The suffering of whom, of what?

A highly sensitive concept While our fundamental concepts are constantly advancing, for the most part, that of suffering is in a kind of sacred tabernacle. It is extracted only to contemplate it with fear and immediately place it back in the same place. Its meaning is so repulsive that the phobia extends to the container … Read more

How should we study religion?

A representative for each look Debate in 2006 between philosophers Daniel Dennett and Richard Swinburne on the best way to study God and religions. Dennett is a naturalist philosopher. He favors ontological reality but is not a reductive materialist; he does not think that science should always impose itself on introspection and common sense. Swinburne … Read more

Intelligence

Multiplying the intelligences does not say what unites them By reducing the scope of IQ to appreciate intelligence, and by multiplying its varieties, has we not aggravated the opacity that surrounds the concept? Indeed, by what are the different intelligences brought together? If we specialize them too much, should we not already recognize that, in … Read more

Entropy and second principle: the great mystification

The mystification of the ultimate disorder Entropy is the measure of the disorder of an isolated system. The second principle is systematically associated with it: the system can only evolve towards greater entropy / disorder. It is an additive quantity (science say extensive): the entropy of the system is equal to the sum of the … Read more

God, science, the proofs

See first : How should we study religion? A dishonest bestseller What is Michel-Yves Bolloré and Franck Bonnassies’ bestseller published in 2021 worth? Its mediocrity is confounding. Clearly written to seduce people confused by the antagonism between religion and science, it does not bring any new idea, nor the slightest proof. Beliefs are backed by … Read more

How to overcome the dichotomy between monism and dualism?

Leibniz’s monads Descartes’ dualism (mind and matter are separate realities) is opposed to Spinoza’s monism (there is only one level of reality). Leibniz, at the end of the 17th century, wanted to overcome this dichotomy with his monads, infinity of points of active substance. Independent, each of them expresses the entire universe. Leibniz uses the … Read more

Quantum oddities under the double look

If necessary, start with What is the double look? Odd in the middle of the other images, not for the math A constant in the popular works of the quantum world: to present the particles as abracadabrant entities, so insane that Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland seems almost wise in comparison. You read that they “alter their … Read more

How will the metaverse transform us?

Philomag looks at this disturbing question in a philosophical press review. How old is the metaverse? For Gabrielle Halpern, the virtual duplication of our reality responds to a fantasy, that of a world that obeys entirely our will. We are interested in the metaverse not because reality is boring but because we refuse its unpredictability,” … Read more

Violence

Incomplete collectivist look Without the double look the researcher often misses his subject. Example with an article on violence in Pour La Science (in french), published by Charles-Édouard de Suremain, anthropologist. He usefully walks the collectivist eye of his specialty on the contexts and forms of violence, but at no time allows to grasp its … Read more

Chaos: order or disorder?

Order in Chaos Chaos is a muddle where our understanding struggles to find the slightest trace of order. An order? In what dimension? Let’s stop time. Chaos becomes a fixed picture. Everything is in its place. Abstract painting but well formed of elements. Order is spatial. By magnifying well we see molecules, each owner of … Read more