Thoughts please.....

[smokeyparkin]

Conscious thought is defiantly a strange phenomenon that I am completely interested in looking into because the idea of reality appears very impossible when seriously looking at it. But what people need to realise is that Christianity and believing a man’s “Sexed up” plight to form a religion outside of the common beliefs of the time is wrong.

Lets stop listening to answers that are 2000 years old; god hasn’t spoken from a bush. We have dismissed all possible re-births of the messier as mad men!!!

So why do we still try to live our lives from a book that contains common sense moralistic values and over exaggerated stories 500 years from the original source? There was not one person that wrote a gospel that actually knew Jesus Christ. Christianity spread for 500 years without any source of code of Christianity conduct written until the pope of the time ordered the new testament to be created, this was all based on popular Christianity stories at the time, mainly the crowd pleasers (certainly the ones about forgiveness and repent of sins, things people were very interested in at the time, and gave money to be forgiven... Totally wrong)!!!

So the next time you hear about your friend Bob who knows someone who has heard of somebody that might be the strongest guy ever…. Think again.

The Bible is wrong. Lets start looking for truth again!!!!!

I am not an atheist; I do not understand life or the meaning of it. One thing I am sure of is that we are on a spinning rock of metal and dust being pulled in by the value zero, orbiting a small sun in a galaxy of billions, in a universe of billions looking toward exaggerated stories as answers to define everything’s existence…

It is so depressing to see just how far behind we really are….

I'd like some thoughts on my thoughts please.....

[harvey1]

If you say that optimum slopes conform to some least action, then there is an implicit consciousness in this since reference since the events are not based on constant conjunction, but rather are based on a proposition being true.

I'm not sure I understand what this means. Are you saying that, without a consciousness guiding every grain of sand, the sand wouldn't form neat piles, but would just spread all over the place ?

No. Here's what I'm saying:

1) Optimum slopes conform to a proposition that exists (viz, least action)
2) Propositions must be understood by an omniscient mind to exist
3) If no omniscient mind exists, then not-(1)
4) Bugmaster says no omniscient mind exists, hence not-(1)

So, I'm saying not-(1)

[Bugmaster]

1) Optimum slopes conform to a proposition that exists (viz, least action)
2) Propositions must be understood by an omniscient mind to exist
3) If no omniscient mind exists, then not-(1)
4) Bugmaster says no omniscient mind exists, hence not-(1)

Well, that's certainly internally consistent, but I deny #1 and #2 (independently of each other, too), so I'm not convinced. I think we're currently debating something like this in our other thread.

[QED]

So, I'm confused. Prior to this point we dealt with three possible ontologies: materialism, platonism, or a duality existing between materialism and platonism.

No, there's at least one more option: that materialism and Platonism are both false, and there exists some third substance, whose behaviors we misinterpret as materialism some times, and Platonism some other times. I think this is what QED is saying, but I could be wrong. Nonetheless, it's a possibility.

That's exactly what I'm saying. To me it's not the least bit radical and seems to follow directly from the discovery of wave/particle duality. Neither model completely captures the essence of the dual slit experiment therefore it seems pretty obvious that we are lacking an appropriate analogy from our everyday experiences. Our everyday experience is limited to a certain range of size, temperature and symmetry which is not particularly representative of the cosmos which gave rise to us -- so it shouldn't be so surprising that we've failed to hit on the right ontology.

Better analogies may exist in our world, but it's not guaranteed. John Barrow discusses how popular science titles are sometimes "ranked" in the publishing industry by the number of novel analogies that are employed to describe some aspect of physics or other. I think this shows a limitation of human thought -- that we can only build new concepts out of existing ones.

Admitting to this inability seems like the only honest approach to me and talk of "duality" as a working ontology seems meaningless and misleading.

[Bugmaster]

Our everyday experience is limited to a certain range of size, temperature and symmetry which is not particularly representative of the cosmos which gave rise to us -- so it shouldn't be so surprising that we've failed to hit on the right ontology.

I guess it all depends on what you mean by "material". For me, the critical "sticking point" is whether natural laws, mathematical concepts, human minds, and other such things, actually exist out there in the aether -- or whether these are just models we use to define certain interactions of elementary particles. I can see your monism going either way, but I think that treating all these things as actually real invites all kinds of logical problems and unneeded complexities.

I think this shows a limitation of human thought -- that we can only build new concepts out of existing ones.

This isn't true. Firstly, if this were true, we'd still be sitting in caves trying to discover the concept of language. Secondly, I can name some concepts that have truly been new at the time they were invented (in no particular order): agriculture, perspective (in art), the number zero, the scientific method, speed of light being a constant, codified laws (Hammurabi gets the credit)... There are plenty more.

[QED]

I think this shows a limitation of human thought -- that we can only build new concepts out of existing ones.

This isn't true. Firstly, if this were true, we'd still be sitting in caves trying to discover the concept of language. Secondly, I can name some concepts that have truly been new at the time they were invented (in no particular order): agriculture, perspective (in art), the number zero, the scientific method, speed of light being a constant, codified laws (Hammurabi gets the credit)... There are plenty more.

