You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Gnomon

Comments

What are you implying? That a non-space-time essential principle could not produce mundane Matter from scratch? Such a non-noumenal notion may be the ...
July 15, 2024 at 21:09
Some want to analyze your question from the perspective of Anthropologists or Biologists. But this is a philosophy forum. So, why not approach your "w...
July 15, 2024 at 16:54
Off Topic : I suppose "that" depends on whether you view Matter or Form as fundamental, or as equal partners. For Plato, Form is abstract, ideal, and ...
July 15, 2024 at 16:21
Do I understand you correctly to mean that : if the world is Deterministic, then a single wrong act makes the whole world system unjust : "a rotten ap...
July 14, 2024 at 21:08
Off-Topic : My "way of thinking" is characteristic of Philosophy, not Science. I've been trying to convince you that I'm not competing with scientists...
July 14, 2024 at 16:45
Off-topic : I normally don't reply to 's jibes, because his philosophical worldview specifically & disdainfully excludes my own. So, the sciencey stuf...
July 13, 2024 at 17:42
Off Topic : You ask good philosophical questions, but you seem to expect Materialistic answers to Abstract inquiries. You expect 17th century determin...
July 12, 2024 at 22:14
Obviously you didn't take the time, or have the inclination, to "check" the off-topic & off-forum evidences presented in the thesis and blog. That's j...
July 12, 2024 at 17:20
It's a long off-topic story. But, if you have the time and the inclination, I have a thesis and blog to underwrite that philosophical inference. :smil...
July 11, 2024 at 22:03
Ha! My commonsense solution to the Fairness & Justice problem would be to have a single-sovereign-supreme-superhuman judge to arbitrate between human ...
July 11, 2024 at 21:21
Since I have no formal training in philosophy, 's posts are often over my head. So, in that sense, I may not have extremely "abstracted notions". But ...
July 11, 2024 at 16:48
OK. What do you mean by "materialist" or "materialism"? Is there a definition of those terms that you would apply to your own worldview? For example, ...
July 11, 2024 at 16:27
Yes. That's the role of Philosophy, not Science. As you noted, we will never have a complete comprehensive understanding of "how things are", or of di...
July 10, 2024 at 23:54
seems to be one of the most philosophically knowledgeable posters on this forum. But his arguments tend to be rather terse, as if he has a canned answ...
July 10, 2024 at 22:54
Perhaps I should have said, "human purposes are both more complex and more general than animal's simple & narrowly focused goals" . But that's a mouth...
July 10, 2024 at 16:13
Pardon, my intrusion. But I suspect your failure to communicate with may be foundering on the notion of "transcendent" ideas. If he is an Immanentist ...
July 10, 2024 at 16:06
Yes. If you define "real" as anything that can interact with other things, then the human mind is real. A rock is inert in itself, but can be used to ...
July 10, 2024 at 15:39
I don't know how this thread got off-track on discussions of Physics and Thermodynamics as the "grounds" for ethical concepts. But, a quick Google sea...
July 09, 2024 at 21:24
Humans, more than most animals, are "animated by purpose". But the universe, as a whole system, is structured by Logic. That mathematical Logic is ari...
July 09, 2024 at 17:03
In the singing birds song, is he saying, "another world" : perhaps a Garden of Eden? Or is he imagining this present world as Non-Dual? Hamlet --- the...
July 09, 2024 at 16:14
Yes. Modern religions still preach hope for perfect justice, but may no longer teach that piety will be immediately rewarded with peace and prosperity...
July 08, 2024 at 17:41
I don't want to get in the middle of a spitting contest. But I'll point out that 's discussion of Ecology hardly qualifies as materialistic "scientism...
July 07, 2024 at 17:09
We may even gain some philosophical insights from Biology. My latest blog post is entitled : Synchrony : Small World Networks*1. In 1926, during the h...
July 07, 2024 at 15:55
Isn't that the role of Philosophy, to deduce both the Good and the Bad aspects of the Real and Cultural worlds, and to devise a new more Ideal social ...
July 06, 2024 at 21:03
Is the real world fair and just? Good vs Evil is indeed a religious concept, often expressed in dualistic terms of Gods and Devils. But the OP was not...
