prothero

I think if one wants to talk about "God" one should take some time trying to define the term. For "God" means many different things to many different ...

I am always curious as to what people mean by "socialist"? Is providing basic health care to the population of your country "socialist" or is it respo...

From Steven Shaviro: For Hume, ‘all events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie between them....

I think a certain amount of physicality and therefore objectification is inherent to sexual attraction and sexual activity but no one wants to be just...

Sociopaths have a hard life, but psychopaths usually do quite well if they can avoid becoming serial killers. About 3% of the population is estimated ...

Quantum size, Quantum rules

Although I consider mind and experience to be ubiquitous in nature. I consider consciousness (self aware, self reflective) to be relatively limited, a...

I am a panpsychist but I have trouble with using "consciousness" that way, as the term usually means self aware self reflective in a way that liver ce...

Control of a small number of neurons the thalmus can induce wakefulness versus sleep, so where is consciousness held ? The researchers headed by Prof....

Somewhere between the midbrain and the cortex. Start removing or damaging parts and see when consciousness disappears or alters? (See traumatic brain ...

I think "violence begets violence" and "an eye for an eye, leaves the world blind" but violence does beget change sometimes as well, although directed...

Do you think the nonviolence of MLK Jr. and Gandhi were the reason for their success or the violence that surrounded their efforts?

Police body cameras are another useful device and often helpful to the position of the police as well. Documentation is helpful to all the involved pa...

I don't know, tough topic. For the most part maybe we should let individuals self identify their gender identity. Unfortunately that does not work for...

Or maybe like Nietzsche knowledge is "beyond good and evil"

He apparently had 18 previous complaints, the exact nature of which to my knowledge have not been yet revealed but I suspect at least some were excess...

Perhaps even better:https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.0808Time and Spacetime: The Crystallizing Block Universe George F. R. Ellis, Tony Rothman The nature of...

"Riots do not develop out of thin air" "Riots are the language of the unheard" MLK Jr. The anger and frustration are the result of decades of inequali...

One can alter consciousness with drugs. One can lose consciousness with injury or drugs. One can be rendered unconscious with anesthesia. Injury to ce...

"Poverty is the worst form of violence" Gandhi I believe

I am not a hard determinist which I why I applaud his having trouble with the concept.

If you are truly a hard determinist, I do not see what the problem would be. Whatever happens was destined (determined), fated to happen you do not re...

If you find bones in the forest you might ask if they are "human". Same for any isolated body part. No one however is claiming an amputated thumb has ...

And this is why using "consciousness" (self knowledge, self reference, self awareness) as a synonym for "experience" creates a problem. You can read a...

What Whitehead would call perception in the mode of symbolic reference which comes after causal efficacy and immediate presentation.

When I refer to "consciousness" as unified integrated experience with self knowledge it is to this kind of "society" I refer. It takes a certain kind ...

This can get pretty far afield of the subject at hand. Are you aware of what happens to the human mind under conditions of "sensory deprivation"? I do...

Science deals with the empirical, the quantitative, the measurable, the observable, the physical. Believing in science does not entail accepting the m...

Panpsychism is said to have a “combination problem”. The combination problem does not require the mental to emerge from the physical. Nor does the com...

In the form of panpsychism I defend the fundamental units of nature are “quantum events occurring in space-time”. In Whitehead’s form of process philo...

No, I just think the idea illustrates the fact that the concept of time depends on change, not vice versa. I am a process reality advocate not a froze...

Different forms of the same stuff, but somehow we consider energy to be more basic than matter. Fission (fusing two lighter nucleii also releases ener...

Where is time in a changless world?

atomic bombs convert mass to energy, atomic power plants do the same so mass can be destroyed it can also be created but that is a different "matter".

I don't think that is true. In that matter at the smallest structure appear to be quantum (non infinitely divisible) and it is suggested in quantum lo...

Models are just models. Most of science is just conceptual modeling, it is when we mistake our models for "reality" itself, that we engage in the "fal...

Thank you, your writing is unusually clear and vivid. I hope you write professionally somewhere because many formal sources lack those qualities.

I thought e=mc2 settled the basic relationship between matter and energy. Matter is just concentrations or configurations of energy in space time? (st...

Time is an abstract concept based on change. Math is an abstract concept based the order found in the universe. The concept of time is meaningless, us...

What is certain in any field? A justified belief in some facts of the science of the 18th century might not be a justified belief in the 21st century....

"But who decides and how do they decide what fair compensation is? I mean I agree the differentials in compensation present today in no way are fair; ...

I think you have to ask questions. Without change (becoming) there would be no time. We measure time by change (rising setting sun, seasons, swinging ...

I am going to refer you to two fairly famous papers on the issue which may help https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F https://w...

Here is Schopenhauer's wider description of "will" http://philosophycourse.info/lecsite/lec-schop-will.html Schopenhauer requires that we not limit ou...

Ah, the "myth of the noble savage" was not the kind of pastoral peace and cooperation you envisage, I think. There was plenty of trouble within groups...

Nothing personal. I do not like polls, I do not think they are reflective of peoples true views as wording of questions and responses (and the limitat...

I have always thought one of the reasons socialism (particularly in the communist form) fails is because it denies the true, competitive, acquisitive ...

I understand the notion. Apples are not “red” when not being perceived by a “subject” with an “appropriate” sensory system. Apples are not “red” in th...

What is it you wish to discuss? Your God is my "myth" and my God is likewise to you? Likewise "myths have meaning".

Do you have a reference? Cause I suspect all photoreceptors are the result of mutations in a common ancestor, and that the different spectral sensitiv...