General Philosophy

I would like to start a new discussion on the topic of what is defined as being imaginary vs what is defined as being real However for this discussion I would like for you to only answer the following questions and then to compare and contrast personally with others who have also answered these questions. the only rules and regulations of this discussion that I ask for you to follow are as followed (1) Post the answer to the question for others to see. (2) Compare and contrast your answered with others to find similarities and differences. (3) Do not question another persons definition of reality and/or imagination, this would negat…

Albert Einstein said: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." What did hen mean with this? Was 'religion' rather a metaphor for creativity/spirituality/imaginativeness?

Is time real? Time is often referred to as a fourth dimension along with the three spatial dimensions, the dimensions this refers to are obviously just measurable quantities of independent variables but I assume you would say the space they measure and the space you experience does actually exist, so what about the time dimension, are the moments it measures and the moment you experience just as real as the space? Length, temperature and weight are all examples of measurements but we don’t experience these quantities either; we experience space, heat and force just like we experience the moment now; or at least I think we do. Is time the measurable quantity…

why do we need all this stuff?

Hi, I am new here, so complete stupidity…but as Flat-earthers also got some community going…let me give it a shot. Isn’t it, because energy travels from - towards +, you can also say that + attracts the energy? Wouldn’t that then make it so that the sun doesn’t shine but the objects around the sun attract the energy? Sucking the light towards it? To me it looks like light has more of a “sticky” property as a “shiny” property. If a part of the sun is not observed; does it then shine or not? Since, if nothing requests energy, why would it shine? If there is no “positive” to receive the energy then the “negative” does not hold value …

I understand all Geometry can be represented in a mathematical way. But the two are clearly different.Is Geometry a (sub?) branch of Mathematics or could it be the other way around? Could all Mathematics even be represented geometrically perhaps? Can ideas muscle in on the act if the "Materialists"* are allowed full license? What I am trying to ask in first place is "How,in essence is Geometry different from Maths ?" *if that is the right term for those who claim that all thoughts and ,by extension ideas can be reduced to their physical interactions...

I'm torn between two worldviews. One worldview, from neuroscience, stating that the more the brain is damaged, the more the mind slips into nothing/nowhere. Taken to the extreme of brain damage/dissolution/annihilation, one should expect that you're no longer there. Also, from physics describing how particles are arranged in specific/specialized patterns and when the particles disarrange at bodily death we cease to be. The other worldview, that we don't where we came from, where we're going, why or how existence is there, why or how awareness of existence is there, we don't know what is outside of mind and we don't know the nature of personal identity. Thus, who is anyone…

The debate between Norton and Brown regarding whether thought experiments transcend empiricism is interesting with Norton suggesting that thought experiments do not transcend empiricism. If one had to choose a thought experiment to defend Norton's view, would Galileo's thought experiment that two falling bodies fall with the same acceleration be a suitable thought experiment since it can be empirically tested and it also can be written in a premise and conclusion argument form. I am not sure whether this would be a deductive argument though. Also, wouldn't the assumption that connecting the heavier (H) and lighter (L) body makes one body of weight (H+L) mean tha…

"If you can't explain something simple enough for someone to understand then you don't know it well enough" or "If you can't explain something to someone then you don't understand it well enough" Takes away the "simple" cause maybe it aint a simple concept to them, but nonetheless can still be explained. I mean that is how we all learn in the first place right.

This could be fun .. hard to see how we can go off topic .. a lot less work for the recently overworked moderators if we remember to be polite and pleasant homo sapiens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/news/2014/09/physics-beyond-god-play-dice-einstein-mean/ Albert Einstein is one of the greatest and certainly best known physicists. If you ask anyone to name a physicist the most common answer you will receive is “Einstein”. Einstein is also famous for his quotations. Among the many Einstein’s quotations one is particularly popular among the general public: “God does not play dice”. But what did Einstein mean by this? "…

I am questioning the position that information and life are more fundamental natural notions than intelligence. One naturalistic view is that intelligence is an emergent quality that arises in living entities, which arose from inanimate matter during abiogenesis, and information is a physical notion that exists in a non living world, and can be instantiated in it without any intelligent agent causing its instantiation. The proof for this is his mathematical/physical theory which doesn't refer to intelligent agents in any way, nor does it deal in any way with them. Although, it implicitly posits the fact that intelligence emerges from information instantiated in living org…

