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Gnomon

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Actually, photons are the universal "carriers of information" in a manner similar to Shannon's "bits" & "bytes". Yet a single photon (bit) is too simp...
April 02, 2021 at 22:05
"Militant Moderate". Perhaps I should have used a smilie icon after that remark, to indicate that I was kidding. :joke: Another way to put is that, ph...
April 02, 2021 at 17:42
I just noticed that, in The Moral Equivalent of War speech, William James came to the same conclusion, to explain why major wars are becoming fewer & ...
April 02, 2021 at 00:22
Did you read The Human Sexes, by DM? Lots of nudity. :yikes:
April 01, 2021 at 23:56
Yes. That's why I am a Militant Moderate. Ironically, immoderate Trump faced-down "little rocket man", and didn't get into a shooting war with North K...
April 01, 2021 at 23:53
Morris may have meant that dogs actually copulate (inseminate) only when in heat. But both male & female dogs will playfully simulate sexual intercour...
April 01, 2021 at 23:34
I suppose this thread is talking about how bad Porn is morally. But that's not the point of my post. It was motivated mostly by frustration, because T...
April 01, 2021 at 04:54
Ironically, the Power of Porn is being revealed today (3/31/2021) on the internet. We're experiencing a worldwide (mostly US & Europe) Denial-of-Servi...
April 01, 2021 at 00:17
The human advantage over cats is in the degree & detail of its imagery -- including abstract models of Probability. I assume that cats have an instinc...
March 31, 2021 at 23:00
The human advantage over cats is in the degree & detail of its imagery -- including abstract models of Probability. I assume that cats have an instinc...
March 31, 2021 at 03:05
In a broad sense, I am OK with the general notion of Pantheism, but for my particular worldview, I call it PanEnDeism. :cool: PanEnDeism : Panendeism ...
March 31, 2021 at 02:49
James was both a Pacifist and a Pragmatist. Which means that, if we can't change the warlike nature of humanity, we must learn to live with it. Perhap...
March 31, 2021 at 02:31
Humans have an advantage over most animals, in that we can imagine the near future, and prepare to make our next move, before the future actually arri...
March 30, 2021 at 17:56
A century ago, William James described the need for an occasional external (or internal) motivating threat to the Body Politic as the "moral equivalen...
March 30, 2021 at 16:57
The title Master & Emissary reminded me of Jonathan Haidt's interesting metaphor of the relationship between Conscious & Subconscious mind as the Maho...
March 30, 2021 at 02:38
When I fist heard of Jayne's hypothesis, I thought the notion of a bicameral brain -- to explain the emergence of human-type consciousness -- was a go...
March 29, 2021 at 22:36
Why is there Something Instead of Nothing? Off-topic diversion continued . . . . chasing the elusive butterfly of Why? Another "simple desultory phili...
March 29, 2021 at 00:21
Sorry. I had just read an article about Bitcoin. Hence the discursive diversion off-topic. But what if it was actually a prologue to an on-topic post,...
March 28, 2021 at 03:35
That's an interesting philosophical concept. For example, in what sense is Bitcoin actual? Perhaps it becomes actualized when a coin miner cashes-in t...
March 27, 2021 at 22:11
Some ancient thinkers assumed that the physical world had existed forever. But others intuited entropy, and guessed that the existing world would even...
March 27, 2021 at 03:20
The word "probability" was derived from the concept of a provable postulate or prediction. An un-provable prediction is an opinion with no testable gr...
March 26, 2021 at 18:03
I'm sorry you feel that way. I've been enjoying my own truish middle ground for several years now. Since I gave-up pursuit of Divine Truth long ago. P...
March 14, 2021 at 03:39
One way to understand Spinoza's worldview is as an Enlightenment Era update to ancient notions of Panpsychism. However, the scientific knowledge, his ...
March 13, 2021 at 23:08
Perhaps you are reading the wrong links. Your definition was the traditional usage of the term "information", up until Shannon's Digital Information T...
March 13, 2021 at 18:45
I understand where you are coming from. It's that prejudice (us versus them) against Essentialism, that I have to try repeatedly to overcome in my ref...
