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Philip Goff and Graham Oppy discuss finite theism and naturalism!

You can now buy the paperback of Why? The Purpose of the Universe here

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Here's my appearance on Mile's Donahue's channel! 

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This was originally a livestream on Alex Malpass' channel.

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Does terminal lucidity refute physicalism? 

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I was graciously invited on the Young Apologists Podcast to discuss my backstory, apologetics, atheism, aliens, the simulation hypothesis, the LDS religion, panpsychism, religious experiences, what would convert me to Christianity, and what I would ask God if I had the chance. 

Young Apologists - Substack

Worldviews - YouTube

Music by Joseph Nied

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Crashing out over a tweet about the moral argument. 

Moral Argument Debunked (Playlist) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg...

Linktree https://linktr.ee/emersongreen

Micah Edvenson and I have a reasonable discussion about Bigfoot, the no body argument, the difficulty of finding remains in the woods, footprint casts, the Patterson-Gimlin film, the comparison with gorillas and chimpanzees, the compatibility of the volume of eyewitness sightings and the supposed elusiveness of Bigfoot, and many other topics. We also touch on eyewitness reports of ghosts, different types of apparitions, and whether a materialist can credit certain ghost sightings as veridical. 

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My appearance on Otherworld about my experience with a cryptid. 

YouTube https://youtu.be/bBU8vXNmyFw?si=VD98PzHdcD26nK-a

Substack post going into more detail: https://emersongreen.substack.com/p/t...

Linktree https://linktr.ee/emersongreen

Episode 113: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 1 https://www.otherworldpod.com/blogs/e...

Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2 https://www.otherworldpod.com/blogs/e...

Does philosophy of language give us reason to think that God, if he exists, is more like us than classical theists expect? I’m joined by philosopher of language Joseph Lawal to discuss an argument from his paper, 'God An Alien or An Alien God?' His argument aims to push us away from the strongest versions of divine simplicity and aseity, but is also potentially a problem for theistic personalists who affirm God's timelessness. The argument, which focuses on the otherness of God (on non-finitist views), leads us to the conclusion that ordinary theological language is either false or meaningless on classical theism. (E.g., “God loves you” would either be false or meaningless.) This poses a major problem for the religious theist and destroys their ability to make predictions and inferences about God based on his attributes. This would not only undermine natural theology, but also harm the sorts of inferences we make about God in ordinary life. 

*In the conversation, I use the word “prediction” at a few points where it probably would have been clearer to use the word “inference” instead.

*There is a lot of information packed into this episode; it may be beneficial to listen more than once. 

Joseph's channel 

SPECIAL THANKS TO JOSEPH NIED FOR THE MUSIC FOR THIS EPISODE 

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Ralph Stefan Weir and Ben Watkins debate whether there is a sound argument from mental causation to materialism. Is the interaction problem for substance dualism fake or fatal? 

My interview with Dr. Weir on substance dualism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw53gH2cq0o • You Are A Soul — w/ Ralph Stefan Weir  

Dr. Ralph Stefan Weir is the author of The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics: An Argument from Consciousness to Mental Substance. He teaches philosophy at the University of Lincoln and is an Associate Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. 

Ben Watkins is the co-host of the excellent philosophy of religion podcast, Real Atheology https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQa6mPLOE2yuMCrDjRio_nA / @realatheology  

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I respond briefly to Alex O'Conner's free will skepticism, specifically to an objection attributed to Schopenhauer: You can do what you will, but you can't will what you will. While I agree that we can't have ultimate responsibility for our actions, I think we can be responsible for our actions. Being the author of one's actions doesn't require anything magical, just that we are (in some sense) the source of what we do and that we (in some sense) could have done otherwise. As long as we have sourcehood and the ability to do otherwise, I think we have free will; and I think determinism is fatal to neither of these criteria. In defense of alternative possibilities, I appeal to Kadri Vihvelin's dispositional compatibilism, the thesis that "the most fundamental free will facts are facts about our causal powers (for instance, our power to decide on the basis of deliberation) and that our causal powers differ in complexity but not in kind from dispositions like fragility, elasticity, and flammability."

Kadri Vihvelin on Dispositional Compatibilism

Interview with Kadri Vihvelin 

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Durham University hosted a conference about panpsychism, pantheism, and panentheism last November, and I was graciously given the opportunity to respond to Joanna Leidenhag and Tim Mulgan. Professor Leidenhag and Professor Mulgan both spoke about alternative models of theism, and I offered a few thoughts and objections to their respective models of God. 

