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Gnomon

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I'm guessing that Anscombe's assertion that "determinism is impossible" was based on Quantum Probability, Uncertainty and Indeterminacy. But early Qua...
October 15, 2022 at 23:09
I just read in Werner Heisenberg's book, Physics and Philosophy, that "causality can only explain later events by earlier events, but it can never exp...
October 15, 2022 at 16:35
" ‘Always when this, then that’" sounds like absolute Determinism, or Fatalism. But Gnomon "advocates" Compatibilism : freedom within determinism. It ...
October 15, 2022 at 16:25
Perhaps the linguistic confusion you are referring to is due in part to the use of a single English word, "cause", to translate Aristotle's four causa...
October 14, 2022 at 23:28
Yes. The key distinction between Potential Energy and Actual Energy is Inter-action. I think of Energy as a form of Information. In its statistical st...
October 14, 2022 at 17:28
Aristotle's differentiation between Potential & Actual, as two different ways to exist, may help you to understand the same distinction in Physics. Yo...
October 14, 2022 at 00:32
I too, have no formal education in Philosophy, except for a math course in basic Logic. Some of these threads & posts use technical scientific and phi...
October 13, 2022 at 23:38
In the Heisenberg book quoted before, he refers to quantum physicists' impractical "thought experiments" as "ideal experiments". Thus implying a link ...
October 13, 2022 at 16:50
Hossenfelder is not saying that bold conjectures (beyond current testability) by scientists should be censored. She's just noting that, until a theory...
October 12, 2022 at 16:43
In general, that's true. Hossenfelder was not condemning scientists for creating theories to explain physical mysteries. What she warned against is fa...
October 11, 2022 at 16:31
I too, read books by Albert Ellis, and was impressed with his Rational-Emotive self-therapy. You could think of it as self-directed Philosophy, or mer...
October 11, 2022 at 15:54
Yes. That was the premise of physicist Fritjof Capra's 1982 book, The Turning Point. In which he introduced the concepts of Holism and Systems Theory....
October 11, 2022 at 00:01
I think Massimo Pigliucci would agree with you about the Non-overlapping Magisteria of Science and Philosophy. That's a nice way to avoid antagonism (...
October 10, 2022 at 23:37
I agree. He's trying to use scientific (physical) methods to study a philosophical (abstract, metaphysical) topic. But, I applaud his ingenuity for de...
October 10, 2022 at 17:14
I agree. Aristotle referred to what we now call "Metaphysics", as "First Philosophy". But, for some on this forum Metaphysics is a four-letter word. A...
October 10, 2022 at 16:39
180boo asks politely why Gnomon doesn't ever "answer any of my polite, direct, simple questions of your "unorthodoxy & jargon"? You can tell him for m...
October 09, 2022 at 22:59
Some have taken issue with your labels for the "two kinds" : Science vs Pre-science. Yet, I suspect you had a good reason to word it that way. Perhaps...
October 09, 2022 at 22:40
Yeah. I eventually decided the Enformity*1 concept might be a step too far into the woo-world*2. Not for me, but for those prejudiced against alternat...
October 09, 2022 at 17:39
Save the spooks for Halloween. I have a suggestion : why don't we just agree to disagree on whatever distraction we are disagreeing on, and return to ...
October 09, 2022 at 00:59
I know; it's a no-win situation. Like defending yourself from accusations of being a witch. Anything you say will be twisted to use against you. I don...
October 08, 2022 at 18:01
Innovators are often "incorrigible" in the face of Inquisition. :cool: In a letter to Kepler of August 1610, Galileo complained that some of the philo...
October 08, 2022 at 17:39
What you're saying is that you'd prefer that I quote from your Science Bible : perhaps the Authorized Steven Hawking Version, or the Official Compendi...
October 08, 2022 at 17:07
No. That was a secondary website I started, but got side-tracked on the blog. The Enformationism thesis is here : http://enformationism.info/enformati...
October 08, 2022 at 16:13
What physicists inappropriately label "Negentropy" is what I call, "Enformy". Entropy is dissipative & destructive, while Enformy is integrative & cre...
