Tag Archives: Empiricism

Philosophy of science and life extension

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Aschwin de Wolf

Paul Edwards concludes his chapter ‘The Semantic Challenge’ in his book God and the Philosophers with the following observation about logical positivism: It is not uncommon nowadays to hear logical positivism dismissed as a set of crude errors and confusions. … Continue reading →

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Non-existence is hard to do

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Aschwin de Wolf

A review of  contemporary antinatalist writings Originally published in Cryonics, 2nd Quarter, 2010 (PDF) “Coming into existence is bad in part because it invariably leads to the harm of ceasing to exist.” David Benatar “If they could get a corpse … Continue reading →

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Edward O. Wilson’s Consilience

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Aschwin de Wolf

Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson believes that a major reason why the social sciences have made so little progress is that its practitioners have ignored the biological basis of human behavior. He is not impressed with arguments that purport that the … Continue reading →

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Down with uploading

Posted on March 25, 2010 by Aschwin de Wolf

Over the last couple of years, cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger has been a vocal critic of simplistic defenses of the idea of mind uploading as a survival strategy. He has worked out his reservations in detail in his latest book … Continue reading →

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The theological orientation of philosophy

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Aschwin de Wolf

In spite of the empiricist trend of modern science, the quest for certainty, a product of the theological orientation of philosophy, still survives in the assertion that some general truths about the future must be known if scientific predictions are … Continue reading →

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Cryonics as something else

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Aschwin de Wolf

At EconLog economist Bryan Caplan has posted a number of blog entries that perfectly illustrate what happens when cryonics is not presented as a form of experimental long term critical care medicine but linked to other ideas such as transhumanism, … Continue reading →

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Karl Popper and Rudolf Carnap revisited

Posted on August 15, 2009 by Aschwin de Wolf

In his classic book Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory (1938) Terence W. Hutchison  makes the case for economics as an empirical science. An interesting aspect about this book is the ease with which Terence W. Hutchison uses logical … Continue reading →

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Five important empiricist philosophy books

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Aschwin de Wolf

Most contemporary philosophers and social scientists have little interest and understanding of logic or the physical sciences and  therefore have little to offer to those who want to understand the philosophical aspects of knowledge. The following five books have been … Continue reading →

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