General Philosophy

(This is going to be rambly, i have always had a hard time putting my thoughts down in a concise manner and i apologize in advance) For the longest time all ive cared about is the truth, and no matter what i cannot lie to myself as it is impossible for me to do so. I am not sure if this is a flaw or an attribute, but it has shaped the way i am today for better or worse. Everything i do focuses on truth, i get super upset with people when they get even the smallest things wrong, but here i would like to focus on the truth of our universe and how it (and we) came to be. Like many i have always had the big questions like why are we here, how did the universe come to be,…

If all human beings were immortal and we knew this were the case, would this make people happier? Or would it make them sadder? Would you like to be immortal? If you thought you were, how would you live your life more different?

Einstein supposedly said this. What do you think about this statement? I don't think it makes much sense. 'religion' should be replaced with 'philosophy'.

Every physical entity present a certain level of information. Information exist beyond the observable physical reality (metaphysical values as consciousness, intelligence, knowledge, personality etc) Does/should physical descriptions count with the presence of information? Can/should we count information as physical entity?

Do you guys believe that if everyone goes Vegan or Vegetarian that world hunger can be solved? I read a lot of articles online saying that the grain that animals in factory farms eat can be fed to starving children across the globe instead. But what is happening is we are taking harvest and feeding it to pigs, cows and chickens so that the rich people can have their bacon and steak. To be honest, this makes me feel bad about eating meat. Sometimes, I just wish I am blinded from the truth so I can eat and just enjoy my food with no guilt.

I though this was interesting enough to have its own thread ... (I am also from industry and have spent my career solving problems. Which is perhaps why I don't know what problems philosophy solves. )

I just came from the chat room with an attempt to get people to exchange thoughts with me about God as the first cause; then suddenly my words did not come out anymore, and I tried to post the same words again, and they did not come out anymore -- and I could not send anymore words for they don't appear anymore in the chat room when I press 'Enter'. So I left the chat room, feeling that perhaps there is some trouble or the chat room of sfn does not allow my kind of thoughts to come out, namely about God as the first cause of everything in the universe that is not God Himself. I am now here in the general philosophy board, and I hope that it is all right to start a…

Can we tell the difference between arrogance and genius? And would a genius be seen as arrogant from an outside perspective in today's world?

"intellectual conscience"---the ability to distinguish right from wrong in the intellectual realm (My words.). When I set out to read Nietzsche (in English), after reading repeated references here, there and, yes, everywhere, I decided that I would do it with the following in mind: I would not read second-party analysis; I would read the originals only; and that I would read mulitple translations, which I did for a few. One particular passage I've always liked--I call it a lamentation--concerns the intellectual conscience: . From The Gay Science, BOOK I, #2, by Friedrich W. Nietzsche. (Possible translator, Walter Kaufmann, 1974. Alternate titles: The Joyful Wisdo…

I'm always trying to reconcile consciousness and physics. This is a thought experiment that scrutinises the relationship between our experience of the universe and the idea that consciousness is just neurons firing in a predicatable way due to their position in space (and their connection to each other). Disclaimer: I don't know if this is an old thought experiment or if it just sounds naive and stupid, I am here to discuss the idea and make some progress with what to me seems like a bit of a conundrum. Imagine we create a replicator. With the recent advances of 3D printing it's not completely implausable to think that we might one day have a device that could sca…

So recently I have been turning this over in my head. Is Eternalism correct? Or is it Presentism? It seems to me that, Special and General Relativity support Eternalism. Just look at the Andromeda Paradox and the fact that there is no preferred "frame of reference" to choose from. On the other hand, there seems to be a "arrow of time" in physics, although for all we know this might get resolved. I have considered that an argument for Presentism is that we humans experience a "flow of time." This is not convincing to me at all because if this was anything to base facts upon then Quantum mechanics and the modern model of the atom (where its mostly empty space) w…

all copy pasted from here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

What a nonsense. I would suggest you learn what modern philosophers are doing. See here. Using your argumentation scheme, I could say that physics is dead because Newton got overruled by relativity and QM. Or the other way round, that what Newton did was philosophy, not physics: his main work was titled 'Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'. Both are nonsense of course. And, btw, saying 'philosophy has had its day' is a philosophical remark.

What does the subject question imply? That things can happen magically/accidentally without cause? That micro events can flit in and out of existence based on zero history, nor initial conditions? If all events do in fact have causes, then does this require one to accept an objective reality? If we accept the well known response of: 'the Universe makes a choice', does this not require an objective reality that is making the choice?

