General Philosophy

The following quote is from Swansont's blog: To what extent should income-classes be treated as collectively powerful? It is popular to view the highest income-classes as a resource for redistributive economics, but if there is more economic power distributed among lower classes, doesn't it make more sense to redistribute from those instead of the wealthier/wealthiest?

The term, "capitalism," is sometimes used in a general way to describe systems of economic control that are regulated with the use of money and finance, but in reality economic activities are governed not just by money/finance but also by other methods of exercising power/control. War and civil strife may be extreme example of moments when economic control gets out of hand as people give up on seeking new avenues of productivity and instead choose to fight with the hope of securing compliance with forms of economic mastery that restore economic privileges. Certainly I think this describes the logic of the Nazi movement following the great depression. But it could also …

Could the holy grail of feminine gratification be total satisfaction as a result of someone else pursuing the means of satisfaction as a goal? In other words, is the ultimate feminine fantasy to be pleased without having to pursue gratification actively in any way; i.e. to simply be so attractive that everything will fall into place as it pleases you? if this sounds misogynist, apologies. I am simply exploring the meaning of femininity as a cultural construct and wondering if anyone else has insights.

Female physical attractiveness can cause men to treat women well, etc. It can also cause them to be interested in other women than their partner and cheat. The question is can women distinguish between men loving them and simply treating them well because of physical attraction? If not, does it confuse them when men seem to love/worship them yet at the same time lust after other women?

What would the consequences be if governments would perform research to establish genetic markers common to all existing citizens? Would it be possible for them to isolate markers or combinations that would exclude all non-citizens globally thus allowing passport-controls to be replaced with genetic fingerprinting? If this was done, could people genetically engineer those markers into themselves or their pregnancies rendering citizenship uncontrollable? Could computers be built that refuse to divulge the relevant sequences/markers thus preventing "gene counterfeiting?" Could individuals be born whose genes were not sufficiently recognizable to the computers? What wou…

I was pondering a while on the thought of judgement and how that influences someones decision. for instance is it possible to not form any opinion at all about someone. for example you walk down the street and see a youg person wearing a certin type of clothes and walking a certin way automaticaly i form an opinion of that person and catagorize them somewere in between. I also believe people have the ability to change that opinion but still stays somewhere in that person. You look at a homeless person and form an opinion rather good or bad, but still pass judgment on him or her. Even so small as to a way someone might look in appearence as the opinion you make. i look at …

Okay well my last post about Energy has been locked due (apparently) to myself preaching so before i get into it i would like a little disclaimer from the staff here: This thread is for the input of others about my idea's, which you FAILED to do. =D Essentially the format is going to be simple, i shall write a few analogies about Energy, God, Consciousness & Purpose, then if you philosophers out there would like to feed me with your idea's we can hopefully get a good discussion going about some of the most intricate, interesting and modern idea's that are floating around right now, so without further ado. Creating ENERGY: okay to start with it might be g…

It is common to hear the claim that quantum physics or other forms of modern physics are not intuitive and that any attempt to understand them intuitively can only result in increasing misunderstanding. So what exactly does it mean to think about or understand something intuitively? What other kinds of thinking/understanding are there that are not intuitive? I would guess that everything that is understood is understood intuitively in some sense, but maybe others see the possibility of totally non-intuitive understanding and, if so, what does/would that mean?

After having an odd day of repeated dejá vu or flashes of memories of my dreams from the previous nights. I realized that these flashes were occurring when I looked at certain objects as if memories were been saved on other objects. This concept inspired me to realize you can save information in some sense on projections or representations rather than just physical objects, I went onto consider the concept of saving or even processing information on objects that are not just material. Perhaps saving and processing information on liquids, gases, energy, or somehow information itself or to save information on projections or objects that bring to mind certain thoughts wh…

I'm just wondering if people who go choose a career in science need philosophy.

If you could somehow inherit all the universe's information then theoretically speaking you should be able to predict anything because every single event leads to another and if you factorize in all events in space & time and how they interact with each other you can then find that you will receive accurate predication's of what will happen next for e.g. you factorize in every rock & meteor in space and their movement then theoretically speaking you could receive all the information of the future. and if we inherited all the information of someones mind and calculate what thought will be thought after the current thought because they are linked you could even …

I was thinking about the multiverse theory and if every possibility must emerge infinite number of times forever somewhere within the multiverse then perhaps there is somewhere an alien civilization which has somehow developed a technology to view other universes. So theoretically people in other universes can see us and are keeping records of our society. So no information is truly lost. Somewhere a civilization has somehow kept record of us and even if our civilization is completely gone. Yet eventually the information will die of cause these civilizations won't last forever. But then again every possibility will eventually transpire so this means that some alien civili…

Here is some interesting philosophical realizations of consciousness 1. You have never directly affected the material world because you only think, its your body that your thoughts order to perform the actions. 2. You never do you only think 3. You are not a human, just consciousness flowing within a brain within a human. 4. If a human body develops consciousness within then us the conscious beings are just one part of the body, yet of course we have a lot of power, we are only members of the body, you could say we are just an organ, that being a brain.

