Category Archives: Philosophy of Mind
A Brief Explanation of Everything. You’re Welcome.
NB: The following is a story. It is not fact. It is based in facts, yes, but it is entirely speculative. This was an exercise I set myself to create a myth that is completely consistent with current scientific understandings. … Continue reading →
Using Derrida, from Notes to Krystalina
This is from a book-length work that I’ve been working on for many years. 2.1 Every actor has had The Actor’s Nightmare. You find yourself on stage, with a set and properties and another actor, but you haven’t any memory … Continue reading →
A Solution to the Fermi Paradox
The current NASA estimate is that there are 19,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the observable universe that are Class G stars like ours AND that have at least one planet similar to Earth. That’s at least 19 SEXTILLION Earthlike planets, folks. No, … Continue reading →
Existentialism in Five Minutes | Bob Shepherd
“This was back in the days Of the folk music craze. . . . [and] parties to pay for the rent. We all wanted to be existentialists. None of us knew what that meant.” –Michael Smith, “The Ballad of Elizabeth … Continue reading →
The Theology of Materialism
In 1996, the Catholic Church finally officially admitted that it had made a mistake in trying and convicting Galileo. It only took them 363 years to do so. It’s difficult for people to make adjustments in their theologies. In the … Continue reading →
The Vast Unseen and the Vast Unseeable: Reconciling Belief and Nonbelief
Those who are not philosophically inclined can be divided, roughly, into two groups: There are the Naïve Realists who think that what is available to the senses or potentially available to the senses is all that there is. And then … Continue reading →
Aidan Reading on the Way to Preschool
So, Aidan was asking whether I thought that the being of self-consciousness is such that in its being its being is in question, and I said, “Come on, Aidan, you’re old enough to figure that out for yourself,” which he … Continue reading →
The Tractatus Comico-Philosophicus: Rene Descartes
Rene Descartes Explains It All to You Here’s my method: I start by trying to doubt everything. I realize, however, that I cannot doubt that I am doubting, that I am thinking. Therefore, I exist. (I think; therefore, I am.) … Continue reading →
Philosophical Zombies with Chairs in Philosophy of Mind
For Rebecca Goldstein Daniel Dennett called one of his books Consciousness Explained. He should have called it Why, Even with My Gifts, I Cannot Explain Consciousness Away. Dennett gives a compelling account of how various unconscious events occur in our … Continue reading →
It’s about Time (a Catena)
A brief tour of fascinating (and lunatic) notions that philosophers (and a few poets) have had about time. The Mystery of Time “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it … Continue reading →
Bob Shepherd | Praxis 