Certainly direct observation can guide us in forming "new" concepts (but I would maintain that even in this case the inspiration comes from something that already exists in the world) and I think that accounts for the examples you give here. But I was thinking about developing concepts about those things beyond direct observation, with little to hint at any structure beyond analogy. The old saying "there's nothing new under the Sun" seems to sum this up rather well.

[harvey1]

I think this shows a limitation of human thought -- that we can only build new concepts out of existing ones. Admitting to this inability seems like the only honest approach to me and talk of "duality" as a working ontology seems meaningless and misleading.

That means you are succumbing to Mystery. It's the old, "Look, I don't have the answers to the paradoxes that you have asserted to show that my atheism is wrong, but in my heart I know that my atheism cannot be wrong, therefore there must be an answer to why my atheism is true even though I cannot formulate a way to answer your paradoxes. I would rather believe that logic is irrational than believe that God is my Savior."

This is what the theist has said all along.

[QED]

That means you are succumbing to Mystery. It's the old, "Look, I don't have the answers to the paradoxes that you have asserted to show that my atheism is wrong, but in my heart I know that my atheism cannot be wrong, therefore there must be an answer to why my atheism is true even though I cannot formulate a way to answer your paradoxes. I would rather believe that logic is irrational than believe that God is my Savior."

This is what the theist has said all along.

And what a strange thing to say! The logic we're using clearly is wrong because we can make paradoxical observations in the two-slit experiment. To look at it as you suggest and conclude that God is our saviour instead makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Nothing about the way the world behaves for me suggests the presence of a saviour so I'm puzzled as to why anyone would see it this way.

For atheism to be wrong means that in addition to creating and planning the world we live in, God also cares for and looks over his children -- guiding events and handing out justice wherever it's required. There's simply too much irony and pathos at large in the world to be compatible with this view in my opinion. The creation part, while being the "obvious" glue that has served to hold together these other oddities is no longer unambiguous and therefore I believe that the accidental universe is the more correct solution.

[harvey1]

And what a strange thing to say! The logic we're using clearly is wrong because we can make paradoxical observations in the two-slit experiment.

Yes, but there are rational alternatives that do not cause us to give up rationality altogether. For example, both Bohm and Feynman provided solutions to the Young's double slit experiment that do not entail giving up on the notion of logic. What I find frustrating about your approach is that you won't commit to falsification of your views. By claiming Mystery someone could argue the validity of any approach.

To look at it as you suggest and conclude that God is our saviour instead makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Nothing about the way the world behaves for me suggests the presence of a saviour so I'm puzzled as to why anyone would see it this way.

You said that you believe that mathematics is discovered and not invented, so in my reckoning that puts you in the platonist camp. If so, then you should realize that there's a deep relation between math and physics. Therefore, without God (the collection of all laws) there would be no universe and there wouldn't continue to be a universe. So, God is your savior since without God there surely would not continue to be a universe.

For atheism to be wrong means that in addition to creating and planning the world we live in, God also cares for and looks over his children -- guiding events and handing out justice wherever it's required.

I think there's a boat load of pantheists and deists who would disagree with you.

The creation part, while being the "obvious" glue that has served to hold together these other oddities is no longer unambiguous and therefore I believe that the accidental universe is the more correct solution.

Well, even in your view you shouldn't see an accidental universe. That is, if there are an infinite number of universes by brute fact, that alone suggests that our universe is not an accident. It is very probable given the appropriate atheistic imagination.

[Bugmaster]

Certainly direct observation can guide us in forming "new" concepts (but I would maintain that even in this case the inspiration comes from something that already exists in the world) and I think that accounts for the examples you give here. But I was thinking about developing concepts about those things beyond direct observation, with little to hint at any structure beyond analogy. The old saying "there's nothing new under the Sun" seems to sum this up rather well.

Ok, in this case I present abstract counting (1, 2, 3, 4, 5...), which is actually the opposite of what you see by observation. You always see 2 apples, or an apple and an orange, not an abstract 2. Another example is the number zero, the concept of which doesn't exist in nature (even vacuum is not entirely empty). Writing, and especially literature, is another abstract invention; animals sometimes mark their territory, but only humans are able to produce symbols that aren't immediately connected to any concrete object in the vicinity. Art is another good example. More recently, we have the concept of currency, information theory, religion (especially the Eastern kind), non-Euclidean geometry, and quite possibly, philosophy in its entirety.

[Bugmaster]

You said that you believe that mathematics is discovered and not invented, so in my reckoning that puts you in the platonist camp...

That's like saying, "you think light is a wave, so that puts you in the wave-ist camp, not the particle-ist camp... heathen !" In reality, it's possible that both camps are wrong, and that Platonism and materialism are both crude approximations of the same, unified substance. In other words, it's possible to be a monist without being a Platonist or a materialist.