Abstract: This paper highlights and examines a critical assumption embedded within the framework of the substantivalism/relationalism debate. This assumption is the unacknowledged priority given to the traditional properties of spacetime-as-coordinate-system that have been handed down over the course of the twentieth century. In this paper, I attempt to substantiate my claim that such an unreflective […]
Philosophy
Do We Live In the Matrix?
Elon Musk recently added his voice to a discussion about the likelihood that humanity is no longer residing in the world as we know it, but is instead housed within a simulation maintained, presumably, by an extremely advanced artificial intelligence. The rationale for this position has some merit, at least on the surface, and goes as […]
Toward a Definition of the First Principle
Our Abyss Customarily, we think of a crisis as a period of limited duration, an obstacle heroically overcome, “bad times” endured with poise and tenacity and then recalled with pride. Man is a hopeful creature, constitutionally bound to imagine, even in the face of imminent death, that salvation is always near at hand. The oxymoronic […]
Why Nothing Matters
Reflections on A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss In his new book, A Universe from Nothing, Lawrence Krauss explicitly acknowledges that, to fully understand the genesis of our cosmos, we have no choice but to face the nothingness that preceded it. But, in so doing, he inadvertently […]
Our Better Angels: Altruistic or Apathetic?
Reflections on The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker There can be little doubt that the increased use of reason has, throughout history and particularly over the past few centuries, dramatically decreased violence around the globe. Yet this decrease in violence has gone hand in glove with an equally precipitous drop in birth rates. […]