Wayfarer

Oh, never. Saudi oil is the lifeblood of industrial culture. (Actually I remember some caustic remark by some former diplomat, who lamented that the g...

Why, thank you! You're too kind, I was simply quoting wikipedia. You might have missed the anecdote I mentioned earlier in this thread:

I'm not claiming that observation is rendered invalid by the requirement that there be an observer. What I'm saying is that the observer brings an ind...

I’m not passing any judgement in its veracity but I thought it was interesting. I got Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe's book way back in the 80'...

I feel so much of US foreign policy at that time was driven by the desire to avenge 9/11. Bush and especially Cheney had a burning desire to demonstra...

That is a very good point.

Let’s not forget the people who launched the whole debacle. The ultimate exploding cigar.

Yes, I think it was that one. Long time ago, very hazy memory. The city of Khandahar, which has just fallen to the Taliban, is a version of the name o...

I remember in the 1970's, I think it was, a Time Magazine account of something that had happened in Afghanistan, I think an overthrow or revolution or...

I think that's consistent with what I said. It's a teleological process, i.e. working towards an end or outcome. In this case, a plausible step toward...

Paper proposing that the CORVID-19 virus arrived from comet fragments on Oct 11 2019. Consistent with types of theories called 'panspermia' proposing ...

Of course. But the connection between impressionism in art, jazz improv, and existentialism, is indelibly printed in my mind. Actually I did a unit on...

that's what I meant. Serious French people in cafes smoking Gauloise, drinking black coffee, Django Reinhardt playing in the background.

Paul Davies says something along those lines in The Goldilocks Enigma. What about the final cause? The final cause of a match is fire, in that matches...

The fact that technology works is not relevant to the question at issue. Technology has very little to say about such questions although it obviously ...

Inter-subjective validation. The ‘view from nowhere’. It’s still a view.

I don't think it has to be. It simply recognises that whatever we say, think or know of reality, is always informed by a point of view, but that this ...

Any point of view is still a point of view.

Well put, I think you hit the nail on the head.

Yes, and he also wrote a brief essay on the reaction to his book amongst the intelligentsia, called 'the sense of being glared at.'

Meaning, grinning while they cut your throat.

And, if nothing else, for alerting us to the word 'pleonasm', which I, for one, had never previously encountered. :clap:

It's like forensic pathology, trying to figure out the specifics of some ancient crime from the dessicated remnants of extinct belief systems. But the...

From our perspective. To truly imagine a universe with no observer, then you must imagine it from no point of view. Nothing within it is nearer or fur...

Not for nothing has Afghanistan been called 'the graveyard of empires'. No occupying power has ever gone in there and come out better off. It's heartb...

I think there's a lurking and very deep issue at back of this, which you in particular might be able appreciate. There has always been a tension in Ch...

And yet:

*

That is a very crude way of phrasing a basic question of philosophy. Meaning is always imputed or interpreted. It doesn't exist in its own right. That...

The point that he is making, that I think Pop is overlooking, is that information is a critical aspect of organic life, but it's not observed in non-o...

To provide more context for that statement: So, what is crucial here, is that Barbieri is claiming there's an ontological distinction between living o...

There's a reason that Marcello Barbieri launched in 2012 what he considers a new scientific discipline which he calls 'code biology'. It is specifical...

That's the point! Go back and look at it again, and consider the distinction that Barbieri is making between 'the chemical paradigm' and 'the informat...

If you can't recognise the distinction that Barbieri is making between 'the chemical paradigm' and 'the information paradigm', then you haven't unders...

How do you understand Barbieri's distinction between 'the chemical paradigm' and 'the information paradigm'? Why do you think he mentions Ernst Mayr's...

Hey, that’s a great word. Isn’t that because according to the current scientific consensus, life and mind are a matter of happenstance, the accidental...

there are massive lawsuits all throughout the US yoga industry, with people suing for ownership of Sanskrit words. So, yeah, that. It’s called ‘corrup...

But an empty set is nevertheless a concrete object? Or, should that be the empty set, as there can’t be more than one, can there?

But the original meaning of atom was literally that. Atom meant non-divisible or non-composite. The atom in modern physics doesn’t mean that, but your...

Do you mean atoms?

I had the idea it was with land title claims and the tallying of agricultural output in Sumeria and Egypt. Land holdings had to be calculated across v...

Regarding 'correspondence'. Randall, J. & Buchler, J.; Philosophy: An Introduction. p133 (Cribbed from an old forum post.) I think the original ration...

I don’t need help, thanks. :smile:

That doesn’t address the point. When you get mail, it’s addressed to you, not ‘the universe’. The separation of self and world is a basic, or the basi...

If it didn't, it wouldn't be 'a self'. Even the very simplest life-forms, single celled organisms, are separated from their environment by a membrane....

:up:

Of course, I agree with that, and there’s plenty of commentary on it, but what I’m resisting is the utilitarian tendency to treat everything as a mean...

Your posts on this are great, SSU. Keep it up.

...Alfred North Whitehead, in particular. Possibly his most famous saying. :ok: There's a philosopher of religion, Mark Johnston, about whom see this ...

Major part of existentialism is disagreement about what it is.