Walden Pod

Recently I learned that H.P. Lovecraft had undergone a surprising and dramatic political transformation in the final years of his brief life. I wanted to read a few of Lovecraft's letters and discuss his views on capitalism, socialism, and the influence of the profit motive on artistic expression. (In the middle part of this episode, I also indulge in a bit of culture war stuff, so consider yourself warned.) In these letters from the last several years of his life, his notorious racism seems to fade, and he explicitly rejects the reactionary political ideology he held prior to 1931. He ruthlessly critiques capitalism, speaks glowingly of Marx, and warns us that our only options are socialism or barbarism. Anyone familiar with the author knows how out of kilter this feels compared to the absurdly reactionary person who most of us know as Lovecraft. First episode on Lovecraft @waldenpod Lovecraft Letters: 1937, Catherine Moore 1936 Arthur Sechrist 1934, Helen Barlow Lovecraft Audiobooks: Dagon The Call of Cthulhu At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow Over Innsmouth / timestamps / 00:00 Introduction 02:53 Flawed Characters, Real and Fictional 09:30 Letter to Catherine Moore (1937) 13:00 Letter to Helen Barlow (1934) 15:32 Letter to Arthur Sechrist (1936) 17:23 Art & the Profit Motive 19:52 The Shadow Transcript

I was recently interviewed by Zac of Adherent Apologetics on the subject of problems with physicalism. We outline a few arguments against the view, including physicalism’s conflict with realism about phenomenal consciousness and anti-emergentism, as well as a couple different forms of the vagueness argument against physicalism. We also talk a bit about the tradition of atheist non-physicalism, which is almost entirely behind the recent rise in interest in alternatives to physicalism. Other topics include the science of consciousness, the relationship between neuroscience and the metaphysics of consciousness, the standard thinking that motivates physicalism and where it goes wrong, panpsychism, and other subjects related to philosophy of mind. Subscribe to Zac’s channel and my channel linktr.ee/emersongreen Support on Patreon here emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Rate the show on iTunes here Listen to our sister show Counter Apologetics here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Follow on Twitter @waldenpod and @OnPanpsychism Music by ichika Nito. Used with permission.

Today I'm speaking with Dr. Michael Huemer about phenomenal conservatism, a theory in epistemology that seeks to ground justified beliefs in the way things “appear” or “seem” to the subject who holds that belief. We discuss a wide range of issues in epistemology, including internalism vs. externalism, justified true belief, proper functionalism, the epistemic value of psychedelic experiences, religious experiences, radical skepticism, knowledge, conceptual analysis, intuition, and much else. Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is the author of more than seventy academic articles in epistemology, ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy, as well as several books, including Skepticism and the Veil of Perception, Ethical Intuitionism, Paradox Lost, and Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism, and his new book, Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy. PC: If it seems to S that P, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some justification for believing that P. Michael’s Website Phenomenal Conservatism - IEP Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism MH YouTube Channel  / / /  linktr.ee/emersongreen For the extended version of this interview, support on Patreon here emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Rate the show on iTunes here Listen to our sister show Counter Apologetics here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Follow on Twitter @waldenpod and @OnPanpsychism / / / YouTube version of this episode

