• Reader Alert: False information about me on the web
• What's new on this site?
• My blog
• My other blog
   
• About me and my research
• Guide to my writings (by subject area)
• Selected publications
   
• Online papers and essays
• My book
• My ebooks

• Guide to my writings (by subject area)
   
• Philosophy
• Science and Mathematics
• Culture
• Politics
   
• Category lists for my blogs: here and here

  

What's New?

 
My Blogs

My blog, The Unfinishable Scroll, has posts about science, philosophy, politics, and other interesting things. Check it out here.

The most controversial part of my blog is The Anti-Dawkins Papers, a set of posts critiquing Richard Dawkins' atheistic book The God Delusion. This critique was not meant as a criticism of all forms of atheism. I just wanted to point out the weaknesses in Dawkins' book. After I posted this critique, a few of Dawkins' followers started spreading false information about my background and work. Follow this link to get the real information. (Incidentally, if you think I must be a supernatural theist because I disagree with Dawkins, you need to think again. Read my other writings on religion before deciding what I believe.)

Besides The Unfinishable Scroll, I have a second blog named Religion: the Next Version. That blog presents my thoughts about what religion could be.

A PDF archive of my blogs is here.  (I don't update this very often, so refer to the live blogs for the newest stuff.)

 
Online Papers and Essays

The list below gives links to the papers and essays on this site. All of these papers and essays are in HTML or PDF formats. Writings too informal to be papers are marked as "essay," "notes," or the like.

This list doesn't include the papers I published in peer reviewed journals. For these, see the Publications page. This list also doesn't include Sharlow's Scratchpad, which is the area where I keep notes and drafts that are too tentative for the main part of the site.

This site also contains a guide document that summarizes my philosophical views and gives links to most of my writings sorted by subject. That document is a good place to start if you want to know what I've said about some particular topic.

Now for the list...

Consciousness and Mind

• "Qualia and the Problem of Universals"
• "I Am an Abstraction, Therefore I Am"
• "Platonizing the Abstract Self"
• "Can Machines Have First-Person Properties?"
• "As True as 'You Think': Preserving the Core of Folk Psychology"
• "Yes, We Have Conscious Will"

Philosophy of Science

• "The Quantum Mechanical Path Integral: Toward a Realistic Interpretation"
• Papers on branching spacetime (links page)
• Three papers on the foundations of physics (links page)
• "Chemical Possibility and Modal Semantics"
• "Phonetic Possibility and Modal Logic"

Other Philosophy

• "Restoring the Foundations of Human Dignity" (essay & links page)
• "Getting Realistic about Nominalism"
• "How Subjective Fact Ties Language to Reality"
• "About Idealism" (essay)
• Notes about subjective fact (notes)
• "Debunking the Skeptics" (introductory page with links to essays)
• "God: the Next Version" (short ebook)
• "Religion and Beyond" (lecture/essay)
• "Anti–Postmodernist Paper #1: Seemsthat" (essay? you decide)
• "What's Really Wrong with the Argument from Design?" (lecture/essay)
• "Playing Fast and Loose with Complexity: A Critique of Dawkins' Atheistic Argument from Improbability"
• "Poetry's Secret Truth" (short ebook)
• "Rethinking Wholes and Parts" (ebook)
• "The End of the Teapot Argument for Atheism..."
• "A Brief Description of Realism and Nominalism" (short note)
• "My View of Spirituality and Religion: a Personal Introduction" (note)
• "Ten Things I Learned by Doing Philosophy (and Some Science, Too)" (note)

Mathematics

• "Generalizing the Algebra of Physical Quantities"
• Also, check out Mark's Mathematical Musings (with links to papers and/or notes)

Culture

• The culture home page has links to essays, including "Liftoff to Progress."

Politics

• "Liftoff to Freedom" is my political subsite. It contains various political documents.

 
My Books

Some of my writings are available as PDF ebooks. Click here for the details.

My book From Brain to Cosmos explored some philosophical questions about consciousness, time and existence from a new vantage point. The book is now out of print. Most of it is available on this site. Click here to learn more.

 
About Me

In case you're wondering about my background, I'm primarily a chemical physicist by training (Ph.D. in chemistry with a dissertation in statistical thermodynamics), but most of my research has been in philosophy. My dissertation research was in an area of chemical physics with known philosophical implications. Before my doctorate, I earned a bachelor's degree with a double major in physics and philosophy, followed by a masters' degree in biochemistry. My research has been published in peer reviewed journals in philosophy, physics and chemistry. Since I received my Ph.D., I've been a college instructor, a scientific computer programmer, and an independent writer and scholar.

 
About My Research

Here are some of my past and present research interests, in no particular order. For detailed information, please consult my publications list, my online papers, my book and ebooks, and the rest of the page that you are now reading.

Contact me at: msharlow AT usermail DOT com

(replace the AT and DOT with the customary symbols, and take out the blank spaces)