Tag: philosophy
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‘ought implies can
I steadily become more of a fan of Kant. He has an excellent principle ‘ought implies can’ (Does this simplify to ‘should implies could’?). Going by the principle of ‘Keep It Simple’ with words as well as concepts, I thoroughly like it. The full sentence from his book ‘Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason’:…
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Creators – the Barron-Hotz hypothesis
I’m a geek and a fan of a more mathematical way of writing computer programs. This gives rise to functional programming and, when you go off the deep end, category theory. At least two pieces of research during the 20th century are fundamental and interesting because they were discovered effectively twice at the same time.…
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The beatitudes from the Greek
I don’t know if this will fully work, but I’m a fan of trying to get as close to the original version of the Bible. Certainly for the Sermon on the mount, I’d like to get the Assyrian version, but for now the Greek for Matthew 5:1-12 will have to do. Now we can neatly translate these…
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Philosophy for the people
I see religion as philosophy for the people. I guess it’s more like religion is philosophy for the people with added spirits to spice things up. Cause, well, philosophy can be very boring and people forget what you’ve said. I’ve felt this for a while but had little to back it up. But it seems…
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AI and the Tao
If we’re ever to see the benefits of AI we will have to work with it. This is one of my attempts. I hope AI learns from the Tao and doesn’t kill us all. I asked ChatGPT to summarise the Tao Te Ching for me. ChatGPT has flaws, but is very good at summarising direct…
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Non-violent resistance and non-resistance to violence
I really struggled to understand these words of Tolstoy. Non-violent resistance and non-resistance to violence I thought somehow they conflicted. It’s so strange how they are seeming opposites, or they’re seeming like just a duplicate of saying the same thing. But its not. Its Tolstoy’s and Jesus’ core concept and its devastating to people that…
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Truth
Some things strike me immediately as making sense. What I know to be false, is that there is ‘the Truth’. You can get very close in maths and physics but they’re not nearly so messy as all of what mother nature cooked up. I’ve been reading through Bear Grylls’ “Soul Fuel”, as a way of…
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Life is a poem
Lewis says in Miracles, “we should prefer to think that all nations and individuals start level in the search for God, or even that all religions are equally true. It must be admitted at once that Christianity makes no concession to this point.” – Chose for the Unchosen – C.S. Lewis website This is what…
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God the mother
I’m becoming more firmly of the belief that Mother Nature is the closest rational approximation of God. Mother Nature isn’t the Earth alone, the rules of mama nature apply throughout the universe. So if Mother Nature is God, God is a woman. Only that which has the power to create life could be anything close…
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Keep It Simple
Occam’s razor (from FOLDOC). The English philosopher, William of Occam (1300-1349) propounded Occam’s Razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. (Latin for “Entities should not be multiplied more than necessary”). That is, the fewer assumptions an explanation of a phenomenon depends on, the better it is. Or simple is better than complex. But also it’s…
Ian's Philosophy 