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Gnomon

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So your unnamed "physicist" is saying that the pioneers of quantum physics didn't understand the philosophical implications of statistical (versus det...
February 04, 2025 at 17:20
That assertion depends on how you define "real". If your interest is in statistical mathematical predictions, picturing the wave crests of a quantum f...
February 04, 2025 at 16:26
What exactly is Process Philosophy? This is a continuation of my previous post. In which I noted that Whitehead's book seemed to be arguing in favor o...
February 03, 2025 at 22:11
One way to understand an obscure philosophical opus is to learn what prompted it, or what it is arguing against. A few years ago, since I never fully ...
February 01, 2025 at 22:43
Yes. The architect of our cosmic habitation apparently was designing for non-divine inhabitants who are subject to the same natural laws as the house ...
January 31, 2025 at 21:45
The First Cause concept may seem like Dualism from your perspective, but it's Monism*1 from mine. I can't tell you "how" it happens. That's a job for ...
January 31, 2025 at 18:19
Thermodynamics is not a problem for "my god"*1, because it is not a physical system subject to natural laws, but the source of those laws. This Platon...
January 30, 2025 at 18:31
When bullied by a forum troll, the best thing to say is nothing. That's why I long ago stopped responding to my own philosophical gadfly, who doesn't ...
January 30, 2025 at 17:13
On a philosophy forum we expect to have disagreements. But we also have a right to expect the disputes to be articulated in calm rational counter-argu...
January 30, 2025 at 01:05
Perhaps, prior to the 20th century, a self-existent universe may have been plausible. But the astro-physical evidence of a singular point-of-origin fo...
January 29, 2025 at 18:34
Yes. Biology & Physics give us a look inside the skull of an observer. From those facts we can construct a mechanical model of how the brain produces ...
January 29, 2025 at 17:44
Yes. There's only one table, but there are two different ways of looking at, or thinking about, the table. One perspective is scientific (particles & ...
January 29, 2025 at 17:19
That comment is true, but the "something" is not necessarily Matter, and may even be a form of Mind. If the notion of mental matter sounds odd or woo-...
January 28, 2025 at 22:16
Did Berkeley in the 18th century have any empirical evidence upon which to base his foresight of "modern subatomic physics" view of Matter? Or was his...
January 27, 2025 at 21:58
I too, postulate a philosophical god-like First Cause*1 as an explanation for the something-from-nothing implication of Big Bang theory. The Multivers...
January 27, 2025 at 18:24
Whitehead's Process philosophy is over my head. But it seems to be describing a worldview that is similar to my own. For example, reductive physical S...
January 26, 2025 at 18:11
What is Process Philosophy? Years ago, I too, got lost in Whitehead's complex & convoluted abstract & abstruse explication of Process and Reality. So,...
January 25, 2025 at 22:24
Has that been your experience in this forum? I started this thread by announcing my ignorance of a new-to-me philosophy. And I suppose most of the pos...
January 25, 2025 at 21:00
Thanks. I didn't mean to characterize Gautama as a doctrinal Agnostic, but merely as one who didn't claim to have knowledge of gods or supernatural be...
January 25, 2025 at 18:08
I assume you are implying that I am "demonstrating" my own ignorance. But this thread is not attempting to "demonstrate" anything about Buddhism or Bu...
January 24, 2025 at 17:54
Perhaps the way to Buddhahood is to know what you don't know. :cool: Rumsfeld : there are knowns, known-unknowns, and unknown-unknowns.
January 23, 2025 at 22:44
The Tao Te Ching does not specify a purpose to the natural world, but its metaphor of "flow" does bring to mind the course of a river that simply foll...
January 23, 2025 at 22:30
I suppose the ancient oriental philosophies & religions were originally Naturalist, in the sense that most aboriginal (uncivilized) societies lived li...
January 23, 2025 at 18:41
Since you didn't want to talk about Taoism, except in traditional authoritative doctrinal terms, I have refrained from adding the Axiarchism post to t...
January 23, 2025 at 00:52
Maybe we can shift our view of The Point (the context). I spell it with a hyphen --- meta-physics --- to indicate that I use the term to mean "non-phy...
