Quizzes Feb 25, 27

T 25 - MP13-14 (Scroll down for *Th 27)
LISTEN

Reports: Cooper, On Humanism; Ben, Identifying parallels between social oppression and control by religious institutions with "Woke Culture". [To be rescheduled: Crystal, Nietzsche]

1. The idea of justice without retribution evokes what pressing questions? 236

2. According to Waller we can use scientific understanding of human behavior to do what? 238

3. Changing an agent's future behavior can focus on what? 241

4. What approach to crime "can meet our highest moral standards"? 247

5. What is the thesis of neuronaturalism? 252

6. The picture of the brain as a nexus of neural activity helps explain why each of us is what? 255

7. What kinds of causes typically have a "strong causal invariance relation with their effects"? 261

8. A "limited free-will view" has what advantages over pessimism? 266

DQ

•  COMMENT: "Free will skepticism cannot deny the reality of our experiences: we feel in charge..." 236
• Who's right, Dennett or Waller?
• Are some individuals "destined to a life of crime"? 242
• Should individuals ever "receive a psychiatric label"? 246
• Is there anything "mindblowing" to you about neuronaturalism?
• Should mental deliberations viewed (somehow) objectively resemble "clockwork"? 257
• Are most people "theory-lite" and thus less committed to (for instance) metaphysical dualism than we might have predicted? 258
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(Alva Noë, former student of Hilary Putnam, educated at Harvard and Oxford, is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. The focus of his work is the theory of perception and consciousness. In addition to several books on consciousness and perception, he wrote Infinite Baseball: Notes from a Philosopher at the Ballpark. I met him last year at my annual Baseball in Literature and Culture Conference in Kansas.)








NOTE: This is an excerpt from the two-part, 60-minute DVD. http://www.thinkingallowed.com/2fcric... A noted scientist discusses free will, consciousness, attention and memory and their relationship to the human nervous system. In a wide ranging discussion, Crick points out that the hypothesis that the brain is the seat of consciousness has not yet been proven. Francis Crick, Ph.D., received the Nobel Prize in 1962 for the discovery of DNA's central role in the process of genetic reproduction. He is author of Life Itself, What Mad Pursuit and The Astonishing Hypothesis.
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*Th 27 - No class, but read & post comments on MP 15-16
LISTEN



1. Nadelhoffer and Wright are focused on the potential ramifications of free will skepticism from what standpoint? 270

2. Francis Crick says "who you are is nothing but" what? 287

3. Do the authors of ch 15 think most people's attitudes towards free will are likely to change anytime soon? 294

4. The "clockwork" aspect of the classical Newtonian universe seems to imply what about life? 300

5. What is "weak emergence" and what can it underwrite? 304

6. What conclusion about absurdity and freedom would be hasty, and what existentialist theme seems refuted by modern physics and cosmology? 306

DQ

• Could free will be a "positive illusion"? In general, do you think there can be good reasons for affirming beliefs that aren't strongly supported by evidence and research?
• COMMENT on one or more of the survey studies in ch 15.
• What do you think of Crick's argument in The Astonishing Hypothesis?
• Do Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, or Sartre induce "existential anxiety" in you? 293
• Do you predict a widespread loss of belief in free will among yourself and/or your peers in the future?
• Is emergent free will at the macroscopic level of the human scale enough to vindicate ideas like purpose and choice, even if there's no use for such concepts at the microscopic level of fundamental physics?
• What do you think of Sean Carroll's "poetic naturalism"? (see below)

How can we explain consciousness? Pioneering physicist and humanist, Sean Carroll describes how Physics can explain what it is to be conscious. How do life and meaning emerge from physical stuff? Sean Carroll argues that the universe is made of stories, not atoms. Watch the full talk https://iai.tv/video/the-poetry-of-th...

Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/


“The strategy I'm advocating here can be called poetic naturalism. The poet Mureil Rukeyser once wrote, 'The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.' The world is what exists and what happens, but we gain enormous insight by talking about it -- telling its story -- in different ways."

Poetic naturalism is a philosophy of freedom and responsibility. The raw materials of life are given to us by the natural world, and we must work to understand them and accept the consequences. The move from description to prescription, from saying what happens to passing judgment on what should happen, is a creative one, a fundamentally human act. The world is just the world, unfolding according to the patterns of nature, free of any judgmental attributes. The world exists; beauty and goodness are things that we bring to it.” 

“Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting.” 

“At each moment, who we are and how we behave is a choice that we individually make. The challenges are real; the opportunities are incredible.” 

The trick is to think of life as a process rather than a substance. When a candle is burning, there is a flame that clearly carries energy. When we put the candle out, the energy doesn’t “go” anywhere. The candle still contains energy in its atoms and molecules. What happens, instead, is that the process of combustion has ceased. Life is like that: it’s not “stuff”; it’s a set of things happening. When that process stops, life ends.” 

“"Poetic naturalism accept[s] that values are human constructs, but den[ies] that they are therefore illusory or meaningless... The meaning we find in life is not transcendent, but it's no less meaningful for that.” 
― Sean Carroll, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
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