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Gnomon

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Since natural genetics takes eons to effect change, and humans are aspirational & impatient, it seems quicker & easier & cheaper -- if not aesthetical...
December 09, 2022 at 18:43
That's not what I said, or intended. Instead, Generic Information (programmed causation) was responsible for gradual emergence of Minds -- among many ...
December 09, 2022 at 00:04
I agree. But I'd prefer to "engineer" man-made machines, and leave DNA-made machines as they are. Our physical limitations are partly due to our menta...
December 08, 2022 at 22:57
I doubt that Consciousness per se is responsible for the QM "collapse". Instead, I would say that extraction of Information from superposed (holistic)...
December 08, 2022 at 17:31
That is the crux of the Realism vs Idealism controversy. Our common language is inherently concrete-based (realistic) because our mutual experience is...
December 08, 2022 at 01:17
What is meant by consciousness being aware of itself? We seem to be presented with two different "thinkers" here : General Consciousness vs Specific T...
December 08, 2022 at 00:17
Yes. Modern physics has discovered both complementary partnerships, as in wave/particle duality. But it also has evidence for contradictory interactio...
December 07, 2022 at 17:55
I just came across a purported Shakespeare quote that epitomizes 's belittling "arguments" toward forum posts that don't fit his own fossilized philos...
December 07, 2022 at 17:39
Humans have already invented technologies that expand the precision & strength of hand movements. For example, surgeons routinely use robotics to do w...
December 07, 2022 at 17:23
I recently read an article -- can't put my hand on it now -- arguing that human consciousness differs from animal awareness primarily in its use of ve...
December 06, 2022 at 23:59
A philosophical (metaphysical) thesis is inherently "untestable" by physical experiments. But it must be amenable to Reason. However, most of the scie...
December 05, 2022 at 18:46
Except that I try not to think of the Enformer in terms of a "Universal Mind", but as the universal power to enform. I have my reasons for making that...
December 04, 2022 at 19:21
No. You need to bring it into focus. These TPF posts on disparate topics are inherently fragmented. But the Enformationism thesis begins at the beginn...
December 04, 2022 at 18:47
"Infinite Regress" is inherent in all scientific postulations (Multiverse ; Many Worlds) that go beyond Post-Big-Bang-Space-Time. On the other end of ...
December 03, 2022 at 19:37
I suppose an Egregore-like emergent entity from collective thoughts could be one answer to the OP. Hive Mind might be another form of collective consc...
December 03, 2022 at 18:36
I saw the possible pun, but I thought you might know of some new philosophical concept. "Conatus" was an old word, but new to me, not long ago. Yet th...
December 03, 2022 at 17:44
Who or what is a "conatist"? I Googled the term, and got only irrelevant links. Literally interpreted, the word refers to someone with WillPower. Is t...
December 02, 2022 at 18:33
For me, that Epistemological dichotomy*1 is not so "sure". From the BothAnd perspective, it's not an Either/Or conundrum, but a statistical spectrum. ...
December 02, 2022 at 18:22
I don't think of the Enformer or Programmer or First Cause as the universal Consciousness. All of those labels point to something outside the space-ti...
December 01, 2022 at 18:19
Apparently Chalmers merely pointed-out an ironic situation -- mind/body disjunction -- that some people accepted as normal (mind physical), and others...
December 01, 2022 at 17:49
Yes. I was trying to distinguish the inner feeling of Irony (private experience) from projecting that feeling toward others, as in Satire or Sarcasm (...
December 01, 2022 at 17:43
You described Irony as directed inwardly. That internal ironic feeling could be rationalized as simply realizing that things are not as they seem, or ...
November 30, 2022 at 18:54
Are those all the facts of the case? If so, what is your verdict? If not, what is the missing piece of evidence? :joke:
November 30, 2022 at 18:05
Yes, but in this thread we differ on our humble opinion of The Facts. For example, is it a "fact" that "Correlation does not imply Causation", as Hume...
November 29, 2022 at 19:31
Before attempting to give a "how" answer to such querulous Matter/Mind questions, I would first ask IF the presumed interaction actually occurs. Does ...
