General Philosophy

There are at leat a couple of current threads where a muddle in the question of equivalence is causing difficulty. I have posted this example for discussion to show that purely mathematical equivalence can be too restrictive.

What is your opinion? Are there any good people left in this world?

As the title says, are cognitive rules and concepts somehow related for referencing itself?

Hi everyone, I just have a question about contradictions. Is there any proof that contradictions are not possible?

I'm just wondering, what this planet would look like if there's no human living on it. As I imagine it - there will be no pollution, no over population and no more endangered animals and among other things. I believe that humans are not part of nature, in a sense that although biologically, our body comply with the laws of nature, we try to fit nature to our needs. If we believe in what we learned from school, that human originally came from a primate like a monkey or ape, how come for many centuries now, we not even heard of any changes regarding offspring of monkey or ape in a city zoo to adapt its environment and evolved? I think, human originally came from some k…

Unless we are getting more intelligent as a species, there will surely come a time when our processing power as humans can no longer move science forward assuming that we will not be intelligent enough to think beyond the boundaries that are presented. The assumption is based on the idea that at some stage someone with an IQ of 170 will not be able to go beyond the current theory even if it is understood to be flawed in some way but would require an IQ of 180 to do this. If you agree with what I am saying, how far away from this do you think we are? If you oppose, perhaps you could explain why? If someone would like to introduce the role of computers in this plea…

I think we are all shaped by the social norms we grew up in, I believe this programes our beliefs and behaviors. Do you think it would be possible to reverse engineer a specific social norm and then create an algorithum. That can be used to predict human behavior ?.

Any group of people, when they start to be formed have people by their own characterestics, little by little when the relations start to be formed people change their behaviour and adopt themselves to the situation. So, there is a force to change any individual to a social element of that society.Competitions, quellings, education, ... . Inteligence goes to be "the power and ability of adoption". But human being has the other sources of inteligence and creativity, which will be the source of various kind of conflicts. What will be the final result? "Are people reduced to their own relations?"

I got into this argument with a philosophy professor. Basically, I read some Karl Popper, ok, and what I got from him is that theories cannot be true. They will eventually be over-ridden. Thus, I claimed that despite how much a person wants to think a theory is "right," it's ultimately going to be wrong. So, whenever you do put forth a theory, you have to recognize that's it's already wrong, because it's going to be over-ridden in the future by a newer theory, of course, which will be over-ridden and so on and so on.... What do you think?

As we have had another one of those crazy types who insist that science is a cult with arrogant high priests, etc. here is an excellently argued refutation of that sort of ignorant, closed-minded nonsense: https://thelogicofscience.com/2016/08/01/are-scientists-arrogant-close-minded-and-dismissive/

There are many ways to imagine the world; but scientists imagine the world in line with the scientific method. Are scientists somewhat nihilistic, therefore? And what I mean by this is that the infinite nature of the mind, seems suppressed to a particular standpoint.

As the title reads can you rebuild a cognitive system using concepts alone?

Lee Harvey Oswald. Hayley Atwell. John Carpenter. Cleopatra. Masters and Johnson. Any internet user. Any mammal. Any species. Is any living being's thoughts the reason of existence?

This is a consequence of Special Relativity and ,although it has been empirically demonstrated it still seems "unreasonable" to common sense. It seems like it is a fact of life nonetheless and I was just wondering can we generalize from the result or do we just take it "as is" and just apply it to such circumstances as it applies to directly. I realize this question must have been asked on countless occasions. I don't think I have an agenda but hopefully I may learn something if anyone has a view;

Hello, i am curious, are there any physicists, which would agree with compatibilism, i found only and mostly philosophers, or neurologists, which support compatibilism. In physics seems most favorable is indeterminism, because it is first condition for free will and because determinism cannot be tested and what cannot be tested is pointless to even do, you could stop doing experiments right here, because which experiment you choose to do and what varables you will set is already determined. Most of physicists deny free will completely, or at least they are incompabilists, or can yet support indeterminism. I personaly don't think compatibilism al…

Hello. I have come to heavily doubt my Efilist and promortalist stance. Is anybody here an ex-efilist, an ex-animal-antinatalist or ex-promortalist? How did you get into it, how did you leave? This is a call for help, I feel trapped by this philosophy. I need to know if there are others like me. EDIT: I am mainly looking for people who have held these stances and have now changed. But I suppose I might as well let others join in. Efil is life spelled backwards. It represents a stance of "anti-life". Efilists are universal antinatalists ,which means they want to sterilise the planet, and are generally promortalists. Promortalists attaches…

Not sure how mainstream an idea this is. I think we all know that we do not know the size or structure of the Universe (not the observable Universe , the Universe) And we can talk (maybe to limited effect) about the Universe as opposed to the observable Universe because we can (and do ,I guess) assume that the Universe does not stop just because we cannot observe it So here is my idea. : What we see as the observable Universe may well be finite in that it may have had a beginning and may also eventually have a thermal death but ,outside this observed /observable Universe there may (or may not) be other regions where similar things are happening. …

Hello, are there more approaches in quantum mechanics than deterministic and indeterministic, because if not, we certainly don't have free will. Thanks for answer.

Are there really answers to the universe and such things as philosophy?

Are there Universal Laws? Can you break them? What are they? Is the a consequence of breaking a law?

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.

Evginia, I like your approach. We have many ways to obtain dopamine, free and easy, or at least inexpensive, and readily available, legal, helpful to others or unobtrusive to others, ways. So good approach. However, I am mixed on providing dopamine, and blockers and reuptake inhibitors and such in a mechanical, chemical approach. I don't think our consciousness is clever enough to out think our own subconscious, much less someone else's. Consider the oxycodone problem came about because the medical profession wanted to lessen human pain and suffering. We technically have the way to provide dopamine in a safe manner. Except providing it too much makes i…

(first post) I think we are, because when you look our thirst for scientific knowledge we will quench it by finding the facts or if that is too off we would run a simulation. What better way to know the secrets of how something starts then by observing how it started. If we could run an intense simulation on a quantum computer but a more basic version of it; then could we not have some grounds to show that we are a possible simulation? Maybe these are humans thousands of years ago running a simulation of their early primitive ancestors to see the progress of their primitive ancestors and cite it as proof because of how realistic this simulation is. There are some powerful…

What are the boundaries of my existence? Where do I stand, in my head?! Isn't that a rough estimation as it gives us an accuracy of about some ten cms? From the current physical point of view the observer is dealt with as a local entity. An observer distinct from the observable traveling with a velocity or in case of usual quantum mechanics doing experiments reducing the state function. But all in all not much is said about the reality of the observer itself. And debates of the sort are usually avoided and considered unphysical. The problem exists though even if we keep ignoring it.

Inspired by this thread: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/33922-homosexuality-in-the-animal-kingdom/ I wonder how many posters in this forum consider themselves animals or even part of the animal kingdom? How much of what is interpreted through our research and studies in biology, ecology, zoology, etc. are we anthropomorphizing? Any thoughts?