Philosophical notes

The Chinese Room:

The fallacy in John Searle’s argument that no machine could ever understand a human language

Cranks and Crackpots:

How experts fail to distinguish cranks and crackpots from serious researchers

The Dead End Path of the Consciousness Myth:

Why the vague and nebulous notion behind the term “consciousness” is a path that leads to nowhere

Man versus Machine:

Roger Penrose claims that Gödel’s incompleteness proof indicates that human brains must be using quantum processes that no machine could replicate

Bishops Dancing with Pixies?

The fallacies in a claim that Artificial Intelligence can never match nor surpass human intelligence

The Mind-Body problem:

Why there is no Mind-Body problem

The Mary’s Room fallacy:

The fallacies in an argument that attempts to prove that consciousness cannot be the result of purely physical processes

Is Mathematics Unreasonably Effective?

Why the argument that conventional mathematics is amazingly effective for science is completely wrong

The duplicity of Mark Chu-Carroll:

How a mathematician refuses to play fair when he finds he has no logical answer to an argument

A John Searle inanity:

A demonstration of the obvious error in an argument by John Searle that human consciousness might be non-computable

How to tell if someone is a crackpot:

An examination of the claims of the crackpot John Gabriel

Fake News and Fake Mathematics:

How some parts of mathematics have been fabricated without any supporting logical basis

Ned Block’s Blockhead:

An attempt to use the concept of a magical non-intelligent machine to ‘prove’ that a non-intelligent machine can pass any Turing type test

Thinking and Being:

How the philosopher Irad Kimhi conjures up imaginary difficulties regarding statements of non-existence

Are we alone in the Universe?

Examining the claim that Gödel’s incompleteness proof is the most profound proof in the entire universe, and that we should broadcast it to alien intelligences

Artificial Intelligence:

A look at possible futures in view of the rise of artificial intelligence

Belief systems versus rationality:

Common factors between different belief systems

Computer Proofs:

Must a proof be correct simply because someone claims that it has been checked by a computer program?

Natural Language and Reality:

How philosophers have managed to become befuddled by natural language and how the difficulties are easily resolved

Numbers, chairs and unicorns:

Platonists claim that numbers have an actual “existence” that is as real as the existence of chairs, rather than simply being human concepts

Why do people believe weird things?

Why do intelligent people continue to defend beliefs that have no logical basis?

Some aspects of Gödel’s philosophy:

Some rather surprising statements by Gödel that reveal beliefs that have no logical nor evidential foundation

Dobbs vs Jackson & Roe vs Wade:

A look at the recent US supreme Court’s ruling re abortion

Responses to Quora questions:

My responses to some questions and answers posted on the censorial site Quora

Platonism:

The source of a multitude of irrational unfounded assumptions about the infinite

“Straight and Crooked Thinking”:

An online copy of the book by Robert Thouless on fallacious and dishonest arguments.

The Law of the Excluded Middle:

A look at the notion of “truth” with respect to provability and the law of the excluded middle

Another intuitive error by Gödel:

An intuitive error by Gödel in another of his published papers, an error that was only discovered years later

The Balls in the Urn Paradox (The Ross-Littlewood paradox):

How woolly thinking about infinity can lead to contradictions