• What is metaphysics?
    Here's the first article I've seen that discusses the possibility of determining whether alternate universes might exist. It still seems a reach.

    In mathematics, a dynamical system might proceed to evolve along alternate paths at points of bifurcation. But what happens in math may be mere fiction in the physical world.     — jgill

    Mathematical physics are dynamical systems where anything that is mathematically possible is also physically possible until the theory is shown to violate some physical law. This leads to some harebrained ideas that can be expressed less expensively by other mathematics. For example, actual multiple universes, where fictional characters can hop back and forth, can also be expressed as mere possible universes of which only one needs be actual at any one place and time.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    the initial shock of this war has blown over - for those of us not in it in real time - but it's far from clear we are out of the woods yet. — Manuel

    Well after the Cuban missile crisis was over, it was reported that Kennedy and top officials were living in bunkers during the denouement, totally unbeknownst to the naive general population. They were ready to push the red button.

    Now, we are in the early stages of this war, with escalation hardly mentioned as far as the West is concerned. But Russia is getting ready to use thermobaric, chemical, biological weapons to annihilate civilian populations after its tanks fail to make sufficiently significant inroads in the Donbas. The Western leaders will then have a big decision to make as far as initiating direct involvement leading to WWIII.
  • A Synthesis of Epistemic Foundationalism and Coherentism
    On the other hand, if the principle is regarded as being empirically descriptive, then it must fallible, in which case it also cannot play a role in any epistemic foundation. — sime

    Non-contradiction as an ontological principle is axiomatically prescriptive therefore infallible wherever it is applicable. However, non-contradiction is very special and it does not generally apply to all things because some things don't stay around long enough or show varied real aspects, or are seen from differing perspectives, or might not be bound, or are not be things in the least. But where the ontological principle can be shown to hold it is foundationally sound.

    For empirically based realism there are at least two ways to go. One through personal experiential sense perception, the other through public often instrumental scientific observation. Traditionally, Plato's handling of appearances (which I think should properly be called Platonic realism as against the idealism of Platonic Ideas) and Kant's scientific empirical realism are interesting parallel takes.
  • What is Climate Change?
    ↪EugeneW


    We tend to think of cause-effect as a simple and direct relation tied together by some unseen underlying commonality. Like when a billiard ball hits another on a smooth surface we have to invent momentum to explain what happens. Climate has many outside environmental causes most of which are complex on their own. Astronomical events like the precession of Earth's axis cause secondary causes, like ice caps, air and ocean currents, vegetation and bacterial life.
  • What is Climate Change?
    And over 800 thousand years:
    graph-co2-temp-nasa.gif?ssl=1     — Xtrix

    I agree with the urgency of the environmentalist argument, but in these illustrations ancient historical data might not represent the same cause and effect relationship as the recent and post-industrial age data. ??

    For ancient data rising global temperatures appear to cause rise in CO2. For the past 150 years or so, cause and effect seem to have reversed so that CO2 is causing rising global temperatures. To see this, one could try to overlap the red and blue charts or just use a ruler to connect corresponding top chart and bottom chart peaks and valleys, it looks to me like the ancient red temperature chart is leading the blue CO2 chart. But I could well be all wrong.
  • Philosophy of education: What should students learn?
    Applying for several positions to teach high school history ... I tend to advocate a kind of perennialism, sometimes called a “Great Books” curriculum. .... These are, of course, just my thoughts. I just feel that teaching be it at the secondary level or college level is becoming way too politically charged. — Dermot Griffin

    If you feel strongly enough to get paid less, then you need to look at small liberal private schools that might agree to offer your broader Western cultural philosophy in teaching the biased politicized history of your community. Most public schools funded by the community will not tolerate your enlightened approach.

    I'm sure you realize that you would be teaching well over the majority of your high schoolers' heads in conveying your joy of the subject matter. The great books were written in the context of their times, past, present, and in an intellectual direction. To teach that context and how the works advanced culture in history is difficult to absorb even for the brighter college students. That's why the standard curriculum, as impoverished as it is, protects you and the school system from attacks by parents who might disagree with you personally or with your point of view.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    I think this is why right wingers gravitate to obvious liars: it is a sign of strength and status, to be able to tell such lies. The stronger one is, the bolder the lies one is able to tell. — hypericin

