Philosophical Speculations

BTW, have you ever seen Winding the Universal Clock Speculations on the Transitions Between Chaos and Order https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P8006.html In the dedications, there is a quote: “For all those scientists still willing to speculate broadly not in the certainty that they are correct but in...

As it happens I've just been watching an interview with Chris Langan in which his take on the anthropic principle is discussed, and so I checked out his wiki, and found the following which may be of some interest here, since it also seems to make the case that 'designer' and design are not-two ... ...

How is Design "outside" of nature, when before nature existed, there were no natural causes? So God is a part of nature? Maybe God is just anthropic principles themselves? The Design is the Designer? But there was no "before nature". Nature is bound to time. It is meaningless to...

To say that ANYTHING in nature can "just exist" is to close off the metaphysical question.

Yep. It's ridiculous so now you should see why the idea of God or Designer is even more ridiculous since it is outside of nature and closes off all questions.

Jim wrote: I agree it [anthropic principle] doesn't explain anything but neither does intentional creation because you still need to explain the creator. If you think you can bypass doing that, then the same bypass could be done with anthropic principle , that is we could assume it is uncaused. Thi...

This discussion reminds me of the Bohm-Pribram's holonomic brain theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomic_brain_theory Specifically about this part: "This model allows for important aspects of human consciousness, including the fast associative memory that allows for connections betwe...

Regarding Chrome spellcheck one thing to look at is whether it has become disabled for some reason. If you right click in the reply box editing area, you should see an option that says "Spell check". If you click that, another menu should come up with options about language and whether you...

Yet another annoying piece of evidence that does not fit into the physicalist narrative. From that point of view there is no reason why specialized neurons should "drift" towards other functions while subjected to the same stimulus. From the non-physicalist view which sees the brain as a ...

I agree it doesn't explain anything but neither does intentional creation because you still need to explain the creator. If you think you can bypass doing that, then the same bypass could be done with anthropic principle, that is we could assume it is uncaused.

Schoonover, Fink, and their colleagues from Columbia University allowed mice to sniff the same odors over several days and weeks, and recorded the activity of neurons in the rodents’ piriform cortex—a brain region involved in identifying smells. At a given moment, each odor caused a distinctive gro...