General Philosophy

Is the burden of life greater than the burden of proof?

Timothy Sprigge advanced an original synthesis of panpsychism and of absolute idealism. He argued that consciousness is an irreducible and subjective reality that is only grasped by an introspective and phenomenological approach and constructed his ontology from what is revealed in the phenomenology itself. In defending the unique place of metaphysics in the pursuit of truth he claimed that scientific investigation can never discover the essence of consciousness since it can only provide descriptions of structure and function in what we normally think of as physical existence itself. In this paper he presents a critical evaluation of Sprigge's view focusing in particular …

Is there meaning to life? To answer this question, let’s take a random subject and find out if it has any connotations. For example, the Bald Eagle – does the Bald Eagle have meaning? It had evolved through natural selection; it looks and acts in that way because it was coherent to the nature that it inhabited. Meaning can be found in every aspect of the Bald Eagle, since each part of it had evolved for a specific reason. A Bald Eagle’s wings were used for flight, and over many years they evolved to better suit its lifestyle – therefore, a meaning associated with wings is flight (as well as other things). You could also associate Air with Flight, and thus, the Eagle’s win…

I'm coining an ulterior name with a positive connotation on this type of attitude. Spontaneosity. I think you guys can draw your own conclusions on this.

The kind of Determinism I am talking about is adequate determinism, which does not say that all microscopic events are predictable. Rather, adequate determinism is about things larger than mere particles. There is not much random about a cell or an animal composed of cells. This probably doesn't need to be pointed out, but I want to remind you that quantum indeterminacy, even if it did affect things on a macroscopic level, would still be beyond a person's control and therefore irrelevant to whether or not a person has free will. Freedom of choice should not be confused with unpredictability of "choice". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism) Now, let us cons…

My car is unique. It was designed to a price and assembled by UAW workers. It is not the fastest car. It doesn't have the most comfort, interior space, or best brakes. But it does something that no other car has ever done and no other vehicle, for that mater, can do. It sits perfectly still at all times. You may think that a car that doesn't move would be a bad thing. Most of the time you'd be right (given a particular frame of reference). But even though my car does not move itself, it remains in one point in space-time and shifts the entire universe relative to its location. So while my car sits at the very hub of creation its engine. drivetrain. and whee…

Hello I am currently attending high school and I feel as though I learn much more meaningful information on holidays than I do at school, I spend countless hours studying for exams and to complete assignments but I feel as though all this time is being wasted when the possibility is there for us to all individually become something unique to benefit not only our selves but society as well. I am almost fnished with my highschool studies but I feel as though all this time I have spent studying for the sake of it is to get a job, I mean a job is neccesary to live in the current society in present but should'nt school be more than that should;nt schools allow students to thin…

Was reading the Wiki article on Schopenhauer and was particulary taken with his critique of Kant. When disussing the establishment of phenomena and nomena and their roles and existence in relation to each other, it occurred to me strongly, that abstraction and understanding of the outside world, is done, primarily in terms of what one can say about it. It is hardly coincidental that the same language we use to form ideas is the one we use to communicate our ideas to others. And if we translate our personal abstractions into a common language, understood by others, and understand the words another says to us, the mere fact of the communication, establishes th…

If there exists all these kind of atheists apatheistic atheists, igtheistic atheists agnostic atheists, gnostic atheists then logically there can exist anti-philosophy atheist Or do I do some kind of philosophy error there? Maybe the word anti-philosophy is too strong? What about unwilling atheist, reluctant atheist, don't feel at home with the label atheist? An adjective is a word that describe how the substantive is? Agnostic atheist is adjective plus substantive. Same with reluctant as adjective so how can it be wrong? http://www.thefreedictionary.com/reluctant sounds very logical to me. agnostic atheist describe an atheist that …

This was brought on by a discussion between a friend of mine and I a while back. Simply put, the question is the same as the title: At what point does something stop being what it was before. Example: You have a wooden boat with long wooden planks from one end to the other with all the accouterments needed to hold it all in place. As time goes on, parts of the boat are replaced as they wear out, warp, etc. Eventually every board, every screw, bolt, and nut has been replaced with a new one. Is it still the same boat? If yes, how can it still be the same if nothing on it is the same as it was before being fixed? If no, how does that apply to living beings? Our cells are con…

What do you think about this? Mostly consciousness, causation/noncausation, the beginning/ending of the universe, the idea that we as humans might overlook a new science or deny it until a thousand or so years from now, an apparent lack of sense in the universe, apparent lack of magic powers, and other such things.

For any given human being, isn't it the case that perception is reality?

