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Gnomon

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In his analogy with icons on a computer screen, Hoffman explains how a low-resolution representation of Reality is good-enough to keep us alive long e...
October 10, 2021 at 18:03
Yes. (self-aggrandizement aside) I characterize the Enformationism thesis as a sort of Theory of Everything, because it reveals the foundations of bot...
October 10, 2021 at 17:29
I think Donald Hoffman's notion of our senses as an "interface" between us and the real world, may offer a clue to "what gives?" In The Case Against R...
October 09, 2021 at 17:17
Postscript to my previous post about the "self-organizing" function of Information. In the same book and chapter, philosopher Rolston mentions "autopo...
October 08, 2021 at 17:37
Speaking of "what is information?", which we were discussing way back in the beginning of this thread : I just came across -- in a book I read before ...
October 06, 2021 at 23:19
You got me there. I was never good at math or logic. As far as I'm concerned, Socrates was a myth. :joke:
October 06, 2021 at 22:41
Perhaps not. That depends on who's pointing. And some modern philosophers have developed a case of Physics Envy, on the assumption that Philosophy is ...
October 06, 2021 at 22:38
FWIW, here's my attempt to define "philosophy", for the purposes of my personal worldview. : Philosophy : The ancient Greeks began to distinguish the ...
October 05, 2021 at 17:07
Yes. That's why theoretical Philosophy, as contrasted with empirical Science, has not made much measurable progress over the centuries. We still debat...
October 05, 2021 at 17:02
Another way to say it, is that "Wisdom is the practical application of Intelligence". For example, homo sapiens is noted for its Intelligence relative...
October 04, 2021 at 23:35
This is also the old Reductive versus Holistic refrain. If you look at particular things or events, each can be evaluated as Good or Bad, in the speci...
October 04, 2021 at 23:27
I doubt that Einstein himself made the distinction I was referring to. It was just my interpretation. I was extrapolating from the terms "Special Rela...
October 04, 2021 at 22:35
AFE, I generally agree with your position on the distinction between human intelligence (HI) and artificial intelligence (AI). But I just finished rea...
October 04, 2021 at 18:05
I agree. When I said that the physical world has a mathematical foundation, I was referring to the pattern of inter-relationships that the human mind ...
October 04, 2021 at 17:21
That's fine with me. But, if you are not interested in metaphysics, my views on Information won't interest you. That's because Enformationism is a phi...
October 03, 2021 at 18:14
Unless you are a professional philosopher, you may never have to use those technical terms for the fundamental distinction of Reality (quanta) and Ide...
October 02, 2021 at 17:39
FYI -- I do "explain how that works" in my website and blog. If you are really interested, I'll give you some links. :smile:
October 02, 2021 at 16:38
That's because you are confusing two separate methodologies : Empirical Science and Theoretical Philosophy. Qualia and Quanta are not real things, but...
October 01, 2021 at 17:44
That dualistic Cartesian worldview -- mental Form vs physical Brain -- is a common stumbling block for discussions of Information : 1> the ideal essen...
September 30, 2021 at 17:36
That's an interesting observation. Which leads me to postulate that the Sixth Sense of Reason is also a sort of mathematical discrimination. Rational ...
September 28, 2021 at 16:49
Yes. EnFormAction causes changes in physical material, and in meta-physical states. It's the subsequent causation after the First Cause. That initial ...
September 28, 2021 at 01:15
Yes. That's why humans were forced by their internal rational conflicts to develop Laws, Ethics, and Morality : we worry too much about the unintended...
September 28, 2021 at 00:00
Absolute symmetry is perfect & changeless. Change requires asymmetry (difference) in order to allow room for something new to happen. :smile: Yes. Met...
September 27, 2021 at 23:23
Yes. EnFormAction causes changes in both physical material, and in meta-physical states. It's the subsequent chain-of-causation after the First Cause....
September 27, 2021 at 22:38
I'm not qualified to confirm or deny your concept that "information is the interaction of forms". But I tend to focus on information as meaning, which...
