Information Philosopher Articles

Publications:

Doyle, Robert O., 1968. "The Continuous Spectrum of the Hydrogen Quasi-Molecule,” J. Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, vol. 8, pp.1555-1569 .

Doyle, Robert O., 1969 (ed.). "Long-Range Program in Space Astronomy,” NASA SP-213, U.S. Government Printing Office, July, 1969.

Doyle, Robert O., 2009a. "Free Will: it’s a normal biological property, not a gift or a mystery,” Nature, 459 (June 2009): 1052.

Doyle, Robert O., 2009b. Free Will as Involving Indeterminacy and Inconceivable Without It

Doyle, Robert O., 2010. “Jamesian Free Will,” William James Studies, Vol. 5, p. 1

Doyle, Bob, 2011. “Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy (Book PDF, Buy on Amazon)

Doyle, Robert O., 2011, Quantum Erasure of Classical Path Information by Photon Interactions and Rearrangement Collisions

Doyle, Bob, 2012, Review of Terrence Deacon, Incomplete Nature, BioScience, March 2012 / Vol. 62 No. 3

Doyle, Robert O, 2013a, Disentangling the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox

Doyle, Robert O, 2013b “The Two-Stage Solution to the Problem of Free Will,” in Is Science Compatible with Free Will?, Springer

Doyle, Bob, 2016. “Great Problems in Philosophy (and Physics) Solved? (Book PDF, Buy on Amazon)

Doyle, Bob, 2016. “Metaphysics: Problems, Puzzles, and Paradoxes Solved? (Book PDF, Buy on Amazon)

Doyle, Bob, 2018. “The Two-Step Process That Creates Information Structures in the Universe Also Creates the Ideas in Our Minds"

Doyle, Bob, 2019. “My God, He Plays Dice! How Albert Einstein Invented Most of Quantum Mechanics (Book PDF, Buy on Amazon

Writings on Information Tools (NewMedia, eContent, Intercom, et al.)

Articles for eContent Magazine, 2004-2008

Videos

Ninety-minute lecture at the William James Symposium at Harvard in August, 2010

The Two-Stage Solution to the Problem of Free Will Social Trends Institute Experts Meeting, Barcelona, October 28-30, 2010

A 10-minute Flash tutorial on Free Will (2009)

YouTube Lectures...

Citations:

Neuringer, Allen and Greg Jensen, 2010, "Operant Variability and Voluntary Action," Psychological Review, Vol. 117, No. 3, 972–993 [esp. p.991]

Brembs, Björn, 2010, “Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait,” Proceedings of the Royal Society, B (Biology), December,

The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 2011, ed. Robert Kane, p.23

"STI Contributes to Free Will Debate, Social Trends Institute, July 8, 2011 "

Lambert, Craig. "Two Steps to Free Will," Harvard Magazine, September-October 2012,

Mente e Libertà? (Mind and Freedom?), Interview, Avvenire, June 4, 2013.

Simonton, Dean Keith, 2013, “Creative Thoughts as Acts of Free Will: A Two-Stage Formal Integration,” Review of General Psychology, December, DOI:10.1047/a0032803

Unpublished articles:

"The Two-Step Process That Creates Information Structures in the Universe Also Creates the Ideas in Our Minds" PDF, Word doc

Doyle, Robert O., 2014, The Origin of Irreversibility

For Teachers

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A web page may contain two extra levels of material. The Normal page is material for newcomers and students of the Information Philosophy. Two hidden levels contain material for teachers (e.g., secondary sources) and for scholars (e.g., footnotes, and original language quotations).

Teacher materials on a page will typically include references to secondary sources and more extended explanations of the concepts and arguments. Secondary sources will include books, articles, and online resources. Extended explanations should be more suitable for teaching others about the core philosophical ideas, as seen from an information perspective.

For Scholars

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Scholarly materials will generally include more primary sources, more in-depth technical and scientific discussions where appropriate, original language versions of quotations, and references to all sources.

Possible journals:

The Information Philosopher hopes to publish articles in the major philosophical journals where the greatest articles of philosophy have appeared in the past century.

Here we make a brief survey of the journals, identifying seminal articles that may deserve a specific response. Perhaps we will name articles fittingly and of course include the importance of the journal's earlier articles in our introduction. Match notes/biblio styles.

