Because maths tells us that chaos must have structure . . .
— apokrisis

No it doesn't. :roll: — jgill

Okaaaaaay. Got my buttery popcorn! :yum: :party:

If truth is unattainable, it would be madness/foolishness to seek it, oui monsieur? — Agent Smith

No, that's silly. :smirk:

What, in your opinion, then should take the place of truth as the be all and end all of philosophy, in life?

I thought 'wisdom', or 'the good life', is (traditionally) "the be all and end all" of philosophy, and for life it's 'happiness'. As for "truth", it's a property of (some) propositions but not a goal of philosophy or science or life.

What general category would evolution and creationism both fall into? — TiredThinker

Natural science and religious fiction, respectively.

:cool:

Because maths tells us that chaos must have structure as free possibility becomes its own system of constraints. — apokrisis

Are you a platonist?

I've known a lot of tough criminals over time and visited a number of jails and it has always struck me as interesting how many people involved in criminal justice are robust theists. Didn't stop them committing egregious crimes, however. — Tom Storm

:fire:

... the idea that living beings are intrinsic to the Universe, and not simply the 'accidental outcome of the collocation of atoms ...' — Wayfarer

As if "accidental outcomes" (pace Einstein) are not intrinsic to the universe. :smirk:

Read Lucretius' De rerum natura or Spinoza's Ethica (part 1 "Of God" re: modes). Apparently you didn't understand Dawkins & Monod (or Heisenberg).

I think I have read this article once when Wayfarer had posted the link. This "blind spot", however, isn't a blind spot; the many limits of theoretical explanation are quite conspicuous. The mind-projection fallacy amounts to woo-of-the-gaps used in denial of the theoretical limits – gaps – of quantum mechanics (Bohr) & cosmology (Wheeler). Wayfarer derives way too much (e.g. significance of human consciousness) from way too little (e.g. observer-effect / participatory universe). It's always seemed incoherent, at the very least, to me to try to use physical theories to "justify" idealist / spiritualist fantasies. Notice how he cannot rebut the substantial issues with his 'worldview' raised in my post and yet dogmatically he persists in regurgitating well-documented New Age fairtytales. :sparkle: :eyes:

Since I am a fallibilist, I find "cultural relativism and postmodernism" completely irrelevant as far as the methods of formal, natural, engineering and historical sciences used to produce knowledge of life, nature and the universe, are concerned

I'm not familiar with Wayf's "blind spot" notion.

Consider the widely-accepted paradigm ... — Wayfarer

Appeal to popularity, again. C'mon, stop with the caricatures. :roll:

Concommitant with that view is determinism, ...

No, sir! Compatibilism is the most reasonable idea that's consistent with both scientific in/determinism and human experience.

Wheeler's ideas can be interpreted as [ ... ] It is a philosophical idea that was also suggested by the discoveries of quantum physics ...

Anything can be "interpreted" in any way you fancy, Wayfarer, but, in natural science, the more consistent an interpretation is with the prevailing experimental evidence, the more credible – reasonable – that interpretation is. Wheeler was as guilty as Bohr & co of committing the mind-projection fallacy insofar as he overdetermined that "observation is consciousness" rather than as a classical physical system-1 interacting with – measuring – a quantum physical system-2 (e.g. wavicle). "The observer" is only ever "conscious" of classical physical system-1 (experimental apparatus) when s/he reads the measurement data. Full stop. The best available evidence is more consistent with the idea that 'the human mind ("consciousness") is a classical, not a quantum, system' than otherwise; and, IMO, it's more reasonable for us to interpret what that means rather than, fairytale-like, speculating in excess / denial of what we do/can not know.

Maybe a more apt metaphor is that the universe discovers itself ...

Anthropomorphic fallacy. :eyes:

:eyes:

As I wrote in my last post

Complementarity is not synonymous with contradiction (pace Hegel). — 180 Proof

I understand yinyang only as complementary and not contradictory in the least since each complement contains – not negates – the other; yin is a variation – not opposite – of yang and vice versa. Read Laozi & Zhuangzi. Read Plato's early dialogues. At least read this

↪Agent Smith
Dialectical monism. — 180 Proof

Aren’t you just mixing up epistemology with ontology?
— apokrisis

They're intimately linked. — Wayfarer

This is "true" mostly for perennialists, platonists, theists, idealists & naive realists.

You've got nothing, man. Don't bother. Consider my questions koans to ponder. :sparkle:

Stop using his "BothAnd" bastardization of yinyang and thereby embarrassing yourself, Smith. Complementarity is not synonymous with contradiction (pace Hegel). I take issue with Gnomon's "Meta-physics" because it's a self-refuting pseudo-scientific speculation that he "defends" with incoherent sophistry. I don't "disagree" with him; I expose him by calling-into-question his crypto-creationist/New Age "Enformation" nonsense, and yet he seems incapable of giving any clear, cogent, non-fallacious answers or rebuttals to my questions.

:worry:

As Hume points out: "causal relations" (i.e. sufficient reasons) are only inferred "habits of association" (inductions) and not observed. — 180 Proof

So 'the cause of causality' doesn't precipitate an infinite regress, Smith, or beg the question?

Is it your position that randomness is explained as the effect of a cause?

Or that reality is explained, even if only in principle, by some 'reason beyond reality?'

And the sufficient reason for the PSR?

Your usual non-answer. That's a tell, sir. :yawn:

PSR (the principle sufficient reason): If x then there's got to be a reason1/cause2/explanation3 for x. — Agent Smith

Why? :roll:

Psychological uncertainty and epistemological uncertainty are very different in my mind.

'The idealist's question would be something like what: "What right[/i] have I not to doubt the existence of my hands?"' — Jack Cummins

What grounds does the idealist have to doubt the existence of her hands? Without grounds, it's not reasonable or "right" to do so. I agree with e.g. Pyrrho, Clifford, Peirce-Dewey, Witty et al on avoiding groundless doubts (or claims).

:up:

It strikes me that the question, as stated, should never arise. Why assume that "something" requires an explanation because it exists rather than or instead of nothing? — Ciceronianus

:100:

I've neither claimed nor implied that.

In other words, either "reasonable or unreasonable" makes no practical – existential – difference. — 180 Proof

:roll:

Whether or not it's "reasonable" to procreate is moot. In other words, either "reasonable or unreasonable" makes no practical – existential – difference.

Question: Why? — Agent Smith

Why the question?

:up:

I can't defend antinatalism and nor can anyone justify natalism. — Agent Smith

"Natalism" needs to be justified? Since when?

Zero to Birth: How the Human Brain is Built, W.A. Harris

Because causing harm to others is bad. — Tzeentch

"Causing harm" to imaginary people is ... imaginary. You're either incorrigible or delusional. :zip:

Pronatalists are of the opinion that ... — Agent Smith

Just to clarify: I am an antinatalist (also, pro-euthanasia, pro-abortion, pro-vasectomy/tubal ligation) because the world and society I was born into and have lived in for almost 58 years is ravaged by gratuitious suffering force multiplied by endemic stupidity; so for the last 30+ years I've deliberately avoided chucking anymore fresh meat into the moral circus of these times. I'm not "pronatalist" at all. In fact, one doesn't have to be; there's no argument needed to procreate and perpetuate the species – that's what extant species do by biological default.

However, I am against poor arguments and sophistical exortations which is all that's ever proffered in defense of "antinatalism". In genuine Hegelian (or Žižekian) fashion, antinatalists should be hyper-natalists preaching "be fruitful and exponentialize" in order to as rapidly as possible bring about the negation of natality with an extinction-event scale Malthusian apocalypse: hyper-natality —> natality thesis negated by fatality antithesis —> antinatal aufhebung. Yeah, it's bullshit, but at least there's an internally consistent hook to hang that antinatal party-hat on (rather than a so-called "utilitarian / consequentialist argument" premised on a category mistake of conferring a moral status on inexistent, merely possible, persons as if they are existing, actual, persons).

:yawn:

Doesn't the Sorites Paradox call into question "determinateness" as a property or condition of "what exists"? Both sand-grains and sand dunes exist yet the difference between them (i.e. phase-transition) is indeterminate.

Also, whether or not Wheeler's participatory universe speculation is ultimately the case vis-a-vis quantum physics, we exist as classical beings within, or at the level of, nature constituted by classical constaints; what difference does Wheeler's speculation make to our lives – striving for 'the good life' – philosophically or practically?

You're an D-K time-waster. Run along and "child's play" somewhere else, kid.

:smirk:

No wonder, because what you're suggesting is absurd - that people have no moral obligation to take into account the consequences of their actions. — Tzeentch

Typical strawman. :ok:

Read Spinoza (re: substance / natura naturans which is both eternal and infinite – the only real, everything else that exists are merely ephemera necessarily dependent on substance). Or read Epicurus / Lucretius (re: the void which is both eternal and infinite ...) There are many other "infinite foundations" – the absolute, god, ground of being, the one, dao, xaos, etc – throughout the history of metaphysics.

You've been dead for a century and a half by the time the bomb goes off, so you don't get to say anything including this "child's play" example. :roll:

Why are you so off the rails hostile? — schopenhauer1

No hostility, just the logic of antinatalism's life-denial.

We who are about suffer,
refute you! :death: :flower:

'Possible persons' are imaginary – nonexistent – and, therefore, only subsist (A. Meinong), like every other mere possibility, (D. Lewis) without a moral status .

Antinatalists, IMO, need to either (A) refute that proposition (B) find another (less incoherent) argument to "justify" their position or (C) concede that the idea is wholly subjective and be consistent enough to (i) refrain from procreating and/or (ii) kill themselves asap.

You've lost me. Sound arguments require demonstrably truthful premises.