General Philosophy

Since it is visibly easy to see that the universe appears to be nothing more than physical matters,and energies operating in a space-time framework,human experience seems as but of some sense ephemeral, and not real. Those who speak of love and of human emotions, and of beauty,and imagination are dealing with the unimportant or other derivative phenomena while the ones who construct an atomic bomb are dealing with what is real. The human "experience" so now becomes "subjective." Yes, merely subjective, a term for psychologists, who find such most prerogative, meaning unreal and totally unscientific. For it has been determined that 'good' explanations/theories are of co…

Since the rise of man (and woman), it was in our nature to understand the ways of nature to better our survival. It was inevitable that we take this instinctual drive to understand nature and push it to its logical conclusion: To have a complete understanding of the atomic order of the universe and then, through our vast knowledge, bend it to our will. To live like gods! But I am tortured by the question “What then?” Hypothetically, if one were to acquire all the knowledge there is to be acquired about the universe, what is that person left to do for the rest of his/her existence? Play ping pong? I think it is the mystery of reality that keeps our lives fulfilling. The fa…

There are no typing errors: "To err is uman."

Laws of Physics What bugs me is not only the fact that these laws seem to appear exactly and only because we set up matter in such a way as to express mathematical relationship, but also because we impose functions upon matter, we impose causes and effects that resonate with the solution of concrete practical problems that must be solved, we impose a logic upon matter as the logic applies to us and our mind language and intentionalities and goals and such, therefore the laws of physics really are not "general" laws at all, just "happens to be" mathematical type laws as convenient patterns our Man Brain already, from the outset, from the get go, implicitly su…

Hi all, I was thinking about this the other day and have just read the below article http://www.newscient...in-control.html "One argument goes as follows: the universe, including the bits of it that make up your brain, is entirely deterministic. The state it is in right now determines the state it will be a millisecond, a month or a million years from now. Therefore free will cannot exist." New Scientist ________________________ I'd like to believe I have free will, but the logical conclusion for me is that determinism makes more sense. What are your thoughts? Edit: I changed my vote about 4 times and then added "undecided" as a catego…

Identity Principle ? I have issues with the Identity Principle, and it should be called Principle and not Law since it is The First Principle from which all else derives. It is just plain Wrong. That's all. I said it. And why ? Well any entity, in order to be identical to some other entity must be exactly the same, that is it must have the same spatial, temporal coordinates and all else. But how can anything even be the same to itself if even time is always flowing and changing ? the same entity that was a moment ago is already different from the same entity at this very moment because they now occupy two different time coordinates. And no matter how small y…

Give Us Back The Old West Like when you see in movies, the two cowboys confront each other finally, they will have a short and small duel (or will slug it out), the fastest pistol to shoot wins, end of story. So the opposition between will powers is a simple affair, no need for ideologies, for lawyers, for complications, for justifications, for religions, for millions of blocks of texts and thought processes and mind games and debates and politics and consensus and convincing others that "you are right", that you "have the truth" that you are spiritually and morally correct, that the rules of society and common living must be those you think are right and …

Not looking for sympathy, so I ask that you please direct your responses to the question of why the mind still yearns to learn. Seven years ago I was told by my doctor that I was ready to have a massive stroke at any moment. Obviously, this didn't happen. But, now my veins are so clogged that I can't walk a hundred feet without having to stop to rest. I get severe chest pains on a weekly basis. And I'm so tired all the time. Long story short - my time is pretty much up. And yet, my mind STILL wants to learn about all the wonders of the universe. Why? What is it about the brain that makes it not want to just give up? After living for seven years under a cloud of …

Assuming that leaning toward a preference for moral actions is the basis of human nature, thus the occurence of mental maturity and development of self-image is present, what are the factors which slow down this process? If demoralization exists, then the other branch would be following moral principles contributing to the ideal behavior in a community. If humans would follow fundamental moral principles, then we would reach an ideal society, developing as individuals to our full mental and physical capacities. Since both moral values and lack of them stems from within our perception and logical reasoning, then demoralization of a whole community takes root …

