Paul Austin Murphy’s Essays on Philosophy

[See my ‘Do the “Mere Correlations” Between Brain States and Conscious States Imply Identity?’.]

I’ve often been criticised for bringing up the religious/spiritual views and motivations of idealist philosophers. (“Why don’t you…

The following is an abridged version of the Wikipedia entry on Panpsychism:

This essay is a response to ‘Emergence’, by the American theoretical physicist Anthony Garrett Lisi. Lisi argues for something he calls…

The following is an abridged version of the Wikipedia entry on David Chalmers:

The term “new mysterianism” was coined by the philosopher Owen Flanagan. It usually refers to positions adopted on the hard problem of…

It’s helpful to distinguish two types of mysterian: (1) Those who both yearn for, and depend upon, mysteries.  (2) Those who discover what…

Kurt Gödel’s proof of God’s existence may well work logically. Indeed, it may even be logically flawless. However, it doesn’t actually…

The anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff believes that consciousness predates evolution. Indeed, he believes it predates life itself. Hameroff…

In the book The Grand Design (2010), Stephen Hawking wrote a passage which has been quoted and memed many times. In it, there’s this line…

In this instance, the philosopher J.R. Lucas relied heavily on Kurt Gödel's first incompleteness theorem to advance his position against…

Some 40 years ago, Jean Baudrillard rejected the distinction between “reality” and the “simulacrum”. (He stated: “The simulacrum is true.”)…

Did the philosopher J.R. Lucas and the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose rely on the rare abilities of a very-small set of…

What is it for a lemon to be “objectively bitter”? According to the philosopher Daniel Dennett (who died in April), it’s “to produce a…

“A quark is a purely mathematical construct. It has no meaning apart from its mathematical definition. The properties of quarks — charm…

(i) Introduction (ii) Aristotle: Substance and Essence (iii) Rovelli on Nāgārjuna and Western Philosophy (iv) Carlo Rovelli’s Relationalism

“We must distinguish between being non-scientific and being unscientific. [] philosophy [perhaps panpsychism and/or string theory] is a…

Many 20th century philosophers set themselves the task of defining (or redefining) the words “true” and “truth”. They wanted to see how…

“The problem of explaining these phenomenal qualities is just the problem of explaining consciousness. This is the really hard part of the…

“Events at higher levels — levels where emergent properties become evident — can in turn feed back and affect events at lower levels. For…

[The word “things” is used to refer to objects, entities, particulars, individuals, etc.]

(i) Introduction (ii) On the Liar Paradox as a Language Game (iii) The Liar Paradox Was Created, Not Found

(i) Introduction (ii) David Lewis on Intrinsic Properties (iii) Philip Goff on Intrinsic Nature (iv) Did Bertrand Russell Reject Intrinsic…

According to Owen Flanagan, Daniel Dennett happily accepted that there is a way things seem to us. However, is that the same thing as…