Wayfarer

I don't agree, and here's the reason why. I think that dichotomy between 'God or nothing' is very much an historical phenomenon. It's much more an his...

Trump is scarily incompetent at actual politics. He's never held an elected office previously, and shows neither aptitude nor interest in the requirem...

I said 'The argument is not really between science and religion, so much as between scientific materialism and religious fundamentalism'. Your point p...

Pretty good compilation. I liked Sheldrake's comments on Whitehead, about 'the past' being fixed and 'the future' as the realm of the possible, and ho...

'We have a factoring problem which is so big it can't be solved with any known computer. Therefore in order to solve it we will need a computer that u...

in which case, I faill to see the cogency of that example for Deutsch's argument for there being many worlds.

Interesting fact - in translations of the early Buddhist texts, the term 'self-and-world' is frequently encountered where one would expect to see the ...

I think that this is the kind of statement you're referring to: Actually that is a bit of an exaggeration. His big idea is 'morphic resonance' - that ...

Oh, I walk my dog every day. And I have a nice robot too. She's called 'Siri'.

well I agree. Although dogs do mope ;-)

but that's not something that's been done, right? Is that part of the argument for quantum computers? That if you want to do that, then you will need ...

Check out 'ponderer'.

In that case I clearly don't understand what Deutsch is talking about, although that is probably not surprising.

You mean, they don't have self-pity?

where are numbers? Any numbers? There might be a vast domain of which the physical universe is simply an aspect, but which is not physical. //edit// W...

(Y)

Actually I think we ought to mention TCP/IP. Without that, no internet. It was designed in the 1960's and 70's to provide a bomb-proof means of distri...

I think that's an excellent post and I agree with it. However I would suggest that that science occupies the role of a guiding philosophy for many in ...

I think a relevant observation, by Schopenhauer, re the US in particular, in respect of this particular question, is this: 'Money is human happiness i...

The celebration of diversity in everything except for opinion.

What is it that can say 'I am'? Answer that, and the rest should be easy.

The testimony of sages is regarded as a valid basis for knowledge in Indian religions (both Hindu and heterodox, i.e. Buddhism and Jainism) and is pla...

That's a thread in itself? Math: Invented or Discovered?

I think there is some truth in that, and I really think I ought to add him to my reading list. I do feel an intuitive affinity with his ideas. As an a...

Trouble is, Rich, that Bergson has no following in the modern academy. He's a museum piece, hardly talked about outside history of philosophy. I found...

Vale Walter Becker - co-founder of Steely Dan, dies at 67.

I think it's more likely that gay activism is becoming evangelical.

The Atlantic article concludes:

I would dispute that mathematics constitute a technology. 'Technology' is derived from the Greek 'techne' which has a connotation of 'craft' or 'artis...

but what about pure maths? In what sense does that work?

Thanks, I will look into that tomorrow. However the question which @Marchesk's post would inspire me to ask of Hoffman is this: he seems very confiden...

iPhone. No question. Although I suppose that is a product rather than a technology. If it were a technology, I guess it would be electricity.

interesting observation.

True, but he also said 'he with ears to hear....' Not for the first time. As far as its proponents were concerned, this was a return to what made the ...

True, but the criteria here is 'what works' i.e. what enables survival, getting along, so it's an implicitly utilitarian analysis, isn't it? It doesn'...

The human being is already a harmonised unity of millions of sub-processes as it is. That is the issue of the 'subjective unity of perception'. What i...

Hey, I've got a post that I created years ago, and put up on the old forum for comments, which might be relevant...hang on.... As I say, I wrote that ...

I think there could be a book written on 'Californian metaphysics', although this one might be close.

Should I edit it to read s/hebang?

The problem there is that, if it were an illusion, it would have to be an illusion for someone. I take your point about the conflict between ego and c...

Do you have any control over your digestive or metabolic processes? When we see ourselves as a being in the world, then that itself is a representatio...

Ideas like that have the rather drab title of 'neutral monism' (which for some reason always reminds me of a British gentleman in a drab overcoat, pos...

But I do have to add this - the reason I mention Lemaître is that he, as I'm sure you know, originally published the idea of the 'big bang'. Now as it...

of course. And in doing that he doesn't need to appeal to science, he just declares such matters out of scope for the work he's doing - which they are...

I don't know. She could say - take it or leave it. The claim is after all made in the context of a philosophy forum, which, hopefully, is situated in ...

But, all due respect, you're missing the point. I don't think this particular religious believer is saying that some particular thing is 'evidence' of...

the point is, the believer claims that the universe IS the evidence, that it wouldn't exist at all had it not been created. But if you think about it,...

All the (religious) scientist need do is gesture in the general direction of the Universe. 'There', she might say, 'is the evidence.'

All due respect, it doesn't seem so. There are many religious scientists, and many scientificallly-informed believers. It isn't, and couldn't be, a 'o...

How about 'murderator'?