Contents: 160 articles accessed through menu-items above and to the right. Each links to a page listing articles under further headings. Most articles are by the site’s publisher, Shaun Johnston. Below are summaries of the articles most recently added.
From writing a utopian fiction in my fifties I came first to doubt Darwinism, then to find its physicalism/materialism toxic. Since then I’ve tried to fashion a natural philosophy from which better origin stories would naturally emerge. Below is my current version. I begin with Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.” Here’s how I developed … Read more
In our common sense account of consciousness, we’re dualists. Here’s a simple everyday example: I think “matter,” then I write the word “matter.” You read “matter,” now you think “matter.” “Matter” is a thought by which we refer to a category we’ve arrived at for physical things in general. “Matter” is not itself something physical. … Read more
To help us understand conscious experience better, I suggest we all adopt the same minimum set of terms. First, let’s just accept physics’ account of physical matter and processes. Then we need terms for only consciousness. Here’s what I suggest: Conscious experiences. These can differ wildly; some people don’t have them. Resources available to consciousness. … Read more
“Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will” by Dr. Kevin J. Mitchell. I’m currently concerned with how well our existing concepts equip us to discuss consciousness and free will. Dr. Mitchell promises to help out: A purely reductionist, mechanistic approach to life completely misses the point… basic laws of physics that deal only with … Read more
I believe in consciousness equipped with free will. Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky doesn’t. Our difference runs deep. Sapolsky: “I haven’t believed in free will since adolescence.” At that age I remember believing in free will enough to explore ways of amplifying it. So, on the matter of free will, we both care. But should you? … Read more
I launched this site 12 years ago to help the humanities inject meaning into our new origin story—that we evolved. Why did I think the humanities should be concerned? Because an overriding complaint today is the absence of meaning in modern life. For that we look to the humanities, not the sciences. Through the writing … Read more
If updating Stoicism was all it took to come up with ways mind could evolve, why does it seem a novelty? I think partly because of ideas left behind by Christendom, and how science dealt with them. According to the Christian story our free will and consciousness were special gifts from God. Once science took … Read more
For most of us, homo sapiens having evolved into existence has become our shared origin story. Quite a few versions of that story have been proposed over time. But in today’s school science classroom only one version may be taught, what I refer to as “Darwinism,” a purely physical process impervious to the operation of … Read more
My triad’s first branch is matter, pretty much as science describes it. My second triad concerns mind. In this chapter I’ll describe mind as I experience it (for that see Triadism 1) and how it differs from matter. Imagine being suspended in space above the surface of Mars. You have a camera, it’s facing down … Read more