Episoder
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What if we could recreate our forests, using biotech to bring back trees that are extinct? We now have that technology. We could replant a modified American chestnut tree all across the eastern United States. But should we do it?
A conversation about genetic engineering, human intervention, nature, the wild and what is meant to be.
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Evelyn Brister is a Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, USA. She is President of the Public Philosophy Network, a professional organisation that supports philosophers in collaborative teaching and scholarship outside their academic communities. She is the editor, with Robert Frodeman, of A Guide to Field Philosophy (Routledge, 2020), a collection of essays examining collaborations between philosophers and policymakers, and she has written over 20 journal articles in philosophy and environmental science.
Evelyn’s current research examines how values shape the use of biotechnology for conservation as well as other issues in land use and management. In 2020, she took part in a workshop with Revive & Restore to assess the possible application of genomic tools to plant and wildlife conservation.
Read Evelyn’s paper, ‘Not the Same Old Chestnut: Rewilding Forests with Biotechnology’: https://www.acf.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2020-Brister-Newhouse-Env-Ethics.pdf
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The ultimate guide to creating a podcast: (1) branding, (2) prepping content, (3) producing audio, and (4) distributing/promoting.
If you’re a podcast enthusiast, you'll hear about the secrets from behind the scenes. And if you want to create your own podcast, this is a great place to learn about all the steps, from start to finish.
Philipp the Interpolator (a good friend of mind) agreed to wear the interviewer hat for the day. Listen as Philipp probes me about the process and learns how to create and publish a podcast.
There’s a ‘cheat sheet’ that comes with this episode. It’s a visual summary of everything you need to know about the podcasting process and it’s available for free at:
geoffallenwriting.wordpress.com/cheatsheet
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In this episode, Geoff and Richard discuss the Headless Way, which is a set of reflections and guided meditations that centre around seeing *who you really are*. Richard even guides the listener through a few ‘experiments’ from the Headless Way.
The Headless Way seeks to highlight what experience is like from a first-person point of view – as a subject. When you look at the world as a subject, you have no head. That’s ‘headlessness’. Of course, you still have a head, but it’s only visible from the third-person point of view – as an object, as a person.
As adults, we go through life seeing ourselves as others see us. For others, we are an object, a person (with a head), a thing. So, we learn to see ourselves as an object for others. Richard encourages us to re-learn what it is like to see ourselves from the first-person point of view – as headless subjects, as empty space for the world.
Geoff and Richard discuss the many, deep implications of the Headless Way: identity (who is at the centre of experience?); third-person science versus the science of the first person; links with psychology and mainstream science; theory of mind; stages of development; learning to wear your face; creativity; learning to live with dualisms; otherness and separateness; projection and reflection; sociology, politics and foreign policy; perception; our experience of time; the distance of observation in physics; other animals; other sense modalities; language and culture; and other topics.
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Richard Lang discovered the Headless Way in 1970 when he met Douglas Harding, author of On Having No Head. Though he was only 17, Richard recognised that the Headless Way experiments are astonishingly effective at delivering the experience of *who you really are*. Since then, Richard has been involved in sharing the experience of *who we really are* with others and now has many friends around the world. In 1996, he set up the Shollond Trust, a UK charity dedicated to sharing the Headless Way.
Richard is the author of the books Seeing Who You Really Are (2003), Open to the Source: Selected Teachings of Douglas Harding (2005), Celebrating Who We Are (2017), The Man With No Head: The Life and Ideas of Douglas Harding (2017) – and the editor of a recent volume of Douglas Harding’s work, As I See It: Articles, selected by Richard Lang (2018). He is also the narrator for audiobook versions of Harding’s books, The Science of the First Person and On Having No Head.
You can find more material on the Headless Way in several places: on Richard’s website (headless.org); on YouTube (youtube.com/RichardLangHeadexchange); through The Headless Way app (on iTunes App Store or Google Play); through Waking Up, a meditation app by Sam Harris; and on Richard’s own podcast channel (search for ‘Richard Lang – Headless Way’).
