Are We All Really Just Disembodied Brains Floating in Empty Space? Recent mathematical results in the field of cosmology related to the Boltzmann's Brain Problem may point toward a peculiarly arbitrary universe in which, as improbable as it sounds, it's more likely than not. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman on Jan 16, 2008 - 104 comments

A case against "starring*" and "looking-glassing^LG" in philosophy: G. Strawson on intentionality and experience. In a very engaging and stimulating paper, Galen Strawson takes contemporary philosophy of mind to task on certain supposed terminological subreptions and conceptual reductions (pdf). You, like others, may of course not find G. Strawson's views fully convincing. (G. Strawson previously on Metafilter here and here.) [more inside]
posted by rudster on Nov 16, 2007 - 12 comments

Dr James Anderson, from the University of Reading's computer science department, claims to have defined what it means to divide by zero. It's so simple, he claims, that he's even taught it to high school students [via Digg]. You just have to work with a new number he calls Nullity (RealPlayer video). According to Anderson's site The Book of Paragon, the creation, innovation, or discovery of nullity is a step toward describing a "perspective simplex, or perspex [ . . . ] a simple physical thing that is both a mind and a body." Anderson claims that Nullity permits the definition of transreal arithmetic (pdf), a "total arithmetic . . . with no arithmetical exceptions," thus removing what the fictional dialogue No Zombies, Only Feelies? identifies as the "homunculus problem" in mathematics: the need for human intervention to sort out "corner cases" which are not defined.
posted by treepour on Dec 7, 2006 - 63 comments