General Philosophy

Can someone please explain exactly what, if anything, this term means? I've been having a debate on Sodahead with a theist (and a troll as well) who keeps on making the claim that if there was no god, there could be no 'ontological grounding' for objective morality. I do not really know how to respond to that because it doesn't even make sense to me. I do believe in objective morality, but whether or not a god exists has nothing whatsoever to do with that so far as I can tell. Is he simply misusing the word 'ontology' to try and throw me off, or am I missing something here?

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

This, for me, gives rise to a fundamental question; are we the only species that can appreciate the beauty of the world around us? Does the appreciation of art/aesthetics stem from intelligence or is it innate in higher life forms?

I notice that if I don't get any input for a little while, or worse, only receive minimal exposure to musical stimuli, I often enter a state of accidental recursion where I lack the ability to prompt any insightful or useful information. Right now, I have had a very catchy song stuck in my head basically paralyzing my ability to prompt linguistic information. It literally took me over 10 minutes to write this. I got caught up trying to find words while the song is running in parallel I wish I had electrodes to measure my brain activity and an app that showed me what was happening.

the light that burns the brightest burns out the fastest, and we have burn so very bright, so is life on this planet better off without humans?

First of all I would like it to be known that these are my theories and educated guesses on a subject that has plagued mankind for a long time. If you have something to add or you disagree with something, please comment. happiness is something we allow situations in our lives to change while we all have the mental ability to keep it alive at all times. this can also be used to define human nature lol. an example of this would be to say that you would never be happy unless you lived out your dream which is false, or to say that a relationship ending will cause you to go into depression. This is also false. You cause the emotions. The situations could be percei…

How do you say a thing is living or non-living? I would say that it is something that tries best to maintain itself in such a condition. But what is "such" a condition?

Philosophically speaking, if something was claimed to be perfect, and it was directly associated with another thing that is imperfect, would the perfect object really be perfect because of the association? I am using perfect objectively, as if it were a subjective term, this argument would be illogical. To me at least.

I quite simply want to get a discussion rolling about the concept of a deterministic universe; that is, one in which every event, from the tiniest atomic collision to the individual thoughts and feelings of a living being, is entirely predetermined by a set of initial conditions. In this situation, would a big bang event with the exact same initial conditions play out in an identical fashion? Or do you feel it is more likely we hold a firm grasp on our free will? With standard physics, it seems to me that a deterministic universe is entirely feasible, but am I missing something in terms of quantum behaviour of particles? Can anything happen at random that co…

I found this thread on a search. I hope people don't mind bringing back old threads here (I'm still really a newbie). I think I've stumbled on the answer. It's the metaphysics of modern science that has caused the fragmentation. I don't mean the fragmentation of knowledge as that is natural due to the remarkable quantity of knowledge and the "necessity" for specialization. It's the fragmentation of the knowledge itself which is rarely understood by anyone because people mistake technology for science and for knowledge. Technology is merely the ability to remove something from the lab and does not connote any knowledge. All human knowledge is therefore either…

This is my understanding after having read Christopher Langan's CTMU. Basically, a syntactic operation is what the intellect is. According to Chris Langan, SCSPL reality embodies infocognition, self-transducing information residing in self-recognizing SCSPL elements called syntactic operators. SCSPL stands for "self-configuring self-processing language", which is supposed to be a language of languages. Click on the .pdf here http://ctmu.net/ I'm not sure how this proves that a God exists or not. Perhaps it does. What are your thoughts?

I'm familiar with Euler's identity, but in reality, how do you actually raise something to the power of an imaginary number? Ever since I first encountered imaginary numbers I've been searching for some way to make physical sense out of them. Where the hell does x^2+10 cross the x axis? I don't see any "i" values on the y-axis. wtf? I thought of some way that might work, I'm too tired right now to try it myself right now, maybe someone else can play around with it. Take an imaginary plane, where coordinates are (iy, ix). Then solve for the equation iy= either (ix)^2+2 or x^2+2, maybe it will make more visual sense, but not too much because where would that situation even…

