ABSTRACTAristotle, the inventor of biology, made final or teleological causation one of his four fundamental modes of explanation. Throughout the history of science, teleological modes of explanation have been employed quite commonly, most often in biology and in psychology and the other human sciences, but also in physics. In the modern period (by which I mean the sixteenth through the Read More ›
In this technical philosophical treatise, Discovery Institute Fellow Robert C. Koons investigates an innovative philosophy of mind. Koons takes on two powerful dogmas in this wide-ranging philosophical work: anti-realism and materialism. In doing so, Koons develops an elegant metaphysical system that accounts for such phenomena as information; mental representation; our knowledge of logic, mathematics and science; the structure of spacetime; Read More ›
For two hundred years materialist philosophers have argued that man is some sort of machine. The claim began with French materialists of the Enlightenment such as Pierre Cabanis, Julien La Mettrie, and Baron d’Holbach (La Mettrie even wrote a book titled Man the Machine). Likewise contemporary materialists like Marvin Minsky, Daniel Dennett, and Patricia Churchland claim that the motions and Read More ›