(December 16, 2023 at 6:25 pm)Istvan Wrote: Markus Gabriel of the University of Bonn has been writing very astute and entertaining works of neo-existentialist philosophy like I Am Not a Brain and Why the World Does Not Exist for several years now, and as a result he's my favorite living philosopher. He's a pop-culture-savvy writer who mentions Larry David as often as Kant, and he believes philosophy is relevant to our lives and our understanding of science, religion, art and politics.
Gabriel is associated with the New Realists but nevertheless acknowledges that scientism and neurocentrism are modern biases that constitute blind spots in our understanding. Don't let the provocative title mislead you. He's not saying reality isn't real or any such thing. What he's saying is that even things like unicorns exist in the set of "fictional creatures." The world, however, represents a totality that is as self-contradictory as square circles.
The prof seems a little nervous in his TED talk, but he's an amusing and engaging speaker.
Oh, yeah, good choice. Gabriel is good.
There are still a lot of people who hold that the mind is nothing more than electro-chemical events in the brain, and Gabriel makes a strong case that their view is too simple. But he's also safe for atheists, in that he doesn't posit a deity at any point.
