The Core of ‘Mind and Cosmos'' Review | Big guns take on Darwin

PUBLISHER:

redshirt

Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

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My review of Dr. Nagel's book "Mind and Cosmos" applauded his opening thesis but declared the whole a failure. After asserting that consciousness could never be accounted for by a purely-physical theory he limited his further analysis to issues posed by traditional philosophic categories. I wanted him instead to deduce what the appearance of consciousness meant for evolution itself. That is, I wanted him to extrapolate from the known, consciousness, to the unknown, evolution, no matter where pre-evolutionary philosophizing stood on the matter.

In a summary published as "Opinionator" in the New York Times Dr. Nagel makes up for his lapse by simply omitting the offending analysis. For an authoritative statement of the mission of this site I can't do better than direct you to https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-cosmos/.

What I, as publisher of this site, am missing is a picture of how students in the humanities are responding to his call-to-arms. These are the people I am trying to reach with this site. Would someone please tell them.