Apologies for interrupting a spirited debate, and this may have come up earlier:

"Crime rates in the U.S. have fallen by about half since the early 1990s. A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that legalized abortion following the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 accounts for 45% of the decline in crime rates over the past three decades.

The paper’s authors, Stanford University economist John Donohue and University of Chicago economist Steve Levitt, take new data and run nearly the same model they used in their influential — and controversial — 2001 analysis published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, where they first suggested an association between abortion and crime."

Time is a local entropic anisometry in the phase space of possible worlds. — Pfhorrest

This is a path which few may tread. The poetry of science. :chin:

I'm rooting for Val Deming. :cool:

Wow! Debating semantics rather than reality — Becky

The cat in the box is reality? :smirk:

At the speed of light no interactions can occur forever. Everything is completely instantaneous because nothing is happening. — Benj96

Let's see, it takes a message from the Mars Rover about twenty minutes to reach Earth. So, nothing happens here while we are waiting. Sounds about right. :roll: :smile:

What about Schrödinger's cat? The act of observance changes the physical entity. — Becky

That may or may not be the case. There is always a risk in magnifying a speculative quantum property to the macro world. The only substantive knowledge about the tiny realm is the mathematics that correctly predicts results. :chin:

To try to turn mysticism in to a philosophy or a religion or any other thought based goal oriented project, is to kill it. — Nuke

Good point, Nuke, but I don't think these guys are going that far. They simply want philosophers to provide "guidance" by interpreting mystical journeys. Good intentions, but reminiscent of similar attempts by non-practitioners to influence the nature of mathematics. Fun for all! :cool:

The real mystic would want to know the real meaning of the sign, to know the real direction to go, and therefore would seek help to interpret the sign — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, indeed, but from fellow, more experienced mystics, not from philosophers who love to speculate, being unfamiliar with the internal adventures.

Outstanding post.

. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind — Gnomon

In my opinion, you are drawing a line that doesn't exist. Physics is just as concerned with conceiving as with perceiving. Is spacetime a metaphysical conception? :chin:

Well, maybe you're like me and you just can't stop playing those old Allman Brothers records. — Nuke

That's downright mystical of you! :smile: Gregg was a distant cousin of mine.

So to experience, just for the sake of the experience itself, without any discussion or explanation, leaves the experience completely meaningless. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perhaps that's true. In a Zen monastery those who have practiced the techniques, along with their mentors, may discuss their internal adventures and receive some clarity. But to suggest that philosophers may assist in this effort is naive, if not laughable. However, mine is but one opinion and others may disagree. :chin:

Information is that which eats away at entropy.

Eating the tomato does not advance one up some ladder — Nuke

But eating a mushroom might. :cool:

So is there more to patterns than complexity? — Gregory

Some patterns are very simple, others more complex. Complexity, itself, does not imply patterns. Nor does it necessarily imply chaos.

Discussion could instead focus on how to have experience. We can observe how practical information like that is typically missing from discussions. — Nuke

Mystical events, which are only incompletely communicable in words, cannot be fully understood by those untouched by such experiences.
~Max Weber — Pantagruel

I made this point some time back, but the two central protagonists on this thread enjoy discussing philosophical perspectives of mystical experiences that are, themselves, better understood by actual practitioners.

I'm an existentialist, having read Sartre over a half century ago. I spend very little time reminiscing over past experiences. Even at an advanced age I look to the future. My purpose evolves. :cool:

Avoid A Far Country. :wink:

It makes a difference in athletics. Title IX assumes equal but different, and argues against transgender participation.

Otherwise, I don't think it's that important.

Years ago I occasionally taught History of Mathematics and I seem to recall that an ancient variety of the sine function was found on cuneiform tablets from roughly 3000BC.

In all fields, finding common principles that underlie many diverse phenomena is an admirable goal. — Pfhorrest

That is certainly true. Higher levels of generalizations in mathematics has led to understanding how seemingly diverse concepts are alike. But this knowledge may not shed light on many existing puzzles in specific areas beneath these umbrellas. Generalizations avoid the nitty-gritty. Sometimes abstraction is merely abstraction.

Knowledge needs to be combined with wisdom. That's where 'religion' comes in — EnPassant

Religion brings wisdom? Tell that to a young girl being stoned to death for becoming pregnant. :worry:

Science is concerned with primitive knowledge about material things. Consciousness is concerned with knowledge about life and being. — EnPassant

Science vs consciousness? Scientists are not conscious? :roll:

If you include political philosophy - modes of governing - I would say that is clearly an area of intense interest today, and perhaps progress is being made there. But, if you are speaking of topics like ontology, I see very little of substance being produced. A little like highly abstract mathematics IMO.

Did you mean virtuous sex? It may not be ethical, but the irony is pleasing. :smile:

That something other than this 3+1 dimensional reality exists is undeniable — Possibility

Please provide references for this statement. Or, do you mean the subjective "I find it undeniable"?