On Durham's website, you can listen to all the full lectures from the event: https://sites.google.com/view/panpsychismandpanentheism/project-events/durham-workshop?authuser=0

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00:00 Emerson Green 

15:40 Joanna Leidenhag 

23:37 Tim Mulgan 

31:00 Q&A

We explore the nature of dreams. We discuss Daniel Dennett's cassette theory, which questions whether dreams are genuine experiences that occur during sleep, instead suggesting that dreams are spontaneous memory insertions at awakening. This theory contrasts with the common view that dreams involve phenomenal states in real time. However, lucid dreaming challenges the cassette theory. We also question the reality of "dreamless sleep" and examine prophetic, precognitive, and shared dreams. 

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We explore Paul Draper's "psychological aether theory" or "aetherism". In addition to gravitation, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak interactions, there is a fifth fundamental interaction: A field of consciousness, a world-soul or mental aether that interacts with our brains. 

"How does the brain produce the mind? It doesn't. Instead, mentality exists quite independently of the brain."

Draper's recent work on aetherism is a refinement of a view proposed by William James in his 1898 Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality. James doesn't deny that thought is a function of the brain. Rather, he challenges the assumption that the function in question is one of production. He defends what he calls the "transmissive function" view over the theory that thought is produced by the brain. For James, consciousness pre-exists, with our brain giving finite human shape to experience, like the pipes of an organ shape the trembling air as it escapes from the organ's air-chest. Aetherism can explain the tight correlation between mental and physical states while allowing for their conceptual and ontological distinction, and dispensing with the need for any spontaneous production of consciousness de novo by the brain. 

Both Draper and James recognize that aetherism leaves the door open to an afterlife, as well as certain psi phenomena. As Draper puts it, "perhaps William James was right to challenge the confidence that most philosophers and scientists have that there is no life after death. For if we don't know that aetherism is false, then we don't actually know that the subject of our psychological properties does not continue to exist after our bodies are destroyed.” 

William James - Human Immortality 

Paul Draper - Psychological Aether Theory

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Monistic Idealism's video

Both Sides Brigade - Interacting with the Interaction Problem

My dualism playlist

Majesty of Reason on the interaction problem

You Are A Soul w/ Ralph Stefan Weir

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We dive into the philosophy of personal identity, exploring whether a consistent "self" persists through time despite physical and mental changes. Is there an essential core that endures transformations? We examine the Ship of Theseus, the deadly and murderous teletransporter which murders people, the “no self” view associated with Hume, mind uploading, Ralph Stefan Weir’s dilemma for transhumanists, and whether Socrates could have been an alligator.

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Explore zombieland with Philip Goff and I as we discuss type-b physicalism, the link between conceivability and possibility, Goff’s differences with David Chalmers, and much else related to the conceivability argument against materialism.

First Zombie Argument Video

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Ralph Stefan Weir joins me to discuss his book, The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics: An Argument from Consciousness to Mental Substance. We talk about the myth of the interaction problem, the connection between theism and the soul, the implausibility of property dualism, substance dualism in Eastern thought, the causal closure argument and energy conservation, a posteriori necessities, modal rationalism, panpsychism and idealism, personal identity, transhumanism, mind-uploading, split brain cases, whether souls are eternal, and much else. 

Dustin Crummett's interview with Dr. Weir

. . .

For reference, here are the two arguments from the book we spent the most time on:

DISEMBODIMENT ARGUMENT

(i) The phenomenal facts do not a priori entail the existence of anything physical.

(ii) If the phenomenal facts do not a priori entail the existence of anything physical, then they do not necessitate the existence of anything physical.

(iii) Therefore, the phenomenal facts do not necessitate the existence of anything physical.


PARITY ARGUMENT

(i) If you accept the conceivability argument, you must accept the phenomenal disembodiment argument.

(ii) If you accept the phenomenal disembodiment argument, then you must accept the existence of nonphysical substances.

(iii) Therefore, if you accept the conceivability argument, then you must accept the existence of nonphysical substances.

. . .

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I am once again begging apologists to stop treating atheism and materialism as interchangeable concepts. It's intellectual laziness at best and dishonesty at worst.