If you wish to attend a free Zoom meeting with others who are interested in the Headless Way, please contact Richard through his website (headless.org).
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In this episode, Geoff and Lauren discuss a range of causal concepts and analogies that we encounter in scientific work. Lauren is doing important work in philosophy of science, writing about casual explanations. She argues that the concept of a ‘mechanism’ (an analogy to a machine) has been over-extended, particularly by new mechanist philosophers. Lauren points to the other causal concepts used by scientists: a ‘pathway’ (an analogy to a roadway) and a ‘cascade’ (an analogy to a waterfall or the snowball effect). The evidence points towards a diversity of causal concepts and causal structures.
Geoff and Lauren discuss: analogies for causation (mechanism, pathway, cascade); distinguishing mechanism vs. pathway; distinguishing mechanism vs. cascade; making connection in different domains of life; analogies and other language for explaining; stories and visual imagery; causation and the goal of control; the observer in science; insights from cognitive science (in fields like causal cognition or cognitive metaphysics); investigating human biases; Lauren’s background from medical school to HPS; big picture questions about medicine (biology, diseases, patient outcomes); applying medical training to HPS; causation as it features in different scientific disciplines; background conditions in biology vs. physics; three types of pluralism (structures, methods and the definition of causation); and other topics!
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Lauren Ross is an Associate Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine. She has an MD from the School of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine and a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh. This crossover influences a good deal of her work in philosophy of biology, philosophy of neuroscience and philosophy of medicine.
Lauren’s research focuses on causation and explanation in science. In her recent work, she analyses how scientists provide explanations by using various causal concepts and analogies, such as ’mechanism’, ‘pathway’ and ‘cascade’. For this work she has received the NSF Career Award and the Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellowship. In other projects, Lauren has discussed causal explanation in neuroscience (neural connections in the brain), in psychiatry (psychiatric genetics) and in chemistry (the periodic table).
https://www.lps.uci.edu/~rossl/
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In this episode, Geoff and Tim discuss philosophy for daily life. In particular, they talk about Stoicism: the wisdom that the Ancient Stoics can offer us, and which parts might be useful for life in the twenty-first century. They present these topics in an accessible way, discussing bitesize quotes, and reflecting on ways that philosophy can be relevant to the people and situations we encounter in daily life.
They discuss: applying philosophy to entrepreneurship and business; Stoic meditations; modern commentators on Stoicism, like William Irvine and Ryan Holiday; logos; pain and suffering; control; reason and emotion; nihilism and meaning; the historical lens versus the philosophical lens; psychology and stress management techniques; negative visualisation; prospective retrospective; the meaning of life; hedonism versus tranquility; pleasure; accepting versus resisting; philosophical tools and philosophical solutions; and other topics.
Geoff and Tim begin by reminiscing about how they met. It all came from a chance encounter in South East Asia in 2018…
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Tim Haldorsson is an entrepreneur. He works in tech and runs a marketing and web development team. Tim is an everyday philosopher, who uses ancient philosophy to guide him in making business decisions. For these practices, he draws on books like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
Tim is also a big fan of traveling and has spent the last five years living away from his home country, Sweden, visiting many different countries. These destinations have included: Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa and – most recently – Portugal and Madeira Island. Tim likes to think of himself as a digital nomad.
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In this episode, Geoff Allen speaks with Pete Mandik about perception and reality. They touch on some of the most intriguing issues concerning representation, egocentricity and perspective. Moreover, they discuss the different ways that minds make sense of reality – such as, the conception of hydrogen versus the conception of a hipster.
Geoff and Pete start with a more general discussion of backgrounds and upbringings. They swap stories of being children with philosophical thoughts and, later, discovering philosophy as a path. They also cover: popularising philosophy; mixing philosophy with art and music; drawing on empirical work; the PR problems of academics and intellectuals; political persecution of academics (in Mexico and Hungary); totalising projects for unifying knowledge; intellectual modesty; and other topics.
