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Gnomon

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Perhaps Hume somehow anticipated the discovery of Quantum Causation*1, which is statistical & uncertain & non-local instead of actual & deterministic ...
December 20, 2025 at 18:19
Apparently, disagrees with your definition of Philosophical questioning. He seems to picture himself as a Socratic gadfly, arguing against the Sophist...
December 18, 2025 at 18:48
Ha! I don't do a lot of "presuming" about such technical questions, because that is peripheral to my amateur philosophy hobby. But I'm currently readi...
December 18, 2025 at 17:05
Of course fuzzy logic is algorithmic to some degree or it wouldn't be programmable for digital computers. But it's much more flexible & adaptable to t...
December 17, 2025 at 23:26
That's an interesting way to look at the consciousness conundrum. Living organic plants could not survive if they didn't sense their environment, and ...
December 17, 2025 at 17:49
Yes. As an anti-social introvert, I am not temperamentally attracted to emotional social religions. I suppose dull rational internet philosophy is my ...
December 17, 2025 at 17:21
Yes. Non-algorithmic Fuzzy Logic*1 is an attempt to make digital computers think more like humans. And it may be necessary for Chat Bots to deal with ...
December 17, 2025 at 17:12
Me too. Apparently, because my BothAnd philosophy is so offensive to his Either/Or worldview, he seldom engages me in philosophical dialog. So normall...
December 16, 2025 at 22:55
I have no experience with AI, other than Google Search. But I suspect that the human programmers of Chat-Bots necessarily include a self-reference alg...
December 16, 2025 at 22:30
How else do we know "what is true"? asserts that Formal or Mathematical Logic is the arbiter of true/false questions. And algorithmic computers are kn...
December 16, 2025 at 22:18
In Faggin's chapter on The Nature of Machines, he makes a distinction between deterministic (true/false) digital computers, and freewill analog (maybe...
December 16, 2025 at 17:32
The material & practical success of quantum science is undeniable : atom bombs, cell phones, etc. But what about the immaterial theoretical foundation...
December 15, 2025 at 17:41
The title of this thread was intentionally chosen to evoke some relationship between the Universe, as a whole system, and human consciousness as a par...
December 14, 2025 at 22:07
Ironically, would troll Neils Bohr as a wishy-washy woo-purveyor, if he had the audacity to post his on this forum. I just realized the significance o...
December 13, 2025 at 23:10
Faggin is indeed idiosyncratic compared to eclectic New-Age-type religious philosophy. But his empirical & rational approach may be acceptable to some...
December 13, 2025 at 18:19
Perhaps. I explore various philosophical positions, but I don't label myself as Idealist or Materialist or Mystic. . . . . nor Immanentist nor Transce...
December 12, 2025 at 23:01
If, by "that term' you mean "cosmic consciousness" you may be correct. I just used that New-Agey Mystical term in place of his more cryptic concept of...
December 12, 2025 at 18:00
I suppose Faggin's notion of Seity is another attempt to define Cosmic Consciousness in scientific and non-anthropomorphic terms. It's his technical d...
December 11, 2025 at 17:54
By "idiosyncratic", do you mean peculiar or individualistic? For an autobiography, I would think individualistic would be a good thing. I've only read...
December 11, 2025 at 00:24
Ha! I was in the Navy --- killing the little yellow man, figuratively not literally --- while the US was going through that New Age of Aquarius, when ...
December 10, 2025 at 18:01
Janus & Wayfarer do tend to view the Mind-Matter problem of Philosophy-Science somewhat differently. So I learn different-but-valuable perspectives fr...
December 09, 2025 at 22:58
Yes, Realism vs Idealism is a dualistic simplification of a multi-faceted complex concept that contains various aspects of both outlooks : what I face...
November 28, 2025 at 18:08
Since Janus and Wayfarer seem to be among the most philosophically erudite posters on this forum, such combative dialog conjures an image of Plato and...
November 27, 2025 at 17:19
I agree : # First, Mind (consciousness, thoughts, feelings) is not an entity, but a process. # Secondly, Mind (power to create imaginary ideas) is not...
November 26, 2025 at 16:57
"Metaphysics" may be the most debated concept on this forum. The confusion may stem from the fact that the idea of Nature, as a hierarchical system, c...