This was originally a short video posted on my youtube channel.

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Today, we explore the privacy of consciousness, a feature of the mind rejected by qualia antirealists. 

(summary of the arguments begins at 43:45) 

A few of the papers and books referenced:

Is Mental Privacy Defensible? Jaffer Ahmed

Explaining Mental Privacy - Colin McGinn

Other minds are neither seen nor inferred - Mason Westfall 

Understanding Knowledge - Michael Huemer

Illusionism As A Theory of Consciousness 

Galileo's Error - Philip Goff

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Today we discuss three skeptical arguments from Wang Chong, a first-century Chinese philosopher who railed against the belief in ghosts. Although the skeptics who initially presented these arguments to me seemed to think they were decisive, I was unimpressed and wanted to explain why I think they miss the center of the spectral target. 

As summarized on Wang’s IEP entry: 

(1) Argument from physical shape:  The death of a person is the result of the body losing the animating qi (vital essence), and once the qi is separated from the body, the body decays.  All will admit to this.  If this is so, however, and the person’s qi is still existent, how can this qi itself manifest in the form of a physical shape?  It is not a body, it is qi.  But when one sees a ghost, one sees a body.  But if the person has died, they no longer have a body, so where could they get another one?  They cannot take over another living body, which will already possess its own qi.  Thus, the view that people when they die become ghosts is nonsensical. 

(2) Argument from population:  If people become ghosts when they die, there should be more ghost sightings than living people, as the number of people who have lived in the past and died is far greater than the number of people now living.  This is not true — ghost “sightings” are rare.  Thus it cannot be that people when they die become ghosts.

(3) Argument from ghostly efficacy:  If a living person is harmed, this person will immediately go to a magistrate and bring a case against the party who harmed them.  If it were the case that people become ghosts when they die and can interact with living humans, every ghostly murder victim would be seen going to a magistrate, telling him the name of the killer and the means of murder, leading him to the body, and so forth.  This is never witnessed (ever). 

Wang Chong - IEP 

Philosophy on the Fringes - Ghosts and Hauntings 

Dale Allison Interview - Encountering Mystery 

Greenbrier Ghost - Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World 

Twitter thread where I first encountered Wang Chong

Music for this episode was performed by yours truly (except the drums).
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Today we discuss Mary the color scientist, her cousin Fred, and a colorblind Norwegian neuroscientist. Specifically, we talk about why Philip Goff thinks "phenomenal curiosity" threatens the ability hypothesis and the phenomenal concept strategy, ruling out moderate forms of physicalism. 

Curiosity and the Knowledge Argument - Philip Goff

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We discuss Philip Goff’s conversion, the online reaction to it, and what his “heretical Christianity” involves. Is he a real Christian? What does he think about the resurrection, the ascension, the miracles of Christ, the virgin birth, the trinity, inerrantism, the atonement, and God’s nature? 

Amos Wollen - Conversion Review: Christianity gains a new smart person 

Randal Rauser on Goff’s Conversion 

Nathan Ormond (DigitalGnosis)- Philosopher CONVERTS to Christianity 

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I give three reasons why panpsychism typically strikes us as counterintuitive, and why we shouldn't credit our innate bias against it. 

David Papineau: Physicalists who find panpsychism counterintuitive haven’t truly freed themselves from dualist thinking 

Jonathan Birch on overconfidence about sentience

This episode was available early to supporters at patreon.com/waldenpod

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Today we continue our exploration of the conceivability argument, covering the best response in the physicalist arsenal, and why it doesn't help physicalists escape the hoard of zombies in the end.

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Today we discuss David Chalmers' conceivability argument against physicalism: the zombie argument.

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The core theory, weak and strong emergence, micro-reductionism, and Sean Carroll’s skeptical argument against everything. Is Dr. Carroll correct in holding that physics has ruled out the afterlife, the soul, fundamental consciousness, parapsychology, and other immaterialist claims? 