Naturalists, according to David Papinau, author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on naturalism, urge “that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing ‘supernatural’.” Naturalism “has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy” beyond this, along with an emphasis on science as a means to understand the natural world. Naturalism is the view that there is only the natural world. I defend this simple conception of naturalism, ward off a few criticisms, and argue that there’s a kind of parity between the terms “theism” and “naturalism.” In other words, if you don’t have a problem with the term “theism,” you shouldn’t have a problem with “naturalism.” Luke Roelofs - Combining Minds: How to Think about Composite Subjectivity Is God the Best Explanation of Things? A Dialogue - Joshua Rasmussen & Felipe Leon (this wasn’t mentioned in the episode, but Leon does a wonderful job fleshing out “liberal naturalism” Graham Oppy - The Best Argument Against God Sean Carroll - Poetic Naturalism Galen Strawson - Real Naturalism William Lycan - Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction Naturalism - SEP / / /  linktr.ee/emersongreen YouTube Transcript  Rate the show on iTunes Support on Patreon here Listen to our sister show Counter Apologetics here Follow on Twitter @waldenpod and @OnPanpsychism / / /  a few elaborations of naturalism... “By ‘naturalism’ I mean the view that the world contains a single basic type of stuff, whose behavior is governed by a single set of simple, general laws, and that these laws are those revealed by science. The most common version of naturalism among contemporary philosophers is physicalism, the view that the world is entirely made up of matter, and matter is exhaustively described by physics. But some philosophers reject physicalism, even while accepting naturalism, holding that matter is not exhaustively described by physics—there are fundamental aspects of matter that physics is blind to. In particular (they tend to say), there are certain things each of us can know about matter, such as that one particular portion of matter (the one between our ears) sometimes feels and thinks and experiences, which go beyond both what physics itself says and what can be deduced from any physical description, no matter how detailed. Because facts about my consciousness are left out by any purely physical descriptions, these ‘naturalistic anti-physicalists’ infer that consciousness must be itself a fundamental feature of reality, no more derivable from physical properties than mass is derivable from charge.” Luke Roelofs “Naturalism is a philosophy according to which there is only one world -- the natural world, which exhibits unbroken patterns (the laws of nature), and which we can learn about through hypothesis testing and observation. In particular, there is no supernatural world -- no gods, no spirits, no transcendent meanings. I like to talk about a particular approach to naturalism, which can be thought of as Poetic. By that I mean to emphasize that, while there is only one world, there are many ways of talking about the world. "Ways of talking" shouldn't be underestimated; they can otherwise be labeled "theories" or "models" or "vocabularies" or "stories," and if a particular way of talking turns out to be sufficiently accurate and useful, the elements in its corresponding vocabulary deserve to be called real.” Sean Carroll “Naturalism says that causal reality is natural reality: the domain of causes is nothing more nor less than the natural world. Atheism says that there are no gods; in consequence, atheism says that there is no God. Naturalism entails atheism: if causal reality is natural reality, then there is no (supernatural) cause of natural reality, and, in particular, there is no God. But atheism does not entail naturalism: to deny that there are gods is not to insist that causal reality is natural reality. . . . Supernaturalism says that causal reality outstrips natural reality: there are supernatural causes. . . . This ‘minimal’ conception of naturalism relies on a prior understanding of the distinction between the natural and the supernatural (as did our ‘minimal’ conception of theism). We shall proceed on the assumption that we do understand this distinction well enough. If we come to have doubts about whether we do understand this distinction well enough, then we can return to give it more careful consideration. ‘Minimal naturalism’ admits of elaboration in many different – mutually inconsistent – ways. Any suitably elaborated naturalism will hold that some features of the natural world are primitive – not susceptible of further explanation – whereas other features of the natural world are fully explained in terms of those primitive features. Thus, for example, some naturalists suppose that all of the primitive features of the natural world are physical features – i.e. features that lie in the proper domain of the discipline of physics. Other naturalists suppose that there are features of the natural world . . . that cannot be fully explained in terms of the fundamental physical properties. The key point to note is that all naturalists suppose that there are no supernatural causal properties…” Graham Oppy

Aaron is a lecturer in the Rutgers philosophy department (@ETVpod). Emerson is the host of Counter Apologetics and Walden Pod (@waldenpod). Aaron’s podcast, Embrace the Void https://voidpod.com/ This debate took place on the Right to Reason podcast https://therighttoreason.podbean.com/e/panpsychism-debate/ https://linktr.ee/emersongreen

