The following passage is taken from The Rediscovery of the Mind by John Searle:
Prior to Darwin, it was common to anthropomorphize plant behavior and say such things as that the plant turns its leaves toward the sun to aid in its survival. The plant “wants” to survive and flourish, and “to do so,” it follows [...]
Archive for October, 2008
Purpose in natural things
Posted in Philosophy / Theology, tagged Evolution, Intelligent Design, Purpose on October 16, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Gasoline
Posted in Miscellaneous on October 11, 2008 | 2 Comments »
…was $2.83 yesterday. How pathetic that I actually found that exciting.
Puzzle Update
Posted in Logic on October 8, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Joseph posted a couple of interesting variants on my logic puzzle in the comments. I’ve reproduced them here, with my answers in white (select the text to read them). I particularly like the second one, which looks especially crazy at first.
1.
A: You don’t, and cannot know, what your number is.
B: I don’t know whether or [...]
Logic puzzle
Posted in Logic on October 4, 2008 | 9 Comments »
This is a puzzle I made up based on a generic category of logic puzzle (usually called “induction” puzzles, I believe).
Two men, A and B, sit facing each other. A third man, C, puts on the heads of A and B a hat marked with a number, so that A can see B’s number and [...]
