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Gnomon

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Good point! This potential vs real argument is another example of how "binary thinking" (either/or, black/white, real/ideal dichotomies) can be confus...
September 18, 2019 at 17:08
No. I am both Realist and Idealist (both Physics and Metaphysics). The extension of my Enformationism thesis is the BothAnd Blog. Blog : http://enform...
September 17, 2019 at 23:24
Metaphysics is "weird" only in the sense that Religion and Science are weird : they are based on invisible intangible spooky forces or agents (like En...
September 17, 2019 at 22:32
:up:
September 17, 2019 at 17:55
Ha! That's getting deep into metaphysics. And off-topic. But from the perspective of Enformationism, I think of Greek Chaos as a field of randomness (...
September 17, 2019 at 17:15
The battery metaphor is an analogy between things that are physically different, but functionally similar. . It was not intended to be taken literally...
September 17, 2019 at 17:03
That's why I prefer to use "physical" or "metaphysical" instead of "real" or "ideal". Plato asserted that his ideal Forms were the true reality, but t...
September 17, 2019 at 16:44
I feel your pain. :worry: Since Enformationism is a new way of thinking about the world, I was forced to coin a lot of neologisms to avoid the histori...
September 17, 2019 at 16:25
Apparently you missed the point. I did not mean to imply that Potential was an isolated power with no connection to Actuality. My analogy of a battery...
September 16, 2019 at 16:47
William James defined a "live choice" by contrast to a "dead choice". Obviously, these are metaphors, and probably used to avoid having to say "a real...
September 16, 2019 at 15:57
Yes. :smile: Polytheistic gods, like Zeus and Shiva, have been extensively described over the centuries. But singular capital "G" God, as in monotheis...
September 16, 2019 at 02:18
Reification : This is how a lot of metaphorical and metaphysical concepts get converted into religious ghosts, spirits, demons, and gods, complete wit...
September 15, 2019 at 18:54
Since my theory of Enformationism is intended to be a scientific theory, I don't normally think in terms of religious concepts. I do use them as analo...
September 15, 2019 at 18:36
I normally use the word "Zero" in the modern sense of nothingness. But, the Greeks, possibly including Pythagoras, found the notion of non-being abhor...
September 14, 2019 at 18:22
Yes, his theory of an Akashic Field is similar to my notion of the universal Quantum Field as a web or fabric of Information interrelationships. Since...
September 14, 2019 at 18:05
Divine Choice or Will is an actuality in the sense of a "live option". As I said before, years ago, I began as an Agnostic, and was trying to avoid at...
September 14, 2019 at 17:47
The "profound sense" of logical structure and causal power in the world, is what I call EnFormAction.EFA is also equivalent to Greek Logos. But both E...
September 14, 2019 at 17:18
It's a fine philosophical distinction. Of course, in the real world Potential & Actual occur in pairs : Voltage & Amperage. But, the voltage in a batt...
September 13, 2019 at 18:37
"God as creator is then a kind of transcendent non-being above the being of creation. He says "God is" (exists in some sense), but is also "non-being"...
September 13, 2019 at 18:10
Generic Information is multi-faceted and hard to pin down to one thing. In Macro Physics, energy and information are not usually equated. But in Quant...
September 13, 2019 at 17:55
Yes. BEING (G*D) is infinite potential, and is not real. But EnFormAction is the power of G*D in the world, and is real in the same sense that Energy ...
September 13, 2019 at 00:27
You are missing the power of potential. If a potential is not capable of causing anything, it's not potential, it's impotent. By definition, the cause...
September 12, 2019 at 23:41
The Star Trek analogy was indeed a "physicalist" model of the mind and the soul. That's where all sci-fi stories of uploading minds into computers go ...
September 12, 2019 at 23:13
Yes. Those words, like most language, can be ambiguous. But as a "metaphysical simple" I'd use the term "information" in the sense of the basic bit of...
September 12, 2019 at 22:43
Yes. I use the term "substance" (ousia) in the sense of spiritual essence rather than material stuff. In the Bible, ousia was typically used to mean "...