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Pete Mandik is a Professor of Philosophy at William Paterson University. He is the author of the books Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind (2010) and This is Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction (2013), and a co-author of the book Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Mind and Brain (2006). His latest book, Physicalist Theories of Consciousness, will be published by Cambridge University Press as part of the Elements in Philosophy of Mind series, edited by Keith Frankish.
Pete’s research touches on points of intersection between philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences, especially neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence. He is primarily interested in naturalistic accounts of consciousness and intentionality. His main lines of research to date have focused largely on three areas: (i) neurophilosophical explanations of phenomenal consciousness; (ii) artificial-life experiments on the evolutionary emergence of representational content; and (iii) the role of action-oriented representations as the basis for enactive cognition and perception.
http://www.petemandik.com
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In this episode, Geoff Allen speaks with Jenann Ismael about puzzles surrounding subjectivity. They discuss topics like time, pain, colour and spatial navigation. In all of these cases, there is a puzzle about how subjective experiences can be reconciled with objective descriptions.
Jenann’s treatment of perspectives and points of view is wonderfully insightful. She frames the metaphysical question in terms of ‘frames of reference’. Certain experiences (pain, colour, the flow of time) only exist within the ‘frame’ of a particular system. They are frame-dependent phenomena.
We should not expect frame-independent descriptions to capture these phenomena. Such descriptions are not only incomplete but incompletable!
As Jenann puts it: ‘Physics doesn’t just *allow* for frame dependence, physics *entails* that there will be frame-dependent quantities – if there are, on the one hand, intrinsic quantities and, on the other hand, observers of those intrinsic quantities.’
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Going deeper, there is also a puzzle about the metaphysics of subjects in the world: ‘We aren’t separate from the world; we are enacting the world as we’re representing it, and that partly means that we have an effect on what is the case,’ Jenann argues. ‘We see both reflections of ourselves in the world and reflections of the world back at us. The world… it pushes back on you, just as you push into the world.’
What does this mean for objectivity and realism? How can we reconcile the place of subjective experience in the world? Tune in, folks!!
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Jenann Ismael is a Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. She has also taught at Stanford University (1996–1998) and the University of Arizona (1998–2018). She received her PhD from Princeton University in 1997. Jenann is the author of the books Essays on Symmetry (2001), The Situated Self (2007), How Physics Makes Us Free (2016) and Time: A Very Short Introduction (2021).
Jenann’s work falls into two rough classes. First, there are concerns drawn from the philosophy of physics – for example, the structure of space and time, the foundations of quantum mechanics, the role of simplicity and symmetry in physics, the nature of probability, natural laws and causal relations. Second, questions surrounding mind, cognition, phenomenology and the nature of perspective. Jenann has been described, by John Perry, as ‘a leading philosopher of her generation’.
https://www.jenanni.com
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In this episode, Geoff Allen and Sam Hafkenscheid convene for a good old-fashioned debate about God and religious beliefs. Geoff takes the side of atheism/naturalism. Sam takes the side of faith/theism.
On the side of atheism, Geoff argues that we can explain (and discard) religious belief as an evolutionary adaptation. But what about meaning and morality? Geoff accepts the nihilism that comes with an atheistic position! He sketches an invitation to see the world with ‘optimistic nihilism’ (see episode #8 for a full exposition). He argues that the naturalistic package of rights/freedoms/meanings has the most pragmatic benefit for human flourishing. This is especially true in ‘zero sum’ political conflicts over abortion or discrimination.
On the side of theism, Sam argues that we require the idea of God to explain why things exist. What existed before the Big Bang, before time and before naturalistic causes? A mind, like God, is the most plausible explanation, Sam argues. Sam also challenges Geoff’s atheistic conception of meaning and morality. Without God, the only moral truth would be an ‘anything goes’ nihilism. At the very least, this means that atheists should live and let live. If it’s just nihilism and evolutionary adaptation, then trying to convert people to atheism is a waste of resources.
