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Philosophy

Consciousness: Unexplain This

Many theories of consciousness attempt to resolve its opacity. Some frame it as an emergent computation arising from neural substrates; others treat it as an epiphenomenon, reducible to material process. Phenomenologists insist it must be described in its own terms, while eliminativists argue it is a cognitive illusion, a misapprehension of distributed processes. Each stance, […]

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Philosophy

Mirror, Mirror…

Technologically-mediated idioms of symbolic communication reflect, reflexively shape, and functionally reproduce our identities and cultures. It may be less obvious but an orientation towards certainty and regulatory control can only ever be grounded in, and validated by, a core dependence upon the impossibility and conspicuous absence of closure.

Categories
Philosophy

Closure: does reality make sense?

Context: A theory of reality that makes sense On the topic of the nominally closed systems referenced in the article above, much of the closure asserted (or interpreted) is at a cost of displacing or offsetting the external dependencies of those systems. Yes, there is a certain degree of ontological individuation without which rationality and […]

Categories
Philosophy

Saturday Morning Enigma: Language

Few seem to be aware that the primary transmission medium of communication as hyper-extended technological overreach embodied in language and various, diverse encoding systems is (and are) foundationally and intractably unable to provide that closure and certainty that we are (yet) able to emulate or simulate from inside it. This is the source of a […]