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Upon looking into Irrealism on Wikipedia, I came across an odd dichotomy called "phenomenalism" and "physicalism." The former seems to be what they were talking about on the Matrix trilogy but the rest of the description for both terms is rather vague and for some reason the philosophy encyclopedia ...

Actually, seaweed sounds like a very good idea to me. You would want to give the people some tie to the water so that they want to grow the seaweed, but once domestic varieties have already been established, it shouldn't be difficult to grow a large enough yield to fuel a civilization. Mind you, mul...

Regardless, islands are not a very stable environment for civilization to arise - unless outsiders bring the means for further development with them to the islanders - because of the significantly lower production yield in the island's eco-system and the more fragile the ecosystem itself is. Think ...

Has anyone tried looking into large-scale pastoralism in a sub-tropical or temperate grassland yet? What about a wetland? I am thinking that keeping lots of bigger animals in a tropical forest environment might make managing the animals rather difficult. A closed-in environment would give them lots ...

This is sounding very interesting so far. I have thought about it, and I might have something to add, but not now. Got a lot on my plate right now. In the meantime, some of you might find this intereresting: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/profile-david-eagleman.html (Note - those who live outside...

TomHChappell wrote:http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... asse-tyson
Colbert Discovers Bill O'Reilly's Theology: 'There Must Be A God Because I Don't Know How Things Work'

I can't watch it because I live in Canada

This video is pretty funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHqXT32DONI&NR=1

If you can read Arabic, it would probably be even better. And great music.

Those who claim that there is no "reality" distinct from perception or belief are called "irrealists" or "antirealists" (some people distinguish the two terms more finely), and they're usually confined to this or that specific issue (moral irrealists, scientific irrealists, irrealists regarding men...

Some of you might find this interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpcVAtbzeTI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB4u2XtRqF8

Wow..... That explains a heck of alot. Yeah, I guess I mean a difference in reality then. But then, if our senses basically work the same way across the whole human species, is it possible that they can tell us each different things? Or does a difference in the way the senses work depict a single ab...

Astraios wrote:Plato's cave?

Sounds like a good place to start. Thanks for the suggestion

I apologise if I am interrupting something here but I have a question regarding ( what I think is ) western philosophy-related and I figured the best place to ask about it would be on this thread. What is the philosophical view called that was talked about in the first Matrix film regarding the perc...

You weren't talking about reference books, and neither was I - narratives are not rare. Actually, yes I was talking about reference books. The topics of fiction vs. nonfiction and historical fiction vs. historical drama became intertwined. When I say "non-fiction," I mostly mean reference books lik...

Maybe from this: But I will say this: narratives do seem to be more common in works of fiction than works of non-fiction. That doesn't mean they never occur in non-fiction at all, only that they are rare. And no, I don't mean narratives happen automatically, they just happen to be the way people or...

For the record, I never said a non-fiction story could not have a narrative. Autobiographies are narratives based on actual occurrances in the author's life. Historical dramas that actually happened can also be narratives because they can be told like a story. As long as it is factual and none of i...

It occured to me that science fiction seems to focus on working out the implications of technical problems. Typical questions include what impact artificial intelligence would have on society or whether quantum physics could allow faster than light travel. More generally, science fiction can examin...

Oh wow, so a planet with a lot of ocean overall, but most of the land broken into large islands might have very few hurricanes? Hurricanes need a combination of warm high-pressure air and cool low-pressure air coming together at the same time to produce a massive storm. You need a lot of land area ...

What is the definition you use?

Pretty much any historical story that appears on film, TV, the radio, a book, etc., is going to be fictitious. We can't possibly know everything that person or those people did every waking second, so to fill up the story the author or narrator makes up the parts of the story not told. Therefore, I ...

The difference being you know what happened. The story might be just as interesting, but it's still written in stone. That was the distinction I was trying to make between fiction and non-fiction. History is fact; it may have been falsified to some degree in some records, but it still really happen...

Cells sizes are proportional - you could fit the Earth in one of Jupiter's "small" cells. A small planet would have a smaller absolute size of cell, but not necessarily more cells because of it. I think this answers my question. Thank you. Final note: don't confuse equatorial rotation velocity with...

Hey, guys, the Church of Exobiology is across the street. Whoops :mrgreen: Must've gotten ahead of myself. I didn't see bricka's thread until he pointed it out on the second page ( wasn't aware this thread had a second page either, at first ). My replies to the other posts will be on there. Hey, gu...

But I will say this: narratives do seem to be more common in works of fiction than works of non-fiction. Historical dramas tend to be more about conveying a record of non-statistical data ( I.e. qualitative information[size]) than about telling a story because, whether you like it or not, it still ...

such sentient life will be land-based and bipedal. It does not need to be humanoid, but it is likely. I am not so sure about this. We already know that dolphins and porpoises are very intelligent. What makes us certain they are incapable of civilization ( right now ) is that they are incapable of m...

I really don't know why it took so long for someone to invent winged or lighter-than-air flight. The principles for both are fairly easy to grasp...OK maybe not the second one, but as Xonen pointed out, it had been done before. Couldn't gliding atleast have been invented earlier in history? All of t...