Geoff and Sam also discuss: Sam’s career in professional gaming and coaching; the journey versus the result in creative pursuits; losing yourself in a creative process; creativity as ‘flowing with the river’ versus ‘creating the river’; worldviews (our deepest-level beliefs); theistic versus naturalistic attitudes about abortion; how to change someone’s deepest attitudes and how to engage with people who share different worldviews; and other topics!
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Sam Hafkenscheid is a physicist, philosopher and professional DotA coach. He specialises in the areas of quantum physics and evolutionary biology and loves to investigate the relation between science and religion. He is also passionate about working in the field of education, with past experience as a private high school tutor and as a teaching assistant (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Utrecht University).
Sam is a professional DotA coach at Gamer Sensei, an esports coaching platform owned by Corsair. He has amassed over 15,000 hours both playing DotA and helping hundreds of DotA players to achieve their competitive goals. Sam received a bachelor in physics and astronomy at the University of Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is currently working towards a masters in history and philosophy of science at Utrecht University.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samhafkenscheid
https://www.gamersensei.com/senseis/skullcandy82
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This episode includes fragments from the track, ‘Optimism/Choate’, written and recorded by Geoff Allen. This music originally appeared in Extrapolator episodes #7 and #8, and it follows the themes of naturalism and optimistic nihilism! The full soundtrack for the Extrapolator podcast is available on Spotify (and all major platforms). Just search for: ‘Extrapolator: Original Podcast Soundtrack’… or click here: https://sptfy.com/6wYf
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In this episode, Geoff Allen speaks with Tom Beakbane about his new book, How to Understand Everything. Consilience: A New Way to See the World. Geoff and Tom delve into the core themes of the book – the neurobiology of humans and other organisms, how the brain constructs and interprets the world, and why we must frame everything in terms of brain science, in order to ‘understand’ everything.
In a nutshell, Tom claims that we must understand brains in order to understand reality – and human knowledge about reality.
Geoff and Tom also discuss: Tom’s academic background; Tom’s career in marketing and entrepreneurship; activities that are ‘scientific’ versus ‘businesslike’; pointified labels for human activities; the need to ‘brand’ an idea; our own labels (‘Consilience’ and ‘Extrapolator’); the history of consilience (William Whewell and Edward O. Wilson); the unity of knowledge; convergence across multiple perspectives and disciplines; how social interactions shape our conception of reality; the metaphysics of ‘reality’ from the standpoint of neurophysiology; the metaphysics of mathematics; the incredible effectiveness of mathematics; instances of the Fibonacci series (plant leaves, snail shells and spiral galaxies); ‘bottom-up’ explanations; complexity and complex systems (brains, hurricanes and pandemics); the neurobiology of consciousness; the evolutionary function of consciousness; whether consciousness has been explained (or is explainable) by empirical science; life history and phenomenal consciousness; how philosophy can engage with empirical science and fill in the gaps; the future of philosophy and philosophical debates; and other topics.
Tom Beakbane is president of Beakbane: Brand Strategies and Communications, a company he launched in 1986 to capitalise on digital technologies. Tom and his team have delivered over 20,000 projects to Fortune 500 customers in a wide variety of industries including pharmaceuticals, sexual health, nutrition, education, grocery, industrial and high-tech products.
Tom’s journey to resurrect the concept of consilience began when he tried to understand why textbook explanations of human behaviour did not account for the techniques routinely used by marketing communications and political operatives. Also he observed that textbook psychology did not explain the interpersonal dynamics he observed while providing services to his company’s clients. He realised that by weaving together developments on the frontlines of biology, physics and computing and reconceptualising human behaviour as an emergent system it was possible to explain the nature of understanding in ways that are all-embracing.
Tom has an honours degree in biochemistry and neurophysiology from Durham University in England.
