About Information Philosopher
Retrieved November 30, 2011, from Information Philosopher
Web site http://www.informationphilosopher.com/about/
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Philosophers
Mortimer Adler Rogers Albritton Alexander of Aphrodisias G.E.M.Anscombe Anselm Thomas Aquinas Aristotle David Armstrong Augustine J.L.Austin A.J.Ayer Alexander Bain Mark Balaguer William Belsham Henri Bergson Isaiah Berlin Bernard Berofsky Susanne Bobzien Emil du Bois-Reymond George Boole Émile Boutroux F.H.Bradley C.D.Broad C.A.Campbell Joseph Keim Campbell Carneades Ernst Cassirer Roderick Chisholm Chrysippus Cicero Randolph Clarke Samuel Clarke Anthony Collins Diodorus Cronus Donald Davidson Democritus Daniel Dennett René Descartes Richard Double Fred Dretske John Earman Laura Waddell Ekstrom Epictetus Epicurus John Martin Fischer Owen Flanagan Luciano Floridi Philippa Foot Alfred Fouilleé Harry Frankfurt Richard L. Franklin Michael Frede Carl Ginet Nicholas St. John Green H.Paul Grice Ian Hacking Ishtiyaque Haji Stuart Hampshire W.F.R.Hardie R.M.Hare Georg W.F. Hegel Martin Heidegger R.E.Hobart Thomas Hobbes David Hodgson Shadsworth Hodgson Ted Honderich Pamela Huby David Hume Ferenc Huoranszki William James Lord Kames Robert Kane Immanuel Kant Tomis Kapitan William King Christine Korsgaard Keith Lehrer Gottfried Leibniz Leucippus Michael Levin C.I.Lewis David Lewis Peter Lipton John Locke Michael Lockwood John R. Lucas Lucretius James Martineau Hugh McCann Colin McGinn Michael McKenna Paul E. Meehl Alfred Mele John Stuart Mill Dickinson Miller G.E.Moore Thomas Nagel Friedrich Nietzsche P.H.Nowell-Smith Robert Nozick William of Ockham Timothy O'Connor David F. Pears Charles Sanders Peirce Derk Pereboom Steven Pinker Plato Karl Popper H.A.Prichard Hilary Putnam Willard van Orman Quine Frank Ramsey Ayn Rand Thomas Reid Charles Renouvier Nicholas Rescher C.W.Rietdijk Josiah Royce Bertrand Russell Paul Russell Gilbert Ryle T.M.Scanlon Moritz Schlick Arthur Schopenhauer John Searle Henry Sidgwick Walter Sinnott-Armstrong J.J.C.Smart Saul Smilansky Michael Smith L. Susan Stebbing George F. Stout Galen Strawson Peter Strawson Eleonore Stump Richard Taylor Kevin Timpe Peter van Inwagen Manuel Vargas John Venn Kadri Vihvelin Voltaire G.H. von Wright David Foster Wallace R. Jay Wallace W.G.Ward Ted Warfield Roy Weatherford Alfred North Whitehead David Widerker David Wiggins Bernard Williams Ludwig Wittgenstein Susan Wolf Scientists Michael Arbib Bernard Baars John S. Bell Charles Bennett Margaret Boden David Bohm Neils Bohr Ludwig Boltzmann Emile Borel Max Born Leon Brillouin Stephen Brush Henry Thomas Buckle Donald Campbell Anthony Cashmore Eric Chaisson Jean-Pierre Changeux Arthur Holly Compton John Conway E. H. Culverwell Charles Darwin Abraham de Moivre Paul Dirac John Eccles Arthur Stanley Eddington Paul Ehrenfest Albert Einstein Richard Feynman Joseph Fourier GianCarlo Ghirardi Nicolas Gisin Thomas Gold A.O.Gomes Joshua Greene Jacques Hadamard Patrick Haggard Augustin Hamon Sam Harris Martin Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg William Stanley Jevons Pascual Jordan Simon Kochen Stephen Kosslyn Rolf Landauer Alfred Landé Pierre-Simon Laplace David Layzer Benjamin Libet Josef Loschmidt Ernst Mach Henry Margenau James Clerk Maxwell Ernst Mayr Jacques Monod Roger Penrose Steven Pinker Max Planck Henri Poincaré Adolphe Quételet Jerome Rothstein Erwin Schrödinger Claude Shannon Herbert Simon Dean Keith Simonton B. F. Skinner Henry Stapp Antoine Suarez Leo Szilard William Thomson (Kelvin) John von Neumann Daniel Wegner Steven Weinberg Norbert Wiener Eugene Wigner E. O. Wilson Ernst Zermelo |
About Information Philosopher
Information Philosophy (I-Phi) is a philosophical method grounded in
science, especially modern physics, biology, neuroscience, and the
science of information. It offers novel solutions to classical problems
in philosophy, notably freedom of the will, the objective foundation of
values, and the problem of knowledge (epistemology). Insights into human
freedom and cosmic values form the basis for a new system of belief and
a guide to moral conduct.
Bob earned a Ph.D in Astrophysics from Harvard and is now an Associate in the Harvard Astronomy Department. He holds several patents and is the inventor of a number of computer games, including Parker Brothers Merlin (1978).
