Fred56

Any sound is due to the air itself filling your lungs but primarily going though your larynx. The sound of each breath is transmitted, or 'commutes with' your inner ear. If you put your thumbs in your ears you can hear the minute muscular activity and the slight cracking and popping of the thumb joints. There's a column of air trapped between your thumbs and eardrums, and you get a rumbling or thundering sound due to the continuous activity of the muscles in your hands (and arms, and so on). You can listen to all kinds of internal 'body noises'. (Ahem.)

Yes I can see that, one is 'f', the other is 'g', are you implying this is all that's needed? What do f or g do with the numbers? Maybe someone could say "the function is what maps the domain to its range", perhaps? I still think you were only being precious about mathematical terminology. Studying calculus usually involves a bit of set theory. And studying electronics usually means you end up talking about functions being 'the same as' their output. This is understood to be mere convenience, and is also understood to not be actually mathematically accurate, but it happens, I have been to lectures where this becomes the norm, say. What's the big deal with doing this, as I outlined in previous posts to this thread? P.S. If a range (which can be continous) can be a domain, why is it wrong to say "a continuous domain", again? P.P.S. Isn't it inaccurate to say: Both domains are indeed the same set of integers, and have identical ordering or collation, but the ranges have different ordering.

Apparently the Heisenberg measurement limit has been reached (just recently). Also very small intervals of time become somewhat meaningless, but attosecond laser pulses are possible now too. Measuring actual time at that level is way too tricky, so they measure other things or 'ignore' the time variable. --www.popularscience.co.uk/features/feat19.htm and here's the paper:http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.65.042313

So much for the DOOM BROOM huh?

Yes, but this thread is about belief and scientific thinking, religion can stay outside (maybe looking in the window) for now. What are these things supposed to be? What equivocation? Perhaps someone might give their (private nonstandard, or whatever) definition of this? Apparently, because lots of people assume that a "belief system" is something to do with religion (something I don't personally, privately or non-standardly do myself), this is a "big problem". Perhaps there's no point in arguing with someone who clings to the belief that belief is unnecessary, and has nothing to do with Science or the scientific method (a strange belief if ever I came across one)... Let's try a different filter: [This formed in my brain due to the 'Scientific method', and had nothing to do with my belief in the theory of electricity (actually I don't believe in it, because I don't have to), these things simply happen.] [but this learning is not belief. Calling my knowledge of how light switches work a belief is simply incorrect, because you have to be religious to believe in anything, and Science has no room for believers.] [This was because my learning (which is not belief or a belief system) was reinforced, not because there was no contending outcome, so my expectation was met, not disputed by the switch or the electricity it 'connected to' the lights.]... is this enough filtering yet...?

That looks a lot like a conjecture. Can you substantiate this at all? So knowing something is just conditioning then? Belief is an unneeded by-product of learning? This looks like something you believe, I would say... This looks a lot like a load of, well, philosophising around... Look what happens when you do this to it: Gotcha! I was sort of hoping you would notice this (apparent) problem with my post. Actually this is what I think you are claiming, type of thing. Kind of 'speaks' for itself...

Isn't that nice? "Science is a belief system which has nothing to do with (religious) faith or belief"... when exactly did I mention or bring religion into this thread btw...? What does it make it then? You appear to be going in circles trying to deny that Science is any system, especially not a system of beliefs. What does based on mean, do you think? To you it is, you mean. Can you demonstrate or define something that is a complete "anything"? Please do try, it should be interesting...

"Waiter, there's an oxy in my moron"

To live. To remain alive, and to be able to eventually reproduce. Life however, appears to be able to do more than simply survive. Can anyone explain 'play'? We observe this apparently purposeful behaviour in many other animals, maybe it's something common to all life (I wouldn't like to say, and I imagine nor would any of you without referring to a learning paradigm, or perhaps 'habituation'). Are there any activities that life apparently performs that are not related to the ultimate purpose (reproduction)? Answer, yes, I think there certainly are. As I pointed out to the other objector to my claim that life (all of it) does have purpose, what is, or how do you alllow for 'survival instinct', if there is NO purpose? viz:

Anyhoo, how many definitions of 'believe' does anyone want to have a go at writing out? I'm fairly sure I can demonstrate that any apparent differences aren't. The gauntlet is thrown...

