Inis

Nevertheless, you cannot weasel your way round the "unconnected-tension, connected-no-tension" contradiction, and you can't imagine how that contradic...

As I made explicit earlier, the tension only exists when the bodies are separate. When they begin falling at the same rate, the tension is zero, to th...

Sure, tension, acting upwards, both slows down and speeds up the larger mass. It's a logical contradiction, really it is.

It seems you have missed the point entirely. According to Aristotle: 1. The tension in the string is caused by the smaller body slowing down the large...

You can still be a determinist. The "probabilities" that quantum mechanics calculates are purely epistemic. The reality behind them is still up for gr...

There is no empirical evidence that QM or GR are problematic at any scale. You are still confusing the respective theories with theories of how they m...

Your point about VR is interesting, because in the case of Galileo's paradox, you cant' do it. You can't program a logically inconsistent physical sit...

You mean philosophers like Popper, who wrote literally books refuting empiricism? - see Logic of Scientific Discovery, and Conjectures and Refutations...

Given that Empiricism, the doctrine that knowledge is derived from the senses, is objectively false, I would hope we could get beyond it, if not trans...

Fair enough, but since, as you point out, we do not know the laws of nature, how do we know they obey the Principle of conservation of energy? And is ...

But energy is not conserved by the Principle of energy conservation. It is conserved due to the dynamics undergone by a system obeying the laws of phy...

How do you change a number, e.g. 13?

The infinity, to which you refer, is not bigger than any number. It is: There is no contradiction.

I'm not sure the definition is all that bad. Mathematical infinity is certainly not a haircut or a goose, it is discovered while investigating the pro...

An alternative view is that AIs will be part of our culture, and will in essence be our descendants. We will teach them what we know, and why our valu...

Of these "hundreds of countries", how many of them give away a £4billion fishing industry, pay £4billion in benefits to citizens of neighbouring count...

The epistemological position is known as Falibilism. It is core to the Scientific Method, and to Critical Rationalism. The Scientific Method provides ...

There exists a more or less fully worked out conception of knowledge that does not require a knowing subject. It's how genetics works. Popper wrote ab...

None of these properties, that you claim concrete objects can possess, is mentioned in the laws of physics. In fact, "causality" itself isn't mentione...

All if them? Including "rationality", "consciousness", "understanding", "subjective experience"?

Less than 8% of UK GDP has anything to do with selling goods to EU, according to the EU Commission. They don't want your stuff, they just want your mo...

As an aside, the Chinese Room is physically impossible. Computers may understand as we do already, but as you point out, human understanding seems to ...

Many people prefer to live in a sovereign democracy than a undemocratic burgeoning police-state, even if that state invests a great deal of your money...

Irrespective of the amount of chess knowledge Alpha Zero may have, it doesn't possess the quale of knowledge. Yet

Science has progressed a fair way beyond that. How does energy establish a causal relationship with atoms?

Being an open free-trading democracy, is always better than the alternatives.

Sure, but why is UK expected to pay so much, when no other country does? Germany pays more in fees, but is vastly over compensated in surplus in trade...

I believe Project Fear has such a device, though it seems to be malfunctioning for the last couple of years.

Given that you are happy to pay £13billion in fees, £4billion in fish, £4billion in benefits to EU citizens, to sustain a £95billion deficit in traded...

We don't need to know what matter is made from, all we need to know is how it behaves, how it interacts, and why. Of course, we do know most of the ba...

But, the output of the computer depends on the instructions. The instructions are real and causal, despite them being independent of their physical in...

If you claim that rational processes exist, that reason is a feature of reality, that reason is causal, then have you not already stepped out of mater...

Isn't this just Eccles's argument? If you are a determinist, then there really is no such thing as an argument that satisfies a rational agent, there ...

We know about the past because we use the present, and the laws of physics to infer it. That's how we discovered the big-band, galaxy formation, and h...

Yes, there is only matter and the laws of physics. Your "animals" and "design" are not real.

If you insist on games, the initial conditions at the Big Bang plus the laws of physics compelled me to write those words, and all the words I have ev...

I copied your words, as a matter of fact.

What laws do abstractions obey? We know the material is bound by the laws of physics, so presumably abstractions have similar constraints. What are th...

Quantum computers, and classical computers possess the same repertoire of functions. Quantum computers merely render certain algorithms tractable, som...

We know all Turing machines are equivalent, and what they are made from has no effect on this equivalence. For a brain to be capable of fundamentally ...

What do you think is the physical difference between a brain and a computer, that permits intelligence?

I think that Popper and Eccles really mean the sort of material determinism that takes the universe from one state to the next. If you admit the causa...

A computer can be programmed to make rational decisions without giving it the property of free will, so I'm not convinced the conclusion is in the pre...