The double look on complex dimension
Abstract: Neurocognitive Mechanisms (2020), by Gualtiero Piccinini, is a philosophical and neuroscientific work, seeking to ground cognition and its phenomena in a comprehensive neurocomputational theory. But the philosophical treatment is wrong. The introduction of “aspects” of a single level of reality also introduces something that looks independently of that single level. We fall back on … Read more
Ariane Nicolas revisits the question of Simone de Beauvoir, 70 years later, in the stormy context of gender transidentity. “A woman, based on my own experience, I don’t know what it is,” she says. The Flying Woman Here are Ariane’s explanations: she knows that she is a woman because society has told her, in her … Read more
Two criticisms Ambitious, the previous article? After showing how thorny the problem of time is, it claims to solve it in a few paragraphs. Philosophical references but no equations. How can science and phenomenon converge under these conditions? This is the first criticism to be made of this article. The second criticism is that it … Read more
Two schools? No time… Time is one of our most enigmatic root concepts. The difficulty of grasping it has created two clearly divided schools of thought. The first sees time as a simple order of succession. No reference to the present or to an observer. One event is limited to being anterior or subsequent to … Read more
Abstract: A theory of causality, a root concept, must strive to converge its ontological and teleological directions. The counterfactuals used by Paul Noordhof unfortunately failed in this attempt. They form a good description of cognition, highlighting its biases. Going further requires looking at the complex dimension. Part 1: Two-way causal representation Causality is one of … Read more
Thinking about evil is not just about burning yourself in it With ‘Evil in modern thought‘, essayist Susan Neiman revisits Nietzsche and Arendt to condemn a resignation from contemporary philosophy about evil. She sees the Holocaust as such an exorbitant evil that it requires a complete overhaul of ethics, not just deconstructing world history. An … Read more
Striking spirit What is immediately striking about the theories of consciousness is that they don’t look alike at all. Of course we group them into major fields, scientific, religious, philosophical, but each group is heterogeneous. Among scientists, disciplines as diverse as neuroscience, complexity, and quantum physics compete for copyrights on consciousness. Every mystic wants to … Read more
A question of bumpers? Philomag tackles death that comes in front of us, or that has already hit a loved one, and we can’t overcome the disaster. Generalization hides strong inequalities: some enter a state of mental decomposition and others seem unaffected. Is death an unknown virus? A new vaccine in sight? The Epicurean and … Read more
Abstract: Using the example of Theo, who renames herself Thea, I show the important difference between true non-binaries, who are rarely heard, and anti-binaries, ardent militants. What is a non-binary? A non-binary person is a person who does not declare themselves in a female or male gender, as prescribed by the dominant cultural binarism. In … Read more
“Talent hits a target that no one else can reach; the genius hits a target that no one else can see.”Arthur Schopenhauer Innate and acquired knowledge No one has the time and the means to unravel the history of science. We are forced to take for granted most of the knowledge used on a daily … Read more