At a Melbourne skeptic’s meeting in Australia, theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss was asked whether spiritual experiences could ever be scientifically validated. Lawrence Krauss – Can Spiritual Experience be Scientifically Validated _“The spiritual things — the exotic phenomena people experience — in general violate the things we know to be correct on the basis of experiment,…
On the coat-tails of a the blockbuster film “The Imitation Game” I saw quite a bit of buzz on the internet about Alan Turing, and the Turing Test. The title of the movie refers to the idea of the Turing Test may someday show that machines would ostensibly be (at least in controlled circumstances) indistinguishable…
Arun Konagurthu is a Senior Lecturer at the Clayton School of Computer Science and Information Technology, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University. Between 2011-2013, Arun was additionally a Larkins Fellow at this faculty. Arun leads a small research group that researches mainly in computational biology and bioinformatics. His other research interests include data structures and…
Rejecting the two extremes of bioconservatism and libertarian transhumanism, Hughes argues for a third way, “democratic transhumanism,” a radical form of techno-progressivism which asserts that the best possible “posthuman future” is achievable only by ensuring that human enhancement technologies are safe, made available to everyone, and respect the right of individuals to control their own…
We have heard many different notions of what the words: science, philosophy and the term ‘philosophy of science’ mean. No doubt if we consult three different dictionaries we will discover three more., and if we consult Wikipedia yet another. I would hope that those of you more predisposed to enquiry than debate ;even those with…
“The Revolutions of Scientific Structure” reveals an empirically measured discovery, by science, about the natural world that is the human scientist. The book’s analysis places science at the cusp of a major developmental transformation caused by science targeting the impossible: the science of consciousness, which was started in the late 1980s by a science practice…
The resurgence of fact talk in political and public discourse — primarily seen in the rise of so-called “fact-checking” websites—is welcome phenomenon, but what does it signify, and why should we welcome it? I’ll attempt to explain how care and attention to talk of facts and reasons can play a vital role in our public discourse, even in the…
Interview with John Wilkins: Every so often, somebody will attack the worth, role or relevance of philosophy on the internets, as I have discussed before. Occasionally it will be a scientist, who usually conflates philosophy with theology. This is as bad as someone assuming that because I do some philosophy I must have the Meaning…
The demarcation problem in the philosophy of science is about how to distinguish between science and nonscience, including between science, pseudoscience, other activities, and beliefs. The debate continues after over a century of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields, and despite broad agreement on the basics of scientific method. For Popper,…
Studies of the nature of life, evolutionary epistemology, anthropology and history of technology leads me reluctantly to the conclusion that Moore’s Law is taking us towards some kind of post-human singularity. The presentation explores fundamental aspects of life and knowledge, based on a fusion of Karl Popper’s (1972) evolutionary epistemology and Maturana and Varela’s (1980)…
