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SophistiCat

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Thanks for the comment. Yeah, the OP is just dumb, but I'd come across Hoffman before and thought it would be an interesting topic. The critical paper...
October 19, 2021 at 20:38
P.P.S. In a sympathetic comment in the same issue (Esse est percipi & verum factum est) Jan Koenderink writes that the "interface theory" is "part of ...
October 19, 2021 at 08:05
P.S. D.D.Hoffman, M.Singh and C.Prakash: The Interface Theory of Perception (2015) Perhaps @"Isaac" could say something intelligent about it.
October 19, 2021 at 07:05
Don't get me wrong, I haven't actually said anything against Hoffman's work other than that it's controversial, which is actually a good thing if, lik...
October 19, 2021 at 06:44
lol, pot, kettle? I am not angry, but I don't respect lazy and incurious people, especially not on a philosophy forum. I have actually looked a bit in...
October 18, 2021 at 18:55
Excuse me if I come off patronizing, but you give an impression of someone who is not at all familiar with how science is done. What Hoffmann et al. d...
October 18, 2021 at 18:15
That's not a "new discovery" but rather a purely theoretical and controversial argument promulgated by Donald Hoffman (a bona fide cognitive scientist...
October 18, 2021 at 16:49
Let's just say that there is more than one sense of truth. One basic sense is where you accept or reject a proposition. This sense is well tracked by ...
October 17, 2021 at 17:13
I haven't read the works to which you refer (Cora Diamond and her unnamed critic), but I like your gloss on the nature moral statements. I wouldn't wo...
October 16, 2021 at 15:46
I don't get what it is you don't get, but let me address this bit: No, chess does not exist in a vacuum, any more than a line. I think when people tal...
October 14, 2021 at 06:51
Within the context of a given mathematical system, yes. But there is more than one system, and hence more than one way to define/describe a line. For ...
October 13, 2021 at 08:14
Far more people die from old age than from what you call "horrible diseases," such as polio, but that doesn't mean that we needn't do anything about p...
October 12, 2021 at 08:22
A line is not usually defined as a distance, if it is defined at all: in some systems it is a primitive element, which is not defined, but merely cons...
October 12, 2021 at 08:06
No, you are right: entropy is a tricky thing (or things, since there are different kinds). Also, while the simple version of the 2nd law (entropy incr...
October 06, 2021 at 07:48
No, the second law applies to all systems, but that just goes back to what you said at the start of your post. You should have stopped while you were ...
October 05, 2021 at 20:32
From my Youtube likes: Rosalyn Tureck plays Bach Capriccio BMV 992 "On the Departure of His Beloved Brother" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIxxnEkOj...
October 02, 2021 at 18:39
My criticism probably won't be useful or convincing to you, but here goes. I draw the line at premise one - a moral system - in the way both your oppo...
September 29, 2021 at 08:01
The question is unclear, which is why I think the responses are all over the place. What sort of an answer to do you expect? Is this a scientific ques...
September 28, 2021 at 11:17
Sure. There's also a difference between hybridisation and selection. And a difference between pumpkins and shovels. Point? I can understand queasiness...
September 14, 2021 at 08:22
We have been literally creating new species since prehistoric times. There are parasites that only exist because of humans - not to mention practicall...
September 14, 2021 at 08:02
Direct manipulation of genome is just the latest technology used in the process of adapting other species for our needs - and we are already using it ...
September 14, 2021 at 07:39
Or, you know, pretty much all the animals and plants that we eat or use or live with. All have been created, intentionally or not, by humans.
September 14, 2021 at 07:27
That wasn't about you, Outlander, but about soon to be banned yet again what's-his-face.
September 13, 2021 at 14:40
@"Hanover"@"Baden" You should start mass-deleting his posts when you ban his next sock. It probably takes like 15 minutes to make a new account, and h...
September 13, 2021 at 12:53
I should still commend you for writing out the texts - much better than just dropping a youtube link, which I certainly wouldn't watch, even with a pi...
