Nietzsche's Naturalism

Brian Leiter's draft paper "Nietzsche's Naturalism Reconsidered" is an engaging look at the issue of "whether and in what sense Nietzsche is a naturalist in philosophy". Leiter contends that perhaps the most worrying obstacle in reading Nietzsche as a philosophical naturalist is his doctrine of the Will To Power and the "crackpot metaphysics" that some interpretations of this doctrine may imply.

A Case for Intelligent Design?

In this post I aim to have a go at the heresy of presenting a case for the plausibility of intelligent design as a factor in biological evolution (although ID of an atypical, non-supernatural sort).

The Goldilocks Enigma

Paul Davies recent book "The Goldilocks Enigma" is a fascinating exploration of why the universe seems to be "just right" for life. Interest in the fine tuning issue (which is related to the anthropic principle) has received something of a revival in recent years, primarily because of the attention paid by some physicists to the view that our universe has an improbably appropriate amount of dark energy to allow galaxies to form and hence life to evolve. In this post, I aim to evaluate possible solutions to the fine tuning problem from a panexperientialist perspective.

Forthcoming Book

I noticed on this blog that David Skrbina, author of the highly regarded "Panpsychism in the West", is editing a new book on panpsychism due out in 2008 or 2009.

Thoughts on "The Ecological Self"

Further to my last post, I've recently read Freya Mathew's book "The Ecological Self" (also partially available on Google books). In this post I'll give a brief outline of the book and make some comments on it. There is not much by way of other reviews I could find to link to (which is not to say the book has been without influence- it is frequently referred to in environmental philosophy texts and the like).

Does Physicalism entail Cosmopsychism?

The increase in interest in panexperientialism (which I use synonymously with the term panpsychism) in recent years has focused mainly on a micropsychic form, in which microepxeriential events at the most fundamental level of nature are the basis from which human experience is constituted. However, another strand of panexperientialism imputes an overarching experience at the level of the universe as a whole.

Panpsychism at Tucson 2008

Panpsychism appears to have featured significantly in the recent Tucson Towards a Science of Consciousness 2008 Conference, to the extent that this reviewer remarks that "Pansychism is no longer crazy - it's the norm".

Property Dualism - micro, macro and mystery

Fiona Macpherson in this article contends that Galen Strawson’s proposed panpsychist solution to the mind-body problem is no less of a mystery than other proposed solutions.