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How Idealism Simplifies Metaphysics


Philosophy of mind forum    8 Replies

Sci, 2023-02-19, 03:19 PM

How Idealism Simplifies Metaphysics

Scott Roberts

[quote]
There is conscious activity (thinking, feeling, sensing, hallucinating, dreaming, and so on). Idealism is the claim that there is o

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  Open Thread

What Life is Like When you Are not Alive


Spirituality and magic forum: science and practice    No Replies

Sci, 2023-02-18, 11:36 PM

What Life is Like When you Are not Alive

D. Bonnette

[quote]
While the preceding speculative musings may be of great interest to the philosopher or theologian, they do little to help us ordinary mortals to imagine

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  Open Thread

Reading “Proof of Spiritual Phenomena”


Skeptic vs. proponent discussion    93 Replies

sbu, 2023-02-17, 08:46 PM

I’m currently reading Proof of Spiritual Phenomena by Mona Sobhani. I picked this book because the author holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience and supposedly have been through the journey from being firmly grounded in materialism to being open minded about spritual phenomena. A transformation I have been s

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  Open Thread

Why Scientists Have Stopped Taking Risks


Skeptic vs. proponent discussion    No Replies

Will, 2023-02-17, 01:17 PM

Not sure where else to put this:

Why Scientists Have Stopped Taking Risks

[quote]
And yet, the underlying risk of failure in exploratory research has always been a feature of scientific investigation. So why is it

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  Open Thread

Where did this ‘Wrong’ idea of quantum theory implying consciousness come from?


Connected science forum (evolution, ID, cosmology, fine-tuning, quantum mechanics)    3 Replies

Sci, 2023-02-16, 08:04 PM

Where did this ‘Wrong’ idea of quantum theory implying consciousness come from? Quantum physicists.

Ruth Kastner

[quote]
There has been muc

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  Open Thread

Developing a Systematic Theology “From Scratch”


Spirituality and magic forum: science and practice    2 Replies

Sci, 2023-02-15, 10:25 PM

Developing a Systematic Theology “From Scratch”

Steve Petermann

[quote]
In other posts, I’ve talked about why one might want to develop a systematic theology, “from scratch”.  Now, by “from scratch” I don’t

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  Open Thread

Blanke et. al. (2002) Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions


Skeptic vs. proponent discussion    4 Replies

Max_B, 2023-02-11, 10:57 AM

As this paper has come up on another blog, I'm going to try explaining my ideas about the veridical Out Of Body Experience (OBE) again here...

1). Blanke et. al. (2002) Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions
https://doi.org/10.1038/419269a

[quote]
Initial stimu

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  Open Thread

When deceased relatives or pets show up in your dreams


Members' general personal experiences    36 Replies

Ninshub, 2023-02-09, 02:46 AM

I'm wondering what people here think if and when they experience dreams where deceased relatives, or pets, appear.

Frequently enough I have dreams where I'll be surprised that someone I thought had passed away (an uncle, for example, or a grandfather) will still be here, and often in the dreams i

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  Open Thread

Do rats need a brain?


Skeptic vs. proponent discussion    4 Replies

sbu, 2023-02-08, 09:29 PM

John Lorber’s classic findings that some people, with no obvious disability, have a severely different brain geometry due to severe hydropcephalus apparently also translate to other primals. The results from the article linked to below has also been published in Nature.

https://news.northeastern.

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  Open Thread

What is it like to be Wigner's friend? By Dr. Caslav Brukner


Connected science forum (evolution, ID, cosmology, fine-tuning, quantum mechanics)    No Replies

Sci, 2023-02-07, 10:46 PM



[quote]
In this presentation, Prof. Caslav Brukner, PhD, also from the IQOQI-Vienna, discusses what it may be like to be Wigner's friend, the famous character of an important thought experiment in foundations of quantum entanglem

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  Open Thread