Eric Holloway

Eric Holloway is a Senior Fellow with the Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence, and holds a PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Baylor University. A Captain in the United States Air Force, he served in the US and Afghanistan. He is the co-editor of Naturalism and Its Alternatives in Scientific Methodologies.

Archives

How the Physicalist Theory of Mind Blows Itself Up

_{If we examine its basic premise that the brain is a computer and the mind is software we come across a startling contradiction}_{Eric Holloway
May 25, 2025}

Mathematics is not material, yet artificial intelligence proponents believe that the mathematics of their neural networks is the seat of consciousness.

Why the Theory That the Brain Is Like a Computer Is Wrong

_{The pattern we see in artificial intelligence progress is that the movement towards emulating the human mind is also a movement away from the brain}_{Eric Holloway
May 24, 2025}

The success of AI shows that to whatever extent the mind operates like a computer, such a mind cannot be running on the hardware of the brain.

Why Our Minds Are More Than “Meat Computers”

_{Pat Flynn, Robert J. Marks and Eric Holloway
May 15, 2025}

Some scientists and philosophers hold the view that our brains are basically brains made of meat. Today, Dr. Eric Holloway and Dr. Robert J. Marks explain what’s wrong with this idea in the concluding segment of their conversation with guest host Patrick Flynn. For starters, the computational theory of mind may be incompatible with materialism or physicalism, as formal, abstract thought appears to transcend the physical realm. Then there’s the argument that the human mind cannot be reduced to a computational system as suggested by mathematical ideas such as Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Computationalism also fails to adequately account for human creativity and the generation of genuinely novel ideas, which appear to be beyond the capabilities of any computer …

AI Language Models: Real Intelligence Or Creative Thievery?

_{Pat Flynn, Robert J. Marks and Eric Holloway
May 8, 2025}

Are AI language models like ChatGPT, Grok, and Perplexity actually intelligent? Or are they getting away with a creative kind of thievery? Welcome to the Mind Matters News podcast, your source for discussions on all things philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence. Today, guest host Patrick Flynn continues his conversation with Dr. Eric Holloway and Dr. Robert J. Marks. The trio talk about AI, plagiarism, and the illusion of intelligence, and, specifically, why AI-generated language is not truly creative and depends on a kind of artistic thievery to get the job done. Dr. Holloway and Marks explain how these models are essentially advanced language prediction engines, not thinking entities. The discussion covers Searle’s Chinese room experiment, the problem of “model …

Can Evolutionary Processes Take Credit for Human Creativity?

_{Pat Flynn, Eric Holloway and Robert J. Marks
May 1, 2025}

On today’s episode, guest host Pat Flynn welcomes Dr. Eric Holloway and Professor Robert J. Marks to the podcast to discuss the information cost of creativity. Today’s conversation is based on a chapter in the book Minding the Brain authored by Dr. Holloway and Marks. Essentially, they are addressing the following question: Can the marvels of human creativity, like novels, speeches, and ideas, really be explained by random processes and brain chemistry alone? As Holloway and Marks explain, even allowing for the computational capacity of the entire universe (and a hypothetical multiverse!), the probability of randomly generating a short, meaningful phrase is astronomically low. This suggests that human creativity cannot be fully explained by natural, random processes, …

Why the Human Mind Cannot Be Reduced to A Mathematical System

_{Philosophers Roger Penrose and J.R. Lucas walk us through an argument based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorem}_{Eric Holloway
April 27, 2025}

Gödel’s theorem started by upending mathematics nearly a century ago by showing that it is impossible to create a mathematical Theory of Everything.

How the Father of Information Theory Invented Modern AI

_{In 1948 Claude Shannon used Andrey Markov’s 1906 process to formulate an appproach that enabled the development of chatbots (large language models)}_{Eric Holloway
March 3, 2025}

The Markov process also explains why an LLM degrades when it is trained on its own output — its drift toward the most probable state ends in rubbish.

How Mathematician Kurt Gödel Proved the Unprovable Proposition

_{He kicked over the mathematical sandcastles of those who proposed a mathematical Theory of Everything}_{Eric Holloway
February 10, 2025}

While Gödel’s technique was unheard of in his day, we are very familiar with it today. It is the same technique that computers use to store information.

A Thought Experiment on the Mind, the Brain — and AI

_{In a crowded AI marketplace, a nerd confronts a philosopher on subject of the human mind}_{Eric Holloway
December 16, 2024}

Question: If thoughts can only be copied — and copied badly — by AI, which is quite unlike the brain. then how can they be generated by the brain?

What Computers Can’t Know: The Unknown Unknowns

_{Eric Holloway
November 18, 2024}

Computers cannot understand all math, as Gödel proved with his famous incompleteness theorems.

