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Logic & First Principles, 22: Is there room for fresh (hylemorphically shaped?) thinking on minds, souls and bodies?

In recent weeks, UD has been looking at the logic of being of minded intelligence, especially, embodied intelligence. One of the pivotal insights is outlined by Victor Reppert — pardon a bit of review: . . . let us suppose that brain state A [–> notice, state of a wetware, electrochemically operated computational substrate], which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief [–> concious, perceptual state or disposition] that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of Read More ›

J. P. Moreland on when it is right to reject “science”

For example, "The presence of a band of highly trained, academically qualified scholars with a good track record for publishing in top journals or with highly regarded book publishers, and who are unified in rejecting the view held by even a vast majority of the relevant experts. " Read More ›

First-ever natural narwhal-beluga hybrid found, has bizarre teeth

For all we know, this type of hybridization could be common. If it’s a bottom dweller, who was looking? Maybe hybridization plays a bigger role in evolution than we supposed. And then schoolbook Darwinism plays a smaller one. Read More ›

“Texas Sharpshooter Fallacies” produce bad science data

Robert J. Marks, author with design theorist William Dembski and Winston Ewert of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics talks with Gary Smith, author The AI Delusion, about how, in general, based data is produced Smith: Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy # 1 is that I’m going to prove what a great shot I am and so I stand outside a barn and then I go and paint a thousand targets on the barn and I fire my gun and what do you know, I am lucky, I hit a target. And then I go and erase all the other targets and I say, look, I hit the target. And, of course, it’s meaningless, because, with so many targets, I’m bound to hit something… Read More ›

Computer model suggests: Plate tectonics drove Cambrian Explosion

"It is remarkable to think that our oldest animal ancestors -- and therefore all of us -- may owe our existence, in part, to an unusual episode of plate tectonics over half a billion years ago" Is this a philosophical statement of some kind? Read More ›