T_Clark

This thread hasn't been open for a while. I have something I tripped across a couple of months ago I wanted to post here. This is the most beautiful t...

I was using "ideology" in a fairly negative way in my post. Ideology as an inflexible, dogmatic viewpoint.

Not an important point for me in this discussion, but it bothers me in general. I think it is disrespectful to both science and religion.

No. I don't agree. Science is an ideology, not a religion. Religion is... well, no, I don't want to open that door here. I don't know how it was used ...

A = sandwich * r^2. Doesn't work for me. Arccos (-1) = sandwich. Nope.

Someday, in another discussion, we can discuss how God is involved in all this, because it is. But, no, I am not, and I don't think Wayfarer is, talki...

I don't think @"Wayfarer" was talking about supernatural phenomena. We'll let him respond.

I've taken my best shot. If what I've written so far hasn't convinced you, let's leave it at that.

Just checked. Here is a link to a discussion in Wikipedia about the proof that pi is irrational: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_that_%CF%80_is_ir...

I agree. It is semantics. You have misunderstood the meaning of the word "emergence" in this context.

I'll take a swing at this. @"Wayfarer" and I don't agree on a lot, but I think we share some views and values in this area. I'm a civil engineer. That...

Concrete is not a property, it is a material made up of sand, cement, and water. Strength is a property which is relevant to concrete and all three of...

I downloaded the Chalmers article. Thanks for the suggestion. I didn't really buy his distinction between strong and weak emergence. Most of the inter...

As I indicated with Pop, this is not the correct use of the word "emergence" in this context.

Sand and cement have known physical and chemical properties, including strength. Resistance to force, i.e. strength, is not a new property or behavior...

The term "emergence" has a specific technical meaning in this context. If it means what you indicate it does, all physical and chemical interaction be...

Not every change in characteristics is emergence. In your example, the behavior of the concrete is directly causally related to the physical and chemi...

"Truth" is generally defined as congruence with objective reality. I will agree that science is very good at identifying the truth in that sense. Ther...

I like this Thompson guy, even though he's got it all wrong. At least he lays out the problems clearly. As a great philosopher once said - Clarity is ...

Do you mean "mystery" as in stuff we don't know yet or as in stuff that requires some special way of knowing? Or maybe stuff that is unknowable? That ...

I agree that there are important, completely non-scientific ways of understanding consciousness and experience and science that doesn't recognize that...

Abiogenesis and evolution are entirely different processes. Evolutionary theory says nothing about the origins of life, only how life has changed over...

Sometimes I remember me too.

I specifically made the distinction between science and technology. I'll nitpick - Science doesn't tell us anything about why, only how. I'm not a the...

Civil engineer working cleaning up contaminated soil and groundwater. Retired now.

I'm sorry no one has responded, so I will. Welcome to the forum. I am an engineer and visiting the Netherlands has always felt like coming home. A nat...

I do want to make one thing clear, in case I've been misleading - I believe there are legitimate, non-scientific ways to know the world. Most of the w...

An....odd simile. By which I mean I don't know what you're trying to say.

Here's a link to a famous article written in 1972 - "More is Different." https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393 You'll find it referenced...

Whether or not technology has saved us is open to debate, but we'll leave that for now. Science by itself doesn't help anyone. It has to be turned int...

I don't understand how your post is intended as a response to mine.

If you're proposing that our society should be so called "color-blind," that won't sell. Maybe it might in the future sometime once we've worked ourse...

I'll ask again. Please explain in what way calling racial conditions in the US a war makes a solution to those issues easier or more likely.

Emerson uses the word in a similar sense in "Self-Reliance." I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on t...

No. Please explain in what way calling racial conditions in the US a war makes a solution to those issues easier or more likely. All they do is give o...

No, they really don't. Sure, maybe chimpanzees can will and intend. I don't know. Not amoeba. You are redefining words for your own convenience. I've ...

So, to be consistent you'd also have to think a plant has a will to seek the sun. You've completely changed the meaning of the word "will." Here are s...

Yes, although I have read other writings that discuss the same issues. I have also spent a lot of time paying attention to my own personal experience ...

Do you think a bacterium has a "will to survive?" What does that even mean? It doesn't have a will to survive. It survives or it doesn't.

I also came from materialism. It seemed so simple. But alas, it's not. It's actually a lot more interesting than that. There is a place to feel at hom...

Now we are in the realm of evolution as described by Darwin. Survival has nothing to do with intention or purpose. If certain characteristics or behav...

This is from the Amazon description of Nagel's Mind and Cosmos: And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existe...

No reputable biologist in the last 100 years, if ever, has proposed evolution as described by Darwin as the mechanism for the origin of life. You have...

The ones closest to my own experience are Reason #s 1, 5, and 7. I don't have any feeling that there is an unseen order. I was trying to make a comple...

I'm not sure James' definition matches mine exactly, but I'll stick with it because, well, we're supposed to use the assumptions provided in the origi...

At least one part of your story is not in tune with current understanding. 3.5 billion years. This is probably not true. It was fine until they took o...

The explicit chain of inference is justification. If not, what is? My opinion, what I called a model, of the world comes from the sum total of my expe...

Moral decisions, in my experience, are not rational, although I guess they could be. A rational argument starts with assumptions. In a non-moral decis...

At some level, when someone asks what something means, they're asking what it points to, e.g. "moon" points to that big round thing in the sky. That's...

When I'm going to make a specific decision based on specific information, I have to be able to set up an explicit chain of inference connecting what I...