Wayfarer

So what was bugging Einstein when he said 'the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible', then? What I'm questionin...

Doesn't allow for the fact that mathematics is predictive, enabling discovery of hitherto unknown facts (e.g. 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathemati...

I didn't say it was. I said that scientific laws (or principles) are where 'logical necessity meets physical causation'. As was established at the beg...

The 'anthropic principle' is quite well established, actually. It comprises observations about the fact that there are a small number of constants whi...

what I think it means, is simply that you can make reasoned predictions and draw conclusions based on both observation and inference. Something very c...

well, he’s written a book on it……

Have you done any units in it? I did a couple of years of anthropology and found it utterly fascinating. Agustin Fuentes seems fascinating. (So many b...

You might like this article on Aeon https://aeon.co/essays/how-trance-states-forged-human-society-through-transcendence Mark Vernon is a writer I have...

mine is currently the last reply in that thread.

An empiricist will say that. A rationalist philosopher might argue that it’s a matter of abductive inference - which means reasoning from effect to ca...

:clap: :up:

An excerpt on Tillich's negative theology: This was also made explicit by John Scotus Eriugena: The point being that according to today's empiricist p...

You and he posted arguments, which I was not persuaded by. Nothing to do with quantum physics.

My conclusion is that scientific law is where logical necessity meets physical causation. I haven't seen an argument to dissuade me of that original i...

Putin’s plan was the Ukrainian army would fold and Russia would install a puppet regime in days or st most weeks. They even had the press releases dra...

With what resources? Presumably, if one wins a war, one can then lay claim to the spoils. Oil, wheat, all the minerals and resources that Ukraine has ...

In any case, the Americans seem to have realised that Putin might be utterly beaten in Ukraine. Early May was Putin’s deadline, in time for V day, or ...

I would read it as a veiled threat. We talking about apophasis the other day, to say something by pretending not to sy it. This is an example. 'Nice w...

Christians just beg to be crucified, don’t they? And it’s so easy to oblige.

It's good that even despite the inconclusive discussion about the actual topic that we've at least been able to sort out the fate of the Universe. Mak...

have a look at that OP pinned to my profile, The Neural Buddhists, David Brooks. Always felt that probably describes my overall orientation quite well...

I don't know. Thomas Nagel says he 'lacks the sensus divinatus'. I recall realising about age 6 that there was such a thing as atheism and finding it ...

Do you know Tao of Physics? That was published in the early 1970s. Of course it has its critics but Heisenberg was interviewed by the author and he ap...

Of course that is true. Religions can be a source of oppression, no doubt about that, but they’re not only that.

Not in the context of post-Enlightenment western culture, because secular culture was explicitly defined against religious culture. The word itself go...

One question I would like to ask is of atheism is the sense in which atheism is the denial of the category of 'the sacred' or 'the holy'. The denial o...

From what I’ve read, Pierce subscribed to a form of scholastic realism i.e. accepted the reality of universals, which would put him at odds with Hume ...

Check out http://www.commens.org/

Perhaps. But it should be considered that in respect of both theology and metaphysics, there is (ostensibly at least) an over-arching framework - that...

My thoughts about it are that the intuition of 'the deathless' represents a supremely important understanding, but that it is very difficult to unders...

It's not showing. :roll: Sorry. Couldn't resist. But you're de-railing the thread again.

As a matter of interest, what school or department was that thesis submitted to?

'Gods'? Gods went out with togas and chariots. I wrote that entry to highlight the distinction between philosophy and physics. They have some areas in...

You will often read that the ultimate question for both philosophy and science is the nature of reality. But I would put it differently: I think the u...

The Via Negativa is associated with Orthodox spirituality and the negative theology of the Patristic tradition. The original point was based on the in...

:100:

Well in that case you probably know a lot more than I do. That might be the source of my disquiet. I only know smatterings of everything.

Have you ever studied units in philosophy? Philosophy of science - Kuhn, Feyerabend, Polanyi? And of those books I mentioned? like Quantum, Manjit Kum...

It's not a matter of using maths explicitly, but that most of the concepts in mathematical physics require a grasp of the maths in order to understand...

See! Lagrangian. What I said.

The problem is, mathematical physics is highly specialised and requires training. Unless you understand what lagrangians and hilbert spaces and vector...

Accordingly, many who misunderstand both classical metaphysics and German idealism believe it's all the same schtick. There's nothing inherently the m...

ahem....philosophy forum..... :angry:

Encyclopedia entries on 'noumena' in Kant 1, 2, and 3. Etymology - The Greek word nooúmenon is the neuter middle-passive present participle of noeîn "...

:up:

I think that is close to what Jacques Maritain meant by the 'intuition of being'. I'm long past expecting anything like that to happen to me, but I st...

It depends on what sense of 'knowing'. This writer says that Kant claims that the noumenal is unknowable - but that both Hegel and Schleiermacher then...

Your question prompted me to review a couple of Robert Lawrence Kuhn's interviews with science educators about this question, Martin Rees and Paul Dav...

I don't think that's correct. But scientists and philosophers both have long noticed the uncanny relationship between maths and the world, going back ...