Wayfarer

Nagel's review of Dennett's Bacteria to Bach and Back is called 'Is Consciousness an Illusion?' David Bentley Hart's review in The New Atlantis is cal...

I had the understanding that quantum physics had obliged science to allow for the role of the observer in the conducting of experiments - the 'observe...

'Don't try to condense the meaning of the wisdom into a sentence' would be a good start.

My thoughts exactly. Mainstream culture has drawn conclusions from the supposed 'discoveries of science', such as that the Universe is the product of ...

Everyone says that 'I' must be this concrete entity that has 'an identity'. 'No entity without identity' - right? But what if it is a process, not an ...

when an artwork is reproduced, what entity travels from the original to the reproductions?

Yes good point. Have a look at the essay.

Your remark: Philosophy and science both are often engaged in exploring theoretical explanations. Naturalism seeks explanations which are based on obs...

Whenever you can't answer an argument, you fall back to ad homs and accusations of 'straw men' which means you don't understand the criticism. I've be...

Well, that's exactly the business that 'natural philosophy' is in, isn't it? Why are the ice sheets melting? Because of increasing CO2 in the atmosphe...

There are different schools of thought about metaphysics. My comment was more about the common belief that metaphysics has been superseded or rendered...

It's significant how much of the new atheist polemics relies on rebutting a literalistic interpretation. But for those who never understood them as li...

Opening sentence is a zinger.

scrivener is amazingly cool although it’s rather Mac-centric, there is a Win version but it was first created on Mac. (I’m getting pangs of guilt agai...

'All compound things are subject to decay', but 'There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbeco...

The 'instrumentalisation of reason' that the New Left describes. The philosophical problem is precisely the elimination of telos, purpose, from ethics...

I think the practice of science is itself becoming 'greener'. I mean, we're going to be relying on environmental science, food science, energy science...

You might find neuro-anthropology interesting.

Hey, thanks for attributing the Copenhagen Intepretation of quantum physics to me! Makes me feel even more significant.

If you mouse-over the bottom of a post, there's an icon that appears with an arrow to the right - click on it, a Link to This Post window appears, cop...

Biosemiosis is saying that interpretation takes place on the level of cellular biology, i.e. that cellular biology can be understood in terms of inter...

Cribbed from various sources: Biosemiosis studies 'pre-linguistic meaning making' - that is, production and interpretation of signs and codes and thei...

Actually that story comes from the early Buddhist texts, where the experiment was conducted by a character called Prince Payasi, who was a charvaka, m...

I think the over-arching point is that it would have been inconceivable for classical culture to entertain the idea that the Universe is the product o...

I asked the question because I found it a very difficult technical article, with a lot of terminology and equations I couldn't understand, and I suspe...

He's on my reading list, as is Antonio Damasio. When I asked 'what compelled you?' it was more an attempt to highlight the irony implied by your quest...

Sure. All those guys who built the Hubble are just blowing smoke. Losers.

Yeah sure Corvus, because you think that, then it undoubtedly must be so. No doubt you're an expert in all this kind of thing.

It's a gross equivocation of the meaning of both. I have faith and trust in science, insofar as I accept that it is conducted by people of integrity w...

To learn how wrong you are, read up.

There is voluminous evidence, but if you’d rather believe some anon poster on an internet forum then that probably won’t make any difference.

‘How can I overcome myself?’

:sad: There's a certain pathos in someone who can't understand what it is they don't understand. ‘We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.’ Sorry. Couldn’t...

No machine could do this.

What compelled you to say that?

You keep saying you’re not a philosopher but I’m not convinced. There are theories of consciousness that I believe are credible, chief amongst them Bu...

NO! Crucial to understand why the question is such a difficult one, and not kick the can down the road by thinking ‘oh well, we will solve it one day’...

‘Theories of consciousness’ suffer from the circularity of being the products of the very thing they’re wanting to explain. That differentiates them f...

No, I didn’t submit. I had a short story but it was too long for inclusion.

:scream: Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328474-400-why-physicists-cant-avoid-a-creation-event/#ixzz749vWdJlV So, there are some k...

Through sheer dumb luck, of course.

There is a realm of possibility. I didn’t invent the saying ‘true in all possible worlds.’

Thanks - John Hand seems another very interesting author. I recently discovered another interesting popular science author, Timothy Ferris, who covers...

that even people way smarter than you can be completely mistaken about something like that?

The Wikipedia entry on Georges Lemaître is a mine of insights on this question. I sometimes draw attention to this paragraph ----- I'm interested in R...

Lawrence Krauss wrote a book, a Universe from Nothing, but David Albert, a philosopher of physics, said Krauss doesn't know what nothing means (apolog...

But you can’t see what anything is, if your face is hard up against it. Obviously. I don’t need to ‘try it’, or ‘prove it’. I see no reason to believe...

Isn’t perspective intrinsic to seeing? If you want to see an object, you can’t see it if your face is pressed against it. Only through perspective, an...

Things don’t have views. Beings have views. The point of Kant’s idea of the thing in itself is simply that perspective is inextricable from the knowle...