Touch, All the Way Down: Qualia as Computational Discrimination
Today I am going to offer a naturalist theory of qualia—the particulars of “what it is like” of conscious experience, like the redness of red or the floweriness of a flower’s scent or the twanginess of a guitar, or even what love or fear, or...Three Models of Critical Thinking: Remote Work, Generational Wealth, and Election Polling
Three articles I read recently contain such valuable lessons for critical thinking that for my end-of-month analysis I want to summarize them for you and extract for you the general lessons you can learn from them, so you can apply them to every question in your life...You Know They’re a [Good|Lousy] Philosopher If…
I’ve been working in the field of philosophy for decades. It has literally been my religion. I spent half my life researching it and developing my own comprehensive, coherent, evidence-based philosophy, which became my 2005 book Sense and Goodness without God: A...A Barely Thinking Ape Hoses Cultural Anthropology and Comes Up with the Manospheric Hooker Theory of History: Part 2
This continues my discussion from Part 1, reviewing Thinking-Ape’s half-hour video Protectors, Providers, Nazis and Prostitutes. You’ll need to read that to understand what’s going on here. Because there I surveyed important background facts about...A Barely Thinking Ape Hoses Cultural Anthropology and Comes Up with the Manospheric Hooker Theory of History: Part 1
There are thousands of crappy videos in aid of dubious projects. So I generally have to be paid to care about any of them. And lo, my latest hire: to examine what’s going on with Stardusk’s half-hour video Protectors, Providers, Nazis and Prostitutes on...Quantum Consciousness Is Bullshit (But Quantum Cognition Is Not)
You may have heard a lot about a thing called “quantum consciousness.” Most of what you’ve heard is bullshit. The Not Bullshit First let’s discuss the bit that isn’t bullshit. Many papers in various sciences that have words in their...Is There at Least a Merely Deistic Kalam Cosmological Argument? A Debate with Carlo Alvaro
As another outcome of my recent debate with Andrew Loke (see We Should Reject Even the First Premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument and What If We Reimagine ‘Nothing’ as a Field-State?) I have here engaged to debate a professor of philosophy, Dr. Carlo Alvaro, on...A Meteor Did Not Destroy Sodom
I still hear the myth repeated that “scientists” proved the ancient city of Sodom was in fact destroyed by a meteor, and this therefore became the basis of the Sodom & Gomorrah legend in the Bible. But that never happened. The science has been proved...What If We Reimagine ‘Nothing’ as a Field-State?
Yesterday I published my take on a recent debate I had with Andrew Loke, before an audience of philosophers, on whether my conclusion is sound that We Should Reject Even the First Premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I took the stance of a nothing-first...We Should Reject Even the First Premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument
After an exchange of articles with Andrew Loke (see Why Nothing Remains a Problem: The Andrew Loke Fiasco and his reply) we were asked by a private professional forum to debate the topic of the Causal Principle, which anchors the first premise of the Kalam...Holm Tetens, Dinesh D’Souza, and the Crazy Idea of the Mind Radio
I was hired recently to look into the claims of the German philosopher (really, now, theologian) Holm Tetens regarding why Naturalism has to be false because it can’t explain conscious experience. There’s nothing new about the idea. The Argument from...From Homer to Frontinus: Biased Translation Is Not Unique to Biblical Studies
I am often asked what the best Bible translation is. My usual reply is that there aren’t any. All translations are biased, they merely differ as to how or where. The best you can do is to read it in the original language (and I teach a course with a lecture on...Boyce and Swenson’s Theological Argument against Multiverse Theory
In 2020, Christian philosophers Kenneth Boyce and Philip Swenson presented a thesis at a conference, which has yet to appear under peer-review (though a version is in review), arguing that “fine tuning” is actually evidence against a multiverse. This is...How the New Wong-Hazen Proposal Refutes Theism
A new law of nature has been fleshed out and proposed, in a research paper by Wong, Cleland, Arend, and Hazen, which theory I will just label for convenience the Wong-Hazen thesis. To read the original paper, see “On the Roles of Function and Selection in...Why Nothing Remains a Problem: The Andrew Loke Fiasco
I’ve long defended an argument theists seem to have no ability to escape: The Problem with Nothing: Why The Indefensibility of Ex Nihilo Nihil Goes Wrong for Theists. Robert Koons couldn’t get around it (Koons Cosmology vs. The Problem with Nothing). And...Get Dr. Carrier’s Latest!
About the Author
Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism and humanism, and the origins of Christianity and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He is also a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and historical methods.
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