A discussion of the many ways of answering the question, “What is a concept?” Perhaps an answer to the question “What is a concept?” is at least partly normative, prescriptive and/or stipulational in nature. That is, the things various philosophers describe as being the true nature of a concept (or…

Does naturalistic dualism lead to panpsychism? Introduction: What Hard Problem of Consciousness?

(1) Do paraconsistentists really accept the conjunction P & ¬P? (2) Does that conjunction really “generate every theorem in the language”? The following essay will question the paraconsistent acceptance of inconsistencies. It will also question the related acceptance of logical explosion and logical triviality (which paraconsistent logicians also reject)…

Keith Campbell stated that “continuity shows that men and one-celled organisms have the same basic nature”. The Australian philosopher Keith Campbell (who was born in 1938) is one of the founders of what came to be called Australian materialism. …

A personal and historical take on the recent rise of panpsychism. [The term “analytic panpsychism” is in quotation marks because it crops up a few times in the philosophical literature. See here, here and here.] ****************************************************************** To start this essay on a personal note. I don’t recall a single reference…

Selected (mainly critical) responses to my essays on Medium — and my replies to them. (4) [Editorial square brackets have been added to make things clearer.] A Story Written by AI? Jim Clyde Monge wrote: “The article you are about to read is written entirely by GPT-3, OpenAI’s powerful new language generator.” My reply: “Yes — it may have been ‘written by AI’ (or by a programme) — yet that may…

Bernardo Kastrup’s Manichean war against “materialists”. [This is the last — and shortest — of my series of essays on Bernardo Kastrup.] I haven’t read every single word that Bernardo Kastrup has ever written. So it must be noted here that when philosophers and scientists criticise Kastrup’s Cosmic Idealism, he…

Selected (mainly critical) responses to my essays on Medium — and my replies to them. (3) [Editorial square brackets have been added to make things clearer.] Intelligence and Consciousness I wrote: “I mentioned the fact in the essay that people define ‘intelligence’ and ‘consciousness’ in many different ways. And you’re using the word ‘intelligence’ in a very particular way. I would say that you’re using the word in a…

Kastrup believes that “inanimate objects are ‘vibrations’ or ‘ripples’ of consciousness”. What does that mean? “Metaphors are powerful tools to paint subtle, complex and nuanced mental landscapes that are difficult or even impossible to communicate literally.” — — Bernardo Kastrup (see source here) “[Analytic idealism] is a formulation that will…