Can anyone name a single testable prediction that has ever been made using metaphysics? If not, then I think all arguments in its favor here are rendered immediately moot.

We can't actually see light, but to understand this, you need to understand the subjective human experience of vision. Physics tries to seperate from subjective experiences, so to physics, detection of light is seeing. Neurologically however, detecting light is merely one aspect of the visual process which results in seeing. When our eyes detect light, they send electrochemical impulses to our brains visual cortex. Here our brain creates visual representations of the objects from which the light originates. So we don't see an actual object. We see our brains representation of the object. We definitely don't see light. Light is a noumenal phenomenon. Brightness, colours an…

Any personal meanings we create in life are all neutral as they all come from the exact same functions of our brains that create nothing but neutral words, sounds, images, etc. For example, create any sound, letter, image, etc. in your mind that provokes no emotional response and is bland to you. Therefore, all other meanings we create in life are the same in that sense because, again, they are all the same functioning in our brains. So that makes our own created meanings all neutral as well. These created meanings are no different than the creation of neutral words, sounds, images, etc. because there is no difference between any personal meanings we create in life as o…

Is it better to be aware of the outside world and of pain, pleasure, and emotions or be blind to them and not have the ability to know that you feel them? For instance as conscious beings we know we will die and a vast majority of us (not all of us) have a hard time accepting the inevitable, for this we live with an 'absence of death' we don't think about it. but Mice and most of the animal kingdom do not know what pain feels like, by this I mean to say that they lack the ability to know that they are being hurt. So is it better to be a mouse, completely blind out the outside world, or a conscious being and aware and conscious of this world and all that it means?

The scientific method is awesome!! I mean it really rocks. It has advanced human knowledge in the past 200 years more than the previous 20,000. However, it has a fundamental flaw that prevents it from overcoming it's own limitations. The fundamental flaw is that it is a doctrine that says truth can only be obtained by following its rigid rules. That is absoluty 100% certainly false. A discovery that advances human knowledge and understanding of nature can be made without the tool of science. Thought experiment: take a human child at an early stage of development. Provide for his needs, give him a basic understanding of nature...fire burns, cold freezes, etc. teach h…

Hey guys, I imagine a world without money. In this world you have the right to have whatever you want in a certain limit. For example, you have the right to have something to have breakfast but you have a list of combinations you have to choose from. In return, you have to do your mission too. What do you think? Is it a better world? Is it possible? WHY? If you have any question about the world you are free to ask

It is often claimed that something cannot come from nothing. Often this is just a colloquial formulation of the conservation of energy, however, it is also used as some sort of metaphysical intuition as a defense of certain premises in logical arguments regarding beginnings. The trouble with the latter sense of the claim is that it is a rather poor intuition. Intuitions aren't innate beliefs, but rather inductive inferences. This inference, however, is based on faulty information. Yes, it is true we do not see things pop into existence out of nothing (vacuums are not 'nothing'), but that doesn't help us. Why is that? Well, we lack the necessary and sufficient conditions t…

This came up in another thread, and I thought this would be an interesting discussion, so I wanted to set this up before I forgot, and will weigh in when I have a chance.

This is a spin-off from a parallel discussion here, in the context of different explanations of SR. The compatibility of 3D Space with SR was put in doubt (if I correctly understood it!) based on the argument that 3D space implies presentism, and presentism is incompatible with SR. I suspect that there's an error somewhere in that logical scheme. Mordred wrote: I could not follow that argument, regretfully... But before getting into details: it was next suggested that usually "presentism" implies a classical Newtonian concept of time. If that is correct, then it doesn't apply to Lorentzian 3D Space. Then, does your argument still stand, do you think? …

I am rather disappointed with how some of the threads in the religious section are attacked and opposed and the evidence for God or a higher authority is requested first applying strict positivist rules even before willing to have an abstract meaningful metaphysical speculation on it. What is evidence for the existence of God has anything to do with discussing concepts of God and its effects on our social and political reforms. The Logic of Scientific knowledge was given by Karl Popper and it is his philosophy of science which is the most accepted one in the scientific community and therefore it is important to understand his philosophical stands, Karl Popper …

What's the difference between evidence and proof? I think a lot of evidence can lead to proof. Also, proving and disproving of a model is important to keep science, scientific.