+Ravenwood I'm sorry if I've offended your religious sensitivities. My concern is that if something is attributed to god then it cuts off further scientific / empirical enquiry. Science must be based on relations between observable quantities.
+Ravenwood Sean Carroll burned someone at the stake? I guess I don't know what you mean by that. He's usually fairly sedate, polite even. Can you tell me where to find this? In your hyperbolic metaphor are you equating blunt criticism with witch-burning?
Ravenwood I found www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/08/22/mind-and-cosmos/ But don't get "vitriolic" out of it. violent hate and anger expressed through severe criticism: dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/vitriol Severe criticism yes, profound disagreement but no hate or anger as such. Sean's main point against Nagel seemed to be that Nagel seemed to be willing to toss out current theories without much more than personal hunches. Maybe that's more acceptable in philosophy but in the sciences it is pretty weak. At any rate I didn't see any ad hominem attacks or emotionally charged rhetoric (which would surprise me from Carroll). P.S. I'm not much of a "materialist" myself. Quantum fields hardly seem made of anything that would qualify as matter. Curiously I have also worked in electro-optics.
Big Bang may not be the correct assumption.
Get rid of the metaphysics and theology.
+Ravenwood I'm sorry if I've offended your religious sensitivities. My concern is that if something is attributed to god then it cuts off further scientific / empirical enquiry. Science must be based on relations between observable quantities.
+Ravenwood
Sean Carroll burned someone at the stake? I guess I don't know what you mean by that. He's usually fairly sedate, polite even. Can you tell me where to find this? In your hyperbolic metaphor are you equating blunt criticism with witch-burning?
Ravenwood
I found
www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/08/22/mind-and-cosmos/
But don't get "vitriolic" out of it.
violent hate and anger expressed through severe criticism:
dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/vitriol
Severe criticism yes, profound disagreement but no hate or anger as such.
Sean's main point against Nagel seemed to be that Nagel seemed to be willing to toss out current theories without much more than personal hunches. Maybe that's more acceptable in philosophy but in the sciences it is pretty weak. At any rate I didn't see any ad hominem attacks or emotionally charged rhetoric (which would surprise me from Carroll).
P.S. I'm not much of a "materialist" myself. Quantum fields hardly seem made of anything that would qualify as matter. Curiously I have also worked in electro-optics.