Wayfarer

How are the 'latent variables' different from 'possibilities'? There are 'real possibilities'. Like, if you wanted to model some process, you could fa...

I get that. The problem that I think MWI is meant to solve is that of the 'wave function collapse': which is that, until the measurement is made, the ...

The quotation was taken from one of the books that did attempt to provide an account of the nature of information in a general sense. Wiener is saying...

What I said is that information doesn't have a single definition, but that there is a lot of discussion about whether 'information' is foundational, i...

There's a lot of reference to 'information' as if it constitutes a new category or 'substance'. But the problem is, information doesn't have a single ...

I was going to respond, but it will end badly. Let's leave it.

Think about some concrete cases, such as drug or gambling addiction. People fall into those habit patterns, and it often precipitates their death, los...

That is really such a sloppy analysis. Any aspect of experience requires both the subject of experience, the experienced object, and the mental action...

Karma is not fully deterministic. There used to be a lot of popular literature around in the early 20th Century saying things like karma was the 'law ...

I did try. In Buddhist psychology, there is no separately-exising self or '?tman' which stands apart from and is witness to the stream of psychologica...

I didn't like the books that made him famous, but I think he's more open-minded than some of his New Atheists confreres. He at least recognises that s...

Although for the first day the seafood would be fabulous.

The most annoying aspect of Harris is the depth of his antireligious convictions. He's like a mirror image of an evangelical. If the element of 'hatre...

The vast majority of suicides are by the severely mentally ill, the terminally ill, people who have experienced some great bereavement or another, unb...

I noticed this quotation by Carl Hempel: 'To Hempel, metaphysics involved claims to know things which were not knowable; that is, metaphysical hypothe...

In ethics, the objects are acts, which in themselves are objective, but they are not compared to other acts, they are related directly to a system of ...

My interpretation of Camus' philosophical project is that he was coming to terms with Nietszche's proclamation of the Death of God. Camus had been qui...

This is where I was going to start another thread, but as the conversation has continued, I will respond here. I don't agree with the above analysis, ...

"The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Dublin Seminars (1949-1955) and Other Unpublished Essays" Schrödinger Thanks. I haven't found that particula...

It was simply that prior to the discovery of matter-energy convertibility, materialism comprised the simple formula 'all that exists is matter and the...

I seem to remember an old saying 'as you sow......'

Source 'The world is not as it appears, nor is it otherwise' ~ La?k?vat?ra S?tra. Yes, yes, and yes. If it's because they're Catholic, then I should l...

So how do you know he talked about them? A martyr to boot. (Although, as a consolation prize, he made a fortune plotting the re-entry paths for ICBM w...

'You never step in the same river twice' ~ Heraclitus

I have no anwer, other than 'anticipation'.

It's not 'a thing which anticipates torture'. There is obviously a process, a stream, if you like, of memories and anticipations, acting as a coherent...

Oh, right, well there's a great opportunity for you there, D, you can start a movement explaining to Buddhists what the Buddha got wrong.

But then I'm back at, of course you'd be concerned, and that is a dumb question. Beings obviously are frightened of death and pain. What's your point?

It's not a matter of respecting or not respecting 'my tradition'. The text I quoted addresses the question: one who was completely free of any self-co...

Very slippery answer. According to the Relative State Formulation, there are many worlds, y/n.

Because it's impending? Does indeed seem a dumb question. Back in my day, we used to get caned for infractions at school - a practice long since banne...

So if 'many worlds' doesn't invoke 'many worlds', why is it called by that name? ('Invoke' meaning 'to cite or appeal to (someone or something) as an ...

Which would mean that materialism is false, and there is no truly objective viewpoint human beings can access, although there may be a noumenal realit...

@Tom - could I put the question to you: what problem is the 'many worlds' interpretation a solution for? Why is it necessary to invoke 'many worlds'?

Thanks, M, very insightful and quite true. You might find this article, Quantum Mysticism: Gone but Not Forgotten, of interest. It notes: Schrodinger,...

Itend to think the implications for causality are the most "offensive" aspects of CI That is what also really annoyed Schrodinger and Einstein. Heisen...

That's not really a straight answer, though! I'll take the plunge: I think the factor which motivated Everett was this: (From the Scientific American ...

Historically, the debate about objectivity only entered philosophy post Kant. The ancients and medievals rarely discussed it. As to why that is, I thi...

I'm interested in getting a straight answer to the question, "if 'many worlds' is the solution, what's the problem?' I asked that on Physics Forum, wh...

The argument here seems be, if some object has the physical property of allowing the transmission of light through it, when we look at this object, we...

Look up 'transparent' in an encyclopedia. It's not a matter of opinion and so neither of argument, but of fact.

As an aside, my way of understanding this illusion is that 'see-through' things (eg, water, glasses, glass, plastic, quartz, etc) are not actually see...

this thread amply illustrates the folly of seeking wisdom on the internet.

What about the fact that our perceptions of things often turn out to be wrong? If perception is all that was real, then how is it that we can have mis...

Fair enough. I have read quite bit of Searle, and I can go along with that. My post was based on the observation that you were offering a biological r...

No worries. Actually I am not going to create that thread, I'm taking a timeout for a while.

'is comprised of' is grammatically incorrect. 'Comprise' is like 'embraces' - 'the act comprises several minor pieces of legislation'. A correct expre...

Deflating the best explanations because of their authority is adolescent, not philosophical. ad hominem reductionism is not assumed in my talk of a bi...

Another thread trashed. Shame, the OP was asking some fundamental questions.

Nobody has tackled the actual claim about the separability of information and representation.