July 06, 2024 at 17:24
That is also my own facile answer to this thread's title question. The physical universe is not a God to be held responsible for my personal flourishi...
July 06, 2024 at 16:29
Yes. If we wake-up one day and find ourselves in a world of simple positives & negatives --- warm milk vs warm urine --- as helpless babies all we can...
July 05, 2024 at 00:22
Isn't that what philosophers have always done : to superimpose a reasoned worldview upon the myriad & contradictory details of the world we are "throw...
July 05, 2024 at 00:02
Quite succinct, and non-polemical. But I was hoping for some why or why-not discussion, that I could learn from. You could take your pick of a few com...
July 04, 2024 at 23:26
Yes. Aristotle's hylomorphism was a proposed explanation for the philosophical distinction between Body & Mind. But it could also serve as a metaphor ...
July 01, 2024 at 16:58
I assume the "underlying issue" for you is similar to what Chalmers labeled "the Hard Problem" of how humans are able to distinguish (differentiate) b...
June 30, 2024 at 21:49
I too, haven't been concerned enough to make a detailed study of the roots of philosophical Determinism, perhaps in ancient Greece. But, I assume its ...
June 29, 2024 at 21:03
Yes. Most humans seem to take their own personal agency for granted. Since they get their desired results from voluntary actions, they feel like they ...
June 29, 2024 at 16:16
I'm a latecomer to this thread. But I just read an article in Scientific American magazine, that discusses "an infant's aha! moment" when they realize...
June 28, 2024 at 16:48
Determinism is a necessary assumption in order to do practical Science. But it may be optional to do theoretical Philosophy. In any case, Determinism ...
June 27, 2024 at 17:23
My personal worldview is ultimately Holistic and Monistic. But when we begin to "describe" the world, in language or math, it is necessary to make "di...
June 27, 2024 at 16:47
That's OK. As I said, I wrote that for me, just to express the aha! idea in words, as it occurred to me. Come on. It's a metaphor. You seem to have a ...
June 27, 2024 at 00:23
Sorry. I'm currently reading a book that gets into Small World math & physics. I didn't really expect you to grasp the concept of "short-cuts" without...
June 26, 2024 at 16:52
I think was arguing for compatibility of natural human FreeWill, not as an abnormal exception to Causation, but as a statistical option within causal ...
June 25, 2024 at 21:54
I Googled the phrase "network of relationships" and found it most often applied to social relations between humans. But, on a universal or sub-atomic ...
June 25, 2024 at 16:49
Just for funsies. Are you thinking of a human building a physical universe from raw materials, or a god creating a dynamic world from scratch? For the...
June 24, 2024 at 21:26
The "Logical Limitation" I referred to is both a measurement problem and a modeling problem. And the Logic in both cases is Mathematical (1+2+X=?), no...
June 24, 2024 at 20:32
Yes. Causal Closure (Determinism) was a simplifying assumption of 17th century physics. But 20th century physics has complicated the math with non-lin...
June 24, 2024 at 16:38
I agree with your Both/And conclusion. My latest BothAnd Blog post is on the topic of Synchrony*1. The author of the 2003 book SYNCH, Steven Strogatz,...
June 24, 2024 at 16:29
I missed the earlier discussion. But I Googled "Peter Tse's physicalist account of mental causation", and found the contrary argument below*1. We coul...
June 24, 2024 at 00:57
Right on! All living organisms have an innate driving purpose : to stay alive. But philosophical discussions of Purpose may be traced back to Theologi...
June 24, 2024 at 00:12
Historically, Enlightenment era scientists & philosophers were forced into Materialist & Physicalist positions by the Catholic church's Spiritualist &...
June 23, 2024 at 16:45
If a single path suddenly & surprisingly branches into two paths, with completely different end-points, is that not a true philosophical dilemma? One ...
June 22, 2024 at 17:15
When you come to a fork in the road, do you stop and imagine taking the road less traveled, or do you start walking in the desired direction? In what ...
June 21, 2024 at 17:24
Aristotle intuitively made a distinction between physical and mental processes in the world. He divided his treatise of Phusis (nature) into an encycl...
June 21, 2024 at 17:19