The Ontology of Moral Facts
Fifteen years ago I was asked to give a lecture to Christian high school students on “the ontology of morality,” which I did using clips from movies and television shows to illustrate the physical instantiation of moral facts in interacting human systems....How All Math Is Real
Long ago I explained why All Godless Universes Are Mathematical and how physicalism already explains The Ontology of Logic and how numbers are not the same thing as quantities but only codewords that refer to them in How Can Morals Be Both Invented and True? And...My Monthly Recommendation: Understanding Physicalism as a Philosophy
To help make ends meet and help you become a better philosopher, and thus a better citizen and thinker, every season I’ll post three books from my long-standing recommendations list, and review and discuss their value. And here’s how you can help: I am an...Ross Douthat’s Worst Argument for God
I’ve written before about the recent decline of Christian apologetics (e.g. Addressing the New Christian Apologetics and Ben Shapiro’s Worst Argument for God and Another Two ‘Best’ Arguments for God?)—a trend that is illustrated by the enthusiastic revival...Defining Naturalism: The Definitive Account
Years ago I wrote on how ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ should be defined based on how those words are actually used in practice. And I developed from that a more useful ontology of naturalism and the supernatural, and a more apt scientific...
On Getting Confused by the Idea That Atheism Predicts Nothing
One of the most persistent reasons any Christian remains stuck in that delusion is that they are really bad at thinking their way out of any false position. Christians are prone to deciding what to believe based on groupthink, cult-think, and intuition (otherwise...A Quick Brief on Identity Theory
Just for utility’s sake, I will organize some of my past comments here on identity theory. By that here I mean one’s ontological model of “identity” (not sociocultural identity): that which makes one thing different from another, or unique...Bernardo Kastrup’s Attempt to Bootstrap Idealism
It astonishes me that anyone can still get articles through peer review defending the dead philosophy of Idealism. As I documented before in my series testing the standards in academic philosophy, the field’s reliability is not that great. Which is inexcusable....Touch, All the Way Down: Qualia as Computational Discrimination
Today I am going to offer a naturalist theory of qualia—the particulars of “what it is like” of conscious experience, like the redness of red or the floweriness of a flower’s scent or the twanginess of a guitar, or even what love or fear, or...Why I Think Theology Is Ridiculous: A Look at Thomas Ward’s Ideas about Divine Ideas
Baylor Theologian Thomas Ward has published and promoted a nice little book on an obscure niche of metaphysical theology called Divine Ideas. Ordinarily I wouldn’t waste a minute on this (because usually intersectarian debate is my idea of wasted lifespan). But...The Argument from Non-Locality
It is common to just assume God is timeless and spaceless. But I aver that’s logically impossible. You Have to Exist Somewhere to Exist at All If God has no location, then by definition there is no location at which God exists. And if there is no location at...Quantum Consciousness Is Bullshit (But Quantum Cognition Is Not)
You may have heard a lot about a thing called “quantum consciousness.” Most of what you’ve heard is bullshit. The Not Bullshit First let’s discuss the bit that isn’t bullshit. Many papers in various sciences that have words in their...What If We Reimagine ‘Nothing’ as a Field-State?
Yesterday I published my take on a recent debate I had with Andrew Loke, before an audience of philosophers, on whether my conclusion is sound that We Should Reject Even the First Premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I took the stance of a nothing-first...We Should Reject Even the First Premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument
After an exchange of articles with Andrew Loke (see Why Nothing Remains a Problem: The Andrew Loke Fiasco and his reply) we were asked by a private professional forum to debate the topic of the Causal Principle, which anchors the first premise of the Kalam...Holm Tetens, Dinesh D’Souza, and the Crazy Idea of the Mind Radio
I was hired recently to look into the claims of the German philosopher (really, now, theologian) Holm Tetens regarding why Naturalism has to be false because it can’t explain conscious experience. There’s nothing new about the idea. The Argument from...Get Dr. Carrier’s Latest!
About the Author
Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism and humanism, and the origins of Christianity and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He is also a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and historical methods.
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