Selected works by recent participants

Philip Goff, "A Priori Physicalism, Lonely Ghosts, and Cartesian Doubt" (2012)

David Papineau, Thinking About Consciousness (2004)

Lawrence Krauss, A Universe From Nothing (2012)

Roy Sorensen, Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows (2008)

Paul Humphreys with Mark Bedau (eds.): Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science (2008)

John Symons with Fabio Boschetti: "Novel Properties Generated By Interacting Computational Systems" (2011)

Philip Goff and David Papineau

Philip Goff (left) and David Papineau (right) on physicalism.

Goff rejects physicalism. Papineau accepts it. In this episode, they examine the arguments on each side. They consider the much-discussed “knowledge argument” against physicalism (10:28), explore Goff’s own reasons for rejecting physicalism (17:23), weigh the dualist arguments of Chalmers and Jackson (27:21), discuss Papineau’s reasons to reject the transparency of phenomenal concepts (32:48), ponder what Levine calls the “explanatory gap” (36:19), and confront the specter of epiphenomenalism (47:35).

Continue reading Philip Goff and David Papineau

Lawrence Krauss and Roy Sorensen

Lawrence Krauss (left) and Roy Sorensen (right) on origins and nothingness.

How did our universe get to be the way it is? Has our universe always existed, or did it arise from nothing? Is it even possible for something to come from nothing? Lawrence Krauss has argued that physicists have discovered some of the answers to these ancient philosophical questions; Krauss’s ideas are controversial among certain philosophers. In this conversation, Roy Sorensen and Krauss consider the connections between Darwinian evolution and Krauss’s views (13:50), discuss whether the scientific worldview is particularly depressing (22:41), examine the meaning of questions about “something rather than nothing” (35:25), and explore the nature of nothingness (47:18).

Continue reading Lawrence Krauss and Roy Sorensen

Paul Humphreys and John Symons

Paul Humphreys (left) and John Symons (right) on emergence.

A property is said to be emergent if it arises from but is not reducible to some fundamental property (or set of properties). There is a wide range of properties that might conceivably be emergent; consciousness is the textbook example, which might explain why philosophers of mind are responsible for some of the most fully developed treatments of emergence. In this episode, after discussing some history of the concept of emergence, Humphreys and Symons wrangle over whether emergence is definable (10:01), discuss ways in which debates over emergence have spread beyond the philosophy of mind (15:12), and speculate about where those debates might lead in the future (41:01).