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Wayfarer

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It’s still writ large in current philosophy of mind. Search for ‘eliminativism’ in this thread and there are half a dozen returns, most of them advoca...
August 17, 2024 at 22:16
To paraphrase the Lankavatara Sutra, ‘the world does not exist outside of experience. Neither does it not exist’.
August 17, 2024 at 10:16
I was simply commenting on your entry: I was fleshing out why it is seen this way, with reference to the division between primary and secondary, objec...
August 17, 2024 at 09:52
August 17, 2024 at 08:59
I mean, you often say you agree with me about the shortcomings of ‘scientism’, but you never say why. I am articulating the historical background to i...
August 17, 2024 at 08:33
I think it lurks under a lot of what you say about it. Unconsciously.
August 17, 2024 at 08:29
The distinction between primary and secondary qualities goes back to Galileo and was later developed by early empiricists like John Locke. **Primary q...
August 17, 2024 at 08:21
*
August 17, 2024 at 04:48
…we would still not know their velocities. I’m sure that’s a spurious quotation, Smolin would not endorse LaPlace’s determinism.
August 17, 2024 at 04:43
Pass.
August 17, 2024 at 04:21
But the point is, that the division between primary and secondary qualities is basic to Galileo and to early modern science and philosophy generally. ...
August 17, 2024 at 02:36
:up: You can see it like provided you don’t fall into the trap of ‘objectifying’ mind.
August 17, 2024 at 00:22
None of which has any bearing on what ‘divine intelligence’ means. I’m not sticking up for the idea, but at least it should be framed in the terms of ...
August 16, 2024 at 21:29
No, seriously, welcome to the Forum and all, and there are folks here who know these materials, but there is a lot in those questions. As the above po...
August 16, 2024 at 11:59
A very great deal of reading, which you’d better attend to pretty quickly.
August 16, 2024 at 11:21
As that article suggests, Heisenberg’s analogy between Aristotle’s potentia and the wave function highlights an important metaphysical insight. Heisen...
August 16, 2024 at 10:42
From memory, Stevenson does consider ideas such as a kind of collective memory. It’s been a long time since I read anything but he canvasses those kin...
August 16, 2024 at 10:23
The way I put it is that 'existence' is not an on/off, is/isn't concept. Saying that 'the object doesn't exist without an observer' isn't necessarily ...
August 16, 2024 at 04:28
Yes - many arcane details to consider. Serves me right for introducing physics into the conversation but then it is part of what Hoffman discusses in ...
August 16, 2024 at 04:02
Fair enough. And looking at it through that lens, the problem is precisely that of the relationship of quantitative measurement and qualitative judgem...
August 16, 2024 at 03:04
A common argument against Bishop Berkeley. But he does consider it in his dialogues. There are gradations of reality, so I guess that is like the inve...
August 16, 2024 at 02:52
So Harris and Biden appear at what amounted to a campaign event, I think in Washington? Anyway, the subject was Medicare reforms and rebates, making a...
August 16, 2024 at 01:47
Well, maybe ‘create’ is a strong word. But look at the way science has managed to peer into the realm of possibility and pluck things out of it that a...
August 16, 2024 at 01:33
Only a matter of precedent, that’s all. The Culture Wars are alive and well but that was an identifiable milestone.
August 16, 2024 at 01:01
Well, true that measurement is central to science, but so too is theory - the framework within which measurements are interpreted. The key fact in rec...
August 16, 2024 at 00:56
You and I are different individuals, no question about that. In the mind-created world thread, I do try and address the objection that 'idealism says ...
August 16, 2024 at 00:31
But is He? Richard Dawkins also says that, but it founders on the rock of divine simplicity. There's a lot of philosophical background to this argumen...
August 15, 2024 at 23:48
So even though there's a single, unique probablity space, it won't ever be captured the same way by two observers. There's a good get-out-of-jail card...
August 15, 2024 at 23:10
I think that's near to what Kant describes as 'transcendental realism'. There are two crucial paragraphs in his Critique to wit: Having carefully dist...
August 15, 2024 at 23:03
Not what I said, and not what the source said. I maintain that world described by physics is an abstraction based on the measurable attributes of obje...
August 15, 2024 at 22:40
It is realist, but I think he really does say there are degrees of existence: Isn't that something like possibility space? It's governed by constraint...
August 15, 2024 at 12:52
Right. And even @"Banno"’s cups - he made not have made ‘em, but he did choose them. And they were made because there are coffee- and tea-drinkers. Al...
August 15, 2024 at 11:35
I was reminded of the ‘does the moon exist?’ question by Apustimologist’s comment along similar lines. That’s what I was responding to. It is of cours...
August 15, 2024 at 10:53
You may not be familiar with the research. It wasn’t based on 'past-life regression'. The cases Stevenson sought out were those where children claimed...
August 15, 2024 at 10:37
As I mentioned to Philosophim, the point about the children with past-life recall is that there is at least the possibility of validating their statem...
August 15, 2024 at 08:45
Compatibilism is the view that free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive, meaning that even in a deterministic universe (where all events a...
August 15, 2024 at 06:47
:up: I know, many big questions here. We'll keep mulling it over, no doubt!
August 15, 2024 at 04:12
The point of Massimiliano Proietti's confirmation of the Wigner's Friend paradox is that the two apparently-contradictory results were actually observ...
August 15, 2024 at 03:12
What's worse, Trump is lying about the 2024 election before it even occurs. His current lie is that Biden's decision not to run is 'a coup' or is 'not...
August 15, 2024 at 00:19
The world, to all practical intents and purposes. I think the sense that 'the world exists independently of observers' is fallacious, because of the m...
August 15, 2024 at 00:06
Your coffee cups are safe.
August 14, 2024 at 23:36
If you wish to discuss it, at least make some reference to that post I entered on the previous page, the book the thread is about, or the video which ...
August 14, 2024 at 23:31
Johnson kicks stone.
August 14, 2024 at 23:25
One of the points Donald Hoffman makes in that video above answers the question I had of him, 'what does objective mean?' At 1:37 he says 'By objectiv...
August 14, 2024 at 23:05
Take the time to watch that video. Hoffman features in it.
August 14, 2024 at 23:01
Albert Einstein famously asked one of his friends whilst on an afternoon walk ‘does the moon cease to exist when nobody’s looking at it?’ If you read ...
August 14, 2024 at 22:52
He’s behaving like a juvenile. Spouting conspiracy theories and insults. His handlers are desperately trying to get him to sound like he knows what he...
August 14, 2024 at 09:07
Me neither. Didn’t really understand it either. Although I can see the connection with QBism. ‘Meta-conscious awareness’ is the term, I believe.
August 14, 2024 at 09:02
I'm finding Donald Hoffman's book alternately interesting and frustrating. His formula of 'fitness beats truth' makes me want to ask what is the ‘trut...
August 14, 2024 at 06:25
Fair enough, point taken, I will keep that in mind in future. Apologies if I was dismissive. Stevenson was widely scorned for his research, as the who...
August 14, 2024 at 04:56