Dear readers, If you decided to read this– be warned- this is not a (published) scientific article, nor is it a synopsis of some award-winning research. We'd all love that. This is meant to be a way for me to express my feelings about science towards those involved in science. To those who are professionals, maybe you'll get a kick out of this. To those who are mere students, maybe even high-schoolers like myself, hopefully you are inspired. My last major post on here was about something I wrote in ninth grade. Now I am in eleventh grade, nearly midway through my third year of high school at John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore, New York. Before we get start…

I woke up one morning, and realized that I don't have an answer to questions such as how life started on earth, and how it evolves. I had nothing better to do, so I started to investigate it a bit, wrote 4 short essays, and published it on a blogger platform. Here they are: https://hrvojedj.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-origin-of-information.html https://hrvojedj.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-revision-of-origin-of-information.html https://hrvojedj.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-connection-between-thermal-food.html https://hrvojedj.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-game.html They also present my naturalistic philosofical views. If you feel like it, give me some f…

why has hide and go seek been around for so long?

is time, from the field of physics, a nonlinear depth of memory, from the field of psychology?

My brother was all his life a lover of dirty life and now is an indigent. I was all the life a lover of letters and I'm now a writer. Why the hell appears by itself an Universe with moral (little or big moral for you or for somebody). I can understand an Universe chaotic appeared by itself (a soup of matter for exemple), but not this one. It's shocking.

Everyone who learns the scientific method and understands how science works understands that for an idea or explanation about reality to be meaningful, it must be testable. It must make predictions that we can verify through experiment. Now, there are unfortunately limits to what is testable. That is, we can verify that a particular hypothesis is true, but we cannot distinguish between it and another hypothesis that makes identical predictions. They are indistinguishable, even if their mechanisms are completely different. To make a fanciful example, I could argue that tiny demons move particles around according to the laws of physics as we know them. Since the dem…

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.

On a forum such as this one, we often hear people claiming that science has proved theory X or Y. Later, the person may partially recant claiming that theory X isn’t completely proven, but it is 99.999999% certain. Because of the evidence, the theory has been so repeatedly confirmed that it would be wrong to withhold provisional assent. However, philosophers disagree because of the problem of underdetermination. To understand underdetermination, we can simply look at the following graph: We have three data points, and we are trying to express these data points as a graph. As you can see, a simple straight line adequately expresses the data. Unfortunately, w…

This question (placed in general Philosophy for a wide discussion base) was inspired by the writings of Professor Ian Stewart. Here are his actual words So give us the scaffolding.

It's a fallacy where one argues that X is justified because Y, but the problem is that Y is created by the very people arguing that X is justified so they can have a justification for it. At first I thought the term "self-validation" could apply, but according to this webpage ... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pieces-mind/201407/self-validation ... that's a different concept. After that, I thought about using the term "self-justification," but while this fallacy may be a type of self-justification, that phrase encompasses every circumstance where you justify your own actions, even when your arguments are valid. Here's an example of the sort of fallacy I…

Just saw this article posted in a Facebook philosophy group I'm a member of, and I wanted some feedback on it from more thoughtful atheists. This seems to be the place for that, so here goes. https://rightsmarts.com/atheism/ A strong case is made that atheism is dead as an intellectual endeavor, with some bold claims about science. A few brief claims: Science has shown the universe is designed. Science has shown life is designed. Abstract concepts like logic, morality, and mathematics has shown that there's more to existence than the physical. God believers built science. There's a lot more, but those are some of the bolder claims off th…

In this thread I'd like to explore the various relationships that obtain between science, truth, and knowledge, and perhaps help to ameliorate some very deep confusions that have been brought to my attention through discussion with fellow members. I've noticed that, in contexts related to science, some members are extremely reluctant to make any mention of the word "truth" (and its cognates: true, truly, etc.), a tendency that struck me as quite inexplicable until the reason, I think, for this misguided reticence was exposed in a very revealing comment recently. If I may paraphrase: "The making of claims to truth would compromise the open-minded character of the…

What I formulate this arguement it is not on the grounds of stating an absolute, whereas for the purpose of questioning and developing new ideas. This is only a hypothetical, used simply as a means of connecting definitions and ideas which are connected to the definitions and ideas of knowledge and imagination. Imagimation definition the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses Knowledge definition (#2.) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation It appears as if, from my current understanding, that imagination can be related to " the…

so i am a guy of zeros and ones. i like logic, maths and science. i am not religious at all and have no beliefs at all. , or so i think. the concept of "believing" something annoys me. i either know it or dont know it. and if i dont know it i either want to know it or will stay undecided until i do know it. so in my discussions with religious people i always ask them, "why do you believe something, why not just accept the concept of either knowing or not knowing"? but is there really such a thing? can we really "know" something or is everything just a level of belief?