Experiments Involving Perception and Intuition

About a month ago, I posted about an article that presents some interesting experiments involving perception. You don’t have to click that link…here’s the relevant bit. It turns out that there are many cases in which what people expect to see tricks them into thinking they saw it. For example, they had people watch someone [...]

The Super Mario Multiverse

Calling all metaphysicians! Would you like a simplified explanation of the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics? Would you like it to be presented to you using Super Mario World? Well, look no further. Interesting Philosophical ApplicationsMetaphysical ModalitySome people think that the parallel universes in the multiverse hypothesis could play the role of Lewisian Possible Worlds. [...]

Young Philosophers - Beebe Intro Talk

I just posted the video of James Beebe’s introductory level talk. The talk was on an interesting version of the Fine-Tuning Argument for the existence of God. Both of the James Beebe’s talks are now up online over at youngphilosophers.org - Check them out and spread the word.

Young Philosophers - Beebe Research Talk

I just posted the video for James Beebe’s Research Talk over at Young Philosophers. The Young Philosophers Lecture Series is officially launched! I’ll be posting the video for James Beebe’s introdutory level talk either late this evening or sometime tomorrow. The video editing for that should move quickly. We don’t have QuickTime files or MP3 [...]

Freewill and Eternalism: Part Two

Thanks for the prodding in the previous post. Also, thanks to the anonymous comment with that list of readings. I knew there had to be literature on this. Here is a quick and dirty formulation of the argument that eternalism is incompatible with some robust conception of freewill. Three different people have given me something [...]

Freewill and Eternalism

I thought it was obvious that libertarian freedom was compatible with eternalism, but I’m starting to realize that this isn’t true across the board. Some colleagues here think that the two are likely incompatible. After talking with some folks at the Pacific APA, I discovered others who thought that the two are obviously incompatible. I [...]

In Other Weird (Non-APA) News

Sometimes computer companies bloat the computer with a bunch of software that you don’t need and will never use. Sony realized the error of its ways, and now offers you a computer without all that junk - the catch - they charge you $50 to NOT put their junk on the computer….awesome.

Bootstrapping

I saw a great session on bootstrapping today. James Van Cleve gave a great talk, and he basically argued that any non-skeptical view will allow for bootstrapping. Bootstrapping involves cases where a person is in a position to justify the conclusion that an evidential source is reliable by relying on that source (e.g., using perception [...]

An Argument for Contrastivism

Jonathan Schaffer presented a paper (just a few hours ago) on a view he favors called contrastivism. Contrastivism is the view that knowledge ascriptions express a ternary relation - S knows that P rather than Q. The more traditional view is that knowledge ascriptions express a binary relation between a person and a proposition. According [...]

Escaping Hell with Andrei and Allen

I’m in Pasadena with another former Rochester graduate student, Andrei Buckareff. I forget how good it is to talk to Andrei. We ran the gamut last night on LEMMing issues. We also talked about his work on The Problem of Hell. If you’re interested in philosophical theology, his work is well worth reading. Andrei wrote [...]