So for the longest, I looked at our species with a mild distaste. After I took us off the pedestal that we put ourselves on as the most prestigious species on our planet everything started looking up. We have come a long way from our primate ancestors. It was only a few hundred years ago most the world was in the slave trade. Yes we pollute, yes were wasteful, and yes most of our governments/systems are not perfect but they are improving. Were still evolving. So to me as long as we don't kill ourselves off with war or depletion of our resources, our future is possible. Anybody have a stand on if they think our species will make it off the planet or perish on it…

So i Was recently reading a thread on here titled real dreams asking if 2 people have the same dream at the same time is it real. Well it lead me to comment about my experiences with deja vu, and im wondering if there is something more to it than has ever been researched or thought of scientifically. First il explain about my experiences. I am sure you all know that every human has dreams every night that we don't remember, Some stick with us until we reach consciousness but that is a very small percentage. (not to say that a dream that had a powerful effect on you mentally would be forgotten. Hence nightmares ) Now that's what happens to me, Il have a dream, and not b…

If two people imagined- (i) the same dream-(some named function) as each other and also at the same time, was it real? Was human interaction made? (i * i) = i^2 = -1, a real number.

In my opinion. Racism is actually culturalism, the ignorant are blind. LABELS and CATEGORIES, tools of the trade for the ones who aren't content with not understanding or having knowledge of.

I agree with you on this, however your standard quote: Data ---> Information ---> Knowledge ---> Wisdom I don't fully agree on / depends what you mean; then I would. Wisdom IMO = creative intelligence + knowledge (i.e. also science as book wisdom) + experience I.e. more Data ----> more information = more book wisdom ----> more knowledge ------> more wisdom But I guess you mean to say that?

Let's play Mythbusters for a minute. Often, in movies and TV shows, when characters wish they had never been born, some supernatural being takes them to some other dimension where they never were born. This place is ALWAYS a dystopian version of the character's home universe. It's supposed to show the viewers that they can always make a difference, but I think they REALLY exaggerate the results. When Kermit the Frog, for example, wishes he were never born, an angel takes him to this place where Piggy is a con-artist and Gonzo is a criminal. Wait... you're saying that, if it weren't for Kermit, Jim Hanson would have created them to be complete pieces of crap …

Can someone explain metaphysical to me? How can anything that can be measured be beyond the physical? If it can not be measured how can it be said to exist? This is connected with my question of what "first principal" means in this thread. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/69026-theory-of-everything/

What is the exact difference between science and philosophy, aren't both a study of nature, and doesn't both of them attempt to explain nature ? So, why the distinction ? Please explain !

if one day, we were eventually able to create a matter replication device, what would the impact of this device be on the price of goods, would it decrease the price by removing scarcity or would it create a separate niche market for "pure" food much like today's niche market for organic food, also, what would it do to the gas crisis?

Shibus four step hypothesis of the fundamental relation between objects. I created this elaborate system that I believe stands true not just for the human mind based on Carl Jung, but also for any two objects in the universe. Remember, its just a hypothesis. 1) I do not make a distinction between humans and objects since i consider humans to be simply complex objects. 2) I believe that objects are either drawn towards, or they draw towards themselves. 3) I think objects draw into themselves either control or freedom, or draw towards control or freedom. 4) I think the purpose they do this is so that they may either grow, or they may survive. In this, i do not assume…

Does our brains or conciseness limit us ? If this is so, then how can we prove this ?

The Quantum world is inherently unpredictable. So, how do we conduct experiments at such a low scale and get reliable results. If the results are different for different observers, then doesn't the scientific method fail ? Then doesn't science fail as well ? I'm not able to understand this. Any help is appreciated.

I was contemplating the mind-body problem. I don't know the current arguments. You can tear apart my argument if you would like to. Here it goes. It might be more consilient to think of "mental substance" and "material (physical) substance" as the same thing. For example, we typically think of the experience of color and the accompanying brain phenomena as two separate things. I'm proposing that they are the same thing. There seems to be two problems with this idea. I thought of a strong solution to the first problem, but my solution to the second problem is weaker. The first problem is how we are aware of time. It seems like a useful metaphor to think of …