Above is my response to the recent conversation between Krauss, Dennett, and Pigliucci. If you don’t know the context of their meeting, see the links below. I agree with Dennett that cosmology is an area of natural science where we are not even close to being done with philosophy. My own small contribution to the philosophical underpinnings of cosmology is this essay: Physics of the World-Soul: The Relevance of Alfred North Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology (2013).
“Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.”
—Alfred North Whitehead
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- “How does matter give rise to consciousness?” (response to Sam Harris) January 3, 2021
- A review of Michael Hogue’s “American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World” (2018) December 18, 2020
- Voices of VR podcast: A Primer on Whitehead’s Process Philosophy December 10, 2020
- Who are we? (thinking w/ Berry and Swimme) December 9, 2020
- Thinking with Carlo Rovelli: The Physics of Consciousness December 3, 2020
- Science and the Soul of the World: Participatory Knowing in Goethe and Whitehead November 25, 2020
- Dialoguing with Philip Goff about Consciousness, Panpsychism, and Process Philosophy November 18, 2020
- Concrescence and the Implicate Order: Whitehead and Bohm in Dialogue November 8, 2020
- Election Coverage: Live-streaming on Growing Down November 3, 2020
- Consciousness between Science and Philosophy (response to Philip Goff on panpsychism) October 30, 2020
- Apology for a Democratic Ontology (response to Keith Woods) October 29, 2020
- Rune Soup Podcast with Gordon White: Talking Whitehead, Plato, & Panpsychism October 24, 2020
- Thinking Cosmologically with Whitehead October 21, 2020
- Towards a Marian Consciousness (Ep. 1 of the Great American Road Trip Diaries) October 21, 2020
- Alchemical Consciousness After Descartes: Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism as Psychedelic Realism October 15, 2020
- American Immanental Philosophies and the Future of Theopolitics: Dialoging with Michael Hogue October 15, 2020
- The brain is not a computer, and thinking is not information-processing. October 14, 2020
- “The Great American Trip,” dialogue on “Growing Down” October 10, 2020
- Rupert Sheldrake on Whitehead September 26, 2020
- Reason, Reality, & Religion in the Making (dialoguing with John Vervaeke) September 13, 2020
- Naturphilosophie as Process Philosophy in Schelling and Whitehead August 30, 2020
- Meta-Linguistics (dialoguing with Layman Pascal) August 29, 2020
- Metamodernism, the Integral Left, and Postmodern Traditionalism (dialoguing with Brent Cooper) August 27, 2020
- Parsimonious Panpsychism? (response to Julian Walker) August 25, 2020
- Emergent Evolution in a Panpsychist Cosmos (dialoging with Corey Anton) August 22, 2020
- Setting the Akashic Record Straight (final response to David Long about emergence and panpsychism) August 21, 2020
- What is at stake in cosmological inquiry? August 20, 2020
- Cosmologies in Question: A Debate with David Long August 19, 2020
- Consciousness in the Wild August 17, 2020
- Toward an Integral “God” – a dialogue with Layman Pascal August 14, 2020
- Death Denial in a Panpsychist Cosmos: A Dialogue with Corey Anton August 11, 2020
- Meta-Politics – a discussion with Layman Pascal on “The Integral Stage” August 8, 2020
- Remembering and Carrying Forward Michael Brooks on “Growing Down” July 25, 2020
- Dialogue with a Whiteheadian Thelemite Vajrayanist Wiccan, Sam Webster July 22, 2020
- The Rheomode Series, a YouTube playlist July 16, 2020
- Integral Entheogens (Ep. 5) – Molecular Alchemy and the Evolution of Spirit July 16, 2020
- Growing Down Podcast on “the Integral Left” July 4, 2020
- Dialoguing with Brent Cooper about ecosocialist politics and integral spirituality June 9, 2020
- “He maketh his sun to rise,” featuring Donald Trump, Cornel West, and Ram Dass June 4, 2020
- The Place of Psychedelic Chemistry/Alchemical Consciousness in Philosophy May 8, 2020
- Imagination as the Topographical Inversion of Reality: Musings with Becca Tarnas May 7, 2020
- Episode 6 of The Future Faces of Spirit April 25, 2020
- Reading and Riffing on Murray Bookchin’s “The Ecology of Freedom” April 15, 2020
- Prayers to a Process-Relational God April 12, 2020
- Ecological Civilization, or Anarcho-Primitivism? March 30, 2020
- Imagining a Gaian Reality After the Virus March 23, 2020
- Thoughts on William James, Pure Experience, and Materialism February 2, 2020
- Musing on “Consciousness” with William James & Alfred North Whitehead January 31, 2020
- What is life? interview with Tim Freke January 17, 2020
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Reblogged this on Skylight.
Please correct the name spelling: the guy’s name is Pigliucci not Pagluicci
Whoops. Fixed it. Thanks for the heads up.
I note a second and third misspelling below the videos, in the body of the post
I think your opinion is very near my own. I view the move from philosophy to any dogmatic (even vaguely or loosely dogmatic) mode of thought as being the move away from philosophy, toward whatever the subject matter may be (science, history, theology, etc.). So I think the move to theory is right, as you mention, but I think theory is less dogmatic than, say, experimental physics, and experimental physics less than engineering.
I am with you on the point of lowering standards through this sort of “conversation.” As well, I think Krauss was in over his head. Quite some time ago, I was sympathetic to the likely feelings in Krauss that induced him to say silly things; but that was before I found out how full of himself the guy is. I hope I am not alone in being absolutely shocked by his continual condescension, patronizing, general intellectual ignorance, and ill-intendedness. Wow… Again, your characterization of Krauss having lost the wonderment and ability to imagine things beyond a certain point reflect what I have said above. Krauss is incapable of dealing with some questions intelligently, because he doesn’t have the ability to go beyond his dogmatism.
I would go a little further than you do, with regard to philosophy as formulating the scaffolding (terminology, questions, etc.) of an endeavor like science. Instead, I think, as Kuhn has shown (and Weber, long before Kuhn, assented to Kuhn) that large chunks of science get wiped away periodically. So I think that there is only philosophy and ossified (dogmatized) philosophy, the latter ever at the ready to be wiped away. The history of science is full of such examples. One needs only look at a graduate text in classical (“Newtonian”) mechanics, in comparison to Newton’s “Principia.” Not only do they bear hardly any technical resemblance, but the concepts aren’t even the same (e.g., Newton’s “vis inertiae” is more like a Scholastic’s notion than it is the modern concept of Kant and Euler, see: Max Jammer’s “Concepts of Mass”).
Krauss’ anti-philosophical attempt to define “nothing” is proving itself to be an invaluable foil for my own dissertation work on Whitehead’s process-relational reformulation of the classical ether theory. So I suppose I am thankful for the relatively easy target.
Oh, isn’t your dissertation on imagination?
By the way, many physicists don’t agree with Krauss, and they think he’s not speaking from physics when he says a number of things, as well on methodological considerations specific to physics. A decent synopsis of a few of these are included in my blog on “Why “A Universe from Nothing” is Garbage.” Have you had the chance to take a look at it (http://milliern.com/2012/11/21/why-a-universe-from-nothing-is-garbage/)?
I haven’t seen your post on Krauss, but I’ll take a look tonight.
Yes my dissertation is on imagination as a cosmographic method. I’m trying to show its relevance to the construction of both scientific theorization and religious mythopoeia. I’m digging into Whitehead’s (and Schelling’s and Steiner’s) post-Einsteinian ether theory as an example of how scientific and religious modes of thought can better co-exist.