans nor anything else can design anything without a functioning brain. I have responded from 424 on, noting there for instance: But we do know that the human brain is a fantastically complex mechanism. We also know [–> presumably, have warranted, credibly true beliefs] that in our uniform [–> what have you, like Hume, locked out ideologically here] and repeated Read More ›

“Si comprehendis, non est deus”  (If you comprehend it, it is not God) Augustine of Hippo

Readers who take an interest in animal cognition may be aware of recent claims that orangutans are capable of planning their travel itinerary a full day in advance, and are also capable of “mental time travel,” i.e. the ability to mentally re-experience past events and to plan for future events. What I shall argue instead is that while some non-human animals are capable of planning for anticipated events and even communicating their intentions regarding these events, the ability to plan for the future is a uniquely human ability. And while some non-human animals are capable of remembering and mentally drawing upon events that occurred in their past, only humans are capable of mentally traveling back in time to the past Read More ›

This post was originally written as a response to Barry’s recent post; however, Barry correctly pointed out that I had significantly mis-read him – I was reading much too fast. Apologies to Barry, and to those who read the earlier version of the post. I have now re-written it to not refer to (my careless misreading of) Barry’s position. I hope it still provides something helpful. As a YEC, when listening to opposing positions, I sometimes hear a combination of criticism of the YEC framework, combined with talk of logic and evidence as an alternative to having an interpretative framework. This is philosophically very naive. It is talk which is especially prominent amongst the New Atheist crowd. Listening to them, Read More ›

Editors:  This was originally posted under a different title in May 2012.  We were inspired to repost it by Dr. Sewell’s post here.  Bishop Ussher famously calculated that the universe was created on October 23, 4004 BC.  I do not hold this or any other young earth creationist (YEC) position.  The evidence that the universe is several billion years old seems fairly compelling to me.  In particular, certain celestial objects (stars, galaxies, supernovas, etc.) are billions of light years away.  From this fact I deduce that the light we see from these objects has been traveling billions of years to get to us, which leads to the conclusion that the objects emitted the light billions of years ago, which in turn Read More ›