Yohan J. John, PhD

philosophy

The “Streetlight Effect”: a metaphor for knowledge and ignorance

March 24, 2016

metaphor, mysticism, philosophy, science

Here’s the beginning of my latest 3QD piece: There is a story that I think anyone interested in human knowledge ought to know. It comes in many forms. Here is one version, incarnated as a joke: ‘A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost.…
Read more →
What do we mean by “Nature”? And what do we mean by “Human Nature”?

November 4, 2015

3QD, human nature, nature, philosophy, psychology, science

Here’s the intro to my latest 3QD essay: I’ve always had a problem with the word ‘nature’. It seems to serve as a label for multiple, mutually inconsistent notions. This in itself is not a reason to dislike a word — we seem to have little problem with most words that have multiple meanings. (Surely…
Read more →
Where do thoughts come from?

October 1, 2015

philosophy, speculation

Here’s my answer to a recent Quora question: Where do our thoughts come from? Thoughts come from nowhere! And from everywhere! I think both answers contain an element of truth. Subjectively, our thoughts come from nowhere: they just pop into our heads, or emerge in the form of words leaving our mouths. Objectively, we can…
Read more →
Me and My Brain: What the “Double-Subject Fallacy” reveals about contemporary conceptions of the Self

September 8, 2015

3QD, cognitive psychology, metaphor, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology

My latest essay for 3 Quarks Daily is up: Me and My Brain: What the “Double-Subject Fallacy” reveals about contemporary conceptions of the Self Here’s an excerpt: What is a person? Does each of us have some fundamental essence? Is it the body? Is it the mind? Is it something else entirely? Versions of this…
Read more →
The Neural Citadel — a wildly speculative metaphor for how the brain works

August 11, 2015

3QD, analogy, dopamine, metaphor, neuroscience, philosophy

My latest 3QD essay is a bit of a wild one. I start by talking about Goodhart’s Law, a quirk of economics that I think has implications elsewhere. I try to link it with neuroscience, but in order to do so I first construct an analogy between the brain and an economy. We might not…
Read more →

philosophy

The “Streetlight Effect”: a metaphor for knowledge and ignorance

What do we mean by “Nature”? And what do we mean by “Human Nature”?

Where do thoughts come from?

Me and My Brain: What the “Double-Subject Fallacy” reveals about contemporary conceptions of the Self

The Neural Citadel — a wildly speculative metaphor for how the brain works