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Gnomon

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Actually, the first so-called "computers" were women mathematicians. And their primary advantage over their male competitors was that they were able t...
May 06, 2022 at 22:17
Yes. But the human mind evolved for quick back-of-the-envelope solutions to pattern-recognition problems : tiger or bush? The computer was developed &...
May 06, 2022 at 22:04
Yes. That's how AI chess players beat humans : they have instant access to thousands of historical games and situational plays. The only thing that ke...
May 06, 2022 at 16:39
Memory is just data storage. Pattern recognition is the beginning of cognition : knowing, consciousness. Pattern recognition sees the invisible (meani...
May 05, 2022 at 22:31
Yes. Ethics is concerned with relationships between people, not between G*D & Man. As I see it, G*D is not Fair-to-me, but Neutral-to-all. For most pe...
May 04, 2022 at 17:17
An old saying is that "you can know the artist by his art". Likewise, you can know the Creator by the nature of his Creation. So, we can infer some ch...
May 03, 2022 at 22:30
Don't take that scientist's loose talk about Information having Mass too literally. He's thinking of Information as a "state of Matter". Instead, I vi...
May 03, 2022 at 18:07
Yes. Quantum scientists & Cosmologists (mathematical theorists, not empirical pragmatists) are coming to the conclusion that invisible-intangible Info...
May 02, 2022 at 17:08
Enformationism is my personal worldview, based on 21st century Quantum & Information theories. Scientists are beginning to conclude that shape-shiftin...
May 02, 2022 at 16:34
I just Googled "Meinong's Jungle", and found that his view of Nominal vs Phenomenal existence was similar to my own assumption in the Enformationism T...
May 01, 2022 at 17:58
Yes. Some ancient philosophers (Pythagoras) and modern Physicists (Mario Livio) have imagined G*D metaphorically as a Divine Mathematician. My own met...
April 29, 2022 at 17:11
Of course, it's wordplay. But it's also Idea-play. That's what humans do. Those who deny Idealism, are repudiating Humanism. What distinguishes humans...
April 28, 2022 at 15:48
Modern philosophers tend to distrust Intuition, as a hasty & emotional instead of methodical & rational way of knowing. But Intuition is fundamental, ...
April 27, 2022 at 17:10
When our calm rational conversations become frictional, it's usually due to some prejudicial unstated presumption. And I think you have hit upon one h...
April 27, 2022 at 00:49
I agree. That's why I refer to the philosophical Principle of First Cause or Necessary Being by various alternative names, including "BEING". But most...
April 26, 2022 at 23:59
This premise presumes physical existence, hence knowable via the 5 senses. But most modern god-concepts deny that premise. Hence knowable only via the...
April 26, 2022 at 17:52
The Catholic Scholastics were arguing in favor of their bible-god : paradoxically, both a timeless abstract concept, and a historical personality acti...
April 26, 2022 at 17:34
Holism is an ancient philosophical notion (e.g. Taoism). But, my eyes were opened to the modern concept of Holism --- as an Evolutionary Principle and...
April 26, 2022 at 00:23
That open-ended chain seems to be the assumption of Multiverse & Many Worlds proponents. But it mandates an endless regression of Causes, with no answ...
April 25, 2022 at 23:10
That's a strange assertion coming from "Philosophim" (those who love wisdom?). If a logical necessity cannot be derived via philosophical argument, ho...
April 25, 2022 at 17:56
Ancient people probably had no concept of an eternal or self-existent First Cause. Their polytheistic gods were merely names for invisible natural fea...
April 25, 2022 at 00:27
Unfortunately, I get the impression that some aggressive posters raise such arcane technical questions in an effort to intimidate those outside the es...
April 24, 2022 at 17:52
Good point. Until the Greek Revival / Enlightenment gave scientists the courage to abandon the age-old all-purpose explanation --- that the omniscient...
April 24, 2022 at 17:26
Yes. But the "Whole" is the immaterial "extra" (pattern ; arrangement ; logical structure ; metaphorical "glue") which unifies the physical parts into...
April 23, 2022 at 18:24
"Ironically, Kant's unknowable noumena are the very kind of knowledge that philosophers specialize in : speculation & conjecture into the unknown, and...