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Sean Carroll speaking to the Freedom From Religion Foundation https://youtu.be/40eiycH077A?si=xgg4KC0JPYWnH0fU

Philip Goff: Is physics different in the brain? https://www.youtube.com/live/wlyKdirhOa4?si=RRYXSUbW8As7sRLw

Papers: 

Carroll: Consciousness and the Laws of Physics (2021) https://philarchive.org/archive/CARCAT-33

Goff’s response to critics: https://philpapers.org/archive/GOFPCF.pdf

The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes (2021) https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07884

Relevant blog posts from Carroll: 

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/04/the-world-of-everyday-experience-in-one-equation/

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/23/the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-are-completely-understood/

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/29/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood/

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/10/01/one-last-stab/

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/07/18/the-effective-field-theory-of-everyday-life-revisited/

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/05/23/physics-and-the-immortality-of-the-soul/

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/02/18/telekinesis-and-quantum-field-theory/

I recently asked for your questions, and I posted my responses on YouTube here. We touch on compatibilism, NDEs, aliens, euthanasia, abortion, death anxiety as an atheist, idealism, incest, Islam, Mormonism, subjectivism, psychophysical harmony, and more. (For those listening via podcast, I left the introduction in to preserve the timestamps for those who want to skip around to different sections.)

00:00 Intro
00:46 Atheistic platonism?
01:22 Why are you gay?
01:30 Are you still a naturalist?
05:47 What kind of compatibilist are you?
09:41 If I settle your debt with PragerU, will you become a libertarian?
10:12 What’s your biggest gripe with physicalism?
12:42 On the abortion debate, when do you think personhood / full moral status begins?
17:22 Do twinks make better philosophers?
17:56 Are you agnostic about anything in philosophy?
19:37 Why are you such a sucker for spooky stuff?
30:49 Who makes those guitar transitions?
32:34 Favorite music?
34:30 Who are some of your favorite Eastern philosophers?
35:03 Which religion would you choose to be true?
40:54 Who are your favorite theist and atheist philosophers?
42:18 Arguing for dualism from mereological nihilism?
45:48 Euthanasia?
48:43 What are your thoughts on each general era of philosophy?
55:00 Thoughts on Jordan Peterson?
58:55 Have you looked into Islam?
1:03:57 Does your mother know you spend so much time talking to strangers on the internet?
1:04:04 What is your opinion on the resurrection?
1:08:23 The best argument against veganism?
1:21:18 What is the primary goal of adopting panpsychism?
1:23:20 Best defenses of objective morality?
1:24:34 How would aliens affect theism and atheism?
1:30:53 Are you a dualist or a physicalist?
1:31:31 Isn’t solipsism simpler than panpsychism?
1:33:37 Thoughts on idealism?
1:35:41 Which political system do you think is right?
1:39:34 Thoughts on metaethical naturalism?
1:41:52 Is incest wrong?
1:45:27 When will you have some Mormons back on your show?
1:46:34 Why atheist and not agnostic? Where can I find good philrel content?
1:49:54 Would necessitarianism defeat fine-tuning and psychophysical harmony?
1:57:38 Do you accept physical causal closure?
2:00:00 How do you explain psychophysical harmony?
2:02:34 Kant’s transcendental idealism and free will?
2:07:56 Are we obligated to refute false beliefs even if they’re meaningful?
2:13:01 Is there any profound nugget of wisdom that Christianity has first or exclusive ownership of?
2:15:17 Analytic/Continental divide?
2:18:05 “Emmerson”
2:19:03 Does the phenomenal powers view weaken psychophysical harmony?
2:22:04 Is time necessary for consciousness?
2:28:49 If you did reconvert, would you be a Christian or a generic theist?
2:32:20 Finite theism?
2:36:22 Top three philosophers who are wrong about everything?
2:37:57 Moral subjectivism with normally functioning humans as the (collective) observer(s) morality is stance-dependent upon?
2:48:52 Are you afraid of death? How do you cope with death anxiety as an atheist?

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Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental states have no effect on anything. The feeling of pain, counterintuitively, does not cause your aversion, mentally or physically. Beliefs don’t cause behavior. None of our actions occur in virtue of our thoughts, feelings, or sensations.

Inspired by Matthew Adelstein’s post defending epiphenomenalism, I want to explain my opposition to the view. A few times, he referenced a podcast episode / blog post of mine from 2020, which I hadn’t read since it was first posted. I found a few things to disagree with in my own episode, so I thought I’d respond to Matthew and try to offer an updated critique of epiphenomenalism in the process. While epiphenomenalism is probably less wrong than physicalism, the causal efficacy of our mental states is as evident as anything, so the view should still be rejected in favor of panpsychism or interactionist dualism. As Paul Draper once put it, “wild ideas are needed” to explain consciousness, but I don’t think epiphenomenalism is the right wild idea.