October 08, 2022 at 01:07
I'm not aware of any official doctrine for Holism*1. It's just a philosophical concept or principle. However, in my own personal worldview, Enformatio...
October 08, 2022 at 00:25
Cheer up! As 180 noted, we are "bags of chemistry, and much more" The "more" is what we call Holism, or a functional system : parts working together t...
October 07, 2022 at 18:02
Not so. Holists would say that 2 x 2 = 4. Holism is not mere addition, but multiplication.*1 The whole system emerges from complex interactions of all...
October 07, 2022 at 17:35
The bare chart lacks context. Is this Binary classification intended to be an idealized snapshot of pluralistic reality, or to refer to an historical ...
October 07, 2022 at 00:51
October 06, 2022 at 23:28
I'm currently reading Existential Physics by Sabine Hossenfelder. The "existential" part of the title was probably an oblique reference to publicprofe...
October 06, 2022 at 19:55
Where can I get a prescription that that? :smile:
October 06, 2022 at 17:07
Ironically, Neo had to take a magic pill to open his mind to the possibility that his reality might not be what it seemed to his brainwashed senses. W...
October 05, 2022 at 23:15
I agree. That's the whole point of putting debatable ideas on a public forum. Most threads on TPF have their pros & cons, yet manage to remain somewha...
October 05, 2022 at 23:07
The simulation hypothesis is fun for computer nerds to contemplate, perhaps because they see no personal consequences of the notion of artificial Real...
October 02, 2022 at 02:21
That was not directed at you personally, but characterized the depressing downward trend of below-the-belt ideological argumentation, on a question or...
October 02, 2022 at 01:18
Don't worry about it. Just as you read something from your own imagination into my posts, I read some un-stated assumptions into your post. So, we're ...
October 01, 2022 at 18:13
Actually, It was Pigliucci, who objected to the use of such a derisive slang term "woo" in a philosophical or scientific context. It's a short-hand em...
October 01, 2022 at 17:00
I'm not familiar with the "bicep data" that you claim I "threw" into the conversation as a "gotcha". Sounds like you know more about what I'm talking ...
October 01, 2022 at 16:30
Good for you! Does that professional "engagement" with word-processing certify your authority to label people's opinions with the technical term "woo"...
October 01, 2022 at 01:33
Unstated assumptions : Speculation Bad! Metaphysics Bad! Did you omit a prejudicial step, in your logical calculation of that damning conclusion from ...
October 01, 2022 at 01:07
What evidence led Guth to extend the Big Bang moment backward in space-time? Historically, the gathering evidence for anthropic initial settings made ...
September 30, 2022 at 23:59
Is that your official definition as an accredited expert on knowledge-in-general? Or is that just your layman's opinion on a debatable question? Can y...
September 30, 2022 at 23:38
Does The Philosophy Forum have minimum requirements for "professional credentials"? Do you have relevant accreditation to verify that your own "opinio...
September 30, 2022 at 18:11
I too am not a physicist, So anything I say about Quantum Physics on a philosophy forum should not be taken as an authoritative pronouncement on physi...
September 30, 2022 at 17:44
To a pragmatic non-philosopher a realistic simulation would make no difference. But inquiring minds want to know. For example, Descartes, skeptical of...
September 28, 2022 at 22:44
Perhaps, but the winnowing of experience separates the wisdom from the babble. Yet, Age alone doesn't make you wise, it just makes you old. Wisdom is ...
September 28, 2022 at 01:40
Try to convince the Ukrainians that peace & harmony is inevitable. To the contrary, Philosophers of East & West have argued mostly for bottom-up happi...
September 28, 2022 at 01:21
I wouldn't say that humans "worship ignorance", but I could suggest that people fear "Uncertainty", and worship "Hope". Religious people are not idiot...
September 27, 2022 at 18:17
The origin of our world in a sudden act of creation is now generally accepted as a scientific fact, not a religious myth. But Science is limited by tr...
September 26, 2022 at 18:27
In the Sci-Fi TV series Expanse, Earthlings who lived for generations on Mars, became adapted to its low gravity. Unfortunately, upon return to Earth ...
September 25, 2022 at 22:54