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In this episode, Geoff Allen interviews Sean Carroll about his career as a theoretical physicist and science communicator. Sean speaks about his work with great energy and insight. He also ends with some pragmatic advice for graduate students!
Geoff and Sean cover topics such as: choosing a career path; the region of overlap between philosophy and science; productivity and workflow; life as an academic and science communicator; getting credit and ‘anti-credit’ for popularising science; mathematical ideas versus linguistic metaphors; simplification versus translation of complex ideas; public trust in scientists; science and scientists on social media; the motivations for podcasting; podcasting as a licence to talk to people!; how to tackle misinformation; the onus on readers to be discerning about sources; purpose, end goal and having fun at graduate school; and other topics.
Sean Carroll is a research professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology and a member of the Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also a well-known communicator of science – writing popular science books, contributing to magazines and journals, and appearing on popular science television shows.
Sean is the author of Something Deeply Hidden (2019), The Big Picture (2016), The Particle at the End of the Universe (2012), From Eternity to Here (2010) and Spacetime and Geometry (2003). He has made appearances on television shows like The Colbert Report and Through the Wormhole, with Morgan Freeman. Since 2018, he has hosted his own podcast, Sean Carroll’s Mindscape.
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In this episode, Geoff Allen speaks with Maura Cassidy Burke about the extent and limit of human knowledge. The idea of a multiverse is a very fun thought experiment here. Are the rules of logic really ‘universal’? For human beings, logic is intuitive and it seems immutable, but maybe there are beings or planets or universes where logic does not hold in the same way. Equally, the laws of physics seem fixed, but what if they were nothing more than our ‘address’ in space? At other locations in the multiverse, the laws of physics may be different!
Geoff and Maura also discuss: the aims of science; perspectival realism; metaphors like ‘approximate truth’ and ‘mapping on to reality’; strategies for scientific explanation (ontic, modal and epistemic); creative thinking and rebellious thinking in academia; mechanisms versus laws of nature; the links between scientific laws and Christian belief; looking for ‘order’ in the world via science and via religion; human observers as ‘agents’ who are embedded in any experiment; feedback loops and co-creation; the notion of co-creation in yoga and in philosophy; the ethics of the agent-dependent view; and other topics.
Maura Cassidy Burke is a PhD candidate in the philosophy of science at Utrecht University and, in her free time, she serves as an editor-in-chief for the Journal of Trial in Error. She holds an MSc in the History and Philosophy of Science from Utrecht University, and a BA in Molecular Biology from Hampshire College in Massachusetts, USA. Maura primarily works on the epistemology of science, with a focus on how explanations function in the natural and life sciences. For her master’s thesis, which served as the foundation for our discussion, Maura began developing a metaphysical position – the ‘agent-dependent view’ – in which she investigates how our role as agents affects our ability to construct scientific explanations and theories. She argues that in order to do good science, we ought to be concerned with the human in the equation (and never forget to have fun).
Website for the Journal of Trial and Error: www.jtrialerror.com
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In this episode, Geoff Allen speaks with Ilan Goodman about the intersection of philosophy and science. They discuss: Ilan’s background as a philosopher, podcaster and actor; scientific philosophy versus ‘pure philosophy’; Patricia Churchland’s views on philosophy and neuroscience; philosophy as a mapping exercise; scientific realism and mind-independent truths; the distinctions between philosophy and science; causality at the level of quantum particles; communicating science to the public; the motivations for podcasting; the current state of intellectual discourse; the challenges of communicating coronavirus information to the public; and other topics.
Ilan Goodman is a podcaster, producer and communicator of science. He works as a producer for science-focused podcasts, including CrowdScience (BBC World Service), The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry (BBC R4) and Azeem Azhar's Exponential View. In a past role, he worked at the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, working as a producer for Risky Talk with David Spiegelhalter. Ilan is the host and producer of NOUS the podcast, which explores questions about the mind through philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. Ilan is also an actor, and he has appeared extensively on stage, in TV shows and in feature films.
