Wayfarer

and yet: Surely if your project were really absurd, then every purported "fact" could be called into question. :chin:

I find it hard to imagine how anything like 'a world' could exist without the possibility of suffering. After all, animals predate each other. Evoluti...

this has to be a troll. Best left alone.

I'll risk my $20.00 if it's still there. :wink:

Gleick's book is a reference in that paper you quoted. As I say, saw a copy the other day, think I'll pick it up. He is a good science writer.

:up: Incidentally do you happen to know if the James Gleick book The Information is worth reading? There's a copy for $20.00 at the local second-hand ...

Update from James Webb More at https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/16/world/james-webb-space-telescope-mirror-alignment-scn/index.html

DNA and RNA encode information. That is why I quoted the 'central dogma of molecular biology'. So I understand what you're saying, but I think it's in...

He most assuredly is not. He is claiming that there's an ontological distinction between living and inorganic matter and so, presumably, in the kinds ...

at the point where you decide not to feed it to the dog.

to make use of all the random left-over bits of things, originally. Then they became a thing in their own right.

:ok:

The point about biological information is that it is morphological. It's causal - as said, it retains information and transmits it. Random sounds or p...

'Those who have ears, let them hear'

Because he felt that the science should stand on its own two feet. I think it's an important principle to understand. A scientific thesis has to have ...

Deep question. William of Ockham was one of the first and most influential of the nominalists. Nominalists were those who dispute the reality of unive...

Popular myth. Properly speaking, it’s indifferent to the subject. It’s up to metaphysics to accommodate the empirical discoveries of science, which it...

Always wondered if this was the intuition behind Wheeler's one electron universe.

At least someone is. I bought a really expensive textbook on the subject, which I was just starting to absorb, but haven't been able to find it since ...

Not at all what I said. If you're going to paraphrase something, you need to understand it. The statement I made was supported with a reference to the...

:clap:

Hence the emphasis in biosemiotics about the centrality of signs and signalling to biological processes. 'Transmitting meaning' to knowers requires th...

:up: ‘The soul is the form of the body’ ~ Aristotle

When you have to enclose terms like physical in quotes, you don’t have an argument.

That example is entirely bogus, which is why you had to enclose “knows” In scare quotes. It’s medieval - the stone “knows” is must be nearer the earth...

On the plus side, I note that you're making an effort to relate your idea of metaphysics to Aristotle's. Also on the plus side, you go to a lot of tro...

You haven't addressed the argument concerning the sense in which mathematical objects, numbers, and by extension also, scientific laws and physical pr...

a considerable post. I'm very busy the next couple of days but will respond later.

Hang on. Where we started was with this exchange: It was at that point that I brought up the significance of 'falsifiability'. I made the point that P...

Mother Jones’ coverage seems pretty good. Lots of first-person reporting.

Must’ve been something we said.

Hey thanks for clearing that up.

Don’t know whether to put this here or in the Trump thread but oh well. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/exclusive-kremlin-putin-russia-uk...

ICU We have to have something to kvetch about. Otherwise, what’s the point?

All due respect, and at risk of opening a can of worms, how is that any different from positivism? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tvzmuUPpNw

Where he and I seem to differ, from my perspective, is that although he gestures towards 'downward causation', ultimately all causation has to be bott...

There is a technical term in Advaita Vedanta, 'nirvikalpa samadhi', ' a state of awareness where the ego and samskaras have been dissolved and bare aw...

After that, nothing further to add.

I did, and it went straight past you.

I suggest you do that before reflexively reeling off an answer.

But the issue there is that the 'criterion of falsifiability' was devised by Karl Popper specifically to differentiate an empirical from a non-empiric...

Oh, and sometimes, if the URL is very long, the whole string after the = sign needs to be enclosed in a pair of double quotes (“).

I’m generally sympathetic to your motives, although I have to say, critical of your methods. I’m on the same side of the ledger as yourself - critical...

Took me years to work that out! Here’s a hint: select an instance and click QUOTE and you will see how it’s done. That Richard Lewontin quote was from...

Hey don’t sweat it. It’s an interesting take on the kinds of things he said, but didn’t ring quite true. Never mind this is not a test.

So - you’re trolling the trolls?

It doesn’t sound like Kant. What it sounds like is garbled version of the Heisenberg quote, ‘what we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed t...

The jealous God dies hard.

Got a reference for that? No, not what I had in mind. Some way in which human existence is part of a cosmic story, and not simply a fluke occurence, t...

There’s something missing from it, though.