Mind
Monist
Philosophy
The Journal of Philosophy (Rod Chisholm)
Noûs
The Philosophical Review, D. Reidel
Philosophical Studies, Dordrecht
Astrophysical Journal (On Entropy and Information Growth in the Expanding Universe)
American Philosophical Quarterly
Proceedings of the British Academy
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (C. A. Campbell)
Journal of Consciousness Studies
Philosophy of Science
Philosopher's Imprint (new, online)
Philosophical Issues
Philosophical Perspectives (Nous)
Philosophical Topics
Philosophy Compass
Philosophy Now
Synthese
The Journal of Ethics
Ethics
Journal of Statistical Physics
Journal of Mathematical Physics
Journal of Physics A
Physical Review (and Phys. Rev. Letters)
Letters in Mathematical Physics (reply to Syros article)
Journal of Information Philosophy (J.I.P.?)
William James Studies
Hume Studies?
Review of General Psychology (APA)
History of the Philosophy of Physics (HOPOS)

Study all the articles in the major anthologies, and spend time in the Widener reading room on recent issues.

Journal	Title	Author	Date	Volume
Mind	Free Will As Involving Determination And Inconceivable Without It	R. E. Hobart	January, 1934	XLIII, 169, p.1
Mind	Freewill And Moral Responsibility	P. H. Nowell Smith	1948	LVII, p.46
Mind	Is "Free Will" a Pseudo-Problem?	C. A. Campbell	October, 1951	LX, 446-465
The Journal of Philosophy	Actions, Reasons, and Causes	Donald Davidson	November 1963	LX, No 23, 685-700
The Journal of Philosophy	Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility	Harry Frankfurt	1969	LXVI, No 23, 829-39
The Philosophical Review	Free Will As Involving Determinism	Philippa Foot	1957	LXVI, 439-450
Philosophical Studies	The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility	Galen Strawson	1994	Vol. 75, Nos. 1-2, pp. 5-24
J. Consciousness Studies	The Hard Problem?	David Chalmers	1996?	?

Possible article titles:

I Could Have Done Otherwise! (Doing Otherwise)
Free Will As Involving Indeterminism And Inconceivable Without It (Mind)
Free Will Is a Pseudo-Problem (and its dis-solution) (Mind)
Whence Comes This Freedom? (Lucretius mistranslated and anticipating Locke
Is "Determinism" a Pseudo-Problem? (or Illusion, below)
Is "Compatibilism" a Pseudo-Problem?
Giving Determinists What They Say They Want (where?)
Strong (or New?) Compatibilism - Free Will Compatible With Both (Adequate) Determinism and Indeterminism (a/k/a Soft Incompatibilism)
Locating the Randomness Generator in the Mind (Where and When)
Hegel, Darwin, and Freedom
The Fixation of Belief in Information Structures
The Doctrine of Contingency (Necessity) Re-Examined (The Monist)
Entropy and Information Growth in the Expanding Universe
God, Freedom, Immortality, and Information Theory
Getting "Ought" from Information (Philosophy)
Jamesian Free Will (William James Studies)
Chance and Choice (from William James to Quantum Uncertainty)
Chaos and Cosmos (Entropy and Info Growth)
Chaos Theory and Complexity Are Deterministic Theories
Chance and Necessity (Monod)
The Decline and Fall of Determinism
Atoms and Avoid(ability) (Epicurus pun, Dennett reaction)
Free Will and the Law (Phil. Trans. Royal Society London, B - Greene & Cohen)
We know our will is free, but there's no end on't (i.e, the endless controversy, pace Johnson, James quote on evergreen problem, many others)
(Why) I-Phi (rhymes with Hi-Fi, Sci-Fi, and Wi-Fi)
I-Phi is Iffy (chancy, contingent, random, uncertain...)
Beating a Dead Pseudo-Problem
In Defense of Common Sense (used before)
The Will Is NOT Free! (John Locke et al. - it is adequately determined)
Determinism and Chance in Hume and Hobart (Compatibilist Overreach)
On Panicky Metaphysics (it is determinism, not freedom, that is metaphysical)
The Lost Generations of Philosophers (cf. Skinner, Cog Sci, Quetelet/Buckle, pseudo-problems, Determinism)
AAA Philosophers (Anglo-American Analytic - Academy?)
Dis-Solving the Non-Sense (of Free Will)
The Adjective "Free"(when pejorative) Does Not Modify "Will" (John Locke, Wretched Subterfuge, Word Jugglery)
Gorgias and the Philadelphia Lawyer on Compatibilism (3-part argument)
Scientism and Logicism (Sophisms, C.I.Lewis on logicism?)
Canonical Compatibilism
The ErGODic Process Within Us - (Process Philosophy - Whitehead)
On Miracles (the causa sui in all of us, cf Stoic λογικος, A.A.Long)
The Dialectic of "Free Will" (random thesis, determinist antithesis, free synthesis - of two opposites, Hegel, Peirce)
Freedom, Determinism, and Responsibility (a better triad)
Liberum Arbitrium Indifferentiae (from Maxwell to Russell, and arcane R. Kane, but careful, it may be the Randomness Objection or the Luck Objection)
The Information "Turn" (cf, the "Linguistic Turn")
Deciding Differently in Exactly the Same Circumstances without being Irrational (dual-control, dual-ability)
If we don't have Free Will, we might have Free Won't (Libet, Richard Taylor? Just Say No, Wm James!)
Second Thoughts, What If?, Instant Preplay.
Beyond Determinism and Randomness (the Standard Argument)
Continuous Creation (of Information, cf. T Gold cosmology)
Information Theology
Doyle's Demon (or Angel? - an Anti-Frankfurt Demon, so Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility)
The Practice of Alternate Possibilities (Pragmatism, Moral Responsibility)
Refuting the Randomness Objection
The Ethical Fallacy in the Free Will Debates (that choices are free only when they are moral, right, good, etc. cf. akrasia.)
Information as the Principum Individuum
Overgeneralization, or the Logical Fallacy of Deducing All from Some, ∀ from ∃, Universals from Individuals/Particulars (Deducing vs. postulating determinism and causality)
Free Will - The Problem Solved (or variations, Classical Problem Solved, etc.)
The Standard Argument against Free Will
Is Free Will A Capitalist Plot? (cf, Nietzsche hangman, Naturalism.org, Pissed off anthropologist)
Buridan's Philosopher (Agnosticism? stuck between determinism and free will - or indeterminism)
Agent Causality without Metaphysics
Event Acausality a Prerequisite for an Agent Causality That Is Not Pre-Determined
Two-stage models are NOT Event Causal (Causa sui or Soft Causality, thus don't fit in the standard taxonomy)
Naturalism is a Modernism (a Scientism, a Rationalism)
Naturalism Throws Out the Gifts with the Giver - God (Naturalism assumes we lack free will because of the myth that animals lack free will, that Free Will a gift of God to humanity)
Naturalism, Humanism, and Exceptionalism (Humanity Continuous with the Animals)
Philosophy Too Important to be Left to the (Academic AAA) Philosophers
The Agnostic Strategy (Philosophical Arguments That Are True Whether or Not Determinism Is True, Mele)
Laws of Nature - Neither Laws Nor Natural?
Free Will and the Immune System (cf. also Protein/Enzyme Formation)
The Illusion of Determinism
The Practical Failures of Philosophical Logic and Language (? Why Logic and Language cannot ground Knowledge, but Information Can?)
The Asymmetry Between Determinism and Indeterminism (cf Susan Wolf,
To Do or Not To Do (always the last option, James, the indisputable freedom, Chisholm?)
Alternative Possibilities are NOT Probabilities (cf. van Inwagen, Kane, someone claims our mind can "adjust" those probabilities - Margenau?, Compton?)
Intelligent Design is Dead, Long Live Intelligent Designers!
With the Origin of Life, Purpose Entered the Universe
Determinism is an Intellectual Challenge, Indeterminism is an Emotional Challenge (Reasons, Passions, Demasio, James, Aquinas)
Naturalizing Theology
Information Theology (ΙΘ)
Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? (If all was chaos...)
The Scandal of Moral Philosophy (i.e., the Illusionists and Revisionists, who should know better than the "folk" that they don't know better than common sense - cf. e.g., Scandal of not knowing the external world exists))
Comparing Scientists and Philosophers, - Community of Inquirers Seeking Inter-subjective Agreement a posteriori, Community of Inquirers in Semi-permanent Disagreement a priori)
Peak of the Meditation (for Nietzsche, when becoming becomes Being, for i-phi, when the source of all values is a cosmic good, or when inter-subjective agreement gets closest to objectivity, as near to "truth" as possible for finite beings)
When Does Skepticism Become Sophistry (counterexamples)