April 23, 2022 at 17:55
Yes. Physicists just take Laws & Constants for granted, without further explanation. For pragmatic purposes, it's not necessary to delve into metaphys...
April 23, 2022 at 17:34
Ironically, Kant's unknowable noumena are the very kind of knowledge that philosophers specialize in : speculation & conjecture into the unknown, and ...
April 23, 2022 at 00:25
Yes. The Big Bang theory caused cosmologists, such as Einstein, to reconsider their presumption that the physical world was eternal, hence uncondition...
April 23, 2022 at 00:06
Yes. Although I would say that Matter is generic Information in a particular formation. Energy & Matter are different forms of general Information (E=...
April 22, 2022 at 23:50
Ya, it does. The ultimate simple is not a part (one of many), but the Whole (all-encompassing Unity). But, a better name for that unpartitioned infini...
April 22, 2022 at 16:56
Slightly off-topic, but perhaps on point. A physicist writing about Quantum Theory, clarified her use of the word "information" : "First, what is info...
April 22, 2022 at 16:41
Non. I use the word G*D, to refer to the Whole of which we humans and sub-atomic dots are merely Parts. No part is fundamental to reality. However, I ...
April 22, 2022 at 15:52
To put this question in the "right perspective", here's the punch line : Physicist Leon Lederman labeled his book on the Higgs Boson as The God Partic...
April 21, 2022 at 23:40
Again, you are using a prejudicial comparison to implicitly label the trans-person as insane. I don't personally know any trannies, yet “gender dyspho...
April 21, 2022 at 23:25
That's an interesting observation. The late emergence of "objectivity", as a formal verbalizable concept , may be explainable in terms similar to Juli...
April 21, 2022 at 17:19
I suppose you are viewing "intelligible objects" from a god-like Rationalist perspective -- from outside the world system. As far as God is concerned,...
April 20, 2022 at 17:22
Welcome to the club. At most human gatherings, philosophers are as popular as wet blankets. :wink: On the bright side, this forum does have special ca...
April 20, 2022 at 00:21
It was just a metaphor. We can imagine logical relationships, but we can't see or touch them. So, we talk about logical relationships as-if they were ...
April 19, 2022 at 23:52
I'm not sure what you meant by "nice shape", but in information theory it's the relationships that make the "form" or "pattern" or "meaning". So, perh...
April 19, 2022 at 23:30
No. You are interpreting a trans-person's self-image as a delusion. But, if so, your own self-image would also be a delusion. :wink: No. That's irrele...
April 19, 2022 at 17:19
Physicalists can shrug-off the power of information, only because it seems Idealistic to them. But, in the Enformationism thesis, Generic Information ...
April 19, 2022 at 16:46
In my personal philosophical worldview, Enformationism, Logical Necessity is Causation. But that meta-physical notion does not compute for physicalist...
April 19, 2022 at 01:40
If you are talking about trans-sexual people, those opposed to non-traditional non-binary gender roles, might say they are "claiming to be something t...
April 19, 2022 at 00:30
From a slightly more positive perspective, I might label this "era" as the birth pangs of the Fifth World. The "fourth world" label is already taken, ...
April 17, 2022 at 22:57
Oui, oui. Since the real world is good enough for survival, but far from optimum, the human mind has developed the unique ability to imagine something...
April 17, 2022 at 17:54
The ambiguity of some male/female physical features is not so surprising if you consider that the embryo -- formed from male sperm & female egg -- beg...
April 17, 2022 at 17:38
I suspect that the concept of a trinitarian deity resulted from 2nd & 3rd century theological debates over the nature & status of Jesus. The Jews, and...
April 17, 2022 at 00:08
The current LGBTQ . . . .xyz controversies revolve around a problem that scientists & philosophers have not been able to resolve : what makes a man/ma...
April 16, 2022 at 18:18
Yes. That's the argument Cypher made in The Matrix : the illusion was the only reality he had known, before he was "woke" into the harsh reality of th...
April 16, 2022 at 16:54
In the current issue of Philosophy Now magazine, David Chalmers is interviewed about his latest book : Reality +. It's described as "an adventure tour...
April 15, 2022 at 16:44