    Right wingers and and left wingers too. That's why they're called wingers.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    All the anti-tank weapons are definitely clearly dangerous, but what we don't know is if Russia has developed effective counter tactics. Russia has had experience with a lot of anti-Tank weapons in Syria and developed counter tactics in that context, but the environment was very different and they weren't NATO's best in stock. We really have almost no insight into what Russian generals are thinking of these weapon systems (except obviously they'd rather them not be there; so, if they simply inflict unsustainable losses without any counter-tactic, then Russia will likely dig in where they are now; but if they, at least feel, they can deal with them somehow, then we may see major offensives demonstrating that confidence--I honestly don't know what the situation is with the ATGM's, except both sides are trying to learn and adapt, and they clearly haven't stopped Russian getting to wherever they are now). — boethius

    I expected that modern technology would have proven cumbersome tanks and even expensive airplanes obsoleted by this war. Movements of large machines can be tracked by satellites making them easy targets for attacks from the distance by small groups of scattered defenders armed with portable and shoulder fired rockets. I would not be surprised if the Russian army already lost 10,000 or more soldiers, and many more to come.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Тем временем рынки ожидают дефолта России по своим долгам со дня на день: — StreetlightX
    I fixed it for you
  • This Forum & Physicalism
    How can materialism ever explain I see a world in colors while it looks like a dark world in which once in a while a ray of sunlight shows itself? A darkness due to a materialialistic outlook. — EugeneW

    Interesting point. Materialism can't decide between traditional tactile objects, the ones we can touch, and the modern physical worlds of Newton, Einstein, and QM. Just look at the SEP entry. Color is not material because it is not a thing and it cannot be touched and it does not repulse other colors. Color is also not physical because nature is in shades of wavelengths and intensities like waves on the ocean. Color always requires interpretation. What then?

    How is that computing done? — EugeneW

    Sorry about having to resort to links but I just don't know enough to give a simple answer.
    The idea is that the world is a quantum computer constantly seeking solutions to problems of its own development. This outlandish suggestion is actually taken seriously by many experts in the field. According to ↪Wayfarer's link around 24% of quantum physicists support an informational interpretation of quantum mechanics. This is just an extreme extension of the discovery and implementation of quantum computation in physics laboratories to solve otherwise too difficult mathematical problems.
  • This Forum & Physicalism
    Since there is no evidence of a universal mind, then it is false. — Philosophim

    I don't think it's that simple. Most scientific evidence is partial or inconclusive or unconvincing. For the sake of argument, let's assume a universal mind that computes the universe continuously at the quantum level, and its product is the universe as it is. What sort of evidence could one have that it is convincingly so or that it is not so? Is philosophical argument ever possible to prove or disprove the assertion?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    An incomplete Guide for the perplexed on possible outcomes of the war in Ukraine
  • Meta-Physical versus Anti-Metaphysical
    Genuine speculation — lll

    And what would that be?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Nuclear war, at some point, is actually preferable to continued environmental destruction. — boethius

    With the war slowly escalating global nuclear war is becoming more likely each day. The advantage of nuclear war over environmental destruction is that nuclear destruction is quicker to solve the environmental human infestation problem. Fortunately cockroaches will survive to carry on their species.
  • Why does time move forward?
    Why aren't all processes moving exactly opposite to their present direction? — EugeneW

    Why would arguments about time be physicalist?
    Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of time and is forgotten through the lapse of time; but not wine song and love
  • Reductionism and the Hierarchy of Scale
    ↪apokrisis
    :up:     — 180 Proof

    I agree also. We're all just a troop of creationists here, aren't we?
  • Reductionism and the Hierarchy of Scale
    And so the irony is that complexity is mechanical - but the causal action reaches down from above rather than works its way up from below. — apokrisis

    Sure, in a laboratory we can make things, but nature doesn't think things out beforehand. But I doubt that either proposed upwards or downwards direction of natural complex development is logically possible or practicable. A lot of complexity just happens because of known or unknowable circumstances. Remove an enzyme and the organism dies and becomes source material for something else.

    But those [global] rules can't be the result of an evolutionary process - they must pre-exist it. Biological evolution at least assumes the existence of species of some kind for any kind of natural selection to operate on, because species uniquely possess the attribute of seeking to continue surviving. — Wayfarer

    Evolution can be gradual or punctuated. The sudden bursts in emergence are the consequence of radical changes in the environment, such as fires, floods, volcanic explosions, poisons that create a nutrient rich environment lacking in dominant life forms. The environment is a third, more powerful force than any of the competing species. After environmental catastrophes new factors open possibilities for life. The rules are post hoc.
  • Reductionism and the Hierarchy of Scale
    Like termites and their castle — EugeneW

    Natural complexes like termites, bees, flocks of geese, trees, clouds, tornadoes, ice, rocks, volcanoes, platypuses and people are fascinating whether created by physical forces with constraints or by the accidents of evolution in response to environmental catastrophes.
  • The start of everything
    The universe is about 70% dark energy. Dark energy is timeless. Another 25% is dark 'matter' that could also be timeless. The remaining 5% is plasma, like the stars, then there is scattered galactic dusting of minute amounts of what we call ordinary matter.