Superstructure and Base (appreciating the microscopic chaotic base for our macroscopic information superstructure, more profound than good versus evil, though quantum > entropy a difficult process to comprehend)
Ethics Naturalized
Naturalism a Scientism and Determinism (see Sidgwick, Mill, on Need for Causality)
Information Ethics
Epistemology Fully Naturalized
Information Epistemology (I.E. = id est, What that is, What is, etc.)
Information Consciousness (IC, "I see", to be conscious is to be aware of information in the world, to react to it, to internalize it, and to act on it. Etymology of conscious, conscience. - with knowledge? Yes, con + scire sharing knowledge)
Correspondence Theory in Information Philosophy
Ideal Gas, Classical Gas, Quantum Gas
The Suppression of Chaos (error detection, correction - and masking?)
The Origins of Randomness - classical ideal = number of microstates, physical = quantum discreteness)
The Information Turn (in Philosophy) cf. Rorty (this term used already - Informational Turn)
Collapse of the Wave Function (Explained)
The Origin of Information in the Universe
Teaching the Paradoxes (Lorentz contraction, Schrödinger's Cat, Two-slit, etc.)
The Biophysical Basis of Behavioral Freedom (w/ Martin Heisenberg? Daniel Koshland, Free Flight guys)
The Great Philosophical Synthesis of Libertarian and Determinist Views on Free Will
Four Degrees of Separation (Free from Will, Moral from Responsibility, FW from MR, Moral Responsibility from the Culture of Vengeance. Cannot separate MR from Desert, but if FW, hope that Education, Rehabilitation, and Medical intervention (e.g., Pharma-psychology as needed) can overcome/correct unacceptable causal influences of heredity and environment, etc.
Separating Free Will from Moral Responsibilty
Eddington's Error > Kane's Mistake (destroys his SFAs; Significance, pp.128-9)
The Standard Argument Against Free Will: Simple, Logical, and Wrong
Hume's Determinism, James's Dilemma, Eddington's Error, and Strawson's Reaction (Doyle's Cogito Synthesis of Libertarianism and Determinism)
A Quantum Event in the Brain (implicit assumption is one quantum event = one decision)
Quantum Events in the Brain (actually billions of quantum events - as noise - and even more thermal noise) - for Nature?
Subliminal Suggestions in The Theater of Consciousness. (Nearby conversations, Words in visual field)
Given Infinite Time and Many Worlds (could we prove any argument?).
Hume's Reconciling Project (cf. Paul Russell, Anthony Flew)
Available Entropy (Linux and Merlin)
Necessity, Chance, and Free Will (the Τertium Ϙuid) (cf. Sorabji, Aristotle, and Epicurus)
Creativity and Free Will (cf. Dean Simonton, Donald Campbell)
Counterfactuals and Alternative Possibilities (Ned Hall)
Must Liberals Deny Free Will? (NY Review, wait for reviewable books, Dworkin)
Is Libertarian Free Will Politically Incorrect?
The Two-Stage Model of Free Will (STI-Barcelona)
The Seven Levels of Selection (Cosmic/Physical, Biological/"Natural", Instinctive, Learned, Predictive, Reflective/Normative, Cultural/Social)
Entropy Flows - Entropy per Bit, per Baryon
The Source of Stable Information Structures (Life is Metastable)
Spontaneity and Selection (ἀυτόματον και προαιρησις)
Mind Over Matter - How Downward Causation Actually Works, in which we show how information, while neither matter nor energy, influences bodily motions. (references to Descartes, Maxwell, Eccles, Donald Campbell, Roger Penrose, and others)
The Will to Believe - in Free Will ("Will" James and Jamesian Free Will)
The Immaterial, Informational, and Immortal Mind (for Mind and Matter - Atmanspacher, Penrose, Stapp, Hodgson, Hameroff, Bohm, Porphyry plus Mysteries, Infinities, and other implausibles)
The Die is Cast (Alea Iacta Est) On Probabilities
Van Inwagen Remains a Mystery
Must Atheists Be Determinists (False by association - God, Freedom, and Immortality)
- 2013
Conditions for the Emergence of Life from Matter and Mind from Life (ex nihilo, nihil fit)
The Information Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
The Origins of Irreversibility
The Horizon and Flatness Problems Solved
A Primitive, Non-Computational, Model for Consciousness - to JCS
The Experience Recorder and Reproducer - a Mind Model
Multiple Universes, Yes, Alternative Possibilities, No! (Today's Philosophers)
William James (Focus Attention) and the Single Neuron
Einstein's Quantum Mechanics
Who Discovered Indeterminism, Quantum Jumps, Wave-Function Collapses, Particle-Wave Duality, and Ontological Chance?
The Origins of Irreversibility - Boltzmann's Molecular Chaos
The Transition (Emergence) from the Quantum to the Classical World
The Emergence of Determinism
The Emergence of Matter, of Life from Matter, and Mind from Life.
Dirac's Three Polarizers (make a YouTube video! - illustrate superposition, measurement, and projection/collapse) diagrams plus video.
Laser Two-Slit Experiment (YouTube)
The Death and Rebirth of the Mind (1913-2013) John Watson page
The Battle of Two Demons - Laplace (pre-determined) vs. Maxwell (intelligent)
Quantum Physics for Philosophers
The Information Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Copenhagen - observer, - classical apparatus, + information creation)
The Brain/mind Is Not a Computer, Especially Not a Quantum Computer.
Possibilities, Probabilities, Actuality
Wave/Particle "Duality" = Possibilities/Actuality Temporal Sequence
nec tempore certo, et nec regione loci certa
The Possibilities Function (knows about open slits, chance plus knowledge/cognitive)
Anomalous (i.e.,free), Dual-Aspect Monism (and Property Dualism)
There is Only One Source of Irreversibility in the Universe
What Is the Anomaly in Anomalous Monism? (freedom, knowledge, knowing, agency)
Einstein's Forgotten Contributions to Quantum Mechanics
The Preferred Frame: Solving the Mystery of Entanglement and Nonlocality
The One Mystery in Quantum Mechanics
Cosmic Creation and Human Creativity
1913-2013: The Death and Rebirth of the Mind (John Broadus Watson)
How Words Failed (Fail?) Philosophy
Replacing Beliefs with Knowledge
Replacing a Creator with the Creation Process
The Words/Ideas Ratio (including new info, for a philosopher, for all philosophers, old wine, new bottles)
Anti-Theism, not Atheism (just a "belief")
Biology as Communications between Information Processors
The Why at the End (or Beginning) of the Universe
Why the Quantum? To Give Us Possibilities, Creativity, Freedom
The Participatory Universe? We Are Co-Creators!
"It from Bit" better seen as "Bits from Its" (Metaphysical Ideas/Info about Physical Things/objects)
Decoherence Claims Are Incoherent!