Bob wrote the first desktop publishing program, MacPublisher, He helped Christopher Lydon and Dave Winer create the very first Podcast in 2003. He edits several websites on blog audio and video, content management, taxonomy, structured writing, the memetic web, and globalization. Bob spent much of his life building tools to "put the means of production in the hands of the people," not as Karl Marx imagined by nationalizing them, but by making them affordable, even free." He blogs at www.bobdoyleblog.com and blog.i-phi.org and was a contributor to the Garden of Forking Paths blog on free will. His goal for the I-Phi website is to provide web pages on all the major philosophers and scientists who have worked on the problems of freedom, value, and knowledge. Each page has excerpts from the thinker's work and a critical analysis. The three major sections of the website each will have a history of the problem, the relevant physics, biology, cosmology, etc, and pages on the core concepts in the problem. Bob had the great privilege of working with some of the world's leading philosophers of the free will problem starting in 2009, when his first published philosophy appeared in Nature. A published paper on the free will model of William James got him an invitation to the William James Symposium at Harvard in August, 2010 to present a 90-minute seminar on his ideas, and the similar ideas of a dozen scientists and philosophers since James. Daniel Dennett invited Bob to take part in his graduate seminar on free will at Tufts in the Fall of 2010. He submitted many short papers to the seminar on his positions relative to those of Dennett. Bob was invited to an "Experts Meeting" on Free Will at the Social Trends Institute in Barcelona, Spain in October, 2010, along with Robert Kane, editor of the Oxford Handbook on Free Will, Alfred Mele, who directs a program at Florida State that studies free will with a $4.4 million grant from the Templeton Foundation, and Martin Heisenberg, a son of Werner Heisenberg, who claimed in Nature that even the lowest animals have a kind of "behavioral freedom." They are not biological machines reacting predictably to stimuli with programmed responses. They originate actions, stochastically. In February, 2011, Bob Kane encouraged Bob to turn the Freedom section of this website into a book, which he did amazingly quickly thanks to Adobe InDesign and a print on demand service at the Harvard Book Store in Harvard Square that helped him produce 14 revisions in as many weeks. His first philosophy book - Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy - was published on June 19, 2011, his 75th birthday. It is available on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites, along with eBook versions for the Kindle and Nook.
Bob's email is bobdoyle@informationphilosopher.com.
His address and phone number are:
Bob's philosophical publications
Robert O. Doyle, "Free Will: it’s a normal biological property, not a gift or a mystery," Nature, 459, June 2009, p.1052.
A ten-minute animated tutorial on the Two-Stage Model for Free Will Robert O. Doyle, "Jamesian Free Will: The Two-Stage Model of William James," William James Studies, June, 2010 Powerpoint presentation at the William James Symposium, August 28, 2010.
Videos of the presentation at William James Symposium:
"The Two-Stage Model of Free Will: How biological freedom in lower animals evolved to become free will in higher animals and humans," submitted to Social Trends Institute for an Experts Meeting on the question "Is Science Compatible with the Desire for Human Freedom?", Barcelona, Spain, October, 2010 Powerpoint presentation at the STI Experts Meeting.
Video of presentation at the STI Experts Meeting 
Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy, I-Phi Press, June 2011. Available in: Hardcover $49.95 - Amazon, B&N Paperback $29.95 - Amazon, B&N, Digital eBook versions for Amazon Kindle, Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo eReader, and Sony Reader, $9.95.
Bob on his philosophical background
My life-long love of philosophy began over fifty years ago with
undergraduate courses at Brown University which were required for my
degree in Physics. A course in Ethics made the biggest impression,
especially its conclusion that science has absolutely nothing to
contribute to the subject. Ethical values must be found in traditional
sources like religion and secular humanism. This struck me as odd. As
Bertrand Russell had written, "What science cannot discover, mankind
cannot know.”
So I took a course in philosophy of religion taught by Curt Ducasse, who had been a graduate student at Harvard during William James tenure. I learned that moral values are relative to different religious traditions, apart from a few axioms like "thou shalt not kill" and some form of the golden rule that seem to be universals. My third course was Existentialism, then the most exciting new philosophy, since analytical philosophy was bogged down in nit-picking arguments over the truth of linguistic statements. I read Friedrich Nietzsche, who saw values as created by human beings. They turn them into truths and moral laws to acquire power over others. They invent gods as enforcers. After the "death of God," Jean-Paul Sartre saw us as free agents, but in the absurd situation of choosing with no moral guides. In my ethics course, I studied various attempts to get values based on reason or human nature or on feelings. The English philosophers found us to have decent value systems (e.g., utilitarianism), but no freedom of will. For them, determinism was obviously true. Causality required every action to have a cause, back to Aristotle's first cause. As long as our own determined mind was involved as a cause of our actions and we were not coerced or constrained, this freedom of action was enough and allowed us to accept responsibility for our decisions. I was not so sure. Freedom without values is absurd. But values without freedom are useless. At Harvard to get my Ph.D. in the 1960's, I started reading the philosophy literature on my own and building the Information Philosopher library, which has now the foundation for the I-Phi website. I also learned a great deal about statistical physics (thermodynamics) and quantum mechanics. My thesis was on the quantum mechanics of the hydrogen quasi-molecule (two atoms in collision). Normal | Teacher | Scholar |
