Wayfarer

And, speaking of idealistic physicists: —?Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, 276-81.

I agree about the applicability of semiosis to biology. And that's because living systems are more language-like than machine-like. But I think the 'm...

There is no point debating philosophy against naive realism. Baggott's book is not about idealism, it's about fantastical ideas in modern physics. Ide...

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

The point I was making was that the original Second Amendment quotation says: '"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free St...

The thought that owning a weapon would be any kind of defense against the US Department of Defense, if it came to that, is surely a ridiculous fantasy...

I don't suppose you've happened on the writing of a philosopher of biology by the name of Steve Talbott, have you? If not, I will provide some links. ...

Well, in the case of the transmission of information across diverse systems, then indeed that's what I'm talking about, and I think it is connected to...

Have you ever encountered the (in)famous 2005 opinion piece, published in Nature, by Richard Conn Henry, called The Mental Universe? What about Bernar...

See this blog post. So does the fact that no such 'perpetual motion' device has ever been made refute that claim? I don't think it is the kind of tran...

No - but there doesn't need to be, for the point to be made, which is that the physical form and the medium in which the information is transmitted ca...

The problem with that, is that maths is predictive. See Eugene Wigner's The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.

'Seems physical' is a bit vague, isn't it? Read the flag/semaphore example again. When that information is transmitted, it goes through a number of tr...

But Shannon's seminal paper was about something specific, namely, the transmission of information between sender and receiver, was it not?

that seems to be the main axiom. It seems plainly wrong to me but it seems widely accepted.

Also, in this most recent case, law enforcement reports that there were no 'red flags' whatever in the case of the Los Vegas perpetrator. Nobody aroun...

Well, that's a relief, although after Virginia Tech, and indeed after every mass shooting, there has indeed been a flurry of legislation, mainly aimed...

Here's the story the Japan statistic came from, detailing how owning a rifle takes a four-month long process, including various forms and interviews. ...

Right! So discussing gun violence is now one of the underlying factors behind gun violence! Gun ownership is a political issue! It's the failure of ef...

Wouldn't get any argument from me. That is like the traditional practice of burying someone in an unmarked grave. But there is zero chance of it happe...

Totally agree with him. They should keep their ID out of the news, not for the reason of censorship, but so as to deprive them of the motivation of po...

Rationality is insufficient, though. Pure mathematics attempts to be 'as rational as possible', but maths is not a science, per se. You can create a p...

It's more about violence being normalised, about it being so familiar through constant exposure that for at least some people, it is that much easier ...

N?mar?pa is fundamental to all Buddhism, not simply Ch'an. It means literally 'name and form' and is one of the '12 nidanas' or links of dependent ori...

E. R. Doherty.

quite a petri dish, this place.

as it happens my immediate family has been profoundly affected by car accidents. But this has no bearing on the appalling incidents of mass murder in ...

that intentional murder carries moral implications that accidental death or death by natural causes do not. But if you can't comprehend that distincti...

not difficult when it's such a meaningless point. it's depressing, the 'business as usual' attitude toward atrocity.

doesn't include suicides and accidental shootings.

A sure indication that the participants don't understand the subject. Whereas, science is all about objects.

Incidentally by way of footnote, Kojeve was considered an influential intellectual and had a strong following in the salons of Paris, however it event...

Sure we do, it's abundantly obvious. Very high numbers of guns in culture, frequent depictions of killings in movies and video games, and imitative be...

Tripe. There is no 'moral equivalence' between deaths by natural causes and catastrophes, and homicides caused by deranged gunmen for no conceivable r...

I think one clue is the famous saying by Galileo, 'the book of nature is written in mathematics'. Galileo's innovations and discoveries in astronomy a...

Google a copy of Evil and the God of Love by John Hick. It's out there. http://www.iep.utm.edu/hick/#SH3a

I really wasn't trying to be unfriendly. I'm just pointing out that whenever a concept comes up that might be associated with 'theism', then look out....

There's your problem in a nutshell - an inherited image which conditions your thinking (and not only yours). It's this kind of subterranean mountain, ...

"Counting" without anyone who counts, "knowing" without anyone who knows. That's the problem I have with 'pansemiosis'.

Isn't that simply another way of trying to dodge the apparent 'primacy of consciousness'?

I don't understand what 'a countable degree of freedom' is. Furthermore - and without wishing to sound trite - who is counting? Does 'physics' really ...

That's all I was trying to say.

Which is the source of the so-called 'observer problem', is it not?

What is 'transcendent' anyway? Might be worth having a go at trying to define it. Perhaps - a feature or attribute of experience, which can't be expla...

Actually, I think this point came from a discussion in the thread on life arising from non-life. I took issue with the idea that 'everything is inform...

Interesting you say that. There is a Buddhist method called Logong, meaning 'mind training'. It is a series of slogans or aphorisms which the practiti...

A lot rides on the insertion of 'ultimately' into that question, because that opens the whole debate on karma/heavenly reward etc. However if 'ultimat...

It is often said that many of Plato's most important teachings weren't written down, and I don't recall much on this particular theme (although as I h...

I don't think ruling on the reality or otherwise of God, is 'science's position' at all. Strictly speaking, science ought to be methodologically natur...

I get door-knocks from 7th Day Adventist missionaries which I politely decline. I am not an atheist, but I don't really believe in a God. It's a lot m...