Wayfarer

That’s because it’s philosophically demanding and goes against the grain of realism, so it’s convenient to dismiss it. Besides most physicists don’t g...

You mentioned that before. It seems, as you say, just too obvious.

Are you familiar with the original paper, which is here http://consc.net/papers/facing.html Perhaps it might be useful to talk in terms of what you do...

Banno and several others are asking 'what is it that reincarnates'. The argument is that as 'the soul' which is the purported entity that reincarnates...

Did I use that word? I'm saying that it's 'the ship of theseus' problem i.e. the parts of an entity can be changed but that entity retain its identity...

I do wonder, however, in the case of young musical prodigies, and other kinds of genius kids, whether there’s a sense of past-life recall at wor, or a...

It's a pretty good list, and very clear. A couple of comments - first, the more general a word is, the harder it is to define. Very specific words - h...

Sad, but true. His ongoing appeal is still a symptom of some dreadful malady regardless.

And for good measure, a couple of unreservedly idealist OP’s by actual physicists The Mental Universe Richard Conn Henry, and Bernard D’Espagnat’s acc...

And if that was all there was to it, then would be no point in writing the article or any point in the so-called ‘delayed choice’ experiment, if the o...

Be that as it may ‘The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts that the universal wavefunction is obje...

If you read a few posts up, I said the introduction of ‘consciousness’ into the discussion - by you, I think - was the cause of confusion.

I still say that even if the measurement is made by a machine, the machine is a scientific apparatus and augments the human senses. The 'registration'...

I trust the sources I'm reading more than that article. Wikipedia is a very weak source in such matters, because it reflects the culture in which it i...

The wise would say that this is the perspective of the disinterested intelligence, subjectivity unsullied by egotism. (Don’t include me in that, by th...

I think there's a lot of confusion introduced when the word 'consciousness' is injected into this conversation. 'Observation' is a conscious act, carr...

Read what I said again. I'm saying that it was fashionable to say that Buddhism was a 'scientific religion' - not that I think that it's true. It's no...

:cool:

According to Buddhism, beings are inexorably bound by karma (pending their eventual liberation). Actually in the early 20th C, it was fashionable to s...

'An instrument' is a device constructed by an observer to capture data. Until that data is interpreted, then it doesn't constitute information - the d...

This is a perennial topic in philosophy of maths and metaphysics. Platonic realism contends that number is real, i.e. not the product of the mind, but...

Actually I'd prefer to discuss it in the good physics thread. (Should've posted it there, I got mixed up, serves me right for posting on the fly when ...

Also this. Back at quantum again. :yikes: Can’t be helped, really, it tends to crop up in any discussion about what’s real.

Have a look at Heisenberg's lecture, The Debate between Plato and Democritus. According to him, Plato 1, Democritus 0.

Indeed, one of his books I read decades ago was The Matter Myth. The problem is, what are fields? In the book I'm reading there's a case made that equ...

Results of a straw poll taken at a conference of physicists at a Quantum Foundations meeting (by Anton Zelliger et al): https://www.preposterousuniver...

Well, if you missed the part where he said 'JUST BY OBSERVING' then there's probably nothing to talk about.

And you still have to ask?

Start with this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YqgPAtzho

No, it's not just the same. It's a false analogy. Fossilised remains are objectively real. The interpretation of observations in physics is inferentia...

I appreciate the effort! Seriously. But I'm questioning whether the origin of life and the nature of mind can ever be derived from physical laws and p...

Actually it’s wrong of me to make fun of that, it’s a serious question. The thing is, to answer in accordance with what ‘religion’ usually means, is t...

Your categorisation is incorrect. There's physical sciences - physics and chemistry - life sciences - biology, environmental science, evolution - geol...

I was being ironic.

No kidding! That's where Stevenson' privately-endowed chair was held, it was founded by him. It's a department whose entire focus seems to be paranorm...

This is a review of a book by a Buddhist scholastic monastic, Bhikkhu Analayo. (Contains a further link to another article on current research.) For a...

There's where we differ. Everyone believes that - it's obvious, it simply must be the case. Well, I say it's mistaken, that it's a deep and pervasive ...

if I were to replace 'thought' with 'reason' then I would agree with this proposition. But if you say that thought and reason are the consequence of a...

More than Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung? I don't think so. Religious wars are a stain on history, no doubt about that, but there have been man...

I have never found it to be so, but I'll leave it.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/04/politics/donald-trump-gop-democracy/index.html I have to say, Trump is acting exactly like a foreign agent who is h...

I say there’s an ontological discontinuity here. (If you know what that means, you’re ahead of about 99% of posters.) And do look at the dichotomy tha...

Incidentally apropos of physics both good and bad :naughty: , this Scientific American profile of Hugh Everett is a must read. It’s semi-paywalled i.e...

I think it's indisputable that the 'wave function' is not ACTUALLY a wave. It's a distribution of probabilities. When you ask the question, 'where is ...

Be aware of ‘objectification’. Questions about ‘what kind of thing or stuff’ are exactly that. One of the suggestions in the Phaedo is that what is im...

Nevertheless, the prevailing view of the Phaedo is that Socrates accepts, and argues in favour of, the immortality of the soul, even if he admits he d...

The fact that 'they say it' doesn't provide any reason to believe it. The only science they mention is NDE, but they don't cite any actual science. It...

:ok: Well said!

More the fact that science is looked to to replace theology, when it starts from different premisses and asks different questions. That is how it deve...

Yeah, bugger the evidence.