General Philosophy

Answering the question "Can nothing exist?": "nohing is" and "everything is not" against "everything is" and "nothing is not". the second statement is a paradox, the firs isnt. to me, this would imply, that the original question isnt correct, that its opposite IS the question: "can nothing not exist"

Statement 1 (S1): Birds don't fly Statement 2 (S2): Frank Sinatra is not a poached egg Both these statements share one thing in common: they are both screamingly obvious; the difference being that S1 is obviously false (it is true that some birds don't fly, of course, but "[all] birds don't fly" is false) while S2 is obviously true. Now, if the village idiot, or the village madman for that matter, were to tell you either of the statements above, you might smile politely, make some excuse about a dental appointment, and disappear fast. On the other hand, however, were S1 or S2 advanced by the village genius, one might stop to wonder "Why is an intellige…

It is my opinion that there are only 2 consciousness states,Manual and Autopilot.We “toggle” all the time between these 2 consciousness states either in awareness or unawareness.If we “toggle” in unawareness then clearly we are a “prisoner of consciousness” to coin a phrase. However, if we have awareness then we can exercise control over which consciousness state we wish to reside within in any given moment.We can bring ourselves out of Autopilot and into Manual. Initially, we are unable to stay in manual for long, we just “toggle” back to Autopilot until we bring ourselves back into Manual again and so it continues. It is my opinion, that awareness is d…

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…

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.

I am not sure where to post this so have used Philosophy (of Science) to allow latitude in exploring this subject. I hope it will make a welcome change from the current Philosophy subject we have surely now done to surely death. Dimensional analysis is a very powerful technique in Science and is one of the things that distinguishes Science from Pure Mathematics, but to repeat the title, Is it necessary for all equations in Science to be dimensionally consistent?

If you look carefully to the video, you will read the words " sens du mouvement" (direction of the movement). This "movement" is a "motion in time". It is represented as Time being a static dimension in which the objects are translating. It appears no different than a motion in space. The video also shows the imprint of the path. The question is if this imprint truly "exist" or not. IOW the question is whether objects constantly duplicate over time and thus "exist" in the past (and also the future) or if the object simply "moves through time" and exists in its own present only. If the imprint exists, then we have the Block Universe (B…

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.

Without meaning to be argumentative, John, I'd say all your claims above might most charitably be described as dubious. (I've numbered them for convenience) (1) The definitions are clear enough? This is news to me. Please share these definitions with us so that those poor beleaguered souls who've spent decades trying to explicate the concept of "evidence" in science, and meeting very little success, might finally rest. It seems to me that "evidence" in science is simply that which people commonly regarded as being involved in the scientific enterprise call evidence. (2) Well, that's one opinion. It's not the opinion of Karl Popper and his followers, though,…

Hey so my question is the following. How would you create a perfect society from a philosophical persepctive. Like would you set any rules, how would your society run and protect yourself. Also that society must be able to exist in the real world.

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…

Brought up here; I'd never heard of this conundrum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton's_dome http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Dome/ Basically, there is a dome shape and the top is a point of unstable equilibrium. There is a solution where an object at the top can spontaneously move off of the top, and once it does, continues accelerating. This is offered as an example of a violation of determinism, as the motion is purportedly spontaneous. But I have a quibble with (at least) one of the arguments I don't think that creating a new version of the first law means that you can claim this is consistent with Newton's laws. The emphasis on "uniform mo…

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?

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 sure , as this is a science forum , the question must have been raised before ! But the discussions are probably buried deep within the depths of information contained in the Forum . With the input of new members and the passage of time and events , it might be beneficial to take another look. Google Definition :- - - SCIENCE. - - - " The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. ". * There are quite a few Meaningful words and sentiments here -----------------------------------------------------------…

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

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.

As has been well documented by now, our bodies respond positively to acts of kindness. As noted in the linked article, seratonin, dopamine, and endorphins are released when we are kind, giving us a pleasant feeling when we do something nice for another party. In other words, our bodies provide positive feedback for altruistic behavior. On the other side of the spectrum, we have shame. I will cite a brief excerpt from Building Self Esteem by Joseph Burgo, Ph.D , pg 14/15. As the book further goes on to explain, this provides negative feedback for bad deeds to promote better social behaviors. Taken in aggregate, combined with our capacity to learn and develo…

Posting this in General Philosophy if that fits. My question is this: "Is there any kind of a test (perhaps along the lines of the Turing test) that we could administer to a sentient creature (or a machine) that would allow us to define or determine whether or not the said subject was actually conscious? I don't know,but it seems a central feature of my existence that I tell myself that I do possess consciousness but I cannot see a way to verify this other than to take it as a matter of a priori belief. Could there be any possible tests or is it just the Turing test that might be applicable? Apologies if this question has been aske…

Kristalris has a habit of derailing threads by shouting "BAYES' THEOREM!!!!!!111!1!11!" even when it's utterly irrelevant because no inference is even being made. So, I've decided to make this thread so he doesn't have to derail the others. He's made some hefty claims about Bayes's theorem. Some are true, some are false. Before we get into that, let's see what Bayes's theorem is. The propositional calculus tells us what is true when other things are true. The problem is, we rarely in a position to tell with the certainty that the propositional calculus demands whether or not propositions are true or false. We can do that with tautologies or contradictions (such as why w…

Having quested for ultimate bedrock. Namely , what is at the bottom of " EVERYTHING" .? One could make the statement , ..." Things are bound to ultimately get better " ... Well if I were designing anything , say a boat to go to sea . Because of the intrinsic nature of the sea , if you fall in , or sink into the sea , you usually die ! I would make sure , that in my design , above all else , there must be some means , like a water pump , to pump any ingress of water OUT . So things would get better , always , as living is better than drowning , always ! Hence , it would stand to reason , that however the universe came about , there must be by desig…

Do you think that the human evolution in terms of civilization & technology and also social evolution would be exponential ? and we would be exploring the galaxys an the universe in the future ? and like curing all types of diseases and these king of stuff ? Or like me do you think our advance & evolution has limits and its limited by our own nature and it would have a peak and after that everything would start to fall apart ? And our civilization would start to gradually collapse In my opinion we have past the peak and started to downfall for about a decade or so

Humans are the only known species to use word-communication, and all other species communicate traditionally. The methods that other species use are similar to each other, primarily they talk with signs and symbols, or through exerts of masculinity. Humans have trained their tongue to talk words; they communicate with their own minds to think. The vocabulary is quite extensive, there are many attributes to the word, it is an intelligent technology, but it is natural? Aren't we somehow differentiated with nature; shouldn't we be talking in signs and symbols like the rest of the animal? A man's mind is silent, are we meant to think in words? Isn't thinking a skill attai…

In the Religion section there's a thread 'Was Jesus a real person?', though the Bible is a book of metaphors. So is it logical for us to interpret things literally when we know that symbolism plays a central role? I also noticed that some content was removed: Moderator Note Posts hidden. This is a discussion of history, not personal testimony/preaching. Is a discussion on Jesus a discussion of history? Or, would it be reasonable to take the symbolism into consideration? Does logic get the better of us sometimes? Is there such a thing as being "too" logical?

What does it mean for something to exist? Does it even make sense to define 'non-existence'?