Wayfarer

A thermostat is an instrument, designed by humans for their purposes. As such, it embodies the purposes for which it was designed, and is not an objec...

But aren’t the limits of science also the limits of empiricism? That is: science deals with contingent facts — with what happens to be the case. It ex...

But some are much more aware of that finitude than others, aren't they? There are a lot of people that barely take into account, I don't know, the fac...

Hi Astorre, welcome to the Forum, very good questions. I don't know if 'awareness of one's own finitude' is an explicit consideration for many people,...

worth looking at it in the context. She's using 'compute' in the metaphorical sense of taking in information and transforming it for a useful purpose,...

The question stands - what kinds of objects think, decide, act, perform experiments? AI is not a naturally occurring object, nor does it possess agenc...

I thought that might be the response. But AI is an instrument which has been created by human engineers and scientists, to fulfil their purposes. It's...

But that is the nature of this subject. Panpsychism, by definition, is a philosophical theory of mind, alongside materialism and idealism. You don't g...

Well, name one.

Thanks for that. Maybe this is because pre-moderns did not have the sense of separateness or otherness to the Cosmos that the modern individual has. I...

Well, you should. If you want to make an OP it has to stand on its own two feet, especially for a major topic such at this. I don't think you're actua...

You haven’t presented any reason for why you would think that.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn (Closer to Truth) has a series of interviews on 'the physics of the observer'.

More that they’re outside the electric fence.

Take a look at the video I just posted into the reply above yours. it is *exceedingly* interesting.

I watched an exceedingly interesting talk recently ('How the Universe Thinks without a Brian') on slime moulds and other very primitive organism, that...

I might add—and as you probably know—Nagel at least sketches a kind of naturalistic teleology in Mind and Cosmos: the idea that human beings are, in s...

You're right to note that I didn't try to answer the question of human purpose directly. My intention was more foundational: to challenge the premise ...

Nor I, but that’s why I said that the argument is kind of a red herring - if you were looking for purpose in the abstract, what would you be looking f...

It’s more that most of the intellectual resources of Western philosophy became concentrated on science (‘natural philosophy’) to the extent that the o...

The assumption that the object is at it is, in the absence of the observer, is the whole point. That is the methodological assumption behind the whole...

:100: It's the essence of culture.

Quite right. But Greek philosophy was also animated by just that ideal. See Becoming God: Pure Reason in Early Greek Philosophy, Patrick Lee Miller: P...

But the point stands. He starts his book Materialist Philosophy of Mind with the assertion that man is an object, which is wrong on so many levels tha...

I can’t help think it must be something like gnosis or one of its cognates - subject of that rather arcane term 'gnoseology' which is comparable to 'e...

I linked earlier to an article by Steven Shakespeare on the unconditioned in philosophy of religion. One of his key points is that “the unconditioned”...

But all of his work is based on the presumption that science is the definitive source of knowledge for what the mind might be. It's a philosophy based...

So if it’s a philosophical claim, then how is it to be adjudicated? Surely that would require some framework within which the expression “philosophica...

What is problematic in that formulation is the hidden or implicit metaphysics in the modern conception of science. A part of that is the assumption th...

Just today, he's crashed the negotiations, sending out his inane missives on his social media platform that he's slapping 30% tarriffs on EU and Mexic...

Doesn't leave a lot of room for equivocation.

Surely some media somewhere must be tracking the Trump Damage List? Trump is attacking so many fundamentals that it’s hard to keep track: Democratic i...

Thanks for that thorough analysis, appreciated. Going on my experience, the models seem to cope with everything I ask of them. I seem to recall in the...

You're not seeing the point. The passage is not a 'theory about consciousness'. Read it again: How can they not be dependent on conscious acts? They a...

A clearing, as one of his successors would call it.

Husserl deliberately brackets metaphysical and spiritual claims in the context of the practice of epoch? —the suspension of judgment about the existen...

That is exactly what David Armstrong and Daniel Dennett do. Where do you differ from them on that score? Another point I’ve noticed: that you label a ...

Big Bad Bill Adds Tax That Could Cripple Wind and Solar Power Generation (New York Times gift link) The only voices in favour are fossil fuel energy l...

Ok might be hyperbolic but it’s making it much harder to raise lawsuits against executive orders. A dissenting opinion said: And that’s from one of th...

Although David Brooks, a NY Times conservative (but definitely not pro-Trump) columnist, points out that the way it has been, Democrats could pick a N...

To rub the salt, DJT made a platitudinous speech about the judiciary being ‘a threat to democracy’, when it is common knowledge that the ‘three equal ...

The Trump autocracy makes another leap towards totalitarianism with today's Supreme Court ruling. It effectively neuters the ability of judges to halt...

Hard to put markers on it, but the late nineteenth and early 20th c were the culmination of processes which arguably started with the Italian Renaissa...

And I have repeatedly pointed out that in this ‘explanatory gap’ dwells the very self that is seeking to understand. And that deferring every question...

Well, to start with, I think any philosophy that declares a fortiori that the world is irrational effectively undermines itself. If reality is, at bot...

To label philosophical spirituality as “wishful thinking” is to close off inquiry too quickly. These aren’t arbitrary insertions into an explanatory g...

This is probably a digression, but I think it's far more than that. The term 'post-' is significant - similar to the sense conveyed by 'post Christian...

@"Pierre-Normand" - something you might find of interest. This mini-documentary from CNBC discusses, with many references, the apparent wall that AI i...

‘Afterlife’ is a term with strong religious overtones, and perhaps it muddies the waters. My point is more modest: as you acknowledge, the so-called e...

Human nature has strong tendencies towards those activities. That humans are often inclined to those destructive behaviours is observable thoughout hi...