Wayfarer

thanks for the clarification of what constitutes ‘an observer’, for the purpose of this discussion. Helpful. Bitbol is interesting to me because I’m m...

But looking at the original quote from Bohr again: Where Bohr says 'it doesn't make any difference what the observer is', I think this is drive home t...

Lab equipment, instruments, and so on, are all simply adjuncts and extensions to human sensory capabilities. An instrument can register a measurement,...

There is a paragraph in the essay on Kastner's paper which says: So - they don't exist in space-time, but they're real. Here is key idea, I think - wh...

C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul[/u[.

‘Thought and object’. It is just that instinctive division which is called. Into question by ‘the observer probllem’. Anyway - thanks for your conside...

I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that every claim about 'what exists' has a subjective pole or aspect, and that this is never made manifest - i...

A relevant quote from the essay about Wheeler, which is closer to what fdrake is arguing (I think):

are animals capable of conducting experiments and interpreting the results?

This is the nub of the issue. I think you’re arguing from the general perspective of representative realism: that concepts represent (or fail to repre...

I am not confusing anything. Why do you think Neils. Bohr found it necessary to say that ‘if you haven’t been shocked by quantum physics, then you don...

Why is the question being asked? What lead to the asking of the question? What is the issue? Isn’t it because physics itself has challenged the idea o...

In principle, it doesn't matter whether it's an 'ionic bond' or any other chemical or physical relationship. The ionic bond is just an illustrative ex...

That's really an un-answerable question; it's a variation of the famous 'ship of Theseus' conundrum. Customarily, Buddhists accept the reality of re-b...

How is this not simply Popper's 'falsification' at work? In saying that, I'm not implying any belittlement of that principle, I think it is profoundly...

I think in some ways it’s an artificial problem - like a ‘thought experiment’, the idea of which is to bring out the nature of the dilemma inherent in...

Wouldn't dispute it for a moment. Kant himself devised the nebular hypothesis, he was a scientist as well as a philosopher. But you go further when yo...

I’m pretty sure that’s not true. It is simplistic. The point in respect of sub-atomic particles, is that they’re not in some undetermined location pri...

But humans provide perspective, a point of view, which in an ineliminable pole in the knowledge of anything. The philosophical issue revolves around t...

You’ve got an excellent term paper idea there. My guess is that you won’t find a lot of consensus about the answer - that some say that the discovery ...

Thanks. I have the preview of his latest on Kindle.

Sure that's part of it. Are you aware of Sabine Hossfielder's recent book, Lost in Math? And all of the huge arguments going on about whether string t...

this is unbelievably tedious. So now all this blathering and dithering is going to go on for months, or even years. Terrific. :rage:

Welcome to the forum. I think that's a very perceptive question. However, I'm not sure that the two uses of the term 'a priori' conflict. In the case ...

:up: On account of 'absence of own-being'. Where in Thomson's writing is that passage from?

Indeed - I think that is very much the kind of understanding that has emerged from science in the last several decades. But I think it sits oddly alon...

So you think physical processes have subjective features? Do you subscribe to panpsychism?

I think the section you have underlined actually mitigates against your argument, don’t you?

That's not the way I see it. To me, the underlying philosophical issue is the presumption of mind-independence which underlies scientific realism, the...

Do you know why, and in what circumstances, Albert Einstein asked the question 'Does the moon continue to exist if we're not looking at it?' //discuss...

But you're not seeing why there is a controversy about this issue. You're simply adopting, or assuming, the perspective of scientific realism, without...

I think that's pretty close to the difference. Another way of saying it is to oppose it to 'artificial' meaning 'made or manufactured'. If you think b...

This is the issue at the heart of the 'observer problem'. This very issue was why Einstein asked (dismissively) 'Doesn't the moon exist when we're not...

That is at the very least a disputed issue.

I really do understand that. I understand that Schrodinger spun that yarn with a certain sense of sarcasm, in order to try and illustrate the bizarre ...

Thanks! Helpful clarification of my hamfisted attempt at an allegory. What if the theory that needs to be ‘beaten’ is not a theory at all but an untes...

So it’s: “Deal? Or No Deal”? NEITHER, roars the house.

That is what the MIT abstract says that it does: —— I don’t regard that as an explanation so much as a cop-out.

As I said to W., if it were that simple then it wouldn’t rate a comment. I think to resort to Schodinger’s famous simile, it’s as if Bob observes a li...

In that case, you have drawn the exact opposite conclusion to what the experiment suggests. If it said something as quotidian as you think it said, th...

An interesting, and pregnant, statement. If you look at it through an historical lense, what you find is something like this. 'Phenomena' means, basic...

That's nondualism. It's interesting but not relevant to the point as it belongs to a different domain of discourse. The point I was making was one abo...

The question should be, will the EU agree to a delay? What if they say 'Hey, Britain, you're the ones who decided to leave, and we've given you all th...

That doesn’t take into account the possibility of revealed truth: that God has chosen to reveal Himself to mankind. So for the religiously orthodox, i...

I see that as motivated by the inability to face the burden of having to decide and to act. Essentially it says that nothing you do matters; existenti...

Maybe the term you're looking for here is not 'force' but 'energy'. Force doesn't 'invade' matter, it causes objects to move. 'A force is a push or a ...

That is where the term ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ applies. There are many people in that category nowadays. I know just what you mean, but I wonder...

My only wish is that some kind mod will correct the spelling of the OP

I reflect on that whenever I sleep in instead of getting up for zazen.

The argument that 'believing in God is absurd because there's no empirical evidence' betrays a total misunderstanding of the nature of religious faith...