Ilan holds an MSc in History and Philosophy of Science from UCL, and this common ground formed the basis for much of our conversation. Ilan holds Bachelor degrees in Experimental Psychology & Philosophy (University of Oxford) and Acting (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art).
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It’s the season one finale (so to speak). Geoff Allen presents a rather optimistic claim: ‘Reality is objectively meaningless, but that’s kind of a nice thing!’
Nihilism is the view that meaning does not exist (externally) – that meaning is not attainable or measurable according to any (external) X, Y or Z – and this has positive implications for human beings!
Who are the pessimistic nihilists who would prefer some fixed, prescriptive morality to be imposed from the outside? Is that alternative really better? (For further incredulity, continue reading…)
What on Earth are these pessimists lamenting? Would they really prefer if meaning was externally dictated?
Nihilism means that it is just us: one terrestrial ecosystem. We are bound together and marooned on this rather lush rock. When we take this outlook, we become pleasantly focused on the real issues at stake.
Life is incredibly improbable and, yet, here we are. We’re kind of in this together. Feel the optimism, folks!
A bibliography for each episode is available here: https://geoffallenwriting.wordpress.com/2020/10/06/extrapolator-bibliography/
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Welcome to the religion episode! It was inevitable, in hindsight. Geoff Allen starts by laying out his personal history of religious un-conversions and re-conversions (from the ages of 12 to 25).
**This episode features some brand new music: an uplifting track to match an uplifting message. This track, ’Optimism/Choate’, and the full album, ‘Extrapolator (Original Podcast Soundtrack)’, are available on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and all major platforms.**
What is the ontological status of a religious belief? Where does it reside, or in what way does it exist? Well, religions are human ‘narratives’, just like currencies, economies and countries. This is revealed when we step back and characterise religious beliefs from an evolutionary perspective.
Religious beliefs have no truth or meaning in reality outside of human minds. We have believed in various gods because it was useful, not because it was true.
When it comes to morality, religious stories can be confusing and misleading. Religious rights sometimes appear to clash with other human rights. Is it hypocritical to restrict the rights of religious people, while they try to restrict the rights of women (and other groups)? How far do religious rights go?
As always, to answer these questions, we must drill down to our fundamental assumptions about reality.
A bibliography for each episode is available here: https://geoffallenwriting.wordpress.com/2020/10/06/extrapolator-bibliography/
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In this second part, Geoff Allen continues his ambitious ‘five birds, one stone’. He discusses the self, free will, intentionality, the flow of time and the meaning of life – all under one umbrella.
What unites these topics is an apparent mismatch between: the first-person experience of human life, and the third-person descriptions of empirical science. In each case, there is a clash between the first-person and the third-person perspectives.
What is the source of experiences like meaning, concepts and the flow of time? Are they subjective constructs on the part of individual organisms and systems… or, are they features of objective reality?
As always, we must take a naturalistic approach – which means no souls, no gods, no spooky (non-physical) forces. We must extrapolate carefully. Perhaps, if we engage in some wilder extrapolation, we can also make some tentative claims about the meaning of life.
A bibliography for each episode is available here: https://geoffallenwriting.wordpress.com/2020/10/06/extrapolator-bibliography/
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In this double episode, Geoff Allen tackles an ambitious ‘five birds, one stone’. He discusses the self, free will, intentionality, the flow of time and the meaning of life – all under one umbrella.
What unites these topics is an apparent mismatch between: the first-person experience of human life, and the third-person descriptions of empirical science. In each case, there is a clash between the first-person and the third-person perspectives.
Why do we have a subjective sense of self? How can we have any freedom to choose our actions? And how do these first-person experiences match up with the third-person descriptions of physics, biology and evolution?
