Comments
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Can the existence of God be proved?Some of us affirm "god exists" only in the heads of it's believers and nowhere else.
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'It was THIS big!' as the Birth of the God Concept
How very charitable of you, Sir. :smirk:It might just be that the word god was the name given to anything that was unexplainable and originally meant "I don't know". — Sir2u
:100: :fire:[It] would be logical to assume ... god(s) came about from the initial belief of animism¹, which likely came about due to pareidolia². — Outlander
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism [1]
https://sites.uw.edu/libraryvoices/2024/02/03/pareidolia-the-phenomenon-of-seeing-faces-everywhere/ [2] -
What is the most uninteresting philosopher/philosophy?
:up: :up:Antinatalism is the poster boy for playing with Big Important Ideas not always leading to wisdom or insight. At least the minutia-mongerers among us aren't so foolish as to think there could be such a thing as an argument against life. — Srap Tasmaner -
The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?Perhaps the prospect artificial general intelligence (AGI) is "the next step in evolution" – post-biological metacognition. As a species h. sapiens today is removed from nature enough to be completely free of adaptive selection pressures making us an evolutionary dead end: from evolution (re: barely good enough adaptations) to development (re: strategic-technical optimizations (e.g. AGI)). Human "consciousness" – phenomenal self-awareness (i.e. subjectivity) – might be a spandrel¹ that is suboptimal (e.g. a metacognitive bottleneck) and therefore not needed to take that "next step". What do you think?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology) [1] -
What is the most uninteresting philosopher/philosophy?Besides scholastic, p0m0ist, idealist/psychologistic philosophies, I find antinatalism (or any other form of futility, defeatism, ontophobia, denialism) "uninteresting" for reasons beginning with these in this recent post:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/928003
coda:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/928725 -
Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
:up: :up:It's factually correct that anyone who defends Israeli aggression is a war crime(s) apologist. — Benkei -
The anthropic principle and the Fermi paradox
No doubt. \\//_ :nerd:Are they overly influenced by watching science fiction? — Relativist -
Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
As well the zionfascist (Likud) regime also "must be" "completely replaced". :mask:Which is why the victory must be complete and Hamas completely replaced. — BitconnectCarlos -
The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
:yikes:You could be possessed. You don't know — frank -
The Problem of 'Free Will' and the Brain: Can We Change Our Own Thoughts and Behaviour?
Perhaps because "the puppet master" is merely a grammatical illusion (i.e. "doer" attributed to doing – "subject" of a predicate) that amounts to folk psychology's homunculus fallacy. Consider (e.g.) Buddha's anattā¹ ... Hume's bundle² ... Metzinger's PSM³ ... :chin:We have learned a bit about the strings and the pulling of them but are completely in the dark about the puppet master. — Manuel
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatt%C4%81 [1]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_theory [2]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_model [3]
@Jack Cummins -
US Election 2024 (All general discussion)Today in Trumpenfreude
13Sept24 – $16.12 per share :down:NASDAQ (DJT :rofl:)
4Sept24 – $16.98 per share (-36% past month)
(NASDAQ 17,084.10) — 180 Proof
(NASDAQ 17,395.53) :up: -
Was intelligence in the universe pre-existing?"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change." :fire:
Insofar as "before" is a synonym for without in this context, the above amounts to asking whether 'walking happened without legs' or 'vision without eyes' or 'life without mass' or 'minds without bodies' or 'patterns without primordial symmetry-breaking' ... wtf :roll:The question I have is…has intelligence always been around before this world was created prior to the Big Bang ...? — kindred -
Can the existence of God be proved?"Existence of God" (false predication) =/= "God exists" (re: matter of fact). You equivocate those phrases and thereby confuse the issue, FO. Btw, "proof" pertains only to logic and mathematics, not to matters of fact which, however, can be shown to be the case or not to be the case. "God exists" can be shown not to be the case.
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Can the existence of God be proved?Afaik,"God" is an empty name that "exists" only in the heads of religious believers (i.e. superstitious, magical thinkers).
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The Sciences Vs The Humanities"So scornful?" Why do you ask? Read the links I provided (the articles are simplified, non-technical summaries).
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The Sciences Vs The Humanities
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Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)Today in Trumpenfreude 11Sept24
The Clown is so fucked! :clap: :lol:
Roevember is coming! :party: -
Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
:100: :up:@BitconnectCarlos The enemy? You mean all those non-combatants you displaced and then stole their houses and land?
It's theft plain and simple. If I attack you and you successfully defend yourself, you don't get to steal my wallet afterwards. The defence is justified the theft isn't. — Benkei -
The anthropic principle and the Fermi paradox
:100:Judging other species by human standards is the first mistake ... — Sir2u
And probably, imo, "they" are not even – are no longer – "species" but instead spacefaring AI probes (operationally independent of their long ago left behind biological makers).. -
The Sciences Vs The HumanitiesG.U.T. =/= "T.O.E." (both in physics and anatomy :smirk:) because the latter is pop-sci / metaphysical hype and the former is a scientific research program.
So you're "absential materialism" (or "strategic incompleteness") is Kantian?When we speculate about the nature and content of this world, of course we’re doing it within the scope of NI. This leads me to say we don’t and can’t really know a non-NI world. -
US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
In that case it wouldn't matter one wit that you'd lived here. :mask:Had I lived in the States, I wouldn't vote. — Tzeentch
:victory: Yes, the next POTUS sure did.Kamala won that debate. — NOS4A2
:up: :up:Trump is the greater evil. Don’t overthink it. — Mikie
Like Ronald Reagan (whom I loathed), Kamala Harris is, if anything (besides highly competent), a happy warrior. :strong: :cool: -
Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
:smirk:Well that was fun. Now about that genocide… — Mikie -
The Sciences Vs The Humanities
Clarify this phrase (in context, of course). Thanks.the omnipresence of cons — ucarr -
The Sciences Vs The Humanities
Are you asking whether or not the world lacks subjects? or lacks subjective aspects? Insofar as subjects are self-reflexive, adaptive objects (which are 'entangled' to varying degrees with (all?) other objects), the unambiguous answer is 'the "objective world" also has subjective constituents'. Anyway, perhaps you can clarify precisely what you mean by "objective" – are you using it as an epistemological concept or a metaphysical concept?Is a purely objective worldout there? — ucarr -
The anthropic principle and the Fermi paradox
Yes. Or maybe we have received their signals but our systems lack the sensitivity and/or bandwidth to distinguish those signals from the cosmic background noise (e.g. maybe they use neutrinos rather than EM waves). That would also filter us out as still too primitive (e.g. one of many Kardashev Level less-than-1 species) to reveal themselves to.The fact that we have not received any signals does not mean that they are not out there, it just means that we have not received signals. — Sir2u -
Relativism vs. Objectivism: What is the Real Nature of Truth?
Whether or not it is (I don't think it is), the OP clearly doesn't use "truth" that way.Isn't truth a metaphysical concept? — T Clark -
The Sciences Vs The HumanitiesYour "physics of nature" is redundant (unless you believe there is "physics of" something other than "nature", which doesn't make sense).
180 Proof
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