Wayfarer

I understand the signature is still too subtle to be detected. The SETI searches have been concentrating on transmitted signals, not biochemical marke...

It's a digression, but I've always really liked the idea of panspermia. I got the book about it, Intelligent Universe, by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickr...

It would be bittersweet if by some extraordinary discovery we were able to ascertain that there was a possible life-bearing planet several hundred or ...

Not so, it's hydrogen, by a very large margin. There's an interesting special on Australian TV at the moment on carbon, https://iview.abc.net.au/show/...

That's not the point. It's not necessarily about you in particular. The subject is implicit in every such imagined world.

Closer to what you're proposing. Yes, you can imagine an empty universe, but that is still an imaginative act on your part. The subject is still impli...

Right. Now try not imagining anything whatever. That would be closer to the mark.

I think it is. Anything that we deem to exist, does so by virtue of its identity - it is something (or some being) which 'stands apart' - which is wha...

(Mind you, both ‘tiny’ and ‘vast’ are matters of perspective.)

I think this is true. There's an almost identical thread already on this topic, they should be merged. See this comment. I refer to a book I've just b...

I've been sifting through it although missed the live reveal. But I keep thinking, each of those vaguely cigar-shaped blobs is a galaxy, and each of t...

I've been reading a very interesting book, Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter, who's a maths emeritus. The very first paragraph says this: Pint...

The scientific point of view assumes, but then forget that it assumes, an intelligent observer, so as to arrive at the contrivance of ‘a universe devo...

There's an excellent essay on The New Atlantis, by Steve Talbott, a favourite author of mine, which starts with some reflections on so-called AI. It s...

that article is a gem. In brief, researchers noticed the repetition of a number of very odd expressions - ‘tortured phrases’ - which they think are a ...

The 'law of identity' is the most truthful, possibly the only completely truthful, instance of 'is' or 'equals'. If you trace the western philosophica...

Still materialist. And speculative materialism at that. Not my cup of tea.

That's what Yockey says is undecideable. (Hubert Yockey wrote a landmark text called Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life.) It seems t...

Consider that in the very simplest life-forms, characteristics emerge which are not discernable in any inorganic process. In all life-forms, there is ...

It kind of torpedoes the whole idea of philosophy as dialectic, doesn't it? There are sometimes comparisons made between Wittgenstein and Zen Buddhism...

First images from JWT about to drop, story in NY Times (paywalled with some free access).

Wittgenstein, Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism, Stuart Greenstreet.

You miss the point again, which is simply that to doubt there must be one who doubts. You've so far wasted 750 words obfuscating this simple observati...

Quote of the week “The sinking ship is leaving the rat.” - UK Labour Opposition Leader Keir Starmer on the conservative mutiny.

You do understand that everything you wrote here is beside the point, don't you? (On second thoughts, please don't try and explain it further.)

I've only ever cited that particular OP, I haven't read anything else by him. I'll read those other ones now you've mentioned them.

Of note is the fact that it was first articulated by David Hume, the godfather of positivism and one of the leading lights of the Scottish enlightenme...

Note that what is referred to above as the 'stable world illusion' is what we generally and uncritically think of as 'reality'.

I shelled out for the Kindle edition. But as I said before, it's a very concise book, I found it very easy to read, it doesn't get bogged down in a lo...

I am not sufficiently educated in the subject to identify any particular artist or school. As the saying goes, 'I don't know much about it but I know ...

I'll quote this passage in full to convey what Pinter is getting at: Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (pp. 118-120). Springer International ...

Just as well you’re not in charge!

Wondering whether or in what way the Universe is physical is by no means ‘silly’. Physics itself is radically incomplete, both on the level of the bas...

Pinter's book, Mind and the Cosmic Order, again. This is the first paragraph in the introduction: — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 1) ...

I will refer you to my responses in the thread which this started from, rather than trying to re-state them again, in particular this one. But in a mo...

and a splendid book it is, I've learned a ton from it. Agree. Andy Warhol makes me :vomit:

CNN compares Johnson and Trump ‘ Britain's Conservatives just did what America's Republicans never dared to do.’ https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/07/politi...

I didn't invent it. Apparently Cartwright is highly regarded in the subject. And isn't equating the description of a fact with a fact the same as conf...

Bohm2 - whatever happened to him? - provided a link to a good OP on this topic, No God, No Laws, Nancy Cartwright. Cartwright on Laws of Nature

Been here ten years, hasn't worked yet :yikes:

It's a perfectly valid philosophical concern, the fact that it strikes the man in the street as obvious or pointless notwithstanding. Besides, if talk...

Johnson's lies were more matters of expedience, I feel, whereas Trump's lies are much more calculated. And also I think Trump is genuinely delusional,...

I was drawing a contrast with what's happening in the US. There, an entire section of the populace and large media groups are getting behind Trump's l...

at least the British had the common sense to forcibly eject a pathological liar from the highest office.

Valedictory from today’s Australian press https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/love-him-or-loathe-him-boris-johnson-was-britain-s-most-consequential-pm...

I read that he is tendering his resignation but will be hanging around for a couple of months until they sort out his replacement. That'll be kind of ...

I attribute this sense of the division of the world into these contradictory opposites to be deeply embedded in Western cultural discourse and specifi...

:100: This is also the exact topic of the chapter I mentioned in the Embodied Mind. It's a coincidence that Bernstien has just passed away. It seems l...

Just now I was listening to the audio version of the well-known book The Embodied Mind. Chapter 7 is called The Cartesian Anxiety, and then they prese...