To answer all of these questions, we must practise ‘naturalised’ or ‘naturalistic’ philosophy! We must refer only to natural entities and processes – which means no supernatural or non-physical claims. No souls, no gods, no spooky (non-physical) forces. Buckle up, folks.
A bibliography for each episode is available here: https://geoffallenwriting.wordpress.com/2020/10/06/extrapolator-bibliography/
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Geoff Allen runs through the history of AI as a field. It all started with a small conference in 1956, where the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was coined. By comparing trends in the history of AI, we can learn about changing conceptions of intelligence and cognition.
How has our conception of intelligence changed over time? There have been at least three broad trends, fashionable at different times – (i) Computationalism, (ii) Connectionism, and (iii) the Situated Embodied Dynamical (SED) approach.
Is the mind best understood – (i) as a computer, (ii) as a network, or (iii) in a physical context? Perhaps each of these theories can teach us something about modelling human intelligence and about engineering new intelligence.
Topics also include: human-perception versus bee-perception; the fuzzy line between iPhones and brains; and a big confession on the ethics of artificial intelligence.
A bibliography for each episode is available here: https://geoffallenwriting.wordpress.com/2020/10/06/extrapolator-bibliography/
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We (humans) still suffer from many errors in our thinking. Among these errors is an incorrect and damaging view of nature and other animals. We view animals as being naturally pigeonholed – ‘dogs are for petting, horses are for riding, pigs are for eating’. Why is it barbaric to eat a dog but not a pig?
Many humans still entertain a Book of Genesis notion that humans have dominion over all animals. At the very least, we (incorrectly) view the human species as separate and from the rest of nature. Pollution is seen as a transgression against the natural realm – ‘unnatural’ human activities disrupting ‘natural’ states of being.
Morality aside, this outlook is factually mistaken! Geoff Allen argues that we should cancel the word ‘natural’. As he puts it: ‘A bird’s nest is no more or less natural than a Toyota Prius’.
Topics also include: the logic of Mean Girls; genetics versus memetics; culture among apes and monkeys; animals planning for the future; thinking abstractly versus thinking concretely.
A bibliography for each episode is available here: https://geoffallenwriting.wordpress.com/2020/10/06/extrapolator-bibliography/
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Geoff Allen tackles his favourite set of overarching questions: ‘What is true?’… ‘What is real?’… ‘What exists “out there” in reality?’... He presents the core debate between scientific realists and social constructivists. (Can we say that electrons are ‘real’, or are they simply sociocultural constructs?)
We are all guided by personal tastes, interests and biases – buffeted by our our biology and psychology. We expect judges to overcome these constructs in order to create ‘justice’. We expect scientists to overcome these constructs in order to discover ‘truth’. Perhaps this is asking too much.
The history of things that were created (novels, pyramids, declarations of independence) necessarily involves a story about human authorship – acts by someone. That is the greasy human handprint on the history of knowledge-making. Can we discern any ‘truth’ behind these smudges? Can humans grasp mind-independent reality?
Topics also include: Trump and the post-truth attitude; scientific realism and climate science; empirical regularities versus metaphysical regularities; why scientific knowledge is special.
A bibliography for each episode is available here: https://geoffallenwriting.wordpress.com/2020/10/06/extrapolator-bibliography/
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Welcome to the pilot. This episode tackles the question that keeps everybody awake at night: ‘What on Earth is Philosophy?!’ Geoff Allen presents his original take on the project of philosophy and its relationship to the project of science. In his view, philosophy has three functions (procedural, mapping, substantive) and the proper content of philosophy is… extrapolation.
Taking a meta-approach to philosophy is, in fact, comparable to the meta-approach of Rick and Morty. (It’s all about attaining meta-awareness of devices, arcs and structures.) Topics also include: everything that’s wrong with armchair philosophy, the history of natural philosophy, and how to extrapolate from physics from metaphysics.
A bibliography for each episode is available here: https://geoffallenwriting.wordpress.com/2020/10/06/extrapolator-bibliography/
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