November 29, 2022 at 02:14
From the perspective of Enformationism, I would say that the "configuration of matter" is its Logical Structure. Most people interpret the word "struc...
November 28, 2022 at 18:11
Reductive Classical Science had no place for mental "beliefs", thoughts or ideas. Instead, scientists focused on the "physical foundations of consciou...
November 28, 2022 at 01:01
This sounds like another case of differently-defined terminology. Nyquist seems to include concepts known only by Reason -- such as mathematical field...
November 27, 2022 at 02:01
In the iconoclastic 1960s, coming from a non-philosophical Modernist background, Postmodern irony just seemed annoying to me. For example, postmodern ...
November 26, 2022 at 00:40
It's true that meta-physical ideas do not exist, as far as our physical senses are concerned. But our brains are "configured" to conform with the logi...
November 25, 2022 at 19:00
Don't worry, I don't take myself too seriously. Why does the turkey say "gobbledy google"? I don't know, why don't you Google it? :joke:
November 25, 2022 at 01:52
Ha! You got me. I'm in over my head as a layman discussing nano & neuro stuff, that's usually reserved for professionals --- except on amateur philoso...
November 25, 2022 at 01:36
My knowledge of Coherence Fields is also superficial (Googled). But in laser light "coherence" basically means "organized or focused" instead of rando...
November 25, 2022 at 01:14
That's exactly why I have concluded, along with some professional physicists*1, that Matter is not the fundamental element of reality. Instead, Inform...
November 24, 2022 at 18:28
Again, I'm coming from a completely different angle -- Information Theory -- and trying to tread water in the deep end of the Neuroscience pool. But f...
November 24, 2022 at 00:25
As I interpret the necessity for imaginary numbers in the wave function equation, it allows a metaphysical (ideal ; mental) concept to be calculated a...
November 22, 2022 at 01:31
Back when I was first exposed to the notion of light as a wave function, I imagined it as an actual machine gun spray of bullets that only appear to c...
November 22, 2022 at 00:34
That description sounds like quantum vacuum fluctuations boiling with "excitations". But those manifold "unsettled" states (noise) are merely Potentia...
November 22, 2022 at 00:30
I just finished reading Physics and Philosophy, by Werner Heisenberg, and The Philosophy of Physics by Max Planck. And they both noted that some physi...
November 21, 2022 at 19:39
I googled "absentia" and found a paper on "absential physics". But it was in a technical journal that I don't have access to. So, I'm still in the dar...
November 21, 2022 at 18:25
Hey, give Enrique a break! He's not reporting on settled science, but exploring the fuzzy fringes of Epistemology. As a modern philosopher though, he'...
November 21, 2022 at 01:01
Physicists do indeed make discrete measurements at sub-atomic levels of reality. But at the sub-quantum levels (superposition) they can't discriminate...
November 21, 2022 at 00:16
Several posters have taken exception to the abstract notion of freely choosing from among equal options : door A, B, or C. One objection is that we do...
November 20, 2022 at 01:03
" As usual all of this postulation of possibilities is over my head. But I keep seeing references to "organization", "signal", "steady-state", "modula...
November 19, 2022 at 02:34
OK. I was just trying to make his statement non-paradoxical. But another way to look at it is that Self-Consciousness is a person thinking about his o...
November 19, 2022 at 01:26
I suppose that innate Empathy serves for morality in animal behavior. Instinctive positive feelings toward kith & kin helps to explain why most (but n...
November 19, 2022 at 01:13
I'm not very familiar with Krishnamurti's philosophy, but apparently he is saying that Universal Consciousness can be conscious of the thoughts of ind...
November 19, 2022 at 00:56
That's OK. We all have our blind spots. Yet, there are plenty of other posters who are not mystified by metaphysics, or flummoxed by feelings. But you...
November 19, 2022 at 00:25
Who said anything about "earth wind, fire and water"? I'm not discussing physical Chemistry. Just meta-physical philosophy (ideas ; relationships ; ca...
November 18, 2022 at 01:26
Since I am a late-comer to Philosophy, I am not well-versed in modern abstruse & esoteric modes of philosophizing. I prefer the timeless common-sense ...
November 17, 2022 at 18:08