You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Gnomon

Comments

The link in my post investigated the history & validity of the quote, and others like it. Personally, I'm not concerned with what was "actually said" ...
October 07, 2020 at 02:24
Yes. I also don't use the term "Information" is a strict Shannon sense. And my thesis is based on modern Science instead of ancient Philosophy. But it...
October 07, 2020 at 01:59
Yes. In conventional physics, all material things are stable forms of dynamic Energy. But in cutting-edge Information Science, Energy itself is a phys...
October 06, 2020 at 22:41
The appearance of contradiction is inherent in Paradox. No. I find Chance & Possibility & Probability in the mindless Quantum Realm. The human mind is...
October 06, 2020 at 22:25
In the US, there are sizable groups of people who are planning, and stockpiling, for a Race War or Civil War. And if Trump loses the presidential elec...
October 06, 2020 at 21:39
I liked the concept of philosophy as "martial arts for the mind". So I googled it. And sure enough that phrase is being used as a come-on for selling ...
October 06, 2020 at 03:03
Humanity has been "on the brink" for eons. The Fall of the Roman Empire __Gibbon 1776 ; The Decline of the West __ Spengler 1926. As a species in a wi...
October 06, 2020 at 01:37
The Buddha disagreed with you. He noted that the average person was not in control of his desires, hence was essentially a zombie driven by evolutiona...
October 06, 2020 at 01:20
I'm not very familiar with "The Axe", but I suspect that his notion of a single creative principle in the world is closer to Plato's "Logos", than to ...
October 06, 2020 at 01:01
I haven't read his book, The Ethical Brain. But according to a brief net search, he seems to be trying to have it both ways. As a Neurologist, you wou...
October 06, 2020 at 00:35
William Shakespeare — 'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'
October 04, 2020 at 16:45
I wasn't familar with Gazzaniga's opinion on Free Will, but I suppose you are referring to his article : Free Will Is an Illusion, but You’re Still Re...
October 03, 2020 at 18:03
Actually, meditators may also try the "get used to it" method to overcome a personal problem. I once worked with a man who flew-in from California to ...
October 03, 2020 at 17:43
Such a cosmic computer, and evolutionary program, has already been designed. And you don't need any goggles to see its virtual reality all around you....
October 03, 2020 at 00:39
Buddhism seems to be both a Religion for the masses, and a Philosophy of life for the few. Admonished by his critique of their current decadent societ...
October 02, 2020 at 18:02
Your diagram illustrates that, in the messy real world, the Good vs Evil conflict is not as simplistic as some would think. This multidimensional conc...
October 01, 2020 at 17:31
The Social Dilemma of social media stems from the fact that, as businesses, they are no longer primarily News media dealing in Facts, but Advertising ...
September 30, 2020 at 17:19
I wasn't familiar with the term "antinatalism", meaning "it would be better to never be born, than to live in an immoral & evil world". Apparently, th...
September 29, 2020 at 18:18
In: Gotcha!  — view comment
Good point! Many philosophers seem to believe that their purpose in life is to find fault in other people's reasoning --- to be the annoying gadfly. B...
September 29, 2020 at 17:17
In: Gotcha!  — view comment
Yes. But that was politics, not philosophy. :smile:
September 28, 2020 at 16:42
In: Gotcha!  — view comment
Unfortunately, that negative definition of Philosophy ignores the positive contributions of Plato & Aristotle, among others. They were not just Critic...
September 27, 2020 at 17:55
It's possible that Socrates was kidding about the daemon, or pandering to popular superstition. But he may have simply used the most common term of th...
September 26, 2020 at 02:10
"Value" can be divided into two general categories : positive value (Good) and negative value (Bad). Hence, "Pleasure" is a sub-category under Good, a...
September 25, 2020 at 17:21
There is no path forward. Philosophy is a heuristic search pattern into the unknown. In retrospect though, the trodden "path" looks like Hegel's zig-z...
September 25, 2020 at 01:21
Space-Time is a complex issue since Einstein muddied the waters. Until then, our relationship with space was taken for granted, as that which is neces...
