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Repeated Phrases
A pattern is fractal if it looks the same on all scales and has a quality they describe as self-similarity. Our mental functions, our language, our biology follow patterns that remain consistent on all scales. Our brain, heart and lungs are chambered. Our homes are chambered, our governments have always been chambered, even in the…
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Defrag Your Personal Observer
Math is rhythms, emotion is rhythms, more complicated than most mathematical models would allow, but quantum modeling comes close. Science seeks to bend the behavior of nature through a process of contagion. Rather than deal with the system as a whole, they try to dictate its behavior through altering parts. They practice a sort of…
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Experimentation for Knowledge
Today we are talking about the metaphysics of empiricism. I tend to range rather far afield in classes, so I will try to remain more on topic. Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that holds that knowledge (either exclusively or primarily) comes from sensory experience, and that discovery is accomplished through experimentation. Thus the term…
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Branch of Epistemology
The principles guiding pursuit of empirical knowledge are themselves not truly empirical. There has to be a subjective handle put on all this objective knowledge. They have to guide the behavior of researchers to preserve the veridical integrity (truthfulness). You can have a big pile of facts and data, and still wonder what it means. And…
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Process Leading to Empiricism
Shall we begin the critique? I had a hard time keeping away from it. We see in the history of empiricism the same human drama that played out in previous religious conflicts, the notion that a greater ideal or noble truth is being neglected or even profaned by the attitude or disposition of those who…
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Progress
In order to compete with religion for the favor of the powers that be, empiricism had to promise a vision of the future more attractive than what religion offered. So we have “progress.” Or just plain out tell the natives they were wrong. Indeed, it did win the lion’s share of influence over time. Are…
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Delete Belief?
The world of the subjective hasn’t gone away. If empiricism was the genuine truth and full basis of knowledge, then why hasn’t the subjective gone by the wayside? There are those who try for that. What are they like? According to the behaviorists, your feelings and behavior are just mechanisms of your brain, and there…
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Humanity Hopping
There is a new study about babies and morality and knowing good from not good. Ah indeed. Yes, babies have been shown to have values even in the preverbal stage, but these have no basis in knowledge according to the empirical standard. So do dogs, and monkeys. They tested the behavior of monkeys to unequal…
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Cultivate the Subjective
The subjective is not a character defect, no more than a fishes inability to breath air is a character defect. So since we can’t rid ourselves of the subjective, why not cultivate it? A great many scientific discoveries came from exactly this, an experimenter getting an idea, and many others say “Oh no, that’s nonsense.…
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What is a Person?
Today, we are going to discuss the metaphysics of cryonics. What is a person? Organic matter? A collection of genetic code? Identity automaton? A model of psychology? Interesting. Shouldn’t it be easy to say what a person is? Yes, not being able to define it is a bit disturbing as we say we are one.…
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Information Theory of Death
The basic metaphysical concept behind cryonics is the information theory of death. According to the information theory of death, you aren’t dead until the structures responsible for generating or expressing your consciousness are damaged beyond hope of recovery. It is scientifically true that a great many parts of the neuron survive intact well after what…
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Preserve Consciousness
What part of the matter in our body is necessary to retain consciousness? Brain. What part is necessary to spark consciousness? Neurons? There are some who think that if you could just preserve the neural net, you would preserve that person’s consciousness, the rest of the brain being unnecessary. They have even managed to run…
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Computer Screen of the Self
Now as for whether we are already living in a computer simulation… There is a facet of physics that would suggest we are not. Physics is proving to defy the nice symmetrical model they are looking for. Now what happens when you introduce asymmetry into any given vector of motion? Erratic path? Go in circles?…
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Energy Moving
Today we are talking about a concept I phrased as “material sympathy”, and I’m hoping it will offer at least interesting ideas if not meaningful insights. We perceive a world that we tend to define by its apparent material compositions, yet matter itself is just one state that energy can assume. Specifically, when energy has…
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Memory of Any Perceived Thing
Stranger still, how would you say you know an object when you see it? It compares well with other similar objects. Perceptual metaphors? Ultimately, our memory of any perceived thing is an energy pattern present in a material substrate, and yet somehow this energy travelling along this specific material circuit can somehow tell us what…
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Things Come Together
Let’s look at the molecules that come together to make up that bird. They behave in relationship to each other the same way they would if they didn’t share the environment of the birds mass. Let’s look at chemical heat. Thermal emissions from the bird behave like light, are considered part of the electromagnetic spectrum,…
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Degree of Deviation
Everything in our environment takes its cues from everything else. Organisms take their traits and shape in part from physical and environmental forces acting on them. Yes, that’s how the eye’s physiology came about… the interaction processes. There is DNA information in the seed, to be sure. Actually, there is information in the atom that…
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Formative Matrix
In Taoism they speak of the “Te” or virtue of a thing. The essence of the thing as it is before we interfere with it. It’s “nature”? Indeed, and the nature of any given thing rests in a foundation of assorted possibilities. Reality is a crooked contract with a lot of fine print that seems to…
Category: Metaphysics of Science
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that focuses specifically on the concepts we use to understand reality itself, rather than what might be the best way to do something. Science was originally classified as a philosophy, in my opinion it still is, but many object to the notion that science is still a philosophy. They point at what they feel is proof that science possesses substance that philosophy doesn’t.
There is a schism between science and metaphysics that I believe would be well served by being bridged rather than having the bridge burned. Would you say that working toward a better and clearer metaphysics is without merit in today’s world?
“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” Albert Einstein
“Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions” Vera Rubin