Philosophy Now Forum

Alan Bloom is a good one. He's the first one that translated the Republic without the Christian reinterpretation other translations were filled with.

Most careful physicists are quick to say that they know nothing of the original state of the singularity before the big bang, as the laws of physics which we use to understand the universe simply break down at this point. So, what is happening here is likely just an anomaly that crops up when trying...

This isn't a shocking statement considering that Hawking considers himself a contemporary Positivist.

I was thinking about the role of science in society today while listening to the Anthem of Science performed by Melodysheep, who's arranged (and auto-tuned) a variety of scientists and what they think of science. Not surprisingly, a lot of common claims are made in this song. In the interest in seei...

Hi grok , your not winning many friends on Atheists vrs Skeptics,, quite the opposite. ??? Just because people disagree on certain things doesn't mean they can't be friends (or at least friendly). I would rather you didn't fill my thread with your nonsense,, you are of course entitled to your opini...

Example for your thoughts: You look for a highly valuable object on a public square. Well, the square is empty. There is nothing there that's highly valuable to you ie. golden necklace by Gucci or some. So you have proven by time and place that there is not a highly valuable object for you in this ...

It sounds to me like you're trying to use the laws of inference on an informal, rather than formal, argument. If so, I wouldn't agree that this is reasonable to do.

Hi Arsing, I know this is going to be a really stupid question...because I don't know alot about science. But it seems to me if an asteroid was blown apart by a nuke and then reassembled itself...it would still be smaller in size and would not be one single solid piece of mass but rather smaller fr...

That was a good post, Typist. I've long argued that the god of the Old Testament isn't good nor evil, but simply is. His personality was based on the personality of the desert, and calling the desert evil is sort of pointless. Now, there are those who'd claim that God is all good. These are either p...

This reminds me of an amusing music video I saw a while back on YouTube. I think the song pretty much summed it all up.

I've heard about this before some time ago, but I don't think it was more than a curious idea at the time. This seems almost Kantian to me. If we're in the center of a black hole, then our senses are really getting the best of us, and time and space are probably a lot different than we expect. This ...

Welcome!

I keep seeing people refer to Kierkegaard, but alas, I haven't read a single sentence the man wrote.

If you intended an exclusive "or" (either machine or organism) then you were committing a false dichotomy. If it was an inclusive "or", then not. How is it a false dichotomy to say that a common division between environmentalists exists between mechanistic and organicist views, ...

What do you mean by mechanism? Processes that obey the laws of quantum mechanics (or some, as yet unknown higher-order physical law) that are "materialistic"? then I'd say it's not distinct from it. Also, not all conceivable lifeforms are organic. They could be silicon-based, artificially...

i blame blame wrote:Something that is made of organic molecules and gets work done, by converting other forms of energy into it. Of course not all possible organic machines would be necessarily be alive.

I don't see how this is distinct from mechanism.