September 09, 2021 at 11:40
Yeah well, this goes both ways. You are entitled to my attention if you know what you are talking about. And I see no evidence of that. But good luck ...
September 09, 2021 at 11:29
This is excellent. You should've stopped here while you were ahead :rofl: Yeah, I did read a bit further than that... Not worth my time, sorry.
September 09, 2021 at 10:57
Well, it may be necessary in some sense - just not in the sense of physical indeterminism. Indeed, if one insists on considering the question in this ...
September 09, 2021 at 08:09
Another thing is that the scientific enterprise does not exist independently of "other phenomen in the history of histories of human civilizations". O...
September 09, 2021 at 07:52
Your point - that science is cyclical - is just postulated out of nowhere. "ust like any other phenomenon in the history of histories of human civiliz...
September 09, 2021 at 07:22
https://www.google.com/search?q=When+were+clocks+used+for+the+first+time+in+science%3F
September 08, 2021 at 09:45
It is unclear to me how anything can give us the "ultimate" answer - one that cannot in turn be challenged with the same question: Why that and not so...
September 07, 2021 at 12:35
That's trivially easy. Premise "A is (im)moral" entails the conclusion "A is (im)moral". I don't see where that gets us.
September 04, 2021 at 09:14
That doesn't really clarify anything. What are sufficient reasons? Who makes the determination? If someones determines to do something upon deliberati...
September 04, 2021 at 08:23
I guess a climatology class for someone training in meteorology is like a cosmology class for someone training in orbital mechanics. Good to have for ...
September 02, 2021 at 15:25
In: Bannings  — view comment
Yeah, if there was a way to throttle a poster, limiting the number of comments and topics per day to, say, 10 and 1, then he would've been ok. No wors...
September 01, 2021 at 06:52
Just want to say thanks for your erudite and educational posts!
August 31, 2021 at 20:15
Warmed-over denialist garbage cribbed from notorious purveyors of science disinformation. Nothing to see here.
August 31, 2021 at 15:33
Whether or not the universe can be thought of as an "object", what's important in this context is whether it is the sort of... thing that can stand in...
August 30, 2021 at 20:30
In: Deleted  — view comment
It's easier when the deficit angle is large - e.g. 90 degrees, as in the example given in the link above. If after making three right turns at a right...
August 30, 2021 at 17:54
In: Deleted  — view comment
Yes, you can detect intrinsic curvature on a sphere, even if it is not embedded in 3D space. Angles in a triangle won't sum up to 180 degrees. http://...
August 30, 2021 at 08:34
Are you saying that the universe is nothing more than an unstructured collection of items about which nothing can be said other than that they are dis...
August 30, 2021 at 08:01
The universe is a class or a set in the sense that these abstractions can be used to talk about the universe as the "sum total" of all there is, but n...
August 29, 2021 at 15:48
Just to add to what @"Kenosha Kid" said, entropy does not decrease when space expands. Rather, the ceiling of maximum entropy is lifted, so it has mor...
July 15, 2021 at 09:08
I think the like score is unclear and misreading. Since likes are not offset by dislikes, the metric is cumulative, so it mixes several unrelated fact...
July 13, 2021 at 20:41
I wasn't closely following the debate with the crackpot, but these numbers jumped out at me.If our energy needs were on the order of 10% of all solar ...
July 12, 2021 at 14:53
LOL no, that was someone else. Pantagruel is all right.
July 11, 2021 at 17:28
So what you were trying to say was that all and only those atheists who are notorious for furiously proselytizing are notorious for furiously proselyt...
July 11, 2021 at 16:12
That's like saying "Americans are notorious for relentlessly shooting people in the street." The statement exposes your ignorant prejudice. There are ...
July 10, 2021 at 18:12
So have any of you guys sobered up yet? I don't mind the like feature (it's almost invisible anyway), but I would much rather have the number of posts...
July 08, 2021 at 20:19