Philosophy Now Forum

... the differences in lensing effects between an observer on our moon and those observed by Zaphod's mum would be minuscule and require instruments of unimaginable precision to detect. Physicists are fond of using the word negligible for effects which their instrumentation can't detect because phy...

My feeling was that scientific literacy was an undervalued commodity at OPC, which was rather disappointing. There were quite a few members with some genuinely significant contributions to make on matters of science and more than a few with a keen interest in reading them. Like you, I've noticed th...

The space between my most recent "lost place" and home is real, Relatively real, Greta. Your spaces are real relative to each other and relative only to the observer's perception of them. The spaces you observe on the streets of Sydney will look quite different to my mate on Betelgeuse V ...

Being a philosophy forum, it would seem prudent to examine the definition of "fool". Google tell us it's "a person who acts unwisely or imprudently; a silly person". A "person". Is foolishness purely the domain of humans, or of primates, mammals, vertebrates, of life pe...

Being directionally challenged, this is a question I have asked myself more times than I care to remember. I am even capable of getting lost using a GPS. There is something wrong with my brain :) Be that as it may, Leo, I need to take up the (fluffy padded) cudgels with you again about space. When I...

Rumours of my death have been grossly exaggerated, Greta, when I merely sought asylum from the religious zealots and the boot-heel of authority descending from the thought police protecting them. Life and work proceed in an orderly and meaningful fashion as always and the garden is once again becom...

In short, reality would seem to "really exist" but the nature of that reality is only partially known. Leo's apple (LTNS Leo!) exists and its "appleness" can be experienced or perceived in numerous ways. After all, you get apples the end of stalks of apple trees as opposed to plu...

Phil (LTNS BTW) I don't find it far fetched.

Are we not already effectively Flatlanders shuffling around the surface of the Earth? Perhaps reality is a series of imperfect fractals following this dynamic of "Flatlanders" on the surface of what are effectively higher dimensional objects?

It's true that we have hangups about death. 93% of all human who have ever lived in dead so death is a prosaic event, despite its personal profundity. Still, survival is only one of the driving forces behind the human "flight from nature". Comfort - not just living, but living well - is ju...