There has been much made of Hawking and Harris using brain scans to demonstrate a deterministic explanation of "free will". My question is, how do they treat a case where I think about moving my arm, but don't? How can the experiment they site test thoughts, subjective experience, etc. which do not lead to any outward physical effects? Must we accept that for all cases of mental phenomena that the brain scan test constitutes a proof?

Suppose we are to believe that the soul exists. If the body is extinguished upon death, then is any type of afterlife in which the soul survives impossible? To me, the body is the soul's material basis; the soul is the functioning of the body. Consequently they cannot be regarded as separate since they are but separate names referring to a single object. For example, the soul is to the material basis as sharpness is to a knife; the body is to its functioning as knife is to sharpness. "Sharpness" does not name knife nor "knife" sharpness. Nevertheless, without sharpness, there is no knife; and without a knife, there is no sharpness. I have never heard of sharpness surviving the destruction of a knife; how then can we accept that the soul survives after the body has died? Or is soul something else?

Hello, My name is Kyle, I'm a physics student. I have zero training in philosophy, save for an introductory philosophy course in my freshman year. I've been thinking about something quite frequently, and would like to hear an opinion from somebody who is knowledgable in the subject; The mind and the ego is a construct of the brain( at least as far as I know), and it's experiences. And I think it's fair to say that the brain is a clever organization of atoms, in what is essentially a computer. It has memories, which I think forms the ego, in a seemingly contiguous storyline. The hardware of the brain is however constantly changing, with atoms being lost and gained, through cell death, reproduction, respiration, and other biochemical functions, and yet our subjective experience remains. Suppose this effect is recreated in hypothetical setting where it is possible to create an exact replica of a person(A) to an artificially constructed person (b). Now, the copy is an exact replica, with every...

Is it even conceivable to think about absolutely nothing?

Is mathematics independent of human consciousness?

Hi, I'll just share my experiences as below and would just like to ask what principle or theory that could possibly explain the phenomenon? And what term you call it? I'm a computer programmer. Sometimes there are program logic related problems that I was trying to solve for hours, and yet cannot figure out the answers. But when I ask a colleague regarding the problem, in an instant, even before my colleague answers my question, I was able to draw the answer from my mind. Then, I'm going to tell my colleague, "uhm, ok, I know already! Thanks". It always happen. Sometimes, just the presence of another person would help you to resolve your problem.

I have a question about "solved" games, and the significance of games to artificial intelligence. I take it games provide one way to assess artificial intelligence: if a computer is able to win at a certain game, such as chess, this provides evidence that the computer is intelligent. Suppose that in the future scientists manage to solve chess, and write an algorithm to play chess according to this solution. By hypothesis, then, a computer running this algorithm wins every game whenever possible. Would we conclude on this basis that the computer is intelligent? I have an intuition that intelligence cannot be reduced to any such algorithm, however complex. But that seems quite strange in a way, because it suggests that imperfect play might somehow demonstrate greater intelligence or creativity than perfect play. [If the notion of "solving" chess is problematic, another approach is to consider a computer which plays by exhaustively computing every possible sequence of moves. This is unfeasible with...

Is judging a person by their intelligence analogous to racism? A person can't help the genetics that determines their intellectual capacity and the belief in the superiority of intelligent people seems to arguably be a basis for social inequalities.

The universe appears to behave in logical ways. All of the individual physical components of the universe, as far as we can tell, are likely governed by logically consistent laws of physics. According to physicalism, human beings are nothing more than complex physical systems. That means that the physical components and functions of a human being, including those that give rise to human thought, are governed by the same logically consistent laws that govern the behavior of electrons, etc. If the physical processes that give rise to thought are rational how can a human being have an irrational thought? Where in the system does irrationality arise? It seems that human beings are in fact capable of irrational thought. If two people hold mutually exclusive ideas then at least one of them must be wrong. But if irrational thought is possible where does it come from? Is this an argument against physicalism? Does it mean we are more than just bits of matter? Or does it mean that the universe itself doesn't...

Is it wrong to fantasize about sex with children? If a pedophile never acts on their fantasies are they still guilty of having evil thoughts, assuming that their abstinence comes out of a genuine desire not to do harm?