Aleister Crowley : He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. — Gnomon

Just a passing comment about this very interesting gentleman. He was a pioneer British rock climber and mountaineer. He was on an expedition to the Himalaya (K2) in 1902. Also, he wrote the first British bouldering guide in 1898, illustrated by a famous artist.

It would be entertaining to read about other little known aspects of the lives of well-known philosophers - show they were not one-dimensional.

And a tiny factoid about the Schrödinger equation: Under certain (unrealistic?) restrictions, it has the form dQ/dt=CQ(t), which is the familiar expression from elementary calculus stating that the rate of change of a quantity at time=t is proportional to the amount of the quantity existing at time=t. :cool:

people seem reluctant to disagree that, according to chemistry (science), water is H2O? — TheMadFool

And why should they disagree? Is there some alternative that makes more sense?

There's no evidence nature is a specific kind of (mathematical) dynamic system.

Has any philosopher ever written something related to this? — Ada

Who knows? But you have described a rock climber. :cool:

Switch off brain, and there goes consciousness. — jgill


There goes identity, not consciousness — bert1

I pity the poor, innocent chunk of dead flesh lying in the morgue, conscious, but not aware of itself. Wes Craven where are you? :groan:

Considering speculative theories of history, the butterfly effect is one extreme. Another is Stanislaw Lem's ergodic theory of history: There are social "attracting fixed points" so powerful that minor or even major alterations of history have no substantial effect on a particular outcome. For instance, had Hitler been assassinated early on, the outcome - a disastrous WWII - might very well still have happened, more or less in the way it happened.

Ergodic theory of history

The Grandfather Effect is fun to contemplate. An outlandish form of multiple universe theory is that the universe is constantly splitting into uncountable alternative states, so that murdering your grandfather when he is young would simply lead to an alternative world history. :cool:

A property-to-property analysis shows no coherent relation between consciousness and a physical brain. — MonisticIdealist

Switch off brain, and there goes consciousness. You assume that because a coherent relation is not detectable now, it will never be detectable because it does not exist. What kind of reasoning flaw is this, philosophers? :gasp:

Attention just is, or so it can feel. — Nuke

That's exactly how my old friend, a thirty year Zen devotee, described it. Empty awareness. We can all have this sensation from time to time when completely relaxed, unfocused, and awake.

Could be. I'm awaiting an application of the hyperreals that is useful in describing or predicting physical phenomena. Perhaps quantum theory will be couched in those terms at some point. But for now they seem to be pretty darn abstract.

Probability may not be appropriate here. Especially using numbers. :roll:

the mystical practise attempts to show you your soul. — Metaphysician Undercover

It seems more appropriate to describe mysticism as the experience of being — Nuke

Is being = soul? The conversation has turned philosophical. :chin:

There's a decimal-like notation for the hyperreals, called the Lightstone notation — fishfry

I keep learning things on this forum. I wonder if hyperreals will ever supplant the real number system. Infinitesimal calculus, touted as a more intuitive way to teach the subject, shows up here and there around the world, even in some high schools. The following seems to be a kind of advanced calculus course centered on the hyperreals that complements a similar elementary calculus course that apparently was abandoned years ago:

https://www.math.wisc.edu/~keisler/foundations.pdf

The author even has diagrams showing "where" infinitesimals and transfinites are located on the real line! :cool:

↪fishfry
Whatever line the surreal is on, I'm still wondering how you would describe writing down the decimal expansion of it. — tim wood

An infinitesimal is technically a "mathematical quantity", but not a real number. Real numbers have decimal expansions. Infinitesimals have an arithmetic that is not the same as real numbers. r+r=r, e.g. How would that work with a hypothetical decimal expansion? Not all arithmetic is with real numbers.

I tend to look at physics to see what kinds of math are consistent with the physical world. Virtually all I see there is real and complex analysis, functional analysis, group theory, matrix theory, etc. None of which seem related to anything but real or complex numbers. (Well, the Hahn-Banach theorem in FA generates lots of functionals and requires in its proof a single transfinite step, unless this is avoided by requiring a tad more in the hypotheses) . Even string theory - seen as a flop by many - doesn't invoke esoteric number systems.

But I read that surreals are connected to game theory. So what do I know? :roll:

The future of philosophy may be the past of philosophy, when the natural sciences and philosophy were closer and philosophy was able to keep up with the sciences. In a similar vein, a lawyer who is a philosopher has an edge over a legal philosopher who isn't.

Words are like the variables in a computer program. They need to be defined for some function to use them properly. If they aren't defined then the function will produce an error. This is the problem that I see occur most in philosophy - where the terms themselves aren't properly defined to do any work with, or that the function references the wrong part of the array if the variable/word has multiple definitions. A word can have an array of definitions and if you confuse which one you are working with, then you will get an error. — Harry Hindu

Amen to that. :up: "Garbage in = garbage out"