I am currently having a discussion with someone regarding whether or not our consciousness is able to survive after death. Personally, I do not believe that it can or even that that is a logically coherent concept. However, as an intellectually consistent skeptic, I never completely rule anything out. Does anyone know whether there is a single shred of valid evidence, whether anecdotal or not, that consciousness is able to survive the complete destruction of the brain? Now, many people cite near-death experiences as evidence; I do not. In fact I would go so far as to say that I know for a fact that NDEs cannot be considered evidence for an afterlife for one very important…

Perhaps minds exist in a similar fashion to light, and in the ideas that create minds, the reference point from which everything else is measured(the single mind) must be measured in the same way to all others proving the unity underlying everything. It's like irrational time except this is applied to thought instead of time? And so any point is an absolute co-ordinate...because any point includes everything else including time. So there is no preferred co-ordinate, they are all equal.

Hi, I'm new even though I've had this account for quite a while. Before I begin, I have to admit that I have high hopes of finding people here that are just as intrigued with many many things like my self. For that reason, I want to have fluent communication with anyone who wants to make an opinion so I'll politely ask that if you decide to write something, use proper grammar or at least, adequate diction, that way it's easy to read and easy to be conveyed by whatever point your trying to make and how you argue said point. On that note, I'd like to begin with a difficult question that can be answer in so many ways, I truly doubt any of us might reach a definitive …

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 …

When and where enligthment grows in a society? It is certain that some environments changes the type of mentality. Seemingly we have such an evolution: In the first step, concepts are considered as an important entity. In the second step, the ideas cross each other. In the third step, loic, reflexibility in thinking, and respecting each other are considered as important. In the third step, there is an evolution. From, labeling mind toward analytical mind. By having labeling mind, people when face a idea, statement or individual, they try to categories him in their known categories, and in the case that they do not find him in his own categoricity they …

What follows assumes that no life after death exists and that a dead person returns to the state of pre-birth. This is not necessarily my opinion, but it seems to be the most logical conclusion. It is commonly said that life is a gift, or at least that you are lucky to have it. Being born means beating astronomical odds, so even the scientifically-inclined tend to characterize it as something that one should be happy about having. But is it really more fortunate to be born than to die in utero? Leaving all sentimentality aside, let us consider what life is like. 1. After birth, humans begins to have desires. Now, a desire is a form of discomfort. It drives us…

i have been reading about scientific theory possibly here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory and i have failed to conceptualise well the requirements of a scientific theory. can some one out there help to throw more explanation on this for me?

Multiverses allow for selection of universes for one in which we can live. Entropy is conditional of the state of the universe we see. We see the most efficient one. The one that exists, With us in it. If you were going to make a universe wouldn't you try out alot of combinations till you found the right one?

so today i was think, and then i thought about thinking... literally... before continuing, take a couple minutes right now and think about something, anything now think: the thought you just thought of was thought up in a language you speak... language is something we use to communicate our thoughts to someone else. so why would we need language to think for ourselves. so when we think we're thinking, we're not really thinking, but talking to our brain, who is actually doing the thinking and then putting those thoughts into words so that we can understand what it (the brain) is thinking... so we have no idea of what we're thinking about except that which our brain…

These are the two things created in order to control human ingenuity and evolution. I believe that the potential of the human race is regulated by some of its members. What would the reason for this be?

After some amazing (yet personal) events have occurred the question of how did everything begin really is important to me. The last time I was desperate to know the answer was 10 years ago when I was 8 years old. I was surrounded by Jehovah's wittiness's explaining how god created the earth and then asked the question "What was god doing before he created the earth? Where did god's life begin?". And the answer I got just annoyed the crap out of me: "God is eternal, He's always been there". Then I said "but that's impossible, everything needs to have a beginning!" I was the one who would always say "Where was god a year before he created earth, the year before that an…

These two graphs are pretty cool. The first goes from 600BCE to 600CE and the second from 600CE to about 1930CE. It's a taxonomy of sorts outlining the relations between different schools of philosophy throughout history. I just thought it'd share something cool I found. Thoughts?

There are two main approaches to the fundamental reality of what science does. The first, called Scientific Realism, is that the goal of science to find the least wrong description of reality that it can. The other set of approaches, called Scientific Anti-Realism, is precisely not that. Most of the versions of Anti-Realism make the distinction between believing a theory is true and accepting that it is empirically adequate. The empirical adequacy, I shall argue, leads inevitably to Scientific Realism. This is often called The No Miracle Argument. In presenting it, I shall discuss Larry Laudans critique of Realism. Laudan has an introductory quote to his paper by Hil…