Are Philosophers "Determined" Never To Create A New Idea? (they are certainly "determined" to reject them!)

Book Ideas

Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy
Great Problems in Philosophy (and Physics) Solved?
Metaphysics Problems, Puzzles, and Paradoxes Solved?
My God, He Plays Dice! How Albert Einstein Invented Most of Quantum Mechanics
Mind: The Scandal in Psychology
Chance: The Scandal in Science
Life: The Scandal in Biology
Knowledge: The Scandal in Epistemology (How we know the "external" world)
Value: The Scandal in Ethics (Dark at the Core of the Enlightenment)
Consciousness: The Scandal in Neuroscience
Creation: The Scandal in Cosmology (creation process, dark age, horizon problem, flatness problem)
God: The Scandal in Theology/Religion
Meaning: The Scandal in Analytic Philosophy (Beyond Logic and Language)
Entropy: The Scandal in Statistical Physics (Irreversibility, Time's Arrow)
Post?-Modernism: The Scandal in Culture (Disenchantment, etc.)
Determinism: The Scandal in ????
Quantum Physics for Philosophers
Einstein: The First Quantum Mechanic (Pop version of How he discovered many/most of the critical concepts)
Possibilities (or Uncertainty?): The Scandal in Quantum Mechanics (No-collapse theories, many worlds, decoherence, measurement problem, Heisenberg uncertainty where credit is Einstein's Zufall)

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