After responding to a few key points from Matthew, I offer a few reasons to reject epiphenomenalism:

• Epiphenomenalism is self-defeating.
• The evidence that supports the causal influence of mental states is the exact same kind of evidence for causal influence in other cases. This not only supports mental causation, but also raises the threat of undermining the epiphenomenalist’s claim that the physical has causal powers.
• The phenomenal powers view as defended by Mørch (2017, 2020) is plausible and entails the falsity of epiphenomenalism. In short, there are plausible examples of causal necessity in the mind.
• Among metaphysical theories of consciousness, epiphenomenalism is the most vulnerable to the problem of psychophysical harmony.

Transcript

YouTube

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Here's my interview on Shannon Q's YouTube channel where we discuss dualism, panpsychism, personal identity, and other topics in the philosophy of mind! 

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Dr. Michael Huemer joins me to defend interactionist substance dualism, the view that the mind and body are composed of different substances and can exert causal influence over each other. 

Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy 

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Wouldn’t aliens manage to avoid crashing their ships, given how advanced they’d have to be? Aren’t the distances between life-supporting planets too vast to feasibly travel? If figures in the government actually knew something, wouldn’t a cover-up involve too many people to keep the secret for long? 

I’m joined by Jimmy Akin to answer ten common objections to UFO phenomena and alien visitations. In the wake of recent news stories about unidentified aerial phenomena, I heard the same skeptical talking points trotted out over and over again as if UFO believers had never considered them and had no response to them at all. So I’d like to play whatever small part I can in improving the quality of the discourse by advancing the conversation past the initial thoughts that are commonly offered into more interesting territory. This should make skeptics better skeptics, and help agnostics like myself better appreciate the skeptical position. Right now, the skeptics are not sending their best.

Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World

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Today I’m speaking with Dr. Dale Allison, historian and author of Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age. The subtitle of the book notwithstanding, the unusual experiences we discuss are not explicitly religious. They’re usually interpreted through a religious lens (often without any reflection), but almost all of them needn’t be, which is something we return to quite a bit. Flatly disputing the phenomenon is not the only option available to the nonreligious. 

We talk about paranormal and parapsychological phenomena, and two major sources of skepticism towards things that fall into those categories. On the one hand, of course, there’s materialism, conservative naturalism, skepticism (as in, the skeptic community), etc. But Protestant Christianity, I was surprised to learn, has also been a skeptical force in history due to their drive to debunk Catholic miracle stories, or even just extraordinary events documented by the Catholic Church that explicitly or implicitly were used as evidence for Catholicism. 

Since we’re exploring new terrain that involves some quite unusual topics (e.g., clairvoyance, levitation, visions of dead loved ones, etc.) there’s a lot more I want to say, even in this little description box, but I’ll save it for the interview. 

One thing I forgot to mention during the interview: In addition to Dr. Allison’s book, there are a couple podcasts that regularly discuss cases like the ones that came up today in greater depth. “Otherworld” and “Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World” come highly recommended from me. 

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Today, we discuss Agrippa's trilemma and look at our hands. 

Epistemology Playlist 

Understanding Knowledge - Michael Huemer

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Today, we discuss the idea that understanding a concept is not a matter of knowing a definition. As philosopher Michael Huemer argues, our main access to a concept comes “not through directly reflecting on the concept, but through activating the dispositions that constitute our understanding.” 

The Wittgensteinian view of concepts explains how it’s possible that we know how to competently use terms even though it is so hard to successfully analyze them. I can’t provide a perfect conceptual analysis of knowledge (no one can), and yet I have no issue using the term and understanding what it means. Not only can I competently use words that I can’t analyze, I can reject proposed analyses as insufficient, like the justified true belief analysis. That’s because I understand the meaning of the concept, despite the fact that I can’t define it. 

“Indefinability of words is perfectly normal," Huemer argues, "since understanding is not constituted by knowledge of definitions. The best way to convey a word’s meaning is through examples.” 


Language & Meaning: Crash Course Philosophy

Understanding Knowledge - Michael Huemer

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One note from Huemer on the Wittgensteinian view of concepts and the contrasting Lockean view: "I think what I have to say about concepts is like some stuff that Wittgenstein said, but I don’t actually care how well it matches Wittgenstein’s views. I also don’t care, by the way, whether the 'Lockean theory' matches Locke’s views. You have to add in caveats like this whenever you mention a major philosophical figure, because there are always people who have devoted their lives to studying that figure and who, if you let them, will give you all sorts of arguments that the famous philosopher has been completely misunderstood and never really said the things they’re famous for saying." 