January 21, 2025 at 18:01
Awesome ! :blush: I'm serious. Don't leave it a mystery. Publish it. And a sequel or two. After all, Dante journeyed for over thirty cantos. :smile: "...
January 20, 2025 at 22:53
So we do agree. For me, Philosophy is Meta-Physics (study of Mind) as opposed to Physics (study of Matter)*1. The Tao Te Ching is a philosophical poem...
January 20, 2025 at 22:19
Hmmm. Disagree with what? Apparently Lao Tse's Tao is very important to you. But not as "empirical science" or "philosophical poetry". Not even "Metap...
January 20, 2025 at 18:30
Not surprising. Would you care to elaborate? My knowledge of Tao Te Ching is superficial, but I found it generally compatible with my philosophical un...
January 19, 2025 at 17:14
Yes. In Lao Tse's time, there was no formal discipline of empirical Science. So philosophers and sages relied upon Intuition (look inward), Contemplat...
January 18, 2025 at 22:52
I'm not sure what "this" referred to, but I'm guessing that you think we humans are not following the Tao, hence are lost in the labyrinth. Yet one la...
January 18, 2025 at 21:13
"Tao" is usually translated into English as The Way or Path or Map. And the admonition to "follow the path of nature" could be expressed in a modern c...
January 18, 2025 at 17:42
I think you have touched on the problem with this stalemated thread. Apparently, most posters on TPF, including myself, are not familiar with the spec...
January 13, 2025 at 17:34
In my last post I promised to link to a blog essay that discusses the connection between meaningful Information and causal Energy, which in my thesis ...
January 11, 2025 at 02:01
My original god-concept came from my austere religious training : back-to-the-bible-protestant-Christianity. It typically dismissed many of the specif...
January 11, 2025 at 01:44
This thread is a continuation of the ancient philosophical debate between Realism and Idealism*1. Today, the debate is mainly between the here & now a...
January 09, 2025 at 18:55
Logic is not, in itself, a philosophical argument. But, like Mathematics, Logic is essential to reasonable thinking & discourse. In college, I took on...
January 09, 2025 at 17:34
Good point! A world "without friction" (entropy) might be eternal and infinite. But that's not how our actual "universe was made". Instead, it seems t...
January 09, 2025 at 01:21
180proof's disparaging assessment ("simplistic/lazy") of your self-effacing (non-expert) post is ironic. He typically dismisses transcendent (non-imma...
January 08, 2025 at 17:59
Great! The US Green Party in 2024 held 153 elected offices in 21 states. Unfortunately, that is just a fraction of the total. The presidential candida...
January 07, 2025 at 22:30
As von Clausewitz noted : “War is a continuation of politics by other means”. But its corollary might be : "Politics is war by other means". And war t...
January 07, 2025 at 18:05
Since I no longer correspond with 180proof, due to his acrimonious trolling replies to philosophical postulations, I'll provide some alternative state...
January 06, 2025 at 23:01
Homosexuality is "interesting" to me, mainly because it is so politically divisive in society. Most human cultures have considered same-sex relations ...
January 06, 2025 at 18:21
The 13th century Cosmological Argument, making a distinction between Necessity and Contingency, was scientifically supported by the Big Bang theory. O...
January 05, 2025 at 18:09
Rabbi Kushner wrote a book on that same subject : When Bad Things Happen to Good People*1. Generally, it advises us to look at the Big Picture --- whe...
January 04, 2025 at 17:40
I suppose you are contrasting an eternal transcendent Creator God with various versions of immanent or more-of-the-same-forever-and-ever-amen (linear-...
January 02, 2025 at 00:31
?Brendan Golledge We wanted to fix what was wrong with Deism, ... by determining why it failed. — Gnomon Afaik, deism is just 'the god of theism' on i...
December 29, 2024 at 18:16
Do you view yourself as the founder of a religious movement, as opposed to merely the author of a novel religious worldview/manifesto? Due in part to ...
December 22, 2024 at 18:10
's trite comparison of a metaphysical a priori concept, Original Cause, with our physical experience of the arbitrary designation of a navigational No...
December 21, 2024 at 18:36
I don't view Deism*1 as a religion, but simply a philosophical worldview that attempts to explain the contingent existence of our physical world, and ...
December 20, 2024 at 22:39