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Andrew M

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An illusion to whom?
December 17, 2018 at 20:49
Holograms are 3D images that are encoded on a 2D surface. The holographic principle in cosmology uses this idea.
December 17, 2018 at 20:47
I would say that the manner in which a thing exists is known to us. The apple is red, etc. That is the thing in itself, as described in human terms. L...
December 17, 2018 at 11:07
I commented on this a while back. One way to think of it is not that the universe didn't exist prior to sentient observers, but that its dynamics pres...
December 17, 2018 at 03:21
@"Dfpolis" was making an empirical claim about the 7-year-old girl. That she had a desire for water. Don't you think that is a claim that can be true ...
December 16, 2018 at 23:48
In: Soundness  — view comment
I'm curious about what the problems really are. It seems easy enough to modify the above argument so that it is sound. For example, in Greek mythology...
November 30, 2018 at 10:31
The problem is identified by the doctor at the end of Scene 5: "Besides, when one starts doubting one's own sense perceptions, the doubt spreads like ...
November 26, 2018 at 01:22
Wrong! But don't despair - Raymond Smullyan's experimental epistemologist will sort you out.
November 25, 2018 at 22:51
The way the term "see" functions in ordinary usage is that it relates a subject (you) to an intended object (the tree). That usage pragmatically abstr...
October 24, 2018 at 10:15
It's common knowledge that you can't see things without light. But then the expression, "I see a tree", doesn't imply otherwise. So what is inaccurate...
October 23, 2018 at 12:21
In reply to Dfpolis, you say: In your example you seem to be saying "you see a tree" but also "you do not see the tree", which is a contradiction. It'...
October 23, 2018 at 03:26
Anil Ananthaswamy's Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality also looks interesting. Especial...
October 19, 2018 at 09:11
Nice find. It's worth noting that the walking droplet experiments provide interesting quantum analogies (and intuitions) for pilot wave theories. But ...
October 19, 2018 at 01:59
Yes. There need not be a single ("the") causal sequence of some set of events - sometimes there are multiple causal sequences. I think it's philosophi...
October 09, 2018 at 11:17
Actually not knowing the causal sequence is not the issue in this experiment. What "indefinite" means here is not "unknown causal sequence" but "no si...
October 09, 2018 at 07:47
Per the earlier video (from 1min:32), that is known from the experimental setup. One component history has Alice applying operation A to the photon an...
October 07, 2018 at 14:43
This probably gets into interpretation territory, but I don't think quantum systems do collapse into classical systems (for example, even if one obser...
October 07, 2018 at 02:09
Unpredictability doesn't imply a violation of causality. Without knowledge or control of the underlying physical causes coin flips are also unpredicta...
October 03, 2018 at 21:11
I would say it's actually classical physical explanations that break down rather than causality. Events A and B are independent transformations which ...
September 30, 2018 at 08:28
Yes. They can be. It just depends on which joint system is being considered.
September 30, 2018 at 05:59
No. The experiment can also be considered at a macro scale using Schrodinger's cat as Banno suggests above. If QM holds true at a macro level (as most...
September 30, 2018 at 04:39
There's no need to give up causality. The paper isn't saying that the cause can happen after the event. It's instead saying that a photon can have an ...
September 30, 2018 at 04:08
Max Tegmark would agree with you.
September 17, 2018 at 23:54
These references may be a useful starting point: As StreetlightX notes, matter and form are the paired aspects of an individual (per hylomorphism). Su...
September 01, 2018 at 06:34
Like this? https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WCpCkogjVY0/Ud_aX8yqw9I/AAAAAAAAGAo/hABoyiFEnPE/s320/IMG_3557.JPG
September 01, 2018 at 00:16
Only in an abstract sense. The truth schema says "p" is true iff p. You can substitute whatever you like for p as long as it is meaningful.
August 31, 2018 at 22:50
So conventionally we mean H2O. But there's nothing prohibiting a different usage. Is there a problem here?
August 31, 2018 at 22:37
As usual it depends on what the statement means. Conventionally, "snow" refers to H2O, so the astronauts are not seeing snow, they're seeing something...
August 31, 2018 at 21:39
Exactly. Per the bank account metaphor, identity is not applicable to the melted coins since they are not individual coins. So to ask whether the coin...
August 30, 2018 at 01:34
That's a nice paper - here's a link to a pre-print for anyone interested. Just to summarize the problem, Leibniz' Identity of Indiscernibles says that...
August 29, 2018 at 13:46
Part of the issue can also be with the perceived meaning of the question. While it says shade, perhaps some interpret it to mean natural color (which ...
August 26, 2018 at 23:29
Agreed. However if there is some reality that is determinately H2O then there is some reality that determinately has three atoms. The latter is simply...
August 18, 2018 at 16:30
No, it assumes realism. It seems to me that you could say the same thing about the particulars. That is, the referent of the sentence is the world whi...
August 14, 2018 at 23:01
I would agree that there is no idea of number independent of an agent's thoughts. Yet there would still be three atoms in a water molecule even if the...
August 14, 2018 at 02:55
Thanks. So to clarify, my claim is that there are three atoms in a water molecule independent of anyone counting them or even conceptualizing numbers ...
August 13, 2018 at 01:47
Isn't that conceptualism about universals rather than moderate realism? The term universal normally refers to what particular things have in common (w...
August 09, 2018 at 01:57
In this case you would be talking about assertability conditions rather than truth conditions. That is, those conditions that would warrant someone as...
August 05, 2018 at 23:52
It is simply a schema for what it means for a statement to be true. In this case, it is the cat being on the mat in the world that is the condition th...
August 05, 2018 at 11:22
Regarding "p" is true iff p, the statement on the left-hand-side is true (or false) if and only if the condition on the right-hand-side obtains (or no...
August 05, 2018 at 04:58
It is, unarguably, since you're talking about judgments. But Einstein's question is whether the mind is inextricably involved in every matter (includi...
August 05, 2018 at 00:31
So that is a question of what is meant by "snow is white". If you are talking about the reflective properties of snow, that is one meaning. If your fr...
August 05, 2018 at 00:17
I'm curious how you would describe a concrete scenario prior to sentient life emerging on Earth with respect to universals. For example, consider a mo...
August 04, 2018 at 23:50
You said this earlier as well but it's not correct. "p" is true iff p is an expression of how the word "true" is used. On that usage, a claim can be t...
August 03, 2018 at 22:30
They aren't problems for truth though. If the referred context of a claim such as "Earth is the third planet from the sun" is our shared experience (w...
August 03, 2018 at 06:47
For a deflationist, what makes "the cat is on the mat" true (or false) is for the cat to be on the mat (or not). More generally, "p" is true iff p. Th...
August 02, 2018 at 07:24
Yes, they are different things. But I think the point that the deflationists are making is simply that the explicit assertion of truth about a stateme...
August 02, 2018 at 02:07
I think you're drawing a distinction between scientific and ordinary claims here that has its own difficulties. I don't see why scientific statements ...
August 01, 2018 at 23:58
Right, the player doesn't have that perspective but we do when discussing hypotheticals with specific distributions. What is the source of the paradox...
August 01, 2018 at 11:02
The way I look at the problem is that the expected gain calculation depends on an agent's knowledge. Some agents may have more information than others...
August 01, 2018 at 01:55
Definitely a good candidate for a discussion sometime!
August 01, 2018 at 01:17