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Gnomon

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One way to look at that question is to think of the physics of the Big Bang. The theory implies that a pre-existing dimensionless Singularity began in...
September 06, 2022 at 17:52
The binary-within-unity Yin-Yang philosophy is neither Pollyanna nor Candide. It admits that "bad sh*t happens", but on-the-whole the good vs evil str...
September 06, 2022 at 16:42
"There's no time like the present". I'm currently reading a book by theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder. In a chapter entitled, Is Math All Ther...
September 05, 2022 at 17:26
Ha! This is what I was referring to in the note about language. One way to understand the term "Monism" is as a huge Atom, with no internal parts -- j...
September 04, 2022 at 23:11
I can pardon obtuseness of ignorance, but not the bias of Materialism. :joke: You don't "get" Monism, because you don't "grok" Holism. It's a general ...
September 04, 2022 at 18:33
I have practiced meditation -- including Alpha-Theta monitoring and the sensory deprivation of an isolation float chamber -- but so far have experienc...
September 03, 2022 at 17:52
You seem to be thinking in terms of scientific Reductionism, as opposed to philosophical Holism. Apparently, you are not familiar with the philosophic...
September 03, 2022 at 17:23
Since my own personal philosophical worldview is Monistic & Holistic, the title of your OP caught my eye. I developed my Enformationism thesis from ce...
September 03, 2022 at 01:08
Thales may have been motivated by confusion, to simplify the profusion of things down to a single amorphous substance : Water, which conforms to its c...
September 02, 2022 at 17:28
My weltanshauung is broad in application, but narrow in focus. It's based on the single simple inference*1 that everything in this world is a form of ...
September 01, 2022 at 23:31
My own interpretation of an evolving world --- which has produced organisms that can wonder about how & why they exist --- is somewhere in between the...
August 30, 2022 at 21:18
I would guess that the universe was designed, not for free-floating souls, but for embodied souls. In this case, the word "soul" refers to sentient se...
August 29, 2022 at 18:08
Yes. Those thought-experiment tools (logic, etc) are used to extract general or universal meaning from personal & local experience. As a matter of fac...
August 28, 2022 at 18:03
FWIW, my "search for truth" was never emotionally motivated (e.g. to find a warm & welcoming religious community to replace the ultra-conservative cli...
August 25, 2022 at 17:15
Thanks for the obscure info. I had never heard of Grosseteste. I was referring to Lemaître in the 20th century. And the oblique reference was merely i...
August 25, 2022 at 16:41
Using personal Experience and innate Reason to hack a path through the jungle of religious beliefs was my only philosophical option. A common religiou...
August 24, 2022 at 22:50
Ouch! Is that why I feel so itchy & drippy around artificial organisms? :joke:
August 24, 2022 at 00:24
Ironically, the emergence of Life & Mind from the heuristics of evolution, is what resulted in Human Culture. And intentional artificial culture is no...
August 24, 2022 at 00:07
Possible?, maybe. Probable?, who knows? Advisable?, pioneers are seldom deterred by lack of understanding. Dangerous?, a shot in the dark is always pe...
August 23, 2022 at 23:44
This is slightly off-topic, but I just read a book review in Philosophy Now magazine (issue 150), which reminded me of this thread. The name of the bo...
August 23, 2022 at 23:05
I too, was once "hopeful & naive". By the time I graduated from high school, I had doubts about my own fundamentalist ("back to the bible") Christian ...
August 23, 2022 at 17:05
That's a provocative assertion for a philosophy forum. Of course, Quantum Physics has no philosophical content for those who prefer to "shut up and ca...
August 22, 2022 at 17:38
Why ask why? Oh yes, we're doing philosophy here, not calculation. Richard Feynman warned fellow physicists about getting side-tracked on "why" questi...
August 22, 2022 at 16:43
Perhaps. But how can we sort-out which of the many "true" religions is the "right religion" for me? In forum discussions, I've noted that Muslims (Isl...
August 21, 2022 at 23:43
As a former Christian, I must say that your post is quite logical, and well-presented. And I agree that "The empirical sciences have not replaced the ...