A Few Technologies ? I was noticing how the Technological Economy is really based on the discovery and use of only a handful of technologies that then lend themselves to constant improvements and refinements and such. Like Silicon Technology in Electronics and Integrated circuits and Microprocessors or the Internal Combustion Engine, or Jet Airlines, etc. These are fixed technologies that have become better and better and more refined (but Silicon Technology and Integrated circuits is a truly Free Lunch (Moore's Law), we went from 5,000 transistor Microprocessors in 1975 to 3 billion transistor Mircroprocessors in 2011), as if in reality, you can only discove…

The 90% of Our Brains. Ancestral Imprint on Our Memories. These ancestral memories most likely come from the unused part of the human brain. This is about 90% of the human brain, and that is a lot of encoded DNA. In that 90% of the human brain there is enough encoded DNA to store all the information that is stored in the biggest computers that man hasmade to date. Encoded DNA Encoded DNA can account for what we call instinct, commonsense or unlearned human-actions such as unusually high natural aptitudes of Math & music or with the metaphysics of logic and knowledge. And th…

Information Relationship Definition of Information Relationship: A set of bits (Observer - Processor) interacting with another set of bits (External Reality). A set of bits (particles, atoms ? granular chunks of Matter - Mass Energy as distinct moving independent parts interacting and talking to each other) as delimited and defined and assigned as an Observer (a Processor, a brain, or in our case a Man Brain) interacting, colliding, being conditioned by another set of "external" bits, (but external is assigned arbitrarily, there is no in or out, no observer and reality, just a smooth continuous monolithic slab of Matter fooling itself, making believe that it is so…

rSo within my own limited experience of life the questions of truth arises. Lets first get some information that we can all start with as a basis for discussion. So take a sojourn to the website bellow and lets start our journey. http://dictionary.re...om/browse/truth Now considering that truth is being genuine, there has to be a concept of lacking genuine quality. Two people make a stone ball. The first person is Aye the second Bay. Aye made his stone ball, while Bay finished a minute later. Is Aye's stone ball of Genuine quality while Bay's is lacking Genuine quality? Consider this as well. "This statement is a lie." If the statement is a lie, t…

look around us, gat equations, is discrete at lower lavels(time,energy,light,....)

One of the things I've been interested in lately is how much phrases come up like "it's just a theory" or "but we don't know for sure" was ways to backup a specific belief. Other phrases like "It's widely accepted that..." or "It's obvious that..." come up a lot too. What I wonder is, how does our thinking change when it comes to pragmatic living? We all make decisions about information all the time, and we rarely have a huge collection of empirical evidence to back up those decisions. We do generally have some sort of "long history of observations" that, while we can't easily conceptualize in a singular way, give us an impression of what data to be skeptic…

http://physicshead.blogspot.com/2008/03/feynman-philosophy-is-bullshit.html Physicshead, 3/11/’08: Feynman--”Philosophy is bullshit”.... How about the "block time" universe proposition? But that depends on contemporary philosophy of science. The classical philosophers are strawmen for Feynman and Hawking. (See below.) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8520033/Stephen-Hawking-tells-Google-philosophy-is-dead.html Hawking: From Philosophy Now magazine, Sept/Oct , ‘11 Hawking contra Philosophy: http://www.philosophynow.org/issue82/Hawking_contra_Philosophy (Final quote from intro): “ So our physics heroes are down on philosophy. …

I now have inner peace. "Bullshit" I hear you cry that's just mystical mumbo jumbo. So you're a Buddhist now? Nope. Buddhism is only relevant if you're from the culture it was intended to teach. No I'm just a bloke who has had his knowledge, of the world and how it relates him, switch flick to understanding. I had four similar switches to flick for this to happen; 1. The illusion of control. Ironically Kung fu panda helped me flick this switch cheers Buddha 2. The illusion of understanding. This forum's responsible for me flicking this switch big up thanks guys. 3. Living in the moment. Again Kung fu panda, partly, and "inow" in question…

