The most common form of reductionism asserts the existence of fundamental particles, each of which exists independently, and says everything is made o...
Which is just saying that we can never talk about it, because that's a utopian goal that can never be achieved. It reminds me of Bob Hawke's 'No child...
I couldn't see anything in that article that resembled a coherent argument against allowing the terminally ill to obtain assistance to end their life....
Actually that's an argument that there is not a 'slippery slope', as that term is used in arguments. The slippery slope argument - beloved of religiou...
The question was never 'Do you support gay marriage?' It was 'Do you agree that the state should formally and publicly recognise long-term gay unions ...
I wonder whether the confusion between blockchain and Bitcoin may be partly fuelling the Bitcoin price bubble. It seems possible that blockchain may b...
This won't help much with speaking, but is great for growing your vocabulary: Get an ebook such as a kindle or kobo, find some simple books in your ch...
The parked car cannot be considered in isolation if we are to bring into consideration - as is done above - the relief of the owner when they see the ...
Do you feel that real knowledge is achievable? Do you think anybody has achieved it? Perhaps some might say that Lao Tzu, Jesus of Nazareth, the Buddh...
If by process philosophy you have in mind the sort of thing proposed by Whitehead, then that would be my approach. Was it him or somebody else that sa...
Hello anonymous. Of your three options, I'd say I feel closest to the Relativist position, as I expect the universe is fundamentally incomprehensible,...
As a young, devout RC with a very questioning mind I used to be tortured by transubstantiation. My devotion said I MUST believe in it (by which I mean...
I'd call those philosophical assumptions, not scientific assumptions. I'm a Shut Up and Calculate person. When I want to connect scientific theories t...
I don't think science has any foundational axioms. The only scientific axioms I know of are those that are part of a theory - eg the postulates of qua...
I'm afraid I don't know. We'll need to wait until SSU wakes up to hear about that (it's currently 4am in Helsinki). I thought you were asking what 'et...
I've got a pretty good idea of what it means, but I wonder if it's correct. Doesn't Finland have a large population of people of Swedish descent, and ...
I can't find the text on the internet. But I saw the page on Amazon and was interested to see that the first user review says: 'The purpose of the boo...
I don't find their notion of causality to be coherent. The notion of a simultaneous cause (item 5) goes against the common understanding of what a cau...
I don't experience a sound. I would say that you are gifted with synaesthesia, except that the article says that 70% of people experience the sound. S...
I am more optimistic. I have learned a great deal from discussions on this forum and its predecessor. Even in that discussion, while no agreement was ...
This thread has all three - critiques, dismissals and ridicule, as well as a spirited defence of Aristotle's position put up by some of the worthy res...
It is valid, but care needs to be taken not to take it out of context, as that can lead to an incorrect statement. The conclusion, stated in its most ...
What is a 'fiscal liberal'? It sounds like somebody who says we should not have to pay tax. There are plenty of those, but for some reason you seem to...
Usually, the pencil has to move before the paper is marked. That's because the mark is made by the pencil leaving behind part of its graphite tip on t...
An article on arXiv is no more holy scripture than a pop-science book. I asked you to link to a proof for your claim. Those papers contain no proofs. ...
It's possible to dislike multiverse hypotheses but not blame it on physics, because it's all unfalsifiable and hence doesn't count as science. I regar...
Well actually the author has misused the cosmological principle, which implies nothing of the sort. The cosmological principle states that each consta...
They do not say that they are speaking precisely and formally in their books. It is only you that says that. The evidence points to the opposite being...
Hi Sophisticat. I skimmed that article you linked and was interested to note that Vilenkin makes statements like: "there are an infinite number of O-r...
Are you of the opinion that the answer is 1? If I agree to that opinion for the sake of furthering the discussion, how do you think that helps your ar...
I would partially agree, but I expect it would not be the sort of agreement you would wish. First, the agreement is partial because I would see the se...
OK then, my answer is simply "No, I do not intend to contact Mr Tegmark, as I have no reason to believe he needs correcting". I see your suggestion ab...
I am not aware that Tegmark made the mistake of aggressively claiming that probability one means 'certain' in an infinite sample space, as you did. I ...
It depends on what one means by 'understood'. There are proofs that I have followed step by step, and validated each step, yet I am still unable to vi...
Your mistake is in mathematics, not in physics, so if you want to invoke a committee, it would be for something like the Fields medal, not the Nobel p...
I am going to tell you that any offence they took from the joke is not the harm to which the para refers. It is the subsequent loss of their job when ...
'Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied', eh? I am more sympathetic to Bentham's view (to which I expect Mill was responding): 'Push-...
I do not, and would not dismiss it in that way without qualification. I am confident that reading Aristotle would be a waste of my time. It sounds lik...
I would not use the word 'ostensive' to describe learning a meaning by reading long texts. Ostension is pointing to a dog and saying 'dog', jumping an...
Comments