Dustin and I discuss vagueness arguments against materialism, phenomenal conservatism, doubt arguments, Phineas Gage, physical causal closure, the core theory, vitalism, ghosts, split-brain cases, occam's razor, panpsychism, idealism, dual-aspect theories, and the problem of psychophysical luck. Dr. Crummett received a PhD from the University of Notre Dame in 2018, and he is currently working on animal ethics as a postdoctoral researcher at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He specializes in social and political philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of religion. Dustin’s website http://dustincrummett.com/ Micah Edvenson & Dustin Crummett on Socialism Dustin Crummett with John Buck & Inspiring Christianity on Dualism  A Deeper Analysis of the Problem of Evil with Dr. Dustin Crummett  Is The Problem Of Evil Worse Than We Thought? Non-Alchemist & Dr. Dustin Crummett  Science, Mind, and the Limits of Understanding - Noam Chomsky  Can physicalism explain phenomenal consciousness?  Luke Roelofs - Combining Minds  Hedda Hassel Morch - The Evolutionary Argument for Phenomenal Powers  / / / emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Support on Patreon at patreon.com/waldenpod or /counter Rate the show on iTunes Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube  Follow on Twitter @waldenpod and @OnPanpsychism linktr.ee/emersongreen

What is philosophy, and who counts as a philosopher? My two favorite answers come from Alvin Plantinga and Arthur Schopenhauer. According to Plantinga, philosophy is just thinking hard about something. Schopenhauer put it a bit more loftily: philosophy represents our attempt to “lay bare the true nature of the world.” (At least, this is true in philosophy’s more ambitious moments.) Additionally, I would submit that philosophy is the intensification of a natural human activity. linktr.ee/emersongreen David Egan on Philosophy [Aeon] Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig on Philosophy [Reasonable Faith] Transcript [emersongreenblog] Is philosophy dead? [iTunes] You’re wrong to hate philosophy [iTunes]

linktr.ee/emersongreen You can watch the video version of this podcast here emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Rate the show on iTunes here Support on Patreon here Listen to our sister show Counter Apologetics here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Follow on Twitter @waldenpod and @OnPanpsychism

We discuss poetic naturalism and its nemesis, tunnel vision reductionism. Tunnel vision reductionism takes one description of reality and declares it to be the “real” description of reality to the exclusion of all others. At the very least, the given lower level of description is considered “more true” than higher-level descriptions. The basic problem with tunnel vision reductionism is that it has a narrow and inconsistent notion of the real. Neurons are taken to be real, but emotions are illusory (or at least, less real than neurons). Both are emergent, higher level phenomena, but for some reason, the former is the true description. But if love isn’t real because it’s a higher level description, then neurons aren’t real either. Neither are chemicals like oxytocin. But of course, higher level descriptions are real. There are many legitimate theories, models, vocabularies, stories, and ways of talking about the world. As poetic naturalist Sean Carroll puts it, “if a particular way of talking turns out to be sufficiently accurate and useful, the elements in its corresponding vocabulary deserve to be called real.” If we describe the biochemical correlates of love, we haven’t described everything there is to know about love, nor have we given the “real” description of love. “But all this only works if we reject reductive materialism, right?” No! This is true especially if one accepts reductive materialism. On reductive materialism, the feeling of love and oxytocin are both real in exactly the same way. Linktree YouTube Transcript Twitter @waldenpod

Here’s my conversation with John Buck and Craig Reid that was held on Craig’s YouTube channel. I was invited on to discuss atheism and consciousness, two of my favorite subjects. Unfortunately we were having audio issues at different points, but I did a bit of editing to make it more listenable. Craig’s channel is primarily devoted to Christian apologetics, but here we mostly discuss consciousness. We talk about my religious background near the beginning, and my reasons for being an atheist a bit near the end, but most of the conversation is on physicalism, panpsychism, dualism, and a lot of interesting questions related to those ideas. Craig's YouTube Channel  Follow John Buck on Twitter here and Craig Reed here  https://linktr.ee/emersongreen