The Quanta Magazine report was intriguingly titled: “Physicists use quantum mechanics to pull energy out of nothing.” That could be big news, and could possibly help answer the ultimate question of where, how and why this universe came to be. It’s one of the truly big questions: Does our current…

Benjamin Cain, one of the more popular Medium philosophical writers with over 10k followers, posed an intriguing question recently: If there was some super intelligence involving itself in our universe and lives, would we recognize it any more than an ant would recognize if we intervened in its effort to…

In the previous post on Near Death Experiences (NDEs) we reviewed some of the current studies on brainwave activity of the dying. On first glance and reading the headlines the findings appear to support the physicalist belief that the mind, consciousness and experience are produced by the brain. In this…

Near Death Experiences are one of the front lines in the battle between physicalism and spiritually-oriented belief systems. Physicalism says that only matter/energy exists and that only the matter/energy in our universe can cause any event. …

This is the final post in the series on panpsychism as argued by philosopher Galen Strawson. The previous posts explored his argument that realist physicalists, those who accept experience as a real thing, must accept panpsychism as a fact of nature. We noted his inconsistency in abusing and then using…

This is the third in a four part series explores philosopher Galen Strawson’s argument that physicalism requires the acceptance of panpsychism. He explains how the reality of experience requires the existence of experience in all matter/energy. He identifies some key objections to this idea, but does he answer them adequately? Emergence of experience from non-experience requires “proto-experience”

The second in a four part series on philosopher Galen Strawson’s argument that accepting physicalism requires an acceptance of panpsychism. Here we look at Strawson’s skewering of emergentists who claim that consciousness or experience is an emergent property of physical matter. Strawson is a realist physicalist, that is one who…

This is the first of four posts investigating the strong claim of philosopher Galen Strawson that physicalism entails panpsychism. Does he succeed in establishing that panpsychism — the idea that all matter includes experience — is a fundamental reality of nature? Physicalism entails panpsychism: this is the strong argument presented…

Does emergence describe something real or is it simply a fancy way to say: we have no freaking idea what is going on? Is it like doctors giving Latin names to unexplained things in order to provide a diagnosis? Like when my dentist sent me to a doctor to get…