Wayfarer

Well, relies on measurement of observable properties. All scientific analysis presumes that, doesn't it? Speak to any scientist, about any subject, he...

Google 'pansemiosis bootstrapping' and see what comes up ;-)

That is a good question and, as you say, central to your OP. I think the central issue is, what criteria are there to decide on the rightness of a cou...

So the basic claim that is at issue in all of this is that whatever the origin of life is, it is something that can be known to science, in principle,...

I'm sure that it is correct to say that the first instance of self-replicating organic molecules was not the outcome of evolution, but is instead the ...

Very close, indeed!

I'm saying, a lot of your thinking is based around identity politics whether you know it or not. Here's how it plays out. The Western democratic tradi...

Well put, Nikolas, very well said. And welcome to the Forum.

Just recently, I was watching a TV documentary, on rag-pickers in slums, in the Philippines and India. Rag-pickers pick over rubbish dumps, competing ...

I used to get a regular bible reading, at Church school - and I never signed up to church, haven't attended since, save for weddings and funerals. It ...

Your post is not about moral norms - it's about identity politics. 'Rights', here, are all about 'my pursuit of fulfilment through identity'. God know...

If the distinction between rational sentient beings and other life forms escapes you, then I'm afraid there's simply no point in the discussion, becau...

You should get your dog to reply. Or your chicken. Then I would have to pay attention.

H Sapiens has language, rational thought, builds technology, and is quantifiably and qualitatively different to any other type of creature in all of t...

'Logos' is not a person so much as a principle. It's the root of 'logic' and also of the suffix -logy, as in the various branches of knowledge - biolo...

Skinner's philosophy was thoroughly dehumanising and in any case had also been discredited by the mid 1960's. 'Operant conditioning' has some applicat...

New Advent Encyclopedia entry on 'Logos' Note the reference to Hermes, the 'messenger of the Gods' and inspiration for Hermeticism, which has remained...

I thought it was Peirce's view that matter was effete mind (where effete means 'no longer capable of effective action'.) But mind itself is never amon...

Or, alternatively, there's something fundamental that neither of you are getting. It is, without mind to animate it, or appreciate it. Incidentally, t...

its the 'physicalism' that I won't accept, with the corollary that not to accept physicalism amounts to superstition.

but outside of engineering and technology, what does it mean existentially? what is the place for 'the immeasurable?'

The 'epistemic cut' implies a dualism between matter and symbol and so implies a duality. The idea of 'soul stuff' is nonsensical, but it comes from t...

I think the paradox comes from the fact of different perspectives. That is after all the difference between a paradox and a contradiction. That 'looki...

It might be worth posting this on Physics Forum.

But where you depart from Aristotelianism, is that in his system, there is still a place for the Contemplation of the Good, which remains a hint of, o...

On what grounds? My cousin thinks Einstein has it all wrong. He drives a cab.

(Y) You get my drift.

Au contraire, this is all an example of where you draw your lines, of the division you see between the naturalist, which to all intents is 'things whi...

Here's the thing - given the order we observe, we can explain a great deal. But we can't explain the order. That is a serious and important point.

A Christian ought to say that that's not the point of their faith. It's not 'proposing an hypothesis' in the sense of a falsifiable, abstract descript...

My reading is, the whole reason Peirce's semiotics became so influential, was because of the manifest and obvious inadequacies of mechanistic material...

If all you have is a hammer..... ...in a culture, a vast number of whose inhabitants have no sense of purpose whatever. They're literally killing them...

So having a religious view amounts to a prejudice, but having an aversion to religious philosophy does not. I think the philosophical and historical i...

The discovery is associated with Edward Hubble. It appears pretty solidly documented. I don't see any merit in doubting established scientific finding...

This is a philosophy forum not a soap opera or singles app.

Oh yeah, and also 'Tour holds more than 120 United States patents plus many non-US patents. He has more than 600 research publications, with an H-inde...

It's actually a lot more complicated than rocket science. Rockets are simple. That's not what the article says, though. I googled James Tour, he denie...

My view is that individualism is superior but only if it is anchored to a proper spiritual understanding, which is what has been undermined by materia...

I too am a 'theistic personalist'. I think one of the reasons that Buddhism is perceived as hostile to the person also has a cultural origin, insofar ...

Yes, but.....the Buddha himself, as tathagatha, was presumably one whose identity was 'gone thus' - and yet, in all the dialogues, he is a figure of u...

Interesting from a 'history of ideas' perspective. I might look at a few more Millbank videos. As far as 'identity' is concerned - the distinction bet...

Here is an open letter from an organic chemist to his colleagues about the unlikelihood of replicating cellular mechanisms forming spontaneously. With...

There's a trap in your question. What does 'independent' mean? 'There anyway', right? We know the moon and the earth pre-date h. sapiens by billions o...

I think is a bit of a misinterpretation, although an understandable one. But Kant's 'refutation of idealism', in the second edition of the Critique of...

Ohe of the standard techniques spread about by Big Energy is to cast doubt in just this way: oh yes, climate is changing, but we really don't know how...

(Y) Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching

I do believe that life formed spontaneously on the early Earth. I am very attracted to panspermia, the notion that the Cosmos teams with proto-biotic ...

I'm inclined to take seriously the whole idea of 'creation from nothing'. I can't give much of an argument for it, other than to note that the whole i...

all we would need, is to observe how a number of universes and/or life-bearing planets evolved over a number of cycles.

But it's those very processes that then culminate in symphonies and every other human cultural artefact. And It's the very simplicity of life that mak...