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Donald MacCrimmon MacKay (1922 - 1987) was an early pioneer in both Information Theory and Artificial Intelligence, who gradually moved into neuroscience. As a scientist he made significant contributions to each of these fields of specialisation, winning several fellowships and awards.
He was first and foremost a scientist. However, some of his scientific findings led him to propose a couple of philosophical ideas which he termed “Complementarity” and “Logical Indeterminism”. Both of these are founded on the view that “standpoint” matters: the former with respect to what one can say about a system or situation, and the latter with respect to what one can say about freedom of action of sentient agents in a rigidly deterministic universe. MacKay was also a reformed Christian who saw that God is author and upholder of all that is, which gave him a life-long antipathy to anything that looked like a “God-of-the-gaps” approach. As such he also applied his philosophical ideas to the domain of Religion and Science.
In this talk I shall present a brief overview of his life and work and review critically his main philosophical ideas and contributions to the area of Science and Religion.
- Speaker
- George Coghill, University of Aberdeen
- Hosted by
- Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine
- Venue
- via Teams
- Contact
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Please register via Eventbrite to recieve the Teams link, or contact e.packham@abdn.ac.uk