September 27, 2021 at 18:25
Landauer says that "erasing" information is equivalent to Entropy, which is the result of deleting Energy from a system. So, extracting Energy is also...
September 26, 2021 at 23:44
Some have noted that it's not the dumb measuring instrument, but the intelligent scientist who looks at the abstract read-out, and realizes what just ...
September 26, 2021 at 23:16
You may not get a lot of sympathy, on this forum, for your apostasy from atheism to deism. But I too, went from a Theistic childhood, to an Agnostic a...
September 26, 2021 at 22:50
Mythically, the root of human ethics is in the freedom to choose what seems to be in the ego's best interest, without regard for the interests of the ...
September 26, 2021 at 22:42
The links below compare the notion of the "neural correlates of Mind" with the filamentous structure of the material universe. Some others have propos...
September 26, 2021 at 22:28
The book I'm currently reading, about The Anthropic Principle, frequently uses the words "crux" and "crucial". The metaphorical reference is to the po...
September 26, 2021 at 18:12
Check-out this site : https://www.incrementalcompressionconjecture.com/summary The link is in the PF thread : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussio...
September 25, 2021 at 17:37
That's similar to what I call "inter-relationships" Systems Theory : A system can be more than the sum of its parts if it expresses synergy or emergen...
September 25, 2021 at 17:06
If our reality is a game, who is the player, and who are the pawns? :wink:
September 25, 2021 at 17:01
OK. Apparently "dualism" means something different to you. You may be thinking in terms of Body/Soul Dualism, while I'm talking about Property Dualism...
September 25, 2021 at 16:58
Yes. I suspect that you envision that Fundamental Information in a form similar to Spinoza's Universal Substance, which is singular, but has "multiple...
September 24, 2021 at 22:51
Actually, Enformationism is dualist in the particular space-time setting, but monist in a holistic infinity-eternity context. It's obvious that the Re...
September 24, 2021 at 18:11
Is the "Enactivist fashion" a physical event, or meta-physical? How do both "aspects of reality" co-exist in a world where two real things cannot occu...
September 24, 2021 at 00:25
Yes. I'm obstinate in my belief that Generic Information is, not just "immaterial", but also "meta-physical". Yet I use that term in the Aristotelian ...
September 24, 2021 at 00:02
Yes. I am one of those obstinate "immaterial minds" disguised as a material body & brain. But that ideal ghostly metaphysical Me only exists as an abs...
September 23, 2021 at 00:25
What are the intrinsic physical properties of "pure energy" fields? As noted below, they are imaginary abstract models of hypothetical (immaterial) ma...
September 22, 2021 at 01:02
Do you think that Idealists are uninformed, irrational, or biased? :smile: Naïve realism : In social psychology, naïve realism is the human tendency t...
September 22, 2021 at 00:14
FreeWill is indeed the crux of the AI debate. And it's obvious to me, that current examples of AI are not free to defy their coding. But, I'm not so s...
September 22, 2021 at 00:10
Yes. The intuitive understanding of objects is that of naive Realism. And normally, it "bears fruit". But optical Illusions and drug-provoked Hallucin...
September 21, 2021 at 23:12
I was not familiar with the term "Enactivism", although I think you have referred to it before. To me, it seems to focus on the two-pronged Informativ...
September 21, 2021 at 23:01
I agree with your first statement. But not with the second. Can you give an example of an Energy "property" that is not known by its secondary "effect...
September 21, 2021 at 22:49
Certainly, Information has physical effects, but like Energy it has no detectable physical properties (color, size, density). Energy was originally de...
September 21, 2021 at 18:10
Yes. The physical "correlates" are visible & tangible. But what does the "meaning" look & feel like? Generic Information takes many different forms, s...
September 21, 2021 at 02:09
Yes. It's understandable that some might define Information in terms of Consciousness. But they are not the same. And the difference makes a differenc...
September 19, 2021 at 18:42
Claude Shannon narrowed his definition of "Information" down to one specific "practical consequence" : either a communication of Information conveys (...
September 18, 2021 at 18:08