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Gnomon

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I can't speak for , but I doubt he means to go beyond human limits into the realm of divine omniscience. Instead, perhaps we can "transcend" a common ...
January 18, 2024 at 16:59
Objection, your honor, the defense is being evasive. The question was not asking about any particular genre of science, but merely about a scientific ...
January 18, 2024 at 01:50
Thanks. But it's a useful metaphor anyway. I may have to disagree with Plato though, on the immortality of the Soul. I tend to think of it, not as a g...
January 18, 2024 at 00:45
Meaning is personal, and Power is communal. So, the pursuit of Meaning is Philosophical, while the pursuit of Power is Political. :smile:
January 17, 2024 at 17:41
The Platonic concept of Body/Soul integrity, as a harmonious interaction, is new to me. So I googled it. As an analogy to pleasing musical synchrony*1...
January 17, 2024 at 17:34
I doubt that many posters on this forum are quite so simple-minded as that. Our personal vocabularies contain categorized beliefs encapsulated in "key...
January 16, 2024 at 18:23
"Here he comes to save the day!" It's super-mensch to the rescue of dystopian society! :joke: Mensch : a person of integrity and honor. Perhaps a hero...
January 15, 2024 at 22:53
Ironically, all universal -isms --- including Materialism, Physicalism, Naturalism, and Idealism --- are beliefs based on Metaphysical induction. And ...
January 15, 2024 at 22:40
Shannon was an engineer, not a philosopher. So, he was interested in getting measurable physical results (communication data throughput), not in explo...
January 15, 2024 at 17:34
Yes. That's why I have to provide my own non-dictionary definitions*1, whenever I mention my Information-centric thesis. After the early 20th century,...
January 14, 2024 at 23:15
Collectively, the US standard of living has increased since the advent of industrialization, urbanization, and representative Democracy. But that gene...
January 14, 2024 at 22:19
As you implied, we seem to have different vocabularies : e.g. materialistic Scientism & wisdom Philosophy. But, I haven't said anything about "purely ...
January 14, 2024 at 17:51
Yes, but an emergent immaterial function (Mind) from a mundane material substrate --- after 10B years of lifelessness & 13B years of mindlessness --- ...
January 13, 2024 at 23:03
A rock is moved only by external forces. But a living organism is self-moving and self-sustaining to various degrees. So in order to continue to live,...
January 13, 2024 at 22:24
Not for lack of trying. A current candidate for president of US frequently criticizes past & current attempts to "level the playing field" politically...
January 13, 2024 at 21:45
"One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wipe...
January 13, 2024 at 17:48
Not necessarily "all" transformations. The quoted phrase was not referring to the physical Emergence, but to how it appears to the observer. The "tipp...
January 13, 2024 at 17:19
Yes. Everything we know via the five senses is physical. But we know some abstract concepts via the sixth sense of Rational Inference. We typically ca...
January 12, 2024 at 23:05
Emergence is a Holistic concept, that doesn't make sense from a Reductive perspective, such as Physicalism. Hence, it is sometimes dismissed as anti-s...
January 12, 2024 at 22:55
The concepts & language in Explanation, Idealism, and Design may be way over my head. So, I only read the Abstract. But you may be able to make sense ...
January 12, 2024 at 22:13
Precisely! The enigmas of quantum physics are Ontological, not Physical. Waveforms & wavefunctions are subjective metaphors, not objective things. The...
January 12, 2024 at 18:03
Virtual Particles don't exist physically, but theoretically, as a mathematical definition*1. For such existential mysteries, Aristotle defined "Potent...
January 11, 2024 at 23:04
This quote raised a strange & confusing possibility in my mind, that may or may not be provable. Greene's illustration of quantum Uncertainty*1 notes ...
January 11, 2024 at 18:05
Again, I apologize for not following protocol. I have no formal training in Philosophy, so I'm making-up my formatting as seems best to present my inf...
January 11, 2024 at 01:01
Actually, should be "better than that", since he has a deep understanding of post-enlightenment philosophy. But he seems to dismiss any philosophy bef...
January 11, 2024 at 00:54
Sorry! Does that extra white space bother you? It's a personal quirk of mine ; to make the transitional conjunction mark stand-out. Another eccentrici...
