Post 126  08/16/2022

Is Consciousness
Everywhere?

Prominent neuroscientist, Kristof Koch, has become an advocate for the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of Giulio Tononi. They now work together to fill any gaps in the theory that consciousness emerges naturally when information processing systems reach a minimal state of integration (wholeness). Tononi measures the degree of unification in units of phi . . .

Post 121 12/12/2021

Is Free Will
Fake Agency?

 An article in Skeptic magazine [v26, no 1 2021] raised several thorny scientific & philosophical issues, including the ontological status of Consciousness and Free Will1. The author proposes to show why such immaterial non-things are not “illusions” or “delusions” as some have concluded after careful reasoning. . . . . .

Post 117 10/2/2021

Information-
Consciousness-
Reality

The author is a theoretical physicist with a Phd in Complex Systems. Yet, in practice, he’s a financial quantitative analyst. And this book is primarily a work of philosophy, as viewed from a cosmic economic-ecological perspective. It’s a very technical book, in both a philosophical and scientific sense. . . .

Post 124 08/23/2020

Cause  of
Existence   

Modern philosophers tend to distrust Intuition¹, as a hasty & emotional, instead of methodical & rational way of knowing. But Intuition is fundamental, instinct-ive, and personal, hence it makes the strongest subjective case for belief. Only after those intuitive embryos-of-thought are established can the rational . . .

Post 118 11/02/2021

Buddhist
Metaphysics

  Brian Morris is a professor of Anthropology in London. So presumably, he brings a hands-on scientific methodology to the philosophical topic of the non-physical aspects of the world. Hence, it’s not surprising that he emphasizes the more pragmatic, and reality-based, forms of the traditional Oriental religion. . . . .

Post 122  12/20/2021

FREE WILL

 And other popular               delusions    
The author begins his introduction by asserting that “the overarching problem is free will”. His concern is not so much with the meaning of “will”, but with “what it means to be free”. Before presenting his own solution to the problem though, he gives us a lot of religious and philosophical background. . . .

Post 119  11/29/2021

What is Meta-Physics ?  

Many of the polarized arguments on the Philosophy Forum hinge on the meaning of the technical term “meta-physics”. Contributing to the conflict of opinions is that dictionary definitions tend to provide specialized meanings that are only of interest to philosoph-ical scholars : e.g. Ontology & Epistem-ology. So, their application to some common issues of 21st century . . . .

Post 120  11/29/2021

Holism
and
FreeWill     

Reductionism vs Holism.

Jan Smuts 1926 book, Holism and Evolution, was a treatise on the philosophy of Western Science, which he saw had veered so far toward a reductive perspective that it couldn't see the forest for the trees. . . .

Post 123  04/11/2022

What is Information?  

Claude Shannon labeled the basic element of computer data as "Information". That word had long been associated with various aspects of ideas in the human mind : communication, knowledge, reference, meaning, truth, etc. But his quantified definition of the term focused, not on any particular semantic content,  . . . .

             Post 125  06/27/2022

          Quantum
          Weirdness    

Phillip Ball introduces his topic by clarifying the murkiness of Quantum Physics : “what has emerged most strongly from this work on the fundamental aspects of quantum theory is that it is not a  uncertainty or fuzziness. It is a theory about information.” . . . because information is not a thing that you can point to . . .”

Post 127  10/18/2022

Potential vs Actual

Aristotle's differentiation be-tween Potential & Actual¹, as two different ways to exist, may help you to understand the same distinction in Physics. You could say that Potential is uni-versal and non-local, while Actual is specific and local. For example, a AA battery is said to have the Potential for 1.5 volt-amps of current, even when no current (kinetic energy) is flowing.

Post 128  05/07/2023

Evolution of
Pseudoscience

 In the may/june 2023 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, post-grad Samit Ghosal describes Ayurveda -- Indian traditional medicine -- as a dangerous trend to “decolonize the scientific method”. Such resurrected ancient systems of medicine & treatment are often characterized as pseudoscience.

Post 116 10/04/2021

The Anthropic
Cosmological

Principle

I had heard of the Anthropic Argument, that the world was designed specifically for human habitation, but didn’t really scrutinize it until recently. The core concept was implicit in the Intelligent Design theories of Christian apologists. And I understood the general reasoning . . . .

Post 129  06/04/2023

Time is Energy

In april/may 2023 Philosophy Now magazine, the question of the month is "what is time?" And the very first reply gave me food for thought along the lines of Enformationism theory : "Time needs to exist for change to happen. This means time must have existed before the Big Bang."

Post 115 03/09/2021

Can I.I.T. Explain Consciousness

In his Scientific American magazine article, science writer John Horgan questions an “am-bitious” new theory to explain how human Consciousness evolved from dumb matter, like atoms, to smart stuff. Like brains. Or as he put it, “how does stuff become conscious?” His first introduction to the theory made him skeptical. . . .