Sure, artificial visual prostheses work 'like' the real thing, and give impaired people 'real' visual experience (brain function?), there isn't much room to shoot anything at it. Microprobes presumably afford a localised precision to neuronal interfacing, but it (interfacing) needs to get more precise, and more accurate. This will undoubtedly happen at some point. The resolution we are getting to is making some difference (maybe quite a big difference) to how we 'interface' with and examine brain function. And the development of miniature (nanoscale) devices --particularly organic ones, or polymers of organic molecules, maybe even DNA processors of some kind-- will probably lead us to new and more detailed pictures of the encoding, or layering of information --are there compression algorithms? There are many sophisticated signal processing algorithms in there (transforms), and some have been studied a bit (Fourier transforms). There will be the other kinds of development (prostheses), and eventually (military at first, no doubt), enhanced brain-function, because of this. I'd say this is a fairly safe prediction, just when it might be arriving is the tough bit. P.S. bascule: was there any investigation of mirror neurons? I know these function during someone's observation of another subject performing some task and they 'mirror' the spatial and motor processing (without effecting any movement) the observed subject is doing, is there any known parallel in the visual system? Or connections to mirror neurons from the visual cortex? Here's some stuff about a new book on the subject of biotech: P.S. please excuse any appearance of making a plug for this book, this is not at all my intention.

If Science isn't a "belief" system. is it a system of any kind, or isn't it meaningful to say Science is sytematic, or a system at all? (it's a method, apparently) This reference to my OP appears to be saying that I am equivocating (and fallaciously). Since you 'offered' this term, what is it am I equivocating about exactly? I think you may need to qualify this because it isn't immediately apparent to me what it might be. In short, can you explain what you mean? Do you think that any experimental approach requires "faith", as in my example of believing that pushing a switch will turn on the lights, or any equipment that uses electricity (this must require a belief in electrical theory)? Or are "believing" and "faith" not the words you would personally use (and if not, why don't you)? Also I don't think I can agree with your claim about multiple meanings for the word, there really is only one kind of believing that we do, I would say, but some seem to think otherwise. I think multiple meanings for the word "belief" are logically unsupportable; are a fallacy (and therefore, your refutation is also illogical). Sorry, but I'm going to take a bit more convincing than just being told that I'm being equivocal or fallacious.

The question is: why do some people insist that life has no (definable) purpose? Purpose is an obvious feature of living things, why is it useless (in any definition)? So this is the only purposeful behaviour we can 'notice' in any living thing (anything else it might do is irrelevant -if it isn't directly related to this ultimate purpose)? So nothing in this list has anything to do with any other purpose: 1. Things contain or store energy. All things made of matter can be converted to some kind of energy. 2. Life stores energy. It has to use energy to do this. 3. Life uses energy to find more energy, things can store energy (have or contain some), but only life (is obliged) goes around looking for more of it. All by itself. 4. Life tracks its environment by using energy to maintain a map of external and internal information 5. Life grows (extends itself) by converting energy into more ´life´. 6. Life reproduces, this requires energy. 7. Life shares information with others. This sharing is not an energy-free process. Also, if this is the only purpose that can be defined, or whatever the rule is, then why am I doing this (why are you doing it)? What purpose could there be to discussing this topic or anything else on any forum, or getting educated about things that have little direct relevance to reproducing? Why don't we just reproduce constantly and focus completely on this (the only meaningful) activity?

Science is learning. Learning is an ongoing accumulation of experience. This is not a passive activity (knowledge and learning do not come to us, as such, but require some expenditure of physical energy, especially mental energy). Science is an accumulation of fact and (undisputed) belief in the existence of the set of accumulated 'facts' about the world, and the behaviour of things in the world: ultimately of the observer's own behaviour also (why do we learn, or how do we acquire knowledge?). A scientist necessarily must divorce their thinking from disputed, or unproven ideas, and cling to knowledge (belief) that is undisputed, or accepted as true, generally because such knowledge 'works' or explains behaviour, and predicts, anticipates, or expects further (possibly not yet observed) behaviour. A scientist must try to divorce their thinking from any beliefs, but in practice, this is not possible. Otherwise there would be a lot of problems to overcome any time they wished to investigate some behaviour. How could they do this, what (apart from their eyes and hands) is available for use in the investigation? Therefore, a scientist is 'stuck' with contemporary beliefs, and must use some of these. Otherwise, they would not be able to switch anything on, or connect any "experimental apparatus" to any source of power (let's say they don't believe it will do anything). If a scientist managed to divorce themselves from all belief, they would then have to rediscover how electricity works, for example, and what happens when a switch is turned on. Even turning on some lighting in a lab would be a big problem, unless they believed that pressing a certain button would achieve this. This belief principle extends to everything else they do in any experiment, or observation of any kind. There is a set of theories and laws, that all scientists are obliged to own (believe in). (This was posted in response to a certain locked discussion, in which someone informed me that Science is not a "belief system". Perhaps that someone would like to comment on why the above is, in that case, a load of rubbish --but not complete rubbish, there is no such thing as "complete" rubbish)

A practitioner who seriously gets into meditation can 'control' their thinking to the extent of slowing down or speeding up the 'inner voice' (which presumably is representative of actual thinking or processing). Also how to slow their heartbeat and breathing. Apparently studies show that yogis, monks, etc benefit mentally (emotionally) and physically, from doing this. I also can personally testify to the above. Without going into too much detail, I have found this to be helpful in dealing with anxiety and other 'unwanted' mental states (I was diagnosed as suffering from an anxiety condition quite some yrs ago -before I enroled at varsity, in fact). Haven't had my brain size measured yet but...