September 11, 2019 at 17:43
Yes. As a result of the work by EnFormAction, Information (meaning) is inherent in matter. This is a form of ancient Panpsychism, except that consciou...
September 11, 2019 at 17:32
Yes. In the Enformationism thesis, the essence of EnFormAction is conditional existence : to be or not to be. In digital Information, the essence of m...
September 11, 2019 at 17:12
Aristotle found it difficult to pin down "substance" to a single definition, so he gave two candidates : Platonic "Form" and Physical "Matter". Materi...
September 10, 2019 at 17:27
Yes. Unfortunately, metaphysical Philosophy has been contaminated by association with various mind-over-matter notions (magical thinking) among aficio...
September 09, 2019 at 18:39
As I said, energy is defined by what it does, not by what it is (essence). Energy is indeed a quality (attribute) of matter, like the redness of an ap...
September 09, 2019 at 18:25
Until the 20th century, scientists did indeed examine the real, physical world. But since the advent of Relativity and Quantum Theory, physicists have...
September 08, 2019 at 17:30
My personality is self-critical. So I have never had the feeling of self-confidence and certainty that you, and many others, seem to have. Consequentl...
September 08, 2019 at 17:00
I don't think that's necessary. We are simply talking about two kinds of knowledge : the personal kind that is validated by feelings (physical), and t...
September 07, 2019 at 17:25
I suspect that Berkeley and Hegel were looking at the same thing from different perspectives. Berkeley was discussing how a human perceives the world ...
September 06, 2019 at 18:03
Chasing the dream of absolute Truth is not practical for materialistic purposes. Pragmatic empirical scientists like Richard Feynman are sometimes dis...
September 06, 2019 at 17:38
That's true, but has any subjective worldview come close to absolute Truth? We can either strive to get closer to objective truth, or give-up that dre...
September 05, 2019 at 17:51
I appreciate the reasoning of deChardin, Tipler and Kurzweil. But I doubt that the physical universe is destined to become a god. Of course, higher te...
September 04, 2019 at 17:54
Then we will have to agree to disagree. In my opinion, the function of Philosophy, as opposed to Religion, is to find some objective worldview that al...
September 04, 2019 at 17:26
There's condescension on both sides. If you Google "knowing and feeling" you will quickly notice that it's a popular topic among Christians, who are a...
September 03, 2019 at 22:49
No. I was not referring to any genetic determinism interpretation of evolution. I was just noting that "emotions" and "feelings" are internal motivato...
September 02, 2019 at 16:45
Years ago, I had an extended snail-mail correspondence on the general topic of religious belief. When asked how she knew her scriptures were true, she...
September 01, 2019 at 19:35
I suspect the feeling of knowing may be the internal sensation associated with the certainty of belief. Absolute positive certainty is blind faith. Bu...
August 31, 2019 at 16:47
T I'm currently reading LOGOS, by physician/philosopher Raymond Tallis, in which he explores "the mystery of how we make sense of the world". He is tr...
August 31, 2019 at 16:32
The Greek word "physics" simply referred to Nature, Aristotle's book by that name was essentially an encyclopedia of then current knowledge about the ...
August 24, 2019 at 17:57
In my previous response I provided a link to the glossary entry for "EnFormAction". Unfortunately, the links to further discussion were broken. So, I ...
August 17, 2019 at 16:43
These poems express some ideas that I address (prosaically) in my blog. If you don't mind, I may use them in a future post.
August 14, 2019 at 16:50
Separately from what? That neologism, like most of the others, is a play on the concept of Information as the universal cause in the world. My G*D con...
August 12, 2019 at 16:40
I found it difficult to follow ANW's neologisms. That's why I have a glossary for my own made-up terms, such as Enformationism as a 21st century updat...
August 10, 2019 at 18:21
In my personal worldview thesis, I have concluded that everything in reality, both matter and mind, is made of various forms of shape-shifting Informa...
August 06, 2019 at 17:32
For the Greeks, the Logos was an impersonal principle equivalent to universal Spirit or Mind, or even a god in the sense of omniscience, but not part ...
August 01, 2019 at 23:05