March 12, 2021 at 21:53
I understand where you are coming from. It's that prejudice (us versus them) against Essentialism, that I have to try repeatedly to overcome in my ref...
March 12, 2021 at 18:56
How does "intellect come from matter"? Do you know what process or "force" could cause inert matter to evolve into a living thinking being? Based on I...
March 12, 2021 at 18:37
Yes, by comparing different "expert's" opinions on a topic. Ancient Greeks, Hebrews, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists addressed similar philosophical topic...
March 12, 2021 at 00:41
Does that mean you think Human Reasoning is a strictly material phenomenon? If so, can you provide empirical evidence to show how material processes g...
March 11, 2021 at 18:40
Don't worry about it. Religious Thinkers and Philosophers often "talk past each other ". :cool: Talk Past Each Other : Talking past each other is an E...
March 11, 2021 at 00:45
I don't follow the Hindu religion, but I do occasionally refer to some sublime Indian Philosophical concepts in describing my own worldview. For examp...
March 11, 2021 at 00:17
I'll preface by admitting that, like Socrates, I know nothing about such preposterous questions. But that doesn't stop me from guessing and speculatin...
March 10, 2021 at 23:53
Some dictionary sites give "imaginary" as a synonym for "mystical". But my primary concern for mystical worldviews is the synonym "occult". Labeling s...
March 10, 2021 at 18:23
Hmmmmm??? OK. But what does that have to do with Human Nature? :grin:
March 09, 2021 at 18:49
So, the un-bound is restricted by the bound, or the un-limited is confined within limits. Sounds like, not a paradoxical koan puzzle, but a simple con...
March 09, 2021 at 18:46
I have read some of Wilbur's intriguing books, but not that one. I tend to agree with most of his critique of Modernism & Scientism. But, I'm not pers...
March 09, 2021 at 18:38
I suspect that most questions about "human nature" are looking for properties ("fundamental features") that are different from "animal nature". But as...
March 09, 2021 at 18:26
Modern psychology has been searching for the common denominator -- or the "essence" -- of the human Mind/Body for several generations. But they typica...
March 09, 2021 at 00:12
In my layman's philosophical thesis, what's "responsible" for initiating the "multiplicity from unity" sequence of events is Intention. That hypothesi...
March 08, 2021 at 23:47
I've saved a copy of the article to peruse when I have time. But my sense of the whole/part priority question is related to the polarized Top-Down ver...
March 08, 2021 at 18:47
Yes. I'm not qualified to follow the complex logic & arcane terminology of your link : Supervaluationism ; Hysteresis ; Resolutions in utility theory ...
March 08, 2021 at 00:14
I assume you intended to reply to Gnomon. Enformationism is my attempt to resolve the paradox of Living - Thinking - Loving Matter, without bowing to ...
March 07, 2021 at 23:46
The only problem with that notion is nailing-down the definition of "entanglement" in this cosmic context. Normally, the term is limited to quantum sc...
March 07, 2021 at 19:06
Gnomon likey! :grin: My worldview is indeed Monistic & Holistic, as opposed to Pluralistic & Reductive. But that all-is-one philosophy takes different...
March 07, 2021 at 04:09
Since I'm not likely to read that highly technical article, I was hoping you would be able to define "Emergence" in your own words. That would show th...
March 06, 2021 at 19:09
For me, Information can be both Ideal & immaterial and concrete & material. As a Platonic Ideal Form, the power of Enformation is timeless & spaceless...
March 06, 2021 at 03:54
Ironically, one problem with using "relationship" to define Information, is that a Google search almost always returns a long list of human relationsh...
March 06, 2021 at 03:40
That stuff is way over my head. So, I'm still waiting for your dumbed-down philosophical summary of whatever that scientific jargon has to do with the...
March 05, 2021 at 18:52
True. That's because Materialism is a commonsense view of reality. Information & Energy are invisible and intangible until embodied in some material f...
March 05, 2021 at 18:42
Yes. In my conjecture, the Artist deliberately encoded an "X factor" into the program of evolution. If evolution was completely determined by the inte...
March 05, 2021 at 01:58