Philosophy Wire: Boat in a Boat. Life in Life…

Photo by Spiros Kakos @ Pexels

But when a high-ranking Viking woman on a farm in Vinjeøra, central Norway, died she was carefully dressed in fine clothes and arrayed with jewels and rich grave goods. Then, she was laid in a newly constructed longboat. But, rather than dig a new grave, the people of Vinjeøra dug up a larger longboat that had already been buried 100 years prior. The inhabitant of the larger longboat was an 8th century man. The woman's 7- to 8-metre longboat was carefully and neatly placed inside the larger 9- to 10-metre one, on top of the man's remains, and the whole assemblage re-buried. Researchers believe that “it's reasonable to think that the two were buried together to mark the family's ownership to the farm, in a society that for the most part didn't write things down". [1] On the ocean of life we travel. Trying to ride the waves of existence. But we are not the passenger. We are the boat. Carrying the cosmos far far away. We are not happy to be alive. It is the universe smiling. We long for death. But we cannot die without death dying as well. There is life in life. Consciousness in consciousness. Existence does nothing more than exist. Being is. Don’t you see? We are not the ones who are afraid to die. The world is.

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Philosophy Wire: Drinking coffee.

Why do we like the bitter taste of coffee? Bitterness evolved as a natural warning system to protect the body from harmful substances. By evolutionary logic, we should want to spit it out. But, it turns out, the more sensitive people are to the bitter taste of caffeine, the more coffee they drink, reports a study from Northwestern Medicine and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Australia. The sensitivity is caused by a genetic variant. "You'd expect that people who are particularly sensitive to the bitter taste of caffeine would drink less coffee," said Marilyn Cornelis, assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "The opposite results of our study suggest coffee consumers acquire a taste or an ability to detect caffeine due to the learned positive reinforcement (i.e. stimulation) elicited by caffeine." [1] [2]

Drinking coffee.
Because we drink a lot of… coffee.
Wanting to live.

Because we keep on… living.
Afraid of death.
Because we have never… died before.

Our life driven by tautologies. Not being able to see. Because this is all we do. Existence dictated by itself. Moving around in circles. Into and out of our very self. Being and not being. Existing and not existing. All the same. In a world full of caffeine, can there be anything else than humans liking coffee?

Here. Drink that cup.
You are awake now!
But not because you were sleeping…

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Philosophy Wire: Thinking. Energy. Being.

Scientists have developed 'neuristor' circuits that behave similarly to biological neurons in the human brain, which can perform complex computations using an incredibly small amount of power. [1] We are used of thinking more and more. But at the end, the highest level of thinking is non-thinking. We are used to admire long and complex calculations. But even the most complex calculation ends up in zero. 1. 1+1. 2. 2+1 … Does it matter if we write 1+1 or 2? Does it matter how many numbers we have? Do you believe that we have numbers at all? At the end, everything is a tautology. Look at the mirror. It all started with One. And no matter how you express it, it will always stay as Is.

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Philosophy Wire: Expanding atoms… Expanding universe…

Researchers playing with a cloud of ultracold atoms uncovered behavior that bears a striking resemblance to the universe in microcosm. Their work, which forges new connections between atomic physics and the sudden expansion of the early universe, was published in Physical Review X and highlighted by Physics. In several sets of experiments, Eckel and his colleagues rapidly expanded the size of a doughnut-shaped cloud of atoms, taking snapshots during the process. The growth happens so fast that the cloud was left humming, and a related hum may have appeared on cosmic scales during the rapid expansion of the early universe - an epoch that cosmologists refer to as the period of inflation. [1]

Patterns everywhere.
Similarities and analogies.

Repetitions.
Parallel lines.

Mirrors reflecting the cosmos.
Playing no role at all.
Except to reveal what already Is.

A world crying in silence…
That it is not real…
Within a similar world, which is…

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective…

Philosophy Wire: Knowledge. Tautology.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-04-10]: Humans can sense the direction of movement via direction-sensing cells in their eyes. [1] Wow. You don't say! Every piece of knowledge is deeply tautological in nature. We can never know what we don't already know…

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Philosophy Wire: The solution of anti-matter mystery and the stupidity of tautology

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-07-02]: Scientists from the Tevatron accelerator claim that preliminary results show a possible explanation of the great mystery of why matter is much more than anti-matter in our Universe [source: BBC News]. When protons and anti-protons collide, new particles are formed which start decaying. Scientists claim they have found that some matter particles decay faster than other anti-matter ones. But what is that? Is that an explanation? Or merely a tautology? When you do not know why matter is more than anti-matter, is the claim “some matter particles decay slower than their anti-matter counterparts” a scientific explanation? Or do we just push back the problem to the previous step? If we ask “why is A > B”, is the claim “because A = C and C is greater than B” and explanation, or do we need to justify why C is greater than A also? Wittgenstein thought all mathematics is a mere tautology. What we learn today is that this may be applied to physics as well…

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Philosophy Wire: Dark matter and the nihilism of tautology as an “explanation” tool

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-05-21]: New research shows the way towards the explanation of the weird behavior of galaxies [source: BBC News]. Scientists say that Dark Matter is the solution. Very good… Science has once more provided the solution. Hmmmm… Really? Not! It is like we say “Hey, this thing behaves like it has property A even though it doesn’t have it. What could be the solution? Oh yes, I found it! The solution is that this thing HAS property A!”… Too simple? Or too dumb?  New theory? Or just a tautology with no meaning whatsoever?

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