Robert Sapolsky is Determined to be Wrong
Robert Sapolsky’s, Behave, published in 2017, provides evidence that when it comes to moral and social matters, the dorso lateral prefrontal cortex, the “decider” part of the…
A Philosopher Explains Moral Realism
An invited speaker asked me to explain moral realism to him. He said he had never really understood it. This is my attempt. Thomas Sowell wrote…
Will AI Technology Cause More Problems Than It Can Solve?
To any software engineers out there pondering this issue, there is no solution to the so-called “alignment problem.” This should be instantly obvious to anyone who spends…
The Reprehensible Peter Singer
Liberals value harm avoidance (harmlessness) and equality. Conservatives can agree that harmlessness and equality are good things, but also value loyalty, sanctity, and authority as complements. These…
Beyond the Scientific Revolution: Ian McGilchrist’s “The Matter With Things”
While the scientific revolution produced many benefits, the scientific perspective omits purpose and value, without which life is meaningless. With The Matter With Things, Iain McGilchrist makes…
Beyond John Locke: Reality and Experience
John Locke argued that there is a difference between how the world is and how we perceive it to be. This idea has come to dominate Western…
Notes From the Underground Shines a Light on The Genealogy of Morals
While Dostoevsky was unaware of Nietzsche, Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols that Dostoevsky was the only psychologist from whom he had anything to learn, having…
Social Psychologists’ Attack on Intuition and Expertise
Iain McGilchrist comments in The Matter With Things that our moral intuitions often cannot survive extremely fanciful hypothetical situations nor imagining counterfactual imputations of omniscience. Our intuitions…
Creation by Inhibition, Withdrawal, and Forgetting
Iain McGilchrist, in The Matter With Things, notes that one conception of God and the divine is that He created by withdrawing, by making a space. This…
Realism is Needed for Moral Intuitions
Iain McGilchrist in The Matter With Things refers to a study where subjects were asked to evaluate two scenarios. One described a woman giving a friend a…
Brain Lateralization and the Limits of Kant’s Moral Theory
Iain McGilchrist is a philosopher, psychiatrist, and neuroscientist with a key interest in brain lateralization, the division of the brain into right and left hemispheres and the…
Determinism and the Good Life Are Incompatible
This article is a continuation of an interaction with a blogger calling himself Robot Philosopher. RP is a polemicist and likes to pepper his arguments with snide…
A Philosopher and Blogger Debate Determinism Once More!
Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary, and The Matter With Things, is an expert on brain lateralization – the division between the right and…
Debating a Determinist: A Philosopher and Blogger Dialogue on Determinism, Free Will, and Philosophy
The thesis of determinism is one of the strangest theories promoted by many academic philosophers. Many determinists seem to think that they can assert the absence of…
The Metaphysical Status of Preferences: In Defense of Free Will
The pseudonymous “Robot Philosopher,” following Sam Harris, suggests that since we do not choose our preferences, we do not have free will. This is an odd line…