What is knowledge? What does it mean to know something? Today, we discuss the defeasibility theory, which adds a fourth condition to the famous "justified true belief" analysis of knowledge. We also touch on Gettier cases, certainty, and what contemporary analytic philosophy is all about (the answer may surprise you!). 


For even more epistemology, check out the new series on Counter Apologetics about mistakes atheists often make about epistemology. 


Understanding Knowledge - Michael Huemer

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We take a short break from our epistemology series to talk about the hypothesis of indifference, a limited God, natural teleology, pan-agentialism, and how value-orientation in the universe is not binary but rather comes on a continuum.

For reference, Paul Draper (1989) characterizes the hypothesis of indifference as follows: “neither the nature nor the condition of sentient beings on earth is the result of benevolent or malevolent actions performed by non-human persons.” 

If the audio sounds different than usual, that's because I recorded this as a video and edited it slightly differently as a result. You can watch the video on YouTube here 

Check out the series on atheism and epistemology over on Counter Apologetics here

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This is part one of a series about epistemology, the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge and justification. When does something count as knowledge? How can we be justified in accepting mathematical truths, moral truths, and truths about the external world? Can I trust my perceptual faculties, my memory, my ability to reason? Can I know anything at all? 

Today, we're discussing internalism vs. externalism about knowledge and justification. We also touch on the person-based nature of justification, giving others the benefit of the doubt, and empathy on the epistemic landscape.

Understanding Knowledge - Michael Huemer 

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Perspective Philosophy and I speak about metaethics, intervening in wild animal suffering, veganism, the toll of working in a slaughterhouse, ethical intuition, moral disagreement, and a few metaphysical questions about contingency and necessity. 

Full interview here

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“On panpsychism, how can there ever be unconsciousness, like in the case of dreamless sleep?” As far as objections go, this is a pretty weak one, but I decided to take the opportunity to talk about death, sleep, states of unconsciousness, and how panpsychists see the mind and its place in nature. 

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Consider supporting the show on Patreon here or Counter Apologetics here

Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here

Transcript

Twitter @waldenpod @OnPanpsychism

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Philip Goff and Dustin Crummett debate psychophysical harmony, God, axiarchism, pan-agentialism, natural teleology, and explore some neglected terrain between theism and the hypothesis of indifference. What are our options in explaining the fine-tuning of consciousness? 

Subscribe on YouTube

Twitter @waldenpod @Philip_Goff @dustin_crummett

Dustin's Channel

Mind Chat

Music by ichika Nito & Whalers. Used with permission.

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When did consciousness first evolve? If physicalism is true, we’d expect it to have evolved gradually, just as other complex biological phenomena evolved gradually. But the transition from feeling nothing to feeling something couldn’t have been gradual. No matter how minimal a conscious experience is, if it’s “like something” to exist – anything at all – it’s not like nothing at all. On reflection it seems hard to imagine anything other than a sharp border between non-experiential reality and experiential reality. On the other hand, complex physical states are not sharp: they admit borderline cases. If we remove one atom at a time from a given brain state, it will eventually be vague or indeterminate whether or not the organism is still in that physical brain state. So if consciousness is just a kind of physical state, we’d expect consciousness to follow suit. Since it seems impossible that there could be a borderline case of consciousness – it’s either like something for a creature or like nothing – we have reason to think that physicalism is false. 

Michael Tye - Vagueness and the Evolution of Consciousness

David Papineau’s review of Vagueness and the Evolution of Consciousness in NDPR

Nino Kadic - Phenomenology of Fundamental Reality

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Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here

Support at patreon.com/counter or patreon.com/waldenpod 

Music by ichika Nito and used with permission.

Transcript 

Twitter @waldenpod @OnPanpsychism

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/ timestamps /
00:00 The vagueness argument
04:18 Which creatures are conscious?
06:18 The sharpness of consciousness
10:09 The vagueness of biological phenomena
12:41 The sharpness of consciousness (cont.)
20:14 Weak emergence
21:42 The advantage of vagueness arguments

In many ways, I'm the ideal audience for apologists of capital punishment. I believe in free will, I think human beings are responsible for their actions, I’m not opposed to retribution in all cases, I believe there are virtuous qualities to revenge, and I think some people deserve to die. However, none of that is enough to justify the death penalty system. 

