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Michael McMahon

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One challenge for anti-realism how to reconcile an immense sight like a mountain range as being visually internal. We usually don't have any problem w...
March 26, 2022 at 19:32
The orbit of an asteroid around the Sun is circular and so the upward or downward components would also be circular. We could use an analogy of a roll...
March 06, 2022 at 16:27
Euler Force Examples: Let's go back to the analogy of the rotating asteroid. For the sake of simplicity we'll just assume that it had a rectangular cu...
March 06, 2022 at 00:30
A possible counter-argument to gravity as a Euler force is that satellites remain in orbit even though there's no atmosphere to affect it and there co...
March 04, 2022 at 23:38
Dualism doesn't always have to include the brain being conscious. For example we could rephrase the mind-body problem as the mind-matter problem. If w...
March 04, 2022 at 22:50
If we were to forget about gravity then your natural tendency would be to stay still since there's no external force according to Newton's first law. ...
March 04, 2022 at 21:48
If planets were kept in place by perpetual motion whereby loose asteroids passively escaped the solar system then it wouldn't matter that stars in the...
March 04, 2022 at 20:23
Newton solved gravity by uniting the force on Earth with the force between planets in the solar system. We were then left with hundreds of years tryin...
March 04, 2022 at 20:10
We've to remember that according to Einstein space is relative and so the up and down directions don't exist without presupposing gravity is already i...
March 04, 2022 at 20:04
Imagining gravity as a Euler force would be like the ground literally met the sky at the horizon.
February 21, 2022 at 00:41
I once experimented with altering the velocity formulas where I measured seconds per metre rather than the usual metres per second. In this case lengt...
February 17, 2022 at 21:04
In: Pantheism  — view comment
Sadomasochism: "the derivation of sexual gratification from the infliction of physical pain or humiliation either on another person or on oneself". Is...
February 17, 2022 at 10:15
A dream could function just like the way music rejigs our time perception. Each instrument has a different flow of time. The emotional tone of a dream...
January 22, 2022 at 17:52
I often find dreams with a theme of outer space to be really mystical. For example someone could have a dream where they're floating between stars. Th...
January 20, 2022 at 14:41
If every neuron has been damaged at least once throughout the entire history and catalogue of brain injuries, then consciousness can't be dependent on...
January 20, 2022 at 12:35
If consciousness is fundamental then it might be computationally simpler for evolution to create a conscious being rather than a philosophical zombie....
January 20, 2022 at 12:24
I sometimes make these embarrassing arithmetic mistakes where I don't know whether to include the first or last item. For instance I was on an interne...
January 08, 2022 at 12:43
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQiNBfgBvoY Numb - OFFICIAL TRAILER An interesting movie about feeling detached from life. When we're knocked off our ...
January 07, 2022 at 13:34
Yet another version of anti-realism could be that empty space is 3D and objects are 2D. In this frame of mind objects in our vision would be separated...
January 02, 2022 at 10:53
In: Pantheism  — view comment
Nature worship isn't always reflected in religion directly but the environment can still serve as small incentive for spiritual enthusiasm. Tibetan me...
December 26, 2021 at 01:46
How do drugs affect our emotions? A drug like alcohol is more than a placebo in that it has an intense and immediate effect on our state of mind. Alco...
December 07, 2021 at 21:11
Ion: "an atom or molecule with a net electric charge due to the loss or gain of one or more electrons." Not only are biological cells made of chemical...
November 30, 2021 at 06:28
One way to think of it is that when we close our eyes we see dark phosphenes and that when we open our eyelids we see the exact same phosphenes except...
November 30, 2021 at 06:14
The photons we see with our eyes are quantum entities and the tactile sense is ultimately based on innumerable collections of atoms. Therefore our per...
November 29, 2021 at 19:35
In: Pantheism  — view comment
There is a subtle difference in energy and vibe between the times of each morning mass and the evening masses. I remember going to a dawn mass for Eas...
November 26, 2021 at 14:01
"Science currently knows of no causal mechanism or connection whatsoever that explains how firing neurons cause conscious experiences, or vice versa. ...
November 25, 2021 at 02:21
If our view of the ground is obstructed we can still use the slope of the floor in front of us to project in our imagination how far it'd take for the...
November 22, 2021 at 09:10
Further objects are seen as higher than closer objects even if they're on level ground due to the apparent rise of the ground when it's viewed from he...
November 22, 2021 at 06:32
If our visual perception was oriented more in one half of the brain than the other, it'd still have to be projected to our conscious mind in a way tha...
November 17, 2021 at 17:15
"To cut right to the chase: the viewing experience that you have with a curved television isn't much different from what you're used to. Rtings states...
November 17, 2021 at 17:01
Spinning around and getting dizzy is a way to imagine gravity as a Euler force where the height of moving objects becomes unfocused and intermingled.
November 14, 2021 at 19:57
It's possible to interpret the sense of touch as being entirely proprioceptive and internal. When you touch a hand railing on the street then the tact...
November 09, 2021 at 00:26
My brain is far more complicated than the thoughts popping into my mind. Likewise the unconscious mind could be more complex than our immediate consci...
October 27, 2021 at 17:29
"Because of the Doppler shift, as a moving source approaches a stationary observer, the observed frequency is higher than the source frequency. The fa...
October 27, 2021 at 14:21
"Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kno...
October 27, 2021 at 13:10
Likewise the shapes of atoms are probabilistic and multidimensional which would be far more complex and unrecognisable than the colourful shapes our m...
October 26, 2021 at 17:45
"At an energy of 7 TeV, the protons are moving at 0.999999991 of the speed of light." -LHC Machine Outreach If the mind is equivalent to photons of li...
October 26, 2021 at 17:36
Thank you for your good explanation. I was approximating "mind" to mean colours, phosphenes and photons and then I was trying to make "physical things...
October 26, 2021 at 17:11
How is perspective related to parallax? The further out an object is the smaller it gets and the less background it occults/blocks out. So a far-away ...
October 25, 2021 at 16:51
My updated blog intro: Here I wonder about the scientific implications of anti-realist philosophy. What would unreality entail for our sense perceptio...
October 24, 2021 at 12:10
Only the first-person character in a video game has free will arising from the input of the hands on the controller where the other characters will mo...
October 13, 2021 at 00:10
If a dream is like a video game then reality is like a multiplayer video game!
October 12, 2021 at 23:53
"If Earth suddenly lost all of its gravity, we wouldn't just start floating. The lack of any forceful gravitational pull would turn humans – and anyth...
October 12, 2021 at 23:42
The original brains in vats! Kang and Kodos - Simpsons Aliens Imagine speaking to a visible brain without a skull in real time!
October 11, 2021 at 00:12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vuRPqzcH54 Eiffel 65 -- I'm Blue (Mister Perfect Remix) I remember years back I went through a stage of listening to ...
October 09, 2021 at 00:03
Hedonistic and rebellious pop songs can sound even more energetic and intense when it's remixed in another language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j...
October 08, 2021 at 23:19
Is colour made of photons or are photons made of colour?
October 02, 2021 at 02:46
Maybe a panpsychist point of view would be that light has colour qualia even before it hits your eyes while a materialist however would say the photon...
October 02, 2021 at 02:42
If consciousness is located outside the body then it'd be movable instead of being in a constant location within the brain. Therefore the mind could a...
October 02, 2021 at 02:04
If our own visual screen of all the objects in front of us is larger than the size of our head and yet still remaining equivalent to our consciousness...
October 01, 2021 at 20:51