“What’s really interesting about [Massimo Pigliucci’s anti-panpsychism] comments is that even a decade or so ago, his was an utterly conventional view. Now he feels he must qualify it by saying “But that’s just one perspective and one way to look at it.” It seems that fewer researchers today expect the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” to suddenly yield to a new research finding — a situation that leaves many looking with interest and sympathy at a non-naturalist approach like panpsychism.”
Science
Proving that they are genuine “sceptics,” British group takes on the pieties of climate change
With a motto to live up to like “Question Everything. Stay Sane. Live Free,” they must sometimes tackle the Establishment’s fondest commitments. And the nonsense they skewer is practically surreal.
Retraction Watch co-founder on the lab leak theory re COVID
Ivan Oransky: Many in the media, as well as some scientists, quickly labeled it a conspiracy theory, designed to shift focus away from the missteps of their own countries. But, like everyone else involved in the discussions about the lab leak theory, scientists have something at stake: If SARS-CoV-2 did escape from a lab, it could further shake trust in research, and threaten funding…
Dembski: Is truth just what your peers will let you get away with saying?
He argues, sound, logical thinking is NOT the norm. Many people, anxious to remain in good standing with leaders and influencers, live quite happily with incoherence and inconsistencies.
At Mind Matters News: Einstein believed in Spinoza’s God. Who is that God?
In a discussion with Solms, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor argues that it makes more sense to see God as a Person than as a personification of nature.
Bill Dembski offers some thoughts on the current state of Christian apologetics
Dembski: I say Christian apologetics needs to be expanded and upgraded rather than reconceptualized or reimagined.
At Mind Matters News: Astronomer: Hunt for ET can unify science and religion
Fewer scientists seem to think we can do without any source of intelligence for the creation of the universe. Hence the idea that advanced ET created it.
Why actual science is not a world of simple solutions
Jonny Thomson: We each approach the world armed with our own “maps” and expectations. As a result, it is highly unlikely that any scientific field will easily, if ever, coalesce around one simple answer to any complex question.
Eric Holloway at Mind Matters News: Can the “physical world” be wholly physical? Physical at all?
The Epicurean philosophy of pure physicalism is attractive to many but the logic of it, followed consistently, refutes itself.
Professional skeptic Michael Shermer gets it about what’s going wrong at the new Woke Scientific American
It turns out, Michael Shermer has his own sad story about how he got dumped by Scientific American after a long career as a columnist there (since April 2001) — as he tells us in “A case study in how identity politics poisons science.”
At New Atlantis: Manufacturing a science consensus
Mills: Whatever the outcome — whether we learn that the virus jumped to humans from an animal, or that it accidentally escaped from a laboratory, or we remain in a state of ignorance — the lab-leak debacle may become a potent symbol of science’s crisis of legitimacy…
Science Uprising # 9: Unvarnished fossil record is bad news for Darwin
Fossils, we are told, demonstrate the Truth of Darwinism as the history of life. But that’s only if you don’t look too closely. Science Uprising #9 looks too closely.
Would it be better if more scientists studied philosophy?
Lehewych: “Consider public health messaging during the pandemic, which consisted of a pattern of revelation and back-peddling. Worse, this pattern wasn’t even cohesive among scientists and medical experts: different experts in the same fields were simultaneously saying things about the pandemic that were contradictory and inconsistent. This only served to confuse the public and aggravate hyperpartisanship.” He suggests that scientists study philosophy so as to avoid sounding like “sanctimonious know-it-alls.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. SteakUmm on the philosophy of science
The thing is, the saucy social media team at Steak-Umm has a point: What does it mean to say that science is “true”? Was all the contradictory nonsense barked at us during the COVID pandemic “true”? That isn’t even possible. Yet all the barkers will insist that whatever stuff they said was “science” and we will, it seems have to believe them on that one. But with what outcome… we shall see.
At Mind Matters News: Jonathan Bartlett Coming to the Defense of Classical Logic
Bartlett: It seems odd that classical logic would need defending, but, in modern times, this seems to indeed be the case. Many modern scholars see the need for demoting the place of classical logic and viewing it as an aspect of western cultural imperialism. In reality, classical logic is a gift to civilization. It was created in the classical west, but its benefit is that it belongs to everyone and can be equally wielded by anyone who chooses to do so.