January 10, 2024 at 23:39
I agree. But, I am agnostic about any divine characteristics beyond the otherwise unexplained chain of causation in evolution, and the mysterious emer...
January 10, 2024 at 23:29
Yes. My Enformationism thesis posits that Information/EnFormAction (EFA -- power to transform) is fundamental ; hence is the precursor of Energy, Matt...
January 10, 2024 at 18:04
Are you giving-up on philosophy? Are you no longer interested in "why" questions about Purpose? Will biological histories, speculating into cosmic eon...
January 09, 2024 at 23:14
Sorry, my previous post was based on the definition of "Direct (naive) Realism" in Wikipedia. Apparently, your definition is more like "Indirect (repr...
January 09, 2024 at 17:51
No, informed realism*1. I was merely comparing the Hard Problem --- of how the experiential quality of Consciousness could "abruptly" emerge from the ...
January 08, 2024 at 17:56
FYI, in Terrence Deacon's book Incomplete Nature, he discusses Emergence and Downward Causation. He explains, "downward causation . . . is in this sen...
January 08, 2024 at 17:17
As you implied, the key to your differences with is in divergent definitions of "To Be / To Exist". A typical dictionary definition says that "To Exis...
January 07, 2024 at 23:06
I suppose you mean that modern Physicalism is more inclusive than ancient Materialism (Atomism). It's intended to include the full-range of modern sci...
January 07, 2024 at 22:35
That is an astute question : why does a particular physical waveform transform into metaphysical (meaningful) awareness? It's easy to imagine that Con...
January 07, 2024 at 17:52
Coincidentally, the same day you posted that skeptical warning of the perils of un-grounded speculation beyond current evidence, I read in Skeptical I...
January 06, 2024 at 22:27
Hands finds relevant ideas for a Philosophy of Cosmology in several ancient myths. He doesn't take them literally though, but as metaphorically releva...
January 06, 2024 at 18:23
Don't get me started . . . . . . . . . . . . :joke: Metaphysical necessity : In philosophy, metaphysical necessity, sometimes called broad logical nec...
January 05, 2024 at 22:23
Pardon me for my audacious assumption. For clarity, I replaced your second "only" with "logical". Although the assertion would work as written, with "...
January 05, 2024 at 22:03
Maybe we can get closer to plausible answers to such enigmas. Folk wisdom has equated Mind with Energy for centuries, and that notion is often the bas...
January 05, 2024 at 17:14
That's why I get most of my information about the multiple roles of Information from professional scientists --- Paul Davies, Terrence Deacon, Santa F...
January 04, 2024 at 16:57
That's where you and I agree & disagree. Many years ago, after becoming disillusioned by the fundamentalist religion of my youth, I may have tended to...
January 04, 2024 at 01:05
Again, you take my metaphors literally. The point of the question is that immaterial functions cannot be studied by empirical methods. There is no emp...
January 03, 2024 at 18:08
The Hard Problem is all about that familiar-yet-mysterious "something other". If you prefer to think that your Mind is a material object, what are its...
January 02, 2024 at 23:01
Another way to express the Hard Problem is : "how does physical activity (neural & endocrinological) result in the meta-physical (mental) functions th...
January 02, 2024 at 18:20
Deacon's Causal Absence is also similar to the notion of Emptiness in Taoism : Thirty spokes share a central hub; It is the hole that makes the wheel ...
December 31, 2023 at 22:49
The website was the beginning of a long journey, and there are still mountains & swamps ahead. : Enformationism https://enformationism.info/enformatio...
December 31, 2023 at 22:33
I'll get back to you about your "easy" solution to the Consciousness problem. In my blog, I compare the emergence of Sentience to the emergence of Pha...
December 31, 2023 at 22:25
My amateur philosophical thesis Enformationism, is not expressed in mathematical equations, or in logical syllogisms, but I hope it's more accessible ...
December 31, 2023 at 22:16
Deacon's Incomplete Nature has become my "bible" for getting a scientist's understanding of certain mysteries of science, that we debate on this forum...
December 31, 2023 at 21:58