Is True Artificial Intelligence Possible? A Science Perspective

_{Many will conclude that true AI — AI that thinks like humans — must be possible because we hear so much about it from so many sources}_{Eric Holloway
September 24, 2024}

Experiments like ARC–AGI have finally made true computer intelligence into a scientifically respectable theory, because AI can now be falsified.

Tech Hype Watch: Do Chatbots Really Understand Things?

_{Well-known author Robert Wright believes they do but he misunderstands how computers work}_{Eric Holloway
July 20, 2024}

There is no way to build a computer that does not rely on 1’s and 0’s (computation), so computers that understand meaning are not possible.

How Ancient Philosophers Can Help Design Better Computers

_{The Kubernetes program, for example, steers groups of computers the way, in the ancient image, a navigator steers a ship}_{Eric Holloway
June 7, 2024}

The program works a bit like our minds, creating information in the world around us by constant comparison, bringing order out of disorder.

Will Artificial Intelligence Revolutionize Math?

_{In an article in Nature, mathematician Thomas Fink makes the case that AI can rapidly falsify wrong conjectures. But what about its built-in limitations?}_{Eric Holloway
May 20, 2024}

The limitations created by the nature of computing mean that a mathematician’s true job of discovering novel theorems is quite safe at present.

Applying the Theory of Intelligent Design

_{What are ID's implications for economics, metaphysics, and computer science?}_{Eric Holloway
May 9, 2024}

As my PhD advisor Dr. Robert Marks likes to say: “You have to make the queen of the sciences get down and scrub the floors.” Intelligent design (ID) is a science, and so ID has to get down and scrub the floors. To further this goal, I’ve come up with a schema for the ways in which ID can be applied, and what it in fact means for ID to be applied. The upshot of this schema is not only to guide brainstorming, but it also demonstrates that ID is already applied in many areas, unbeknownst to all. As they say, the best way to get something done is to take credit for someone else’s work. First, let’s identify what ID is. ID is the theory that intelligent activity can be empirically distinguished from the results of chance and necessity. While commonly …

How Could Intelligent Design Help Us In a Conflict?

_{Well, what would happen if Daffy Duck teams up with Marvin the Martian?}_{Eric Holloway
April 10, 2024}

In war, the goal is to eliminate a threat as quickly as possible, given available resources. We try to hit the center of a target with the fewest arrows. A key mathematical concept of intelligent design, active information, captures this dilemma. It also helps us understand the role of artificial intelligence might play in wartime. Active information Active information is the difference between two sources of information. Picture archers shooting at a target: 1. Endogenous information: What is the size of the target? And how difficult is the target to hit? It is the difference between hitting a squirrel and hitting the moon. 2. Exogenous information: How skilled the archer is who is firing the arrows? What difference does the archer’s skill make? Let’s say we have a …

How Is Intentionality Embedded in the Universe?

_{All efforts to extinguish intentionality and morality only serve to further establish their inescapable reality}_{Eric Holloway
March 11, 2024}

The conclusion we must reach by examining our own intentionality carefully is that it has an ultimate origin from a conscious being outside of our world.

Could Our Minds Be Bigger Than Even a Multiverse?

_{The relationship between information, entropy, and probability suggests startling possibilities. If you find the math hard, a face-in-the-clouds illustration works too}_{Eric Holloway
February 28, 2024}

This article has equal entropy to gibberish letters of the same length, yet it contains information and gibberish does not. Much follows from that fact.

Is Your Mind Bigger Than the Universe? Well, Look At It This Way…

_{Surprisingly, there is a way to measure the mind that shows it IS bigger than the universe — information}_{Eric Holloway
February 12, 2024}

Imagine you’re sitting at home, relaxing in your favorite easy chair. Go on, kick your legs up. Feel your limbs releasing the stress of the day, starting from the extremities, and progressing up your core to your head. Now, let your mind expand. Let go of what is holding your mind down. Feel it become free, outside of everything around it. Let the feeling continue until your mind is bigger than the universe. Now consider the question: if your mind is bigger than the universe, can it be within the universe? If a ball is bigger than a bag, can it be contained by the bag? Of course not. If the mind is bigger than the universe, then it must be outside of the universe. Of course, a daydream in the easy chair is proof of nothing. Plus, how can we measure the mind? We can’t poke or …

Why Is Theology the Most Important Empirical Science?

_{Arguing pro or con about the existence of God has resulted in many successful and/or widely accepted theories in science}_{Eric Holloway
February 4, 2024}

If generating testable theories in empirical science is the standard of success, theology has certainly succeeded, as the record will show.