I don't really know much about the concept of "multiverse," but it occurred to me that this term could be used to refer to the experience of meeting other people that exhibit various degrees of identifiable resemblance to oneself and ones own experiences. So, for example, you may have begun with pre-med in your early university years and switched to chemistry. Then, you might run into a doctor later on in life who shares other aspects of your pre-chemistry history. I.e. It could be as if you were running into a version of yourself that you branched off from in choosing to shift from pre-med to chemistry. 1) Does this at all resemble the concept of a "multiverse?" 2) …

Imagine three people: Bob, Jake and Jennifer. Bob goes to work with Jake and Jennifer is Jake's sister. If Bob talks to Jake then what Jake's says to Jennifer is somewhat influenced so very slightly by what Bob said to him (for e.g. Bob said ello instead of hello hence Jake states ello instead of hello to Jennifer) then what Jennifer says to Jake influences what Jake says to Bob, so is this in some sense an indirect conversation between Bob & Jenifer? if you may. although they may not know each other could you consider this an indirect conversation between two individuals? also if this is true it would affect the whole world and that almost everyone…

I was born an individual. Yet if we are all born individuals and all had a point of being born, then there must have been some reason that one experiences an individuals life and not another and yet if you don't believe we are determined as individuals at birth then that means we were individuals before life, yet how can you be before you are?

1. You cannot be certain the external world exists because the external world if it does exist is only known to exist via the electrical signals which offer its presentation in our head yet we cannot be certain there is an external world in the first place, the external world may be completely in our brains. 2. If you cannot be certain the external world exists this opens up the possibility of the external world not existing regardless of it being true or not it is possible and if so then the real world is not the external world yet what is the real world? we do not see the real world if the external world is not the real world yet if we don't see the real world how c…

Sometimes I wonder why I exist and relative to oneself we all ponder the question "why I exist?" well I believe that space & time is infinite maybe not in our universe but beyond that and into the multiverse and beyond that realm onto the infinite realm of space & time and even properties of reality & types of worlds that are so different we have no characteristics of those worlds and in fact the basic rules of reality are more than infinitely different than these realms and it goes on and on and that describes everything, but I believe because this everything is infinite in terms of space & time every possibility must come true and I am a possibility henc…

If has occurred to me that discussions of morality are lacking when there is not also a shared concept of democratic principles. This is also a problem in political discussions or when discussing the limits of power. We have entered wars saying we are defending democracy and in the past when we did this, books were written about the principles of democracy and what separates us from the enemy. Lately, it seems like few people have an understanding of democratic principles, and I would like to what you think they are.

Personally, I dislike the culture of whispering about sex. People subdue their voices to tell some secret about who is doing it with whom in a way that expresses that what's going on isn't quite kosher but they like the intrigue. If they would actively reject sexual taboos or actively criticize the behavior, they would talk openly about sex. If they would legitimately want to keep it secret, they would remain silent instead of whispering. Yet there seems to be some special pleasure in whispering. Whispering generates intrigue and tension. It suggests manageable danger, maybe. It breaks taboos without rejecting them outright. Why aren't people more uncomfortable wi…

Typically I think of resource conservation and profiteers as being opposed to one another. After all, more commerce logically results in more material consumption, which entails more resource utilization. However, it just occurred to me that both positions are oddly related to one another in a fundamental way. I.e. both rely on scarcity as a basis for valuation of their respective values. So while conservationists are concerned with using less resources to avoid running out of them, profiteers seek to drive up the prices of the same resources and the products that are dependent on them to make more money, which is achieved by creating artificial (speculative) scarcity…

We choose to think when there is a need to think and it is suitable for this. But, some people sometimes think with no problem in hand while being in very hard situation. If the second sentence is correct, can we believe that "those people are not choosers"? Will you think?

There is a radical cognitive difference between conceptualizing space(time) as a container of all forces that transcends (i.e. is separate and distinct from) those forces and conceptualizing space(time) as an internal product of force-interactions. Since this language may sound convoluted, take the following examples: 1) space(time) is viewed as a container housing matter and energy phenomena but it is assumed that the forces are not themselves the ultimate container 2) gravity and/or other forces are viewed as directly interactive and what is observed/perceived as space(time) is purely an effect of interactions between forces. If spacetime is indeed a trancendent …

Is there a relationship between spacial and musical harmony that can explain the entire universe? Musical harmony being a vibration. Spacial being a position in relation to other positions.

So much energy has been expended on explaining space time, gravitational lensing, general and special relativity, entropy, what our universe actually looks like, where it came from, etc? I'm exhausted just trying to understand even a little of it. Some answers are acceptable and some I simply can't grasp no matter how much I read or listen. My question is, with all of the above data mandated as scientific fact or models of probable fact, how do we deal with flesh, blood, tissue and elemental stone; without bringing God into the mix? That is unless one of you can point me in the right direction real quick. Someone out there has an answer!