But why does one? There isn't any need to define purpose, and it isn't useful to define, according to the dude I'm dealing to in the OP... We just 'are', whatever that means, and it's pointless to analyse. Also, this leads to the same question I pose at the end of it. In other words, how do you explain that we do discriminate between animate (living) things, and inanimate (not living) things, since we are unable to do this, without doing a bit of arbitrary assignment first? Or alternatively, why do we bother discriminating if there is no point in so doing? I.e. there is no such thing as purpose, therefore there can be no purpose in discriminating things that appear to have purpose, because they really don't have any (we just imagine, or project 'purposeful behaviour' onto things, for some reason we don't understand, or need to). If some think there is a big circular argument here with no possible resolution, I'll start again with this: Does life exhibit purposeful behaviour, and is this behaviour the same thing as 'having purpose'?

I bet he thinks he can fly around on that BROOM of his too...

Sentiet sapiens callide solummodo paucissimu scit...!? Qui cogitas? sum: I am sim: I am being eram: I was essem: I was being ero: I will be futurus sim: I will be being fui: I have been fuerim: I have been being fueram: I had been fuissem: I had been being fuero: I will have been esse: being futurus: to be intending fuisse: to have been locutus: speaking es: (it) is! esto: (it) will be! este: (they) are! estote: (they) will be! loqui: speaking ...non solum, sed etiam... Trans-lat-i-o-nes met-ri: Occultus incendi ti flamm(a) Anoris ministro. dit-dah-dit dit-dah-dit dit dah dit-dit-dah dit-dit-dah. Sentiet sapiens callide solummodo paucissimu scit...!? dit-dah-dit dit-dah-dit dit-dah-dit dit-dah-dit-dit dit-dah-DIT-dit dah...!? --facilissimus est!

I guess the scriptwriters gave up on the idea of translating Tolkein into a "modern idiom" (maybe P.C. looked too boring). Don't you mean he went "Glamdring" on the Balrogus maleficus? PC version: (as a "termination interview", with strained, cheesy grin) "We can't be moving forward on this, I'm sorry to say. Unfortunately, at the end of the day (assuming there'll be one) this dark Fire thing won't be empowering for you, flame of Udun, so it's back to the Shadow, I'm afraid. I simply can't see you going forward with us here!"

Yes it does. Of course it does. Of course it does. Repeating yourself or others does add validity to your statement. Repeating yourself or others does add validity to your statement. Does that 'add' any difference to the validity of a contention or the state of any of the 'statements'? (never mind...) Just how do you figure that Science is "not a set of beliefs". Nope, no beliefs there in that Science thing --they don't believe anything at all; all science is beliefless... (possibly also hairless).

Science is NOT a belief system. It's a method. It's an approach. Come on. Science IS a 'set of beliefs' though. Or are papers and theses not ideas based on other ideas (and faith that measurement of the universe -i.e. the GOD particle' date=' is possible)? A definition of a 'belief system' is lacking here, I feel. Is it [b']any [/b]system (self sustaining or maintaining) of theories and conjecture, or is it more narrowly defined, say as delusional thinking, or irrational 'logic'?

I'd say my chartreuse-striped purple unicorn won't be very happy to hear that! What would any of you say, do you s'pose, to God if you met him? Would you recognise who (or what) was in front of you? Hate is a pretty strange beast. It's a feeling all humans can experience, but we tend to project it at something or someone, rather than see it for what it really is: something caused by an emotional (over-)reaction, and which should be controllable by an 'adult' person. Children will not learn this if adults don't do it (much)...

Got it. But again, how do the experimenters know that what they are 'seeing' is a valid internal process (that produces a 'real' image as far as the cat can tell)?How does artificially inducing some 'experience' in a subject's brain produce a 'real' experience. How can we tell?

Not legally speaking, sure. But tens or hundreds of thousands of people exercise this "right" every day --call it "stealing" if you like (I do this too because I understand that's what it is, and that everyone else also understands it's "wrong").