    So the universe started as concentrated pure energy and will end as ultra-thinned out pure energy. Sounds pretty boring, doesn't it?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    it is unlikely that the US will attack the Netherlands — Benkei

    True, but there is always the possibility of a nuclear winter lasting years. Like what happened in 1815-1816 following the volcanic eruption of mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in present-day Indonesia, then part of the Dutch East Indies.
  • How is truth possible?
    All this talk about "objective truth" is silly. Objectivity and subjectivity are properties that pertain to a mind. None of the literature on the theories of truth (pragmaticism, coherentism, correspondence, semantic, et. cetera) ever seems to actually investigate this isolated pop-culture idea about "objective vs subjective" truth. — Kuro

    Silly is ad hominem name calling and not an argument. It only suggests that you lack familiarity with the subject, therefore you intend to tackle the opponent instead of the claim.

    Objective truth is a golden dogma and you can stick to it as you will. No problem. But others are at liberty to question the comfortable surroundings of strict and limiting non-contradiction with excluded middle. They will find other possibilities. By 'literature' you just mean standard dogmatic literature taught to undergraduates. It's OK, but there is much more to logic, and truth is only a value of a logical calculation in whichever logic one might choose.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    For example, how many old scientists does it take to replace a light bulb? — magritte
    I give up. How many? I will note though, that changing the incandescent for the LED has provided us with a much more efficient source of light. And the LED still has significant energy loss as heat.     — Metaphysician Undercover

    Two. One to mix the martinis and one to call the super.

    But it does need Crimea for its security in the Black Sea — Apollodorus

    You keep saying this but I don't get it. As long as their naval base is secure what else would they want with a practically closed sea?
  • Is materialism unscientific?
    My contention is that some kind of dualism is more scientific than materialism — lorenzo sleakes
    I'm confused. Wouldn't that dualism be denied by any science that you can name?

    In which case consciousness would be left either a monist instrumental observational object of physiology, or an indirect suppositional construct of psychology, a perhaps an ungrounded model of philosophy, or just a plain real subjective personal insight, subject to sensation and perception, devoid of label?

    if consciousness is merely a by-product of physical processes then it cannot ever have any independent effect back to the physical world and therefore it cannot be detected or measured in any way. — lorenzo sleakes
    This is an interesting thing to say.

    We know that the mind is indirectly affected by physical events as sensations and can indirectly cause movement and actions. But I don't know how that works for consciousness. If you say that consciousness is the reflective inner working of the mind, then I'd have to agree.

    Imagine if every time I clap my hands together I claim to have created a new ghost particle that can never be detected. Such a view would be dismissed as meaningless and unscientific. But the view that physical processes generate consciousness but consciousness has no independent effect back on physical processes is the same.
    No theory of a purely epiphenomenal mind can ever be tested. An invisible object which has no causal efficacy disappears into pure speculation.
    On the other hand if I clap my hands and create a particle called a poltergeist that I claim has some effect on the world then that claim can be tested, falsified and verified. At least it a scientific claim. We are discussing consciousness so it must have some ability to speak for itself.     — lorenzo sleakes

    I love thought experiments to simplify and clarify ideas and I also use them as often as I can. Are you here still talking about consciousness itself or about a broader interactive transcendent mind?

    Incidentally,
    Imagine if every time I clap my hands together I claim to have created a new ghost particle — lorenzo sleakes
    Clapping is a physical act of slapping two material objects together in such a way that physical waves are produced in the air. Some instruments, like microphones, will detect the air waves. When a person or animal is present this is heard as a sudden loud sound.
    But clapping can also be produced by just one object or physical event, such as lightning, or a plane breaking the sound barrier, or a whip, or a wet towel.
    Never mind my musings. Obviously, when a tree falls in the forest it produces shock waves in the air and the ground, but sound must be heard.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    putting Russia in a position in which it sees it has no escape other than a massive escalation of this war — Manuel

    There is no need for that. While negotiating on the Belarus border, Russia is intensifying attacks elsewhere. They can send in wave after wave of troops to destroy Ukraine without any massive escalation.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    This week might prove crucial, depending on how much more resistance Ukraine has left. — Manuel

