In the previous Philosophy Monday we took a first stab at supporting a view of humans and advanced artificial intelligences as making choices. Today we will start to dig into the "How" part of the fundamental question: "How should we choose our actions in light of our understanding of reality and the potential impact of our actions on this reality (which happens to include how we and others are feeling)?" Our point of departure will be a closely related “how” question. How should we evaluate ...

In the previous Philosophy Monday we took a first stab at supporting a view of humans and advanced artificial intelligences as making choices. Today we will start to dig into the "How" part of the fundamental question: "How should we choose our actions in light of our understanding of reality and the potential impact of our actions on this reality (which happens to include how we and others are feeling)?" Our point of departure will be a closely related “how” question. How should we evaluate ...

So far in Philosophy Mondays we've established how language interacts with reality and what we can know about reality. The next logical question is "how do we act?" We have action movies and action figures and we speak of some people as being action-oriented. But what exactly do we mean by that? For the purpose of this series we will use "action" to describe something we do that affects the physical world around us in a material way. This delineates "action" from "thinking" and "feeling" whic...

So far in Philosophy Mondays we've established how language interacts with reality and what we can know about reality. The next logical question is "how do we act?" We have action movies and action figures and we speak of some people as being action-oriented. But what exactly do we mean by that? For the purpose of this series we will use "action" to describe something we do that affects the physical world around us in a material way. This delineates "action" from "thinking" and "feeling" whic...

Now that I have established some basic positions on language and reality, I come to the concept of understanding. In today's Philosophy Monday, I start digging into the question of what we humans can understand or know. The technical philosophical term for this type of inquiry is epistemology, the theory of knowledge. In an earlier version, this post was in fact titled "knowledge" but that interferes with my own and different definition of that term, which plays a central role in my book The ...

Now that I have established some basic positions on language and reality, I come to the concept of understanding. In today's Philosophy Monday, I start digging into the question of what we humans can understand or know. The technical philosophical term for this type of inquiry is epistemology, the theory of knowledge. In an earlier version, this post was in fact titled "knowledge" but that interferes with my own and different definition of that term, which plays a central role in my book The ...

As humans we like to put things into categories. It makes communicating and thinking easier. Scratch that. It makes communicating and thinking possible. Categories go hand in hand with words as providing us with crucial compression of reality. Just like a 1:1 map is completely useless (it is the terrain itself), so would be a need to describe every detail of every person or object before being able to make a point. We would never get anywhere. Not surprisingly then, categories are everywhere....

As humans we like to put things into categories. It makes communicating and thinking easier. Scratch that. It makes communicating and thinking possible. Categories go hand in hand with words as providing us with crucial compression of reality. Just like a 1:1 map is completely useless (it is the terrain itself), so would be a need to describe every detail of every person or object before being able to make a point. We would never get anywhere. Not surprisingly then, categories are everywhere....

We are once again at a transition moment in history. Where our journey goes from here could be exceptionally good or absurdly bad. This mirrors past moments, such as the transition into the Agrarian Age, which gave us early high cultures but also various dark ages. Or more recently the transition into the Industrial Age, with democracies flourishing, but also fascism and communism killing tens of millions. In the past few years we have had incredible unlocks across many fields. To name just a...

We are once again at a transition moment in history. Where our journey goes from here could be exceptionally good or absurdly bad. This mirrors past moments, such as the transition into the Agrarian Age, which gave us early high cultures but also various dark ages. Or more recently the transition into the Industrial Age, with democracies flourishing, but also fascism and communism killing tens of millions. In the past few years we have had incredible unlocks across many fields. To name just a...

In today's installment of Philosophy Mondays I start to tackle reality. My goal is to stake out my own position by contrasting it with what I consider to be the major ways philosophy has run afoul. In last week's post on language I wrote that language is the map. Reality is the territory. There are two big failure modes in thinking about reality. The first is to deny the existence of the territory entirely. The most extreme form of this are speculations that nothing exists outside of consciou...

In today's installment of Philosophy Mondays I start to tackle reality. My goal is to stake out my own position by contrasting it with what I consider to be the major ways philosophy has run afoul. In last week's post on language I wrote that language is the map. Reality is the territory. There are two big failure modes in thinking about reality. The first is to deny the existence of the territory entirely. The most extreme form of this are speculations that nothing exists outside of consciou...

A good place to start Philosophy Mondays is language. After all, I will be using, well, language, to write the posts. A huge amount of philosophy is about language because it is so central to the human experience. In my book The World After Capital, I make the argument that written language was the decisive breakthrough which allowed humans to accumulate knowledge, which is the source of our power. Throughout this post I will use language as synonymous with human language (as opposed to say c...

A good place to start Philosophy Mondays is language. After all, I will be using, well, language, to write the posts. A huge amount of philosophy is about language because it is so central to the human experience. In my book The World After Capital, I make the argument that written language was the decisive breakthrough which allowed humans to accumulate knowledge, which is the source of our power. Throughout this post I will use language as synonymous with human language (as opposed to say c...