Divine Supervenience I wish to broach an extremely speculative theological question: Is God supervenient on the universe. More precisely, are the properties of God uniquely determined by the properties of the universe? Does any universe qualitatively identical to our universe in all its non-divine attributes contain a god that is qualitatively identical […]
Descartes without Dualism There is something right about Descartes’ metaphysics of mind and body and something wrong. He is right in supposing there is a kind of symmetrical duality with respect to mind and body, but wrong in supposing there is a corresponding dualism of substances. A body is an extended […]
Degrees of Determinism People usually talk about determinism and indeterminism as if it were a binary affair. But there are different strengths of determinism and indeterminism, with some more plausible than others. Let me first define the strongest possible kind of determinism: if a cause from the actual world is […]
Dark Mind Dark matter pre-dates its detection by billions of years: hence its name. It is dark precisely in the sense that it does not emit or reflect light—it doesn’t interact with electromagnetic radiation at all. It is detectable only by means of remote gravitational effects. It is nowhere to […]
Consciousness and the Atomic Bomb The atomic bomb was invented and produced because the Allies feared that Germany was on the brink of developing just such a bomb. After World War II a cold war between Russia and America led to the proliferation of atomic weapons and their increased destructive power. […]