August 21, 2022 at 17:29
Perhaps those mathematical ratios & regularities tell us only that whatever happens is natural & logical -- or G*D's Will, if you will. From that assu...
August 21, 2022 at 16:26
I agree that "measurement" is more appropriate as a causal force, than mere "observation". The latter term can be construed as Passive, while the form...
August 20, 2022 at 22:09
Modern Science has concluded that every physical thing in the universe is essentially a form of mathematics : geometric relationships & algebraic rati...
August 20, 2022 at 17:31
Perhaps, the "mechanistic worldview" you are referring to is the philosophical faith labeled "Scientism"*1. It seems to consider mechanistic Classical...
August 19, 2022 at 17:39
One "singular truth" of the Mechanistic worldview may be the assumption that humans in a "state of nature" are completely selfish, and always in a "wa...
August 18, 2022 at 16:58
A quick Google search indicates that Dr. Desmet is primarily concerned with The Psychology of Totalitarianism. And I infer that he views the current t...
August 17, 2022 at 17:03
Why desultory? Sounds like a fun hobby. As an architect, I once designed a Sundial Tower, just for funsies. It wasn't really a sundial, but merely "in...
August 12, 2022 at 16:58
You are not alone, in looking for an alternative to negative-combative-simplistic-two-value-Either/Or thinking. In my personal philosophy, I call that...
August 11, 2022 at 21:59
That's OK. No offense taken. I was just riffing on one implication of your post : that humanity might be devolving due to unfitness : not having the "...
August 11, 2022 at 16:27
Is that your humble way of implying that, contra Kant, you do have personal access to "absolute truth"? What "trick" are you referring to? Do you thin...
August 10, 2022 at 21:52
Don't give up on us yet. I hope our good qualities are not being "discarded". But sometimes one talent comes to the forefront, and another recedes. Fo...
August 10, 2022 at 17:20
An interesting perspective! It reminded me that lower animals have no illusions. For example, an ant is not concerned with "Truth", and doesn't worry ...
August 09, 2022 at 17:17
Apparently, Stalin saw only the forest, and not the trees. Which is why he could view individuals as expendable for the higher purposes of the collect...
August 08, 2022 at 17:11
Yes. Evolution weeds out un-fitness, but useful (pragmatic) "illusions" (models of reality) are fit-enough to pass the survival test. Donald Hoffman d...
August 08, 2022 at 16:47
I also don't imbibe 180 proof Materialism. It's bad for your mental health; even for those who don't believe in immaterial Minds. :joke: Anti-Idealism...
August 07, 2022 at 22:34
Say what? Alls I'm sayin is that our understanding of what's real or unreal, true or false is subjective phemomena, not objective noumena. That's why ...
August 07, 2022 at 18:02
True & False are opinions, not facts. They don't exist apart from human minds. That's why Kant labeled them "synthetic" (artificial instead of natural...
August 06, 2022 at 23:07
I just read, in Stephen Nadler's A Book Forged in Hell, about Spinoza's concept of divine determinism, as evidenced by reliable (consistent ; unvaryin...
August 06, 2022 at 17:37
Yes. If we couldn't agree on some universally applicable First Principles (starting point for reasoning), Philosophy & Science would be a political co...
August 05, 2022 at 23:39
I think you have put your finger on a sore-point of Philosophy & Science : the necessity to take some "facts" for granted without empirical proof. The...
August 05, 2022 at 17:18
Good point! In Physics, changes in value can only proceed "forward" (positive) one-step-at-a-time. But in meta-physical*1 Mathematics, we can imagine ...
August 04, 2022 at 17:07
In sci-fi movies, AI robots, such as the Terminator, are represented as recognizing a target person by rapidly overlaying templates, until a match is ...
August 04, 2022 at 16:09
I have toyed with the notion that the human brain comes equipped with "templates", abstract images, that we apply to percepts in order to "make sense"...
August 03, 2022 at 23:10
Yes. Obviously "fundamental matter is not conscious" (dumb as a rock). But some foundational element of Nature must at least have the Potential for pe...
August 03, 2022 at 22:39
Most of the proposed answers I've seen, to the "invented vs discovered" question, seem to conclude that it's a little of both. The "unreasonable effec...
August 03, 2022 at 22:22