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Marchesk

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There is an entirely different possibility, ala Kant. The real world is very different from our ability to conceive it, and the rubber meets the road ...
January 08, 2017 at 23:01
There's a better way to state the problem. The Schrodinger equation doesn't show any sort of "collapse" to a single outcome, which is based on a proba...
January 08, 2017 at 22:58
No, because he's basically rejecting point particles in favor of a quantum fields. The fields have wave-like properties. When they interact with somet...
January 08, 2017 at 22:52
But then how do you account for all the things that General Relativity does? Gravitational lensing of stars and Galaxies, Mercury's orbit, neutron sta...
January 08, 2017 at 17:53
Gravitons, I would presume. And space has quantum foam, where virtual particles pop in and out of existence, creating energy that supplies most of the...
January 08, 2017 at 16:07
Yeah, but part of science is asking why phenomena appears the way it does. What's going on behind the scenes? Imagine if Newton and Einstein had stopp...
January 08, 2017 at 16:03
So a universal computer could compute the result of itself being sucked into a black hole and having contact with the interior (singularity or whateve...
January 06, 2017 at 00:27
Back to this. Let's say all of physics is computable with a few hundred qubits, including black holes and Microsoft Office for all sentient beings ins...
January 05, 2017 at 23:05
What does the algorithm for computing a black hole look like? Do we know that a quantum computer can operate as a turing machine, and do we know that ...
January 05, 2017 at 22:58
Do you think that a few hundred qubits could completely simulate a black hole? And by that, I mean the object itself, not just the effect on things ou...
January 05, 2017 at 18:40
How would the computer compute the future of the universe without being the entire universe? And if the entire universe isn't computing ahead such tha...
January 05, 2017 at 08:43
If the sentence is meaningless, then it can't be true.
January 04, 2017 at 19:14
That seems like cheating. Now you can just remove any paradoxical statement by saying it's neither true or false. Let's try this as a result: "This st...
January 04, 2017 at 12:28
The third one is the "strengthened" liar paradox. Consider: "This sentence does not express a true proposition." If it's true, then you're back at the...
January 04, 2017 at 12:24
Which form of the liar statement? I am lying. This sentence is false. This sentence is not true. The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is f...
January 04, 2017 at 12:16
I don't know how you can say that. The contradiction in the liar statement stems from following the rules of logic. If not, then why is it considered ...
January 04, 2017 at 12:09
From finally getting curious enough to read up a bit on it, seems the motivation is to be able to define a theory of truth free of contradiction. Witt...
January 04, 2017 at 09:52
Star Trek version: KIRK: "Everything Harry tells you is a lie. Remember that! Everything Harry tells you is a lie!" HARRY: "Now listen to this careful...
January 04, 2017 at 09:42
Here's an even better one that dates back to ancient times: A crocodile takes a child but promise the parent he will return the child if the parent gu...
January 04, 2017 at 09:37
Math and logic aren't grounded by the world. Also, there's fictional truths, such as Harry Potter performs magic.
January 04, 2017 at 09:20
Well, here's a clever way to remove the self reference and still end up with the liar's paradox: Socrates: "What Plato is saying is false" Plato: "Wha...
January 04, 2017 at 06:54
You requested that of MindForge, but since he hasn't gotten back to you yet, what do you think of the argument that SEP presents? L = "This sentence i...
January 04, 2017 at 06:40
SEP's counter to this is the sentence, "This sentence is not in Italian", which is not meaningless, but is in the same form as the liar sentence. And ...
January 04, 2017 at 06:23
But we do say things like that on occasion. For example, "This party is not a party", meaning it's a party in name only. I'm pretty sure I have said s...
January 04, 2017 at 06:17
We use the word contradiction in natural language. That politician is stating contradictory things, or you're contradicting yourself, etc. This is the...
January 01, 2017 at 13:27
I don't understand what feelings have to do with this. The liar's paradox presents a logical contradiction. I can't always be lying if I'm telling the...
January 01, 2017 at 04:33
Idealism isn't skepticism. It's a response to skepticism, in that an alternative metaphysics is being proposed such that one can't doubt that one is k...
January 01, 2017 at 02:43
If waving one's hands was enough to defeat Berkeley's arguments, then surely kicking a rock would have been as well? Both totally mischaracterize idea...
January 01, 2017 at 02:36
Yes, it's like your brain and your body have different ideas.
December 24, 2016 at 10:35
I suppose so.
December 18, 2016 at 07:50
The properties that make a thing a certain something. What is the essence of an electron? Mass, charge, spin, and whatever else distinguishes electron...
December 18, 2016 at 06:37
So what are similarities? Every single electron in the universe is similar because it has the same mass and amount of charge. Mass is similar because ...
December 17, 2016 at 11:03
Apo and Streetlight in a similar thread to this months ago said that everything starts off the same, and then because of symmetry breaking and what no...
December 16, 2016 at 21:25
Gollum, because he saved Middle Earth by biting off Frodo's finger with the ring on it at the last moment.
December 16, 2016 at 21:18
So, instead of a deserted blob, it's a bunch of particulars. But what is the relationship between particulars such that some particulars are more simi...
December 16, 2016 at 20:37
What in hell does it mean for the human condition to be a logical entity?
December 12, 2016 at 18:16
An empirical question that would shed light is whether the brain uses the same resources to imagine, hallucinate, and dream that it does for perceptio...
December 10, 2016 at 06:54
I don't think that's the fundamental issue. I think it's that an objective description is abstracted away from first person experience. So the questio...
December 10, 2016 at 05:49
Why would God need to think? It occurred to me a while back that God has no need for intelligence, because there are no problems God needs to solve. I...
December 09, 2016 at 21:47
How would one go about showing that consciousness is decidable? I take it that if it is, consciousness can be computed, which means a Turing machine c...
December 08, 2016 at 22:15
Because in this one you're replying to the post. In another one, you're sleeping. What you're asking is why you're experiencing posting and not going ...
December 07, 2016 at 08:31
Obviously, thought would need to be physical in a way that's connected to the physical thing. Computation is one such attempt to do so. How can a comp...
December 06, 2016 at 19:04
They did, or will exist, and GR suggests that they do. Also, the future is conjecture or projection for us, not knowledge. It's past events you're que...
December 06, 2016 at 18:43
Does it make any difference if it's 5 feet away versus 5 million miles? (I don't recall the sun's distance from Earth). Light takes time to travel reg...
December 06, 2016 at 18:41
Why isn't there a physical connection to things in time or space? I don't get that at all. The sun isn't inside our brains. It's several million miles...
December 06, 2016 at 17:44
Sure. But those are likely cultural. I can think about a unicorn. I didn't invent the idea of unicorns. It was out there in the cultural landscape. An...
December 06, 2016 at 17:42
But not according to anyone else? The sun is just an experience that has nothing to do with our talk of the sun? That sounds rather Landru-like, and i...
December 06, 2016 at 17:40
This is a matter for the sciences to sort out, ultimately, not philosophers. It's a matter of how human beings learn, form concepts about what they le...
December 06, 2016 at 16:48
I like how Meillassoux used death and finitude to get around correlationism. That's rather creative. Death by various means is problematic for idealis...
December 06, 2016 at 14:29
How much are you suffering? Are you being stretched on the rack? Are you scraping by in the zombie apocalypse? Did someone put you in the dungeon and ...
December 05, 2016 at 10:32