Wayfarer

Would it have been, pre-Schrodinger?

I haven't read De Beauvoir, but something this brings to mind is Abraham Maslow's conception of self-actualisation: that humans have needs beyond thos...

So what? It's still thinking like an engineer.

Right. That's why I said it wasn't 'a kind of phenomena'. (Incidentally check this thread out).) That's the interpretive problem in a nutshell.

thank you Anthony, many fine points there, I can see you are very insightful.

Darwinian theory is a biological theory which is first and foremost a theory of the origin of species. As an account of the origin of species, it assu...

The Buddha's authority is not unquestionable. Nobody has to accept the Buddha's teaching. In the tradition, a lay person had to approach a monk three ...

Bit of a sleight-of-hand there, really. There is the Berkeleyian point that ‘all we know are perceptions’, but that is not quite the point at issue. T...

Fair enough. Me also - I mean, not nearly becoming a monk, but the ambivalent relationship. And I do agree that the power relationships that seem to i...

Ah, but is it. A phenomenon is 'what appears'. And what appears are not waves, but patterns that look like waves. The pattern is predicted by an equat...

Many, or all? Do you think there is any reality in religious or spiritual traditions, or they are simply power-relationships and methods of domination...

I see your point. (And a very well-written and insightful post.) As an anglo drawn to Buddhism, I too have found there are aspects of it that are, sha...

The trouble is that the word 'objective' is inextricably connected to the concept of an 'object'. Whereas the ontological status of the wave-function ...

It all hinges on the fact that, for scientific realism, ‘real’ means ‘mind-independent’. That is what has been called into question, and it’s clear fr...

Sort of. Wheeler uses the metaphor of paper mache. In any case there isn’t ‘a particle’ lurking there undetected. What is there, is a distribution of ...

Which object would that be?

You asked a question - and then answered it yourself, in the affirmative. ‘Is the particle there when there’s nobody there to observe it?’ is the crux...

You're not seeing the problem, again. You're simply asserting that it isn't real. The attitude of the Copenhagen group is pretty succinct on this: the...

Don't you see that this is the whole point of the article in the OP? Read the title of the thread again - it is literally what the experiment is about...

Trump’s treachery goes way beyond Russia

My hope is 'withdrawal of Article 50'.

I completely reject that. Your criticisms are ad hominem, they're not supported by any references or sources, and they're solely informed by prejudice...

That is an exact analogy. It is why the question is vexed. It was expected that 'bacteria' (fundamental particles) would be found. It was precisely be...

Actually the next sentence is that the reason 'this made Einstein unhappy' is that 'it conflicts with the view that the universe exists "out there" in...

Wheeler says: 'The dependence of what is observed upon the experimental arrangement made Einstein unhappy'. Why was that? Why would Einstein be unhapp...

And at no point, could that apparatus have been set up without a guiding theory. If there were no theory to test, then no apparatus would have been se...

One problem is understanding 'mind' or 'consciousness' as "the attribute of a person" - of what goes on in an individual's mind. This is plainly what ...

It's all ad homs, it's all you have. And that's a misspelling.

You are a mod here, right? So how is it that you believe that a string of ad homs amounts to anything? I think I understand why my posts illicit such ...

Bohr did have a ying-yang symbol on his family coat of arms, and I can't see how this was not significant. The ying-yang symbol represented 'complemen...

So why do you think Bohr said that?

It’s because the view that we can arrive at a completely objective understanding of nature, is what is hubristic. We learned we cannot fully determine...

Worth noticing what is being said about the Barr whitewash.

It is true that my tendency to 'include the subject' is rejected by mainstream science. The wiki entry on the subject says the same, with these footno...

Do you think any other kinds of beings that we know of can actually do physics? It seems obvious that animals must be excluded. Computers can perform ...

I really believe that you don't see the problem. One of the things Bohr said, and it's a bona fide quotation, is that 'Anyone who is not shocked by qu...

On page 2, we read, This is repeated on Page 10: Now I think the notion of an 'experiencer-independent world' is not actually metaphysical realism, bu...

In which case, how does this address the 'observer problem'? The observer might occupy a particular reference frame, but without an observer, then wha...

An observer is simply a scientist making the observation. It’s not specialised. The whole controversy is because of the requirement to consider the ob...

Right. That’s why I am taking issue with it. I’m saying observers are intentional beings, and not simply objects or systems.

Observers are not systems, but intentional beings. That's why I don't get this: I think I understand what a reference frame is. But I don't understand...

No, what I mean is, all his so-called supporters, mainly domestic, and the spineless, unprincipled lackeys in the House of Congress who won't stand up...

It's worth noting that the Mueller enquiry has already resulted in people being sentenced to jail, including Trump's lawyer and campaign manager, and ...

Right. And by my reckoning table lamps can’t do that.

I think you’re basically correct, but there’s more that can be said. First of all, it is indeed correct to say that faith in a broad sense is fundamen...

Actually I read your account of Rovelli's 'observer' again, and there's something about it I can't buy. It says "I use the word “observer” in the sens...

Here is a useful passage on 'the meaning of religion' from Maverick Philosopher's entry on the American idealist philosopher Josiah Royce:

I never thought Trump literally conspired with Russia, so it doesn't surprise me. That only leaves obvious incompetence, narcissistic personality diso...

Thanks for the mention, looks a good read! Interesting author, also. I think you really have to grasp the historical dimension of this statement. Phil...

The price to pay for that is subjectivism/relativism/nihilism. My view is that naturalism as a stance assumes the reality of the world (or rather, the...