November 24, 2025 at 23:04
may be simply implying --- based on absence of {empirical or theoretical} evidence to the contrary --- that massive space-occupying Matter*1 --- what ...
November 22, 2025 at 22:55
So, you are saying they are parallel domains --- empirical vs speculative --- not one above another? That's OK. I was not implying any heavenly domain...
November 20, 2025 at 01:12
I agree that there are philosophical "domains" that go beyond the self-imposed limits of Objective Physical Science. And philosophers, back to Plato &...
November 19, 2025 at 18:25
Yes. I use the term Universe in reference to the expanding evolving ball of matter & energy that somehow formed a safe haven for us living beings. But...
November 17, 2025 at 18:06
Yes. The difference between modern Philosophy and modern Science lies in their explanatory means & methods : the exploring mind of the Natural Philoso...
November 16, 2025 at 22:40
. The philosophy of consciousness has always circled around a central mystery. But empirical science was supposed to dispel those ancient enigmas with...
November 16, 2025 at 22:25
Good point! Accusations of "dogmatism" and "closed-mindedness" have traditionally been directed toward people of Faith. So, it's ironic that posters o...
November 16, 2025 at 17:38
The problem with Mysterian*1 philosophy is that it gives-up on the ancient philosophical quest : to explore the Hard Questions that are not subject to...
November 15, 2025 at 22:43
Ironically, even some (supposedly) pragmatic scientists are entertaining (seemingly) spiritual explanations for consciousness*1. Such modern theories ...
November 15, 2025 at 17:47
I wasn't familiar with the minority philosophical position, that a Theory of Mind should be eliminated*1 from consideration of the human role in reali...
November 14, 2025 at 18:24
I suspect that this Ontological & Epistemological dichotomy has plagued philosophers from the time of Plato & Aristotle : Hyle (matter) vs Morph (form...
November 13, 2025 at 18:27
Yes. That sounds like a superficially plausible theory. But Materialists will ask, "where's the physical evidence" of an Information Field, and of "do...
November 13, 2025 at 01:06
I Googled McFadden*1, since I had heard of him, to see how he would explain "how the brain becomes aware". He seems confident that this philosophical ...
November 12, 2025 at 18:26
Since I am only superficially familiar with the theory of Biosemiosis*1, can you briefly summarize the steps or stages in the evolutionary mechanism o...
November 11, 2025 at 23:04
Are these your words, or those of Vedral? I'm vaguely familiar with Vlatko Vedral from his association with the Santa Fe Institute for the study of Co...
November 11, 2025 at 22:44
Good point! Deriving Physical sensations from Metaphysical fundamentals, seems to be the inverse of the usual philosophical Hard Problem : Mental idea...
November 11, 2025 at 18:02
Yes. If noumenal Mind could be empirically validated, we wouldn't be discussing it on a philosophy forum. But, since the 20th century, scientific vali...
November 10, 2025 at 17:52
Scientists don't know what Energy & Fields are in substance, but only what they do in causal relationships between material objects. To avoid misleadi...
November 08, 2025 at 23:00
Timaeus*1 observed that, in the real world, "nothing happens/changes without a cause". So he seems to assume that even the ever-changing Real world mu...
November 08, 2025 at 18:33
Again, I had to Google your abstruse terminology to break it down into more commonsense concepts that an untrained amateur philosopher can relate to. ...
November 07, 2025 at 18:17
I assume that in Plato's day they just called it Philosophy. Perhaps, you are stating the obvious, that modern versions of Platonic Idealism are not a...
November 06, 2025 at 22:28
"Undivided-yet-fragmented" may sound like nonsense, unless you are familiar with Kastrup's analogy of psychological Dissociative Identity Disorder (fo...
November 06, 2025 at 18:04
Sorry. But your notion of a "triad of constants"*1 that add-up to 1, sounds like "handwaving" to me. Not because it's wrong, but because it's over my ...
November 06, 2025 at 17:15
Another interpretation of the "Cosmos Created Mind" is Kastrup's Analytical Idealism*1. discussed this alternative in his thread*2. I'm not sure I ful...
November 06, 2025 at 01:12
"Planckscale" is not a fact, and not actual, but imaginary & Ideal & hypothetical. Since I'm not a physicist, "planck scale facts" do not compute for ...
November 05, 2025 at 18:14