This is a spinoff of another thread that I don't want to derail as it appears to be thisclose to being amicably resolved. What does it mean for something to exist without an observer? Does this mean that it remains unobserved, ie. unmeasured? Clearly, observation should include indirect observations, so that any measurement that is derived from other measurements would be considered "observed". So then, if something remains unmeasured, can we say that its measure has no possible bearing on what we observe? If it has a bearing, or if it has a deducible effect on reality, can't that be considered a measurement of the thing's existence? Then, if you can s…

Atheism 1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God. 2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings. Agnosticism 1. the doctrine or belief of an agnostic. 2. an intellectual doctrine or attitude affirming the uncertainty of all claims to ultimate knowledge. Theism 1. the belief in one God as the creator and ruler of the universe, without rejection of revelation ( distinguished from deism). 2. belief in the existence of a god or gods ( opposed to atheism). Ok, starter topic I'll come back and edit key points later. Right now I'd like to invite people to discuss. iNOW? agnostic theists, agnostic atheists?

Hi all, I wasn't sure where to put this question but I think this is the right place now. When I think about something I use language, I "hear" the words in my head. How do you think without language? for instance if you were born deaf (or raised by wolves or whatever...) what would your thoughts be like? would there be a more abstract process of thought going on, or would you sort of "create" your own personal language of sorts to enable higher thought? Also, if thats the case does that make language the enabler of higher thought? Any feedback welcome Thanks, Alan

I showed a few of these in my Philosophy of Mind class today. Some of them are pretty amazing (and more or less accurate). Fair warning, they contain profanity.

I joined this forum because I thought I had a brilliant idea that should be shared with the science community. Sadly I was wrong but it did get me thinking, if I am unable to recognise my own incompetence, can anyone?If, for instance, a doctor miss' a diagnoses through lack of knowledge and is later correctly diagnosed. Would the doctor recognise his/her incompetence and seek the knowledge he/she lacks or would he/she simply shrug and say with a sheepish grin "oops missed that one" and carry on with the day. From what I have observed of human nature I would say the latter is most likely. In industry whistleblowing or flagging up incompetence is more likely to be met with …

Hello! I sometimes debate my friends on different topics that involve history, geology, biology, cosmology e.t.c. So i have a question: Where i can quickly get information about scientific consensus on different topics? Like age of the Earth, for example. Or history of the institution of marriage. Or history of Christmas. Something that would involve links to peer-reviewed articles and a sets of scientific facts. Wikipedia doesn't really work, because it's articles rarely include links to peer-reviewed sources and can be biased. How not to fall for things like "holocaust didn't happen" or "earthis 6000 years old"? I don't want to make mistake of belie…

The reason science is destroying our society, because science has allowed the moraly corrupt to have no accountability. The excess' of these people have no checks therefore the extrems are bigger and far more damaging to society. The religions grew up with a set of ideals and beliefs based on a bible of some description. This contains mans best atempt at explaining the universe at the time of writing, this leaves no room for flexibilty, consiquently you have a rigid set of believes that must be true. This flaw means science explains to us this book isn't the absolute truth how can it be etc... I can see nothing to stop a religion allowing flexability by haveing fundamenta…

No need for any "first cause" arguments here, just discussion of the many ways there could be a multiverse. The Universe that was always expanding Space is now expanding at and accelerating rate (cf dark energy) If we extrapolate backwards, we could conclude there was a big bang. If we observe, we can only see signs of inflation from just after this moment (cf Inflation theory, cosmic microwave background radiation CMBR.) Therefore we cannot say for certain there was a big bang. So it's equally possible that the universe's default state is inflation. Matter and energy are fueled/produced by the expansion of space: Space produces virtual particles …