General Philosophy

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 …

Does free will exist ? Any ideas ?

It's so peculiar that there has always been a lot of conflict between religion and science. Why do you guys think that is?

Postulating a Basis for Belief in a Technological Afterlife by Bob Cross I’ve been thinking about the implications of the accelerating advance of technology in our world. Extrapolating this to the far future has led me to postulate the plausible expectation of a non-supernatural afterlife – a Technological Afterlife. Think about the advance of technology we’re experiencing. Compare 2023 vs. 1923. Compare that to 1923 vs. 1823, etc. It’s advancing exponentially. So, imagine what will be possible – not just in a century – but in millennia. I like to use Arthur C. Clark’s idea about what vastly advanced civilizations will be like to us…

In the past, I came up with a type of philosophy called "Systems Interaction Hypothesis." It states that a given object is a "thing" or system or concept which can interact with other systems. Each interaction is known as an "event." Each event is considered a connection or point of a holistic relationship between systems. Systems are the same as the general definition of a system, which is "a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network." A class or a categorization would be considered a system. Using this philosophy/framework, you would define concepts and objects as systems and their interactions as events. You coul…

I'm a proponent of the computational theory of mind, which proposes that the brain is an information processing system and can therefore be emulated on a Turing-machine type of computer. This philosophical approach to consciousness meshes well with modern neuroscience, which so far has not found any mechanisms in the brain which cannot be understood by classical mechanics. If the computational theory of mind is correct, our thinking process is of course deterministic. Who here ascribes to the computational theory of mind? If you don't, why? A counterexample to the computational theory of mind which still relies on natural processes would be Penrose/Hamero…

Please consider these three posts as the start of this thread; they were copied from the "Are all religious people hypocrites?" thread. (One little mechanical comment: I have trouble quoting quotes on this forum.) ​You rather seem to have missed the point that the theists don't have one either. Well, theist believe they do, but you don't believe they do. You're obviously someone who doesn't believe, so you don't know how believing can so strongly motivate a person. Let me say then that theists thoroughly "believe" they have an invariant source of moral code with inevitable and eternal consequences. Let's say a man finds a money…

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. )

The result of pondering whether human life was purposeless or not, lead me to conceive an early hypothesis, somewhat detailed in some earlier threads: Why is the purpose of human life reasonably to create Artificial General Intelligence? Consciousness causes higher entropy compared to unconscious states in the human brain (Relates to thread above) However, given my hypothesis above, upon discussions, especially atheistic persons tend to confuse teleonomy (purpose in the realm of science/objectivity) for the teleological argument, which is a religious/subjective concept contrary to teleonomy; where my threads concern teleonomy.) Why aren't concep…

Split from Anti-Human thread. First, what makes an animal sentient? I defined it as A: Being able to think logically. B: Having emotion and being self aware C: Having a language of some sort. I would, if I had to, say dauphins were the closest animal to meeting all three of these requirements.

I notice this is currently being wrestled with on the social platforms, including this one. Is it not really an unattainable aspiration because freedoms must always have limits? Where do we draw the lines between acceptable and not?

Those of us that struggle to make ends meet, dream of winning the lottery. It's even advertised as, a life changing amount. But is that change positive? The Diderot effect would sugget otherwise....

Nothing is somewhat meaningless to think about because there is nothing to think about. Now I want to think about it together with you guys because it is in some way important to think about. I will draw two areas of discipline to diagnose about how they look on "nothing". First in philosophy, it is metaphysically valid that nothing produces nothing. It is obvious in our own intuition that what comes from nothing is always nothing. Nothing is in a sense "nonbeing", so nonbeing produces nonbeing in a logical manner. Now the second is in physics. I am shocked on how scientist like Krauss define nothing. I will paraphrase on what he said that "nothing" is something. How can …

The scientific method (hereafter TSM) has been traditionally defined as a single, timeless, invariant set of rules governing empirical inquiry, at least since the time of the so-called Scientific Revolution of around 400 years ago. If real, TSM would be precious indeed: it would serve to unify all the prima facie disconnected scientific disciplines (after all, it's far from obvious that anything links the activities of subatomic physicists with economists, say), it would act as the demarcation criterion to distinguish bona fide science from pseudoscience or non-science in general, and it could be appealed to in order to explain the undeniable success of the scientific ent…

Punishment for the previously punished? or Revenge for the victims of the previously punished? Or???

