Siti

A universe that is birthed, plays out and ends might very well be ultimately pointless even if it at some brief interlude during its existence is was ...

Being, knowing and experiencing are necessarily temporal - that is a key idea of process philosophy. The idea of time as fundamental is not shared by ...

Try the library - that's where I found it. You can use one's own experiences - that's why these counter-intuitive notions seem like "common-sense" int...

Gnomon - I really don't think I can do this question justice right now...but the essential idea is that the actual entities composing reality are "occ...

If you were to stop there, we would be in almost complete agreement...and we would both be saying: Not "known" universe - not limited to human knowled...

Of course they are...oh dear! So many misconceptions and misinterpretations - where to start... OK - virtual particles are NOT particles that are virt...

I do and it is reasonably well captured in this excerpt from your quotation of Wilberg: This "primordial field of potentiality" seems to be what you s...

Agreed. But shifting from reductionism to holism and mechanism to organism doesn't mean we have to abandon physicalism...it just means we have to take...

I think you are missing the point again - I don't insist on the "primacy of the material world" - the world is always (no matter how simple or complex...

Now who's missing the point? Just because it itself is not a piece of matter doesn't mean it is does not belong to the material world. In any case, wh...

Oh c'mon Gnomon! You almost had me believing that you had a solid argument - not one that I happen to agree with you understand, but a solid one nveve...

But that would be the end of time - no time, no change, no anything...that can be the end, but it could not possibly be the beginning...how could chan...

Well that's the sixty-four thousand dollar question isn't it? If we extrapolate back, the 2nd law of thermodynamics states that we should see evidence...

But wasn't elan vital abandoned by biologists when it became clear that evolution (aka change) was the driving force of biological variation? The pote...

I suppose for the same reason that ancient cartographers used to write "here be dragons" at the edges of their maps. There's no harm, but how does it ...

Well - I wrote a long response to your earlier post only to find that my internet connection had mysteriously disentangled itself - my attempt to fix ...

Well I did say there considerable gaps to be filled in - qualia clearly arise at somewhat higher levels of complexity - but fundamentally, are they no...

I just want to clarify why I DO choose to use the experience despite the obvious disadvantage you have correctly pointed out. For me, experience is ju...

Well if I knew that, I wouldn't be wasting my time in The Philosophy Forum, I'd be on my way to Stockholm to collect my Nobel Prize...but I prefer to ...

If you can entertain the notion of an infinite regression of multiverses, zillions of mindless atoms bouncing around like un-aimed billiard balls will...

No you didn't, I did. I suggested that the "primordial" IDEA - i.e. the starting point of the "process of creation" - if it were truly unlimited (as i...

I understand that...but even a 'wise fool' (according to the well known Irish joke) knows that if you want to get to Dublin you shouldn't start from h...

So would that not be "intuition" rather than "insight"? And forgive me my lack of faith, but I can't help being very wary of philosophical ideas based...

I'm a little bit confused by the OP linking "insight" (whatever that is) with "pattern recognition", which is sometimes, it seems to me, the opposite ...

Bula Gnomon! I am struggling to see how you can have both of these: and... If the first is correct then the "original idea" and "intended goal" must p...

If its an "intentional program" then "essentialism" is the only option, nothing is really genuinely the result of constructive (creative) evolution bu...

Don't know about that - it would presumably be an even greater misfortune for a Buddhist to be reborn as a fundamentalist Christian - who (from a Budd...

Such as?

But surely one of the most obvious facts about human nature is that humans have the propensity for devising moral and political systems that fail beca...

How can anything that humans have devised "fly in the face of human nature"?

Science is necessarily empirical and based on the assumption that B follows A (whatever A and B cause/effect pair we are considering) via a perfectly ...

Obviously! So is there any reason - now that we have happily discarded the argument for irreducible complexity - to doubt that it is equally obvious t...

Perhaps - but they do seem to spend a bit less time trying to kill each other than either of their two closest evolutionary cousins - so perhaps a few...

But then you are left with a null hypothesis (which is not really a null hypothesis anyway) that simply states that "you can't get from A to B" when t...

Chicken!

But that second definition too is based on teleological assumptions - the argument is that evolution could not 'select' in favour of a pathway leading...

Now you are misrepresenting what I said - of course alien life is possible - even intelligent alien life and even super-advanced intelligent alien lif...

No I'm not, you were talking about things for which we have zero evidence...so was I.

Well "as far as we can possibly tell" there are giant silver teapots orbiting all planets beyond our own solar system and entirely invisible moncupato...

Dear God - what have I got myself into? No - IC is committed to teleology because (as Behe defines IC) it makes the assumption that all the parts of a...

OK - but can I use my own words that I already used...or do I need to reduce the complexity of the language?

True, but if it leads to infinite causal regress why not just admit that we have no clue what caused it and focus on attempting to understand what we ...

What are you talking about...OK - here are Michael Behe's own definitions of IC: And here's his conclusion from the same article: How is any of that n...

I'm not following - because I talked about two ideas (ID and irreducible complexity) making the same assumptions (as they do) my comments are irreleva...

I don't think they answer anything - there is absolutely zero evidence for intelligent aliens interfering in biological evolution - and how does it he...

That's why I said "and"...

I think you're missing my point here. The assumption of ID and irreducible complexity is that there exists a teleological relationship between biologi...

I mean since I do not take simulation theory or the idea that earth-bound biology was somehow "engineered" by advanced aliens seriously, I have no req...

How can "irreducible complexity" be anything other than an a priori assumption? Scientists are not sleuths - its not a "crime scene" where evidence is...

Well that's me off the hook then!