I'm currently reading The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, by Astronomer Barrow & Physicist Tipler. I was superficially aware that AP was a religious...
I'm guessing that the age-old question of Consciousness is not a major problem for "methodical materialists" because they don't concern themselves wit...
The "Hard Problem" is hard for those who think in terms of Materialism. But, if you think that Information is more fundamental than Matter, "aha" the ...
Yes. Materialists liked Shannon's statistical definition of "Information", because it allowed us to think in terms of Mechanical Machines instead of C...
So, when the material form decays and dissipates, the conceptual Form vanishes? That would make our concept of categories of things-with-something-in-...
Yes. That's why I try not to present my notion of "G*D", without some preliminary throat-clearing, to dispel the Judeo-Christian notion of a humanoid ...
Where is "nowhere"? Do "forms" pop into existence like Venus, who emerged from the sea "fully formed", with no history behind her? What if "nowhere" i...
Yes. Where is Information before it is "encoded" in material form? An idea can be "encoded" in a thousand languages and a variety of mathematical equa...
I just a moment ago read an article by science writer John Horgan : What God, Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Have in Common. But, it's actually a...
To say that Information is "physical" could mean two different things. Either that it has mass like all other physical objects, or that it has the abi...
Yes. I know that abstractions, such as mental Information, can only be discussed in terms of physical metaphors. We just have to be careful not to rei...
Pardon me for butting-in here. But, I think the point of that article, and others like it, is not that Mass, Energy, and Information are the same thin...
The notion of "neural correlates of consciousness" is an attempt to draw a simple one-to-one map of the inter-relationships between empirical brain fu...
How about : "Enformy is Energy with a purpose"? Or, “Enformy : the motivating and guiding force behind the self-organizing process of Natural Evolutio...
Hmmm! I'd first have to define the terms of the definition. . . . . . As I understand it, Information comes in many forms. Yet the basic distinction i...
"Enactivism" is a new term (to me) for an old concept : interaction, communion. And it seems to be relevant to Information Theory, in that it implies ...
Yes. Quantum Theory has made the old Atomic theory obsolete, except in the sense that it is much more intuitive for non-scientists. A Quantum Field is...
Yes, Of course, those abstract terms can be used to describe the statistical energy state of material substances. But, in that symbolic sense, they ar...
What I said was : "Shannon defined his concept of Information in terms of the absence of energy (entropy)". I didn't mean to put words in his mouth, b...
For a communications engineer (Shannon), it wasn't about the energy. But for more recent information theorists, their topic has much broader applicati...
I think that assessment misses a significant distinction between the motives of males and females. Natural selection for reproduction decided that one...
Don't get me started. I have a webpage and a blog devoted to exploring that equation. Shannon defined his concept of Information in terms of the absen...
Information is not only fundamental to the universe, it is ubiquitous. In my view, it is the essence of both Energy and Matter . . . . and Mind. Some ...
The difference is specific Intention versus general progression. Evolution is a process of enforming, by which general laws "select" the fittest forms...
For what it's worth, here's couple of my attempts to define the ancient & modern meanings of the term "information", and the act of "enforming". :smil...
I'll butt-in here to suggest that what Wayfarer meant by "cut itself off" was not a literal or physical operation, but merely metaphorical or metaphys...
This thread has been unusually calm & rational & broadminded, perhaps because Pop himself is calm & rational & broadminded. However, the philosophical...
I also think of active Information (EnFormAction)in terms of Logos and Tao. It's not a physical thing, but a process of organizing and integrating dis...
Our physical Senses are able to detect Information (meaning) only in its "entangled" or embodied physical form. But human Reason is able to detect Inf...
Since Claude Shannon formulated his definition of "Information" as an empty mathematical vessel for carrying meaning from one point to another -- spec...
I don't mean to harp on one note, but I didn't interpret the topic of this thread as referring to pragmatic mathematical axioms -- that are "rationall...
Point taken. I may have missed your intention in the OP. Yet, in my experience, the term "presupposition" is typically used as a negative assessment o...
This thread has strayed from the OP topic of "Presuppositions" --- presumably referring to "unwarranted assumptions" and "biased beliefs" --- into the...
Yes. The paradox of human Reason is that it is the mechanism by which we come to know Reality, but it is also the ability to imagine worlds that don't...
I agree that Nescience is just as rare as Omniscience. So I muddle along somewhere in the middle, consoled by the knowledge than even Socrates admitte...
Hence, your negative reaction to the notion of Transcendence. I will agree that denial of the mundane Reality of our direct experience is unjustified....
Like many philosophers, Kant could be interpreted, and quoted, from both sides of the religion question. Nominally, he was a conventional Lutheran. Bu...
I think you are over-reacting to presumed implications of Kant's Transcendental Idealism, which was not a denial of a real world, or affirmation of a ...
Do you really know what's real? My position is similar to that of Kant : our senses are probing the presumed reality outside our heads, but the pictur...
Objectivity may be "honored more in the breach than in the observance". A succinct statement of ancient philosophical wisdom is Socrates' epigram : "k...
Who said it was? What I said was, "A major feature of wisdom is to know what you don't know." Do you disagree with that assertion? The point of wisdom...
Don't let contrarian posts deter you. He's probably been imbibing too much of his namesake beverage. Which makes everything seem pointless. :joke: Alc...
That description may be true of many people, who accept what they think they see as what is real. But to skeptical scientists and philosophers, and so...
I haven't seen the article, but I have read the book. So, I'd say that the difference that makes a difference, between imaginary snakes and real snake...
"The quote seems to imply that, to reconcile Relativity and Quantum Theory, Plato's Ideal Forms (potential things) should be considered among the "rea...
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