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Come, let us reason together. Though unlike Paul, I promise I won't try to bamboozle you with chop -logic.
Yeah, I’m just here talking as if we are all drinking coffee around my kitchen table. I haven’t much skin in the game beyond that. (I don't recognize the name "Paul" of whom you speak, btw.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER
If I get you right, I'd say that you are thinking about our capacity for reasoning and indeed 'free will' (as it is called) in a physical universe and we are in fact (so I argue) evolved biomechanical machines, like all other animals.
Yes, I am thinking about what limits there may be in this Universe-as-IS model that I’ve been describing. For now, I gently exclude your use of the word "evolved" so as not to include more than my model intends. In my model, yes, I aver that we humans and animals (and plants) are, okay, machines. I use your word machines carefully, in case it brings an obligation upon me that I did not foresee.
But, so are rocks machines, I suppose. Rocks, as an example, are blind-deaf-mute stationary machines. To the extent I say that we humans do not actually think, we humans only respond to what I previously referred to as our pushing inputs. It so happens that rocks have fewer parts to them and thus a narrower range of inputs to push upon their fewer parts. Rocks, like humans, also do not think. They also have no temporary biological parts, so rocks last longer before they reform into other matter. In my model, what we call biology is the manifestation of the universe of certain of its parts (humans and animal organs, plant parts) that respond to inputs not available to rocks and/or are particularly ineffective upon rocks. We are, perhaps, complicated rocks.
Seems to me that "free will" means that we initiate an action somewhere in the exercise of free will. That would make us creators of such actions. