Especially to Count Timothy von Icarus. What a comprehensive answer -- my jaw dropped! Did you read all those books? — dani

Based on the quality of his entries here, the answer is most likely 'yes'. :wink:

The Colorado 14th Amendment judgement has come down - Colorado judge rules Trump can be on ballot but says he ‘engaged’ in insurrection.

Why the scare quotes? He engaged! But the judgement was that the clause doesn’t apply in this case.

Denver District Judge Sarah B. Wallace wrote that Trump “acted with the specific intent to disrupt the Electoral College certification of President Biden’s electoral victory through unlawful means; specifically, by using unlawful force and violence.” And, she concluded, “that Trump incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021 and therefore ‘engaged’ in insurrection.” ‘

… Although Wallace found that Trump engaged in insurrection, she determined Section 3 does not apply to him. Section 3 refers to some offices by name as well as those who are an “officer of the United States,” but does not specifically mention the presidency.
 Wallace determined those who wrote Section 3 “did not intend to include the President as ‘an officer of the United States.’”
The judge also determined that the amendment’s provision technically applied to those who swear an oath to “support” the Constitution. The oath Trump took when he was sworn in after he was elected in 2016 was to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.
Wallace wrote she did not want to disqualify someone from office “without a clear, unmistakable indication” that that was what those who wrote the 14th Amendment intended.

Needless to say, Trump will trumpet this as a huge win. No collusion!

Still reckon he’s going to be a convicted felon before November next.

And I'm also reading Sophie's World (by Jostein Gaarder), even though it's for tweens, because didactic is didactic is didactic! — dani

I liked that book at the time I read it. I still reckon Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy’s a good standby. It has many flaws as have been amply detailed in the years since but Russell’s style is approachable for non-specialists, and the historical approach - framing ideas in terms of how they developed over history - is invaluable, in my opinion.

I think I get it. You’re saying there must be an objective reality over and above whatever models or representations the mind creates, right?

Here's a handy summary of roughly how very fucked we are and why we are not going to be unfucked by science magic or very stable geniuses. — unenlightened

My father was an esteemed professor of medicine and one of the generation of doctors that introduced birth control to civilisation. He read the Club of Rome report which was famously pessimistic about the future of Western civilisation. He was utterly convinced that India would face mass starvation and economic collapse in his lifetime (he died in 1993), hence his interest in birth control programs in India. He had a rather pessimist outlook, although his public persona was never dour or negative. But, in any case, he was wrong. Some unexpected developments came along that completely changed living standards in India. One was the ‘green revolution’ which dramatically improved crop yields. Another was the ‘tech revolution’ which gave hundreds of millions of Indians a pathway out of subsistence farming and into middle-class technologically-enabled lifestyles. So I agree that the world is facing vast challenges, but trying to resist doomsayers, on that account. (By the way, a provocative book on the subject is John Michael Greer’s Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush.)

So what do you make of the essay behind this discussion, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, by David Chalmers?

I think the nuance here is that guns with the capacity to kill large numbers of people in a very short amount of time are much more readily available in the USA than in many other developed countries — GRWelsh

Agree, but it’s hardly a ‘nuance’. It is a glaringly obvious fact. There was a feature by a journalist a couple of years ago about the process of acquiring a gun in Japan. Several exams, written questionnaires and more than one interview, taking more than a year in all. Of course Japan and America are vastly different culturally and socially, but then, Japan has almost zero gun deaths and I can’t recall ever reading of a mass shooting. (The assassination last year of Shinzo Abe was with a home-made weapon.)

One thing I’ll never understand about the Second Amendment argument is why there is complete deviation from the original wording, which talked of ‘well-regulated militias’. If a well-regulated militia was given control of AR15 assault rifles, it would presumably keep them under lock and key and the control of a responsible officer. Not make them freely available to anyone who happens to want to take one home. There was apparently another Supreme Court ruling some time back which interpreted ‘well-regulated militia’ to mean practically unlimited rights to own any kind of weapon. Which is another thing I don’t understand - why the US Supreme Court has such a libertarian attitude towards gun ownership.

The latest mass-shooting episode has just been reported - Multiple Victims in New Hampshire Psychiatric Hospital.

You’ve moved quite a long way from

What is the fundamental difference between information processed by a mechanical computer and a brain? How can there be a fundamental difference in what is happening if all we are is mechanistic? — Restitutor

The reason I reacted against the OP in the way I did, was because I took this as an expression of the kind of scientific materialism which I'll always argue against for the reasons I've given.

Once you begin to take into account the way in which ‘mind constructs world’, you’ve already moved some way from that, you're reflecting philosophically on the nature of knowledge.

But:

The best we can do in terms of communing with the fundamental reality is to extract information from it and model that information it the physical structure of our brains and then commune with that representation. For me, the representation of fundamental reality can have as much "truth" to it as any representation of anything can. This would mean that we can commune with fundamental reality through extracting information and making models out of the information, it is just that can't directly commune with fundamental reality in the absence of these models. — Restitutor

'Communing with fundamental reality' brings to mind something very different from 'representation'. It brings to mind Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 'flow state' - where you are completely absorbed in what you are doing, to the extent you loose all sense of time and place. It might also bring to mind states of absorption that are encountered in yogic meditation, which is related to the 'flow state'. It is a felt and lived reality, a state of being, rather than a representation.

Besides, once you subject the idea of representation of reality to analysis it opens up many cans of worms - like, how do you compare the representation with the reality? To compare it, you would have to know what the reality is, so you wouldn't need a representation, but if you don't know what the reality is, then you can't compare it. (Also notice the excerpt from physicist Wheeler in this post about the 'observer problem' in quantum physics.)

I've run across Joscha Bach mainly in references from other sources - obviously a very smart guy but I don't have time at the moment to go through the lectures (seems to be a useful summary here. He does seem to throw shade on 'physicalist realism' i.e. here). Another of similar ilk is James B Glattfelder's Information, Consciousness and Reality, although I think he's less materialist in overall outlook.

There's a huge ferment of philosophical, scientific and spiritual ideas welling up on the Internet. My current listening includes Bernardo Kastrup, who's a computer scientist and idealist philosopher. He's a very effective critic of philosophical materialism in my view. I've put the case for a type of phenomenological idealism in the thread The Mind Created World..

In the form of a true/false statement I could state my view as 'intentional content' is derived only from biological brain function. Do you claim that is false? — Mark Nyquist

So does a Swede have Swedish brain states?

Q: How to define stupidity.
A: I have a spanner. Will that help?

Recall that the original concept of the atom was ‘indivisible’. As such it represented ‘the absolute’ in material form; Democritus said ‘there are only atoms and the void’. But atomism in that sense has been completely discredited by quantum physics which now understands sub-atomic particles as ‘excitations of fields’. And the nucleus of the atom is far from being simple.

I don't get to talk about this with many people normally so its really great to get suggestions from well read people such as yourself. — Restitutor

Glad to be of help, and as I forgot to previously say, welcome to Philosophyforum.

So you are not liking this information is brain state idea. — Mark Nyquist

It's not a matter of like or dislike. There's a distinction in play between the idea of 'brain states' and 'intentional content'.

The myth of the 'good guy with a gun' has no stats to back it up. For every legitimate discharge of a weapon in defense or the upholding of the law, there are many more improper deaths, either by suicide or homicide. 'In 2018, for every justifiable homicide with a gun, there were 34 gun homicides, 82 gun suicides, and two unintentional gun deaths' (source).

Extremely distressing story in today's Washington Post with graphic photographs of what AR-15 weapons do when fired in schools and churches (link provided).

Mass shootings involving AR-15s have become a recurring American nightmare.

The weapon, easy to operate and widely available, is now used more than any other in the country’s deadliest mass killings.

Fired by the dozens or hundreds in rapid succession, bullets from AR-15s have blasted through classroom doors and walls. They have shredded theater seats and splintered wooden church pews. They have mangled human bodies and, in a matter of seconds, shattered the lives of people attending a concert, shopping on a Saturday afternoon, going out with friends and family, working in their offices and worshiping at church and synagogue. They have killed first-graders, teenagers, mothers, fathers and grandparents. — Washington Post

Don't expect any action from American politicians, though. They seem to regard it as the price worth paying for the constitutional rights to bear arms.

I did notice the Chinese put huge emphasis on 'not interfering with America's internal affairs'. The unspoken quid pro quo is, of course, 'so you won't interfere with ours, right?, including any moves on Taiwan or efforts to eliminate Islamic or Tibetan cultures from within our borders.'

Of course Xi Jin Ping is a dictator, although it was not particularly diplomatic of Biden to say so. He could have answered, 'the PRC doesn't elect its officers by popular vote', or something along those lines. Still, speaking unvarnished facts is not necessarily a vice amongst world leaders.

A phrase that seems appropriate to summaries my view on the relationship between matter and information could be described as information-matter dualism. So that’s what I think, information-matter dualism is how I personally frame what science says about information. — Restitutor

There's an entire massive website, The Information Philosopher, Bob Doyle, which is devoted to this idea. It's a constant reference point for me, I guess you know about it already but for the record it's here https://www.informationphilosopher.com/ . The index of carefully curated articles about individual philosophers and scientists is a fantastic resource.

Where 'information philosophy' doesn't gel with me, though, is that I see philosophy - as distinct from science - concerned with the question of the nature and meaning of being, not the analysis of objects and their relations. There is an irrevocably first-person perspective required by philosophy, as distinct from science. I feel that prior to the advent of modern thought, this kind of went without saying, because humans hadn't yet reached the point of abstraction where we could stand outside ourselves and treat ourselves and everything else as objects of analysis. We had a more embedded and organic relationship with the Cosmos, which was (regrettably) harnessed to an empirically false cosmological picture. So the shattering of the great medieval synthesis was also a huge existential crisis. This is why the 'embodied philosophy' school that @Joshs mentions above is so crucial, as it re-orients science around 'the human condition' and stops treating humans as mere objects (or machines!) That is very much in keeping with existentialism, phenomenology and the continental schools of philosophy, unlike the scientistic reductionism that is so influential in English-speaking philosophy.

Not only that, but the meaning of "evidence" to some here has been so narrowed down by empirical principles, that it could only mean something which appears directly through an individual's sensations. — Metaphysician Undercover

And validated in peer-reviewed science journals!

I've often reflected, when Dawkins waves his hands around and says 'but where is the evidence??' that any believer could simply say 'you're standing in it!'

I think that's the problem. If any given thought can be the result of many different arrangements of matter, then how can it be that the arrangement IS the thought? — Patterner

That's the idea. It's a refinement of Hilary Putnam's 'multiple realizability'.

You've seen the range of information definitions that show up here. Two that seem to be scientific but are not are Shannon information and what physicists call physical information. Both of these reduce to abstract concepts that must be supported by brain state. — Mark Nyquist

So, do you think in the absence of any mind that basic logical principles such as the law of the excluded middle would not hold? My view would be that the law of the excluded middle and other such simple principles are discovered by rational sentient beings who have the wits to discern them. That such principles are discerned by intelligence, not 'supported by brain state'. The unique thing about them is that they're independent of any particular mind, but only discernable to reason. That is what gives them the status as foundational to rational thought (nous).

I think there's probably some base structures that are pretty damn similar between humans — flannel jesus

What about Chomsky's universal grammar?

In this way the information in the original soundwave can be duplicated highlighting that information, unlike matter can be given away repeatedly without ever losing the original information. A record can be copied millions of times from the mold, with the mold changing the shape of molten plastic. — Restitutor

That analogy can be extended though. If you have an item of information - say, instructions, or a recipe - that can be represented in any number of languages, or encoded in any number of media (digital, physical, and so on). Provided the information is faithfully replicated in each transformation, then the information stays the same, even if the material form of its presentation is completely different. That is the sense in which meaning can be understood as independent from physical form - as you say.

Aristotle observed there are two distinct things about wax which are its substance and its shape. — Restitutor

Not substance and shape, but substance (hyle) and form (morphe). 'Aristotle explained that "By hyle I mean that which in itself is neither a particular thing nor of a certain quantity nor assigned to any other of the categories by which being is determined." This means that hyle is brought into existence not due to its being its agent or its own actuality but only when form attaches to it. It has been described as a plenum or a field, a conceptualization that opposed Democritus' atomistic ontology. It is maintained that the Aristotelian concept should not be understood as a "stuff" since there is, for example, hyle that is intellectual as well as sensible hyle found in the body' (wiki). So 'form' is a much more subtle concept than 'shape', recall it is ultimately descended from Plato's 'ideas' albeit modified by Aristotle's 'moderate realism'.

. This means that to make dualism fully compatible with science all you need to do is stop claiming res cogitans is independent of matter and start calling it information. — Restitutor

I almost agree, with this caveat: Descartes' principle error was in regarding res cogitans as an object, something that could be conceived of in an objective manner. Husserl's primary objection to Descartes lies in the latter's approach to consciousness. Descartes regards consciousness as 'res cogitans' (thinking substance) and the material world as 'res extensa' (extended substance). Husserl, a phenomenologist, argues that this perspective wrongly subsumes consciousness under the same category as physical objects - by treating it as objective - thereby neglecting the inherently first-person nature of conscious experience.

Husserl contends that consciousness should not be treated as an object within the world but rather as the precondition for the appearance of any such objects, that through which everything objective is disclosed in the first place. He emphasizes the intentionality of consciousness — its inherent nature of being about or directed towards objects, and how it constitutes the meaning and essence of things rather than merely perceiving them as physical entities.

This critique is fundamental to Husserl's phenomenological project, which aims to return to the 'things themselves' by examining the structures of experience as they present themselves to awareness, free from either preconceived theories or scientific assumptions. This is the 'phenomenological epoché' or reduction.

If you are getting at something of a dualist nature I might understand. Brain state is neurons holding mental content. — Mark Nyquist

But what is 'holding'? Is it 'representing'? If so, that's semiotic - which is not itself physical as it relies on interpretation.

If you say that 'a thought IS a brain state', that 'IS' is not, itself, something physical. You're saying that 'this physical state' means or is the same as propositional content. But that is a judgement of equivalence between a physical configuration and semiotic or semantic content. I can't see how it can be claimed that such a judgement can be understood as a 'brain state'. That's the issue.

The argument of brain-mind identity theorists, who posit that every thought or mental state is identical to a brain state, faces complexities when dealing with semantic content, like 'the cat is on the mat'. The core challenge is this: while neuroscience can identify and map various brain activities and states, it struggles to find a direct and consistent correspondence with the semantic content of thoughts or propositions. This issue arises partly because thoughts and propositions are abstract, involving meaning, context, and interpretation, while brain states are physical, observable phenomena.

Different individuals may have different neural activations for the same thought or proposition. This variability makes it hard to pinpoint a universal brain state corresponding to a specific thought.

The meaning of a proposition can change based on context, individual understanding, and interpretation. This subjective aspect of semantic content is difficult to capture in the objective framework of brain states.

Language and thought are highly complex and dynamic. The same proposition might involve different cognitive processes depending on factors like language proficiency, attention, or prior knowledge.

There's also the issue of subjective experience or qualia. How a person experiences understanding a proposition might not be directly translatable to a measurable brain state. The same proposition might mean something completely different to different people.

Hence my difficulties accepting the equation of brain states and information.

This headline is misleading because it creates the impression that the US is warming faster than other countries. — Agree-to-Disagree

Taken out of context, it might appear to be, but the article provides further detail. The associated report was the work of 'an exhaustive distillation of climate science compiled by more than 750 experts across the US federal government'.

The report shows “more and more people are experiencing climate change right now, right outside their windows”, said Allison Crimmins, a climate scientist and director of the National Climate Assessment. Crimmins said that escalating dangers from wildfires, severe heat, flooding and other impacts mean that the US suffers a disaster costing at least $1bn in damages every three weeks now, on average, compared to once every four months in the 1980s. ....

Scientists who worked on the 32-chapter report, which touches on everything from climate change’s impact upon the oceans to agriculture to transportation to cultural practices, say that scientific confidence about the influence of global heating upon extreme weather and other phenomena has only strengthened since the last report in 2018. ...

The report’s findings include:

* The climate crisis is causing disruption to all regions of the US, from flooding via heavier rainfall in the north-east to prolonged drought in the south-west. A constant is heat – “across all regions of the US, people are experiencing warming temperatures and longer-lasting heatwaves” – with nighttime and winter temperatures rising faster than daytime and summer temperatures.

* People’s health is already being harmed by worsened air quality from smog, wildfire smoke, dust and increased pollen, as well as from extreme weather events and the spread of infectious diseases. Children born in 2020 will be exposed to far more climate-related hazards compared to people born in 1965.
* There are “profound changes” underway in the water cycle, raising the risk of flooding, drought and degraded water supplies for people in the US. Snow cover in mountains is decreasing, while the nation’s supply of groundwater is under threat from warming temperatures.

I don't think it's 'alarmist'. I think it's alarming. As to why the US, in particular, is exposed to such effects, there might be geographical, topological and climatic reasons for the impact on the US in particular, but I guess one would have to read the report to find out.

I am just making the claim that information could be simply what its like to be information. — Apustimelogist

I don’t know if you’re aware of ‘the information philosopher’ site but he says something similar. See

https://www.informationphilosopher.com/mind/

did Donald Hebb or other neurologists, neuropsychologists identify information as brain state only? — Mark Nyquist

Something I'm confused about is the apparent equation of physical states with symbolic meaning that is implied here. Symbolic meaning is representational, where a symbol or sign represents meaning to an interpreter. (That is basic to semiotics which extends the concept to many organic processes other than language). But does this mean that a brain state is the same as an item of propositional knowledge? I don't see how it can be, as propositional knowledge is internal to the act of thinking, whereas a physical state or configuration of neural matter is objective or external to the act of thought. And even to try and map an item of propositional knowledge between it's linguistic meaning - 'the cat is on the mat' with an array of neural activity, relies on the reliability of symbolic (and therefore logical) representation ('this means that', 'this is the same as that', and so on.)

Do you see the difficulty I'm trying to articulate (probably not very well)?

A new word! (I'm inclined to start a thread on 'philosophies of consciousness' - the link between psychedelic experiences and Eastern philosophy. Won't clutter up this one.)

I just had a discussion with an atheist friend of mine and I'm beginning to feel very melancholic about the meaning of my life — T4YLOR

Don't give way to anxiety. Understand the 'wheel of thought and emotion', that is, how emotional reactivity and your conscious inner dialogue influence one another in a continuous chain. Freedom from that is a matter of becoming more 'choicelessly self-aware' - by that, I mean, become aware of your thoughts, without allowing them to capture you or own you, without justifying them or condemning them. Emotions and thoughts change constantly, so whatever mood or emotion arises, learn to observe it and understand that it will pass in due course. By becoming fearful or anxious, you're imbuing your thoughts with too much gravity. Mindfulness training is especially useful in that regard.

With regards to getting a grounding in philosophy - there are some books around that introduce the subject of philosophy from a layman's perspective, rather than diving straight into The Great Works. One book which benefitted me was Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. I also benefitted from books by Will and Ariel Durant, who are rather old-fashioned and not very well-known today, but had a very approachable style and encylopedic knowledge of philosophy (try The Story of Philosophy, Will Durant). Before I commenced undergraduate study I read the whole of The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. It has its critics and indeed its flaws, but on the whole it is very helpful for its historical flow, helping to understand how the subject developed over the centuries. Alain du Bouton is useful. Jules Evans another. I'm sure there others, but the point is, to try and get more of the lay of the land before trying to absorb major texts.

But sometimes people come pretty close to saying "emergence-did-it" without offering convincing details, most obviously when arguing that consciousness is an emergent property of brain activity. — bert1

That's what I was getting at.

Well, reading about Lublin Thomism, on Dermot Griffin's suggestion, I came across an interesting term in religious literature - 'gnoseology' (rather a peculiar sounding word, but never mind.) The thrust of it is that it's to do with 'gnosis' - not 'gnosis' in the sense of 'gnosticism' (which is heretical) but simply as 'higher knowledge'. If you look it up in the dictionary, it basically says it's an alternative for 'epistemology', but the etymological root, gn-, signifies its affiliation with gnosis (which is also found in Sanskrit languages as 'jnana'.) Apparently it is part of the curriculum in scholastic philosophy. I have a rather interesting book on Orthodox Christianity in which there is also some discussion of gnosis as 'higher knowledge' (and carefully distinguished from gnosticism per se).

Consider this passage from Buddhist scholar, Edward Conze:

The "perennial philosophy" is ...defined as a doctrine which holds [1] that as far as worthwhile knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; [2] that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; and [3] that the wise have found a "wisdom" which is true, although it has no "empirical" basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality--through the Prajñāpāramitā of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on; and [4] that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents.

This maps quite well against the table that is provided in the OP.

My belief is that there is a real qualitative dimension, the vertical axis - which I think is the minimum possible requirement for a spiritual philosophy. But this is non-PC in secular culture, which is a flatland as far as values are concerned: every individual is his or her own arbiter of value, and any claims to 'higher knowledge' amount to authoritarianism and dogma.

If religion was an “open book” as you say, and accessible to anyone, there would be no need for religious authorities and nothing *special* or sacred with which to bind a community. — praxis

It is an open book to those who are able to read. Those who can't read need to be shown how to read. Same with any other higher skill - medicine, piano, science.

I think Philosophy of Religion ought to accomodate it. I try to maintain a 'philosophy of religion' on the forum, as far as possible. It's a different orientation to evangalism or proselytizing (although there are some who will always take it that way.) But I'll log your suggestion with the Forum Admin as there is some background work going on on refinements.

he fact you call the idea of emergence a "ad hoc gap filler" is profoundly ignorant. All scientists believe in emergence and the fact that you don't explains why you are so profoundly confused about how physics and biology relate to each other. — Restitutor

But you keep making sweeping statements that 'all scientists believe this' and 'all science says the universe is a machine'. There are plenty of criticisms of reductionism and physicalism within science. Furthermore there is a distinction between the domains of science and philosophy, although as a philosophical distinction it might be hard to appreciate from a scientific perspective.

You seem to think that there is some great sacred divide between biology and everything else and there isn't. — Restitutor

It's an ontological distinction, not a 'sacred divide'.

Yes physics talks about what objectively exists but that doesn't mean it isn't saying anything about the "nature of existence". — Restitutor

It doesn't consider the human condition, the plight of human existence. It deals solely with the behaviour of objects.

Science is screaming at us that the fundamental nature of existence is mechanistic and deterministic but because this isn't what you want to hear you don't listen. — Restitutor

Not "science" - you're screaming that.

I bet Wayfarer has never heard any of that. You must have really opened his eyes. He should be grateful. — bert1

:lol:

"Belief without evidence" is trickier. There's all kinds of evidence for the existence of God and even the divinity of Jesus, but none of it is rock solid. As in so many areas, we're left with beliefs that fall far short of certainty, but are hardly as bereft as "belief without evidence" sounds. In my opinion (and experience), a direct encounter with the mystical is extremely powerful evidence in support of theism. — J

Totally with you on all that. But the accusation of belief without evidence is often raised on this forum whenever any vaguely religious sentiment is expressed. In the context of today's culture, science is implicitly understood as the arbiter of what should be taken seriously, so to argue for anything deemed metaphysical or mystical is generally relegated to the domain of faith - it may be edifying, but you have no way of showing that it's true. Part of this is that, not only Biblical texts, but the literature of all the traditions of the sacred, are presumed to lack any evidentiary value, because, for instance, 'all the religions make competing claims to the one truth, how could any of them be right?' (I get that a lot.)

Have you ever tried LSD? — wonderer1

Back in the day. I'm a sixties person and it was around then, in fact when I first tripped, it hadn't been banned yet. It can be (although not always is) like a window to another dimension of existence. The memories I retain are a sense of rapture at the extraordinary beauty of natural things, some vivid hallucinatory experiences, and a sense of 'why isn't life always like this?'

You really don't understand the point, do you. Oh well, no point labouring it.

if you believe the findings of quantum physics are not subject-invariant (i.e. objective) — 180 Proof

The fact that quantum physics appears to undemine the concept of objectivity was part of the major news out of the Solvay Conference in 1927. Why was Albert Einstein compelled to ask the question 'doesn't the moon continue to exist if we're not observing it?' The later Bohr-Einstein debates were mainly about this. Hey, don't take it from me, here it is from John Wheeler:



From John Wheeler, Law without Law

'No elementary phenomena is a phenomena until it is an observed phenomena'.

the natural world, 'subject-invariant' reality – — 180 Proof

'If you're not shocked by quantum physics, then you plainly haven't understood it' ~ Neils Bohr, taking questions after lecture to the Vienna Circle, Copenhagen, 1950's.

You're merely referring to "the nature" of the simulation, Wayfarer, and not what it simulates. — 180 Proof

The whole point is that 'what it simulates' is an unknown.

It's not that they 'ignore' that teaching, although they might. It's also because the main point of the Buddhist teachings is not simply an open book to anyone who happens upon it; or rather, that insofar as it is an open book, one has to learn to read it. The Buddha declares elsewhere that 'the dhamma that I teach is subtle, deep, profound, only perceivable by the wise' (my italics). Unlike empirical science, the kind of insight into emotional reactivity and attachment that the Buddha teaches is a first-person discipline. But, and especially in the early Buddhist texts, it is also stressed that this insight can be obtained by others, as that is the aim of the entire teaching. However not everyone will have that insight to begin with, so to that extent the possibility must be taken on trust. And that does amount to faith, although I understand the connotations of the term provoke strong reactions.

In a dialogue with the monk Sariputta we read the following (where 'the Deathless' is a synonym for 'nibbana'):

Sariputta, do you take it on conviction that the faculty of conviction, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation? Do you take it on conviction that the faculty of persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation?"

"Lord, it's not that I take it on conviction in the Blessed One that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation. Those who have not known, seen, penetrated, realized, or attained it by means of discernment would have to take it on conviction in others that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation; whereas those who have known, seen, penetrated, realized, & attained it by means of discernment would have no doubt or uncertainty that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation. And as for me, I have known, seen, penetrated, realized, & attained it by means of discernment. I have no doubt or uncertainty that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation." — Pubbakotthaka Sutta: Eastern Gatehouse

Sariputta is acknowleding that those who have 'not known, seen, penetrated, realised or attained it' would 'have to take it on conviction', whereas those (like himself) who have seen it, know 'without doubt or uncertainty'.

my understanding is that "the nature of the wavefunction" is a mathematical artifact of the set ups of QM experiments. — 180 Proof

Not so. The implications of the nature of the wavefunction are significant.

Ontological Status: Is it a real, physical entity or merely a mathematical tool for predicting experimental outcomes? Realists argue that the wave function represents a physical state of a quantum system. In contrast, instrumentalists view it as a tool for calculating probabilities of different measurement outcomes, without ascribing it any physical reality.

Wave Function Collapse: The issue of wave function collapse during a measurement process is another philosophical puzzle. When a quantum system is not being observed, it is described by a wave function that encompasses a superposition of all possible states. However, when a measurement is made, the system appears to 'collapse' into one of these states. The nature of this collapse – whether it is a real physical process or a mere update of our knowledge – is debated with no empirical way of adjuticating the competing interpretations.

Locality and Nonlocality: Quantum entanglement, where particles remain connected so that the state of one (no matter how far apart they are) instantly affects the state of the other, challenges the notion of locality in physics. This leads to philosophical questions about the nature of reality and whether actions at one point in space can instantaneously affect distant objects (nonlocality).

Determinism and Indeterminism: Quantum mechanics, through the probabilistic nature of the wave function, raises questions about determinism in the universe. While classical physics is largely deterministic, the probabilistic outcomes in quantum mechanics have led to debates about whether the universe at a fundamental level is deterministic or indeterministic.

The Measurement Problem: This is related to the issue of wave function collapse and concerns the question of how and why quantum states appear to change abruptly and discontinuously in the act of measurement. This problem has led to various interpretations of quantum mechanics, each with its own philosophical implications.

Many-Worlds Interpretation: This interpretation posits that all possible alternative histories and futures are real and that they exist in a vast and complex multiverse. This raises philosophical questions about the nature of reality and our place in it, as well as the meaning of probabilities in a universe where every possibility is realized.

Epistemological Questions: Quantum mechanics also poses epistemological challenges. It forces us to reconsider our notions of knowledge, observation, and reality. The role of the observer in quantum mechanics, and the limits of what we can know about the quantum world, are central to these discussions.

Of course, most working physics can ignore the questions, as the equations and predictions work with enormous precision. They simply shut up and calculate.

Can you name a mystical / supernatural religion that is either founded on or predominantly preaches

"Thou Shalt Not Believe Hearsay"? — 180 Proof

Excerpts from Kalama Sutta, wherein the Buddha addresses the people of Kalama village with respect to which teaching to reject and which to accept.

The criterion for rejection

4. "It is proper for you, Kalamas, to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are bad; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,' abandon them. ...

The criterion for acceptance

10. "Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them.

Oxford dirtionary “an apparatus using or applying mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task.” — Restitutor

That is the dictionary definition quoted. Organism is defined as

1. : something having many related parts that function together as a whole. 2. : an individual living thing that carries on the activities of life by means of organs which have separate functions but are dependent on each other : a living person, plant, or animal.

Organisms are mechanical in some respects but with attributes not possessed by machines.