September 25, 2020 at 01:10
I too, in Architecture school, did exercises in visualizing negative space. We learned to view Empty Space not as mere nothingness, but as a potential...
September 24, 2020 at 22:49
Yes. In the Enformationism thesis, human "Mind" is defined as the emergent function of human Brain, as it processes Information. But the ultimate "Cos...
September 22, 2020 at 22:15
Actually, a Photon is a hypothetical particle. No one has ever seen or touched an elemental photon. Like Energy, we know that photons exist only by th...
September 22, 2020 at 17:48
Is the term "All" useless or meaningless? Is the term "Whole" too broad for understanding? "Information" originally referred to the meaningful content...
September 22, 2020 at 17:31
Yes, we can now define Reality in terms of invisible intangible immaterial mental Information. Some physicists now define "reality" in terms of fundam...
September 22, 2020 at 03:14
Precisely! But, since Causal Information, or as I call it Enformy, includes both cause & effect, it is responsible for both Mind and Matter. Matter is...
September 21, 2020 at 17:52
I agree. That is the basis of my Enformationism worldview. This is not traditional Panpsychism though, but the cutting-edge concept of Information as ...
September 21, 2020 at 17:33
Yes. After I "lost faith" in my "back to the bible" fundamentalist upbringing, I was initially intrigued with the general concept of Theosophy (god wi...
September 20, 2020 at 18:00
Good point! I was in the Agnostic "maybe" category, but developed a Deist god-concept based on the science of Information Theory, and concluded that a...
September 20, 2020 at 17:28
Hi Hermit I'm not sure what you mean by equating "unconscious with reality". Freud's term "unconscious" is today more appropriately called "sub-consci...
September 19, 2020 at 17:50
Nothing is "beyond Reason" --- if it is allowed to roam freely, and restrained only by the long leash of Experience. Human Reason is like a dog's Nose...
September 18, 2020 at 22:48
Jersey offered his opinion that Enformy sounds like a "mystical force". So, I'd like to clarify -- not for his edification, but for yours -- that Enfo...
September 18, 2020 at 18:23
The Enformationism thesis is my contribution to the current desire among thoughtful people of good will, to reconcile the metaphysics of Religion with...
September 18, 2020 at 18:05
No. It's a philosophical hypothesis, based on cutting-edge science. It's also a person opinion. I'm sorry if novel ideas annoy you. :cool:
September 18, 2020 at 01:05
Fear not! There's no cult. There's only little old me. It's a personal philosophical non-religious worldview, based on modern science and reason, not ...
September 18, 2020 at 01:01
For the purpose of communication with non-philosophers, I sometimes use the term "G*D" with an asterisk to indicate an abstract "deity" as opposed to ...
September 18, 2020 at 00:58
Enformationism : As a scientific paradigm, the thesis of Enformationism is intended to be an update to the obsolete 19th century paradigm of Materiali...
September 18, 2020 at 00:48
Sorry to butt-in with a low-IQ comment. But the human race is not a consequence of order destroying Entropy. It is instead, in my humble opinion, the ...
September 18, 2020 at 00:13
My personal worldview, Enformationism, also inferred a necessary abstract hypothetical world creator from the available evidence of the physical & met...
September 17, 2020 at 23:53
The "way of thinking" that emerges in the un-self-censored anonymity of internet forums is what I call the "Either-Or" attitude, which denies any midd...
September 17, 2020 at 18:14
The evidence and reasons of believing or disbelieving in a mysterious deity, responsible for the existence of our world, have been bated & debated for...
September 15, 2020 at 23:30
My Enformationism thesis is qualified by the admission that it is an informal layman's speculation, intended only to serve as the basis for a personal...
September 15, 2020 at 23:15
Apparently, you think that the "reasonableness of Theism" topic is an intra-natural scientific question. But, I am approaching it as a supra-natural p...
September 15, 2020 at 17:07
BEING is a personal neologism, coined to encapsulate the notion of fundamental essential existence that is logically necessary, and not beholden to an...
September 15, 2020 at 02:50
What "alternative theories about existence" did you have in mind? Most atheists seem to just take the existence of "Reality" for granted. Hence, the M...
September 15, 2020 at 02:16