    I suspect that Russia is sustaining much heavier losses than might be assumed or reported. But heavy losses in personnel has not deterred the Russians in the past. It has been more convenient to push divisions of lower status ethnicity troops to the front line as cannon fodder to solve two problems at once.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Take The Manhattan Project for example. When you get hundreds, or even thousands of scientists working together, in a network, there is a lot more efficiency than a handful of scientists here, and a handful there, with intellectual property guarded by secrecy. Fusion, or other new ideas, might not be as far away as you think. — Metaphysician Undercover

    When experts are required for a project then adding less skilled workers will get the job done faster but it will increase waste and decrease overall efficiency. For example, how many old scientists does it take to replace a light bulb?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    This is why I earlier said that Putin needs to be put down — Christoffer

    You're saying this without having considered possible consequences. Suppose we declare March 15, the Ides of March, All Tyrants' day. What then? Who or what will follow Putin in Russia? Do you have any idea? Would it become a fairly elected republic or would it be an Augustus or a Caligula?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    To say that a defensive alliance like NATO is an offensive threat to Russia when they make nations bordering to Russia members is just uneducated on what NATO actually is.
    The truth is simple, NATO is NOT a threat to Russia other than blocking Putin's ability to easily invade and claim these nations for himself.     — Christoffer

    People need to understand that it's not Russia that is acting here, there is no Russia, there's only Putin. — Christoffer

    :100:
  • Ukraine Crisis
    ↪javi2541997


    So-called historical reasoning is a fallacy, quite typical of Marxist-Leninist thought. It takes history to be an objective criterion for political judgment.

    But history is different for each culture or political entity as is written in their language in their history books. Usually it fixes the world at the glorious height of a culture's power. Spanish and English history books will conveniently differ on issues of past national conflicts. Canadian and US history is different.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Putin genuinely seems to view things that he is doing from a historical perspective. Hence his actions now are responses to things that happened decades ago. — ssu

    According to this 'historical' reasoning, Ukraine could be Swedish.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Does Putin think that capturing Kiev and installing a puppet regime and things will be fine? Those troops have to stay and occupy a huge country of 44 million people. — ssu

    Apparently he does. How does this work with Belarus? Can that translate to a more belligerent population on the old Soviet model?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    as a result of the US trying to project power into areas it doesn't even have realistic interests — Benkei

    And what geopolitical alternative would you prefer? We Americans are not happy with the mushrooming war memorials in our cities either.

    Putin's also demonstrating promises from NATO are meaningless. — Benkei

    Scary times coming for the Baltic republics, especially after full sanctions are imposed on Russia by the West, because the rat will now finally be cornered.
  • Introducing myself ... and something else
    human beings are the spokespersons for reality. There are no others.

    Knowledge is the adventure of a lifetime when we seek it through talent, humility, sacrifice, experience, and so much more that the gift of our humanity has provided us.

    I have found that a skeptic likes to look up into outer space because he has never discovered the greatness right where he stands, within himself.

    Your ignorance of your own greatness will keep you from the knowledge of who you actually are until you breathe your last breath in this body and this knowledge is revealed to you in the next instant     — Joe Mello

    You're in need of lots of philosophical therapy. Stick around.
  • Are there thoughts?
    Explain how the brain functions if you're going to insist it functions in such a way that everything is perfectly as it seems (to you.)
    You're a little ant building a hill, oblivious to the mountain behind you.     — theRiddler

    If everything looks perfect then there is nothing that needs explaining. The mountain is not my problem.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    As Putin is obviously trying to reconstitute and reconquer the Russian (Soviet) Empire, he truly is the modern imperialist in the genuine sense. — ssu

    Yes, Putin is trying to rebuild the lost glorious national power that Stalin won after the war. If he really cared about the future of Russia he would be more occupied with the problems and potential of melting and burning Siberia.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    George Soros — Apollodorus
    Nobel peace prize candidate. It's a shame he can't run for presidency. What a man !
  • Ukraine Crisis
    It's only Ukraine
  • Ukraine Crisis
    ↪Christoffer
    ↪ssu

    :cool: :100:
  • Is Pi an exact number?
    pi as a constant is ambiguous - just ask Matlab — sime

    Is Matlab binary based?
  • When the CIA studied PoMo
    from Le Monde: 'The deconstruction of the discourse of objectivity at work in Lacan and Foucault was transposed by American universities to their own cultural context: this objectivity that must be deconstructed is that of the dominant, white male.' — Olivier5
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