First, arguing that some people deserve to die is not sufficient to show that any particular institution (e.g. the state) should have the power and legitimacy to carry out executions. Second, capital punishment is not reconcilable with the principle of remedy: when mistakes are inevitably made, the punishment for the wrongly convicted cannot be brought to an end and they cannot be given damages. Third, the application of the death penalty will inevitably be morally arbitrary in some cases – either due to the morally arbitrary nature of the laws themselves, the enforcement of the law, or the imperfect determination of guilt. Since this is unavoidable, we cannot have the death penalty without murdering innocents. And since saving innocent life is far more important than ending the lives of the guilty, this should dissuade us from maintaining a death-penalty system. Finally, the virtuous qualities of revenge are absent in the death penalty system.

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Support at patreon.com/waldenpod & patreon.com/counter

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Transcript

Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here

Music by ichika Nito and used with permission.

Twitter @waldenpod

linktr.ee/emersongreen

Subscribe on YouTube

Consider supporting the show on Patreon here or Counter Apologetics here

Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here

Music by ichika Nito and used with permission.

Full interview on the Sentientism podcast

Twitter @waldenpod @OnPanpsychism

linktr.ee/emersongreen

Subscribe on YouTube

Consider supporting the show on Patreon here or Counter Apologetics here

Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here

Music by ichika Nito and used with permission.

Full interview on the Sentientism podcast

Twitter @waldenpod @OnPanpsychism

Dr. Michael Huemer joins me to discuss moral realism vs. antirealism, ethical intuitionism, phenomenal conservatism, moral disagreement, and much else in moral philosophy. 


Ethical Intuitionism 

Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy 

William Lane Craig vs. Erik Wielenberg 

Linktree


/ The Five Metaethical Positions / 

Noncognitivism/expressivism: Moral statements are neither true nor false. Evaluative predicates do not even
purportedly refer to any sort of property, nor do evaluative statements assert propositions.

Error theory/nihilism: Moral statements (that imply that something has an evaluative property) are all false.

Subjectivism: Some moral statements are true, but not objectively. For a thing to be good is for some individual or group to (be disposed to) take some attitude towards it.

Moral Naturalism: There are objective moral properties, but they are reducible. Evaluative truths are reducible to descriptive truths. Additionally, moral statements can be justified empirically.

Moral Non-Naturalism/Intuitionism: There are objective moral properties, and they are irreducible. Evaluative truths are not reducible to descriptive truths. Additionally, at least some moral truths are known intuitively.


/ Timestamps /
00:00 Introduction
01:05 Objective vs. Subjective
06:45 Five Metaethical Views
36:45 Fictionalism
50:40 Phenomenal Conservatism, Scientism, Skepticism
1:15:00 Moral Disagreement
1:25:00 Theism and Moral Realism
1:41:00 Companions in Innocence
1:46:30 Evolutionary Debunking Arguments
2:00:00 Huemer’s soul is not in Colorado nor is it in Michigan

Is the intellectual tradition of theism evidence in favor of it? What about the atheistic tradition? ... Does atheism sap your moral motivation? Do Christians even believe in ultimate justice? ... Do contingency arguments succeed? What does it mean for something to be necessary? 

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I'm joined by two proponents of libertarian free will to discuss determinism, the phenomenology of free choices, how "ought implies can" could prove we have the ability to do otherwise, and much else. 

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Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here

Music by ichika Nito and used with permission.

Twitter @waldenpod @OnPanpsychism

Darren (Necessary Being) w/ Bread of Life

Necessary Being on Free Will

Critiquing arguments against free will from neuroscience | The Analytic Christian & Dr. Matthew Flummer (of The Free Will Show) 

I'm joined by Matthew Adelstein of Deliberation Under Ideal Conditions for Utilitarianism 101. We also talk about a few basic things everyone needs to know to be conversant in moral philosophy. 

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Matthew's Channel 

Matthew's Blog (Bentham's Bulldog)

Consider supporting the show on Patreon here or Counter Apologetics here

Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here

Music by ichika Nito and used with permission.

Twitter @waldenpod @OnPanpsychism

linktr.ee/emersongreen