Do you fear death? Why or why not? What do you think happens after your short little life on Earth? When you are on your death bed what will you be thinking while staring in the face of death?

First,is there a distinction to be made? After all the mind is created by the external world (= is that the same as the observed world?) There are even those who claim that the external world is a creation of our mind. I don't think our ideas have an obvious "physicality"(no mass anyway) but can this actually be proved? Seems like our ideas are born out of the physical world and ,like ingrates cut all ties and fly away... But could there be an idea that could turn the tables and ,in a sense "rule the world,the whole of the external world even soon long as it was not infinite?

What do you think of this statement? Many things in what people consider mainstream science are logic ideas not based on scientific evidence. Something that concerns science but is not based on scientific evidence is imo philosophy and not (yet)science.

Most people have difficulty defining consciousness as have most of the big thinkers from 1000 BCE! For me it is fairly easy because I have a spiritual basis in my life. For those that haven't a spiritual basis, consciousness is almost impossible to understand or explain as Daniel Dennett discovered. Consciousness is the limited time we have to experience and communicate with the universal consciousness commonly known as God but more accurately described as the Hebrew Yhwh , the elohim (several or many gods) the Holy Spirit ,Nirvana , Param Brahma ,Vishnu etc As a side note it was the elohim (a Hebrew plural) that created the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1.…

What I noticed about myself from a young age is that I "knew" instinctively what logic and philosophy were without learning about them from anyone or anywhere. Anyone else feel that logic and philosophy are inborn abilities?

I have personally experienced precognition many times, which being scientifically minded has always led me to try to find scientific explanations. None of my paths of investigation, multiple dimensionality, quantum physics etc. have ever fully satisfied me due to one thing. I find it impossible to use for personal gain. I don't mean the "using it for personal gain will lead to disastrous consequences" rhetoric. I mean literally not possible. The merest thought of a personal gain in my subconscious or similar, means I am wrong. To give two examples to explain. I knew Prince William would have a boy and name him George. I never doubted it, but I did not place a bet on …

I was thinking the other day about QM, uncertainty principle, superposition the multiverse theory, destiny and so forth. I then started to consider what the philosophical implications of infinite multiverses may present. The main one I considered was what this means for a person regarding their "soul", their destiny and so forth... I started to imagine such a scenario where we have the idea of infinite parallel multiverses where every quantum change creates a new universe that branches off. This sounds so far out there but is considered by some physicist as a plausible idea that can be used to explain many phenomena. So in this scenario everything that coul…

My previous approach to this subject got bogged down with a lot of my personal ignorance, so my intent here is, as per title to give examples of the actual debate among spacetime ontology scholars and invite comments. I found the most basic question about the ontology of space at the NASA Astronomy Cafe, Q&A section: ................. "Special & General Relativity Questions and Answers Can space exist by itself without matter or energy around? No. Experiments continue to show that there is no 'space' that stands apart from space-time itself...no arena in which matter, energy and gravity operate which is not affected by matter, energy and gravity. General r…

there are a few posts i've seen by members here which are along the lines of "logic is branch of mathematics." is "logic" considered indistinct from "mathematical logic?" if so that seems to be a narrow generalization of what logic is(at least in comparison to the descriptions i can find elsewhere such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic),but i could be wrong and that's why i wanted to ask.

Is our mind inside or outside of our brain? Our mind is spiritual where our brain is biological. Which part the mind or the brain holds our emotions? I'm for our mind. It' said our emotions are in our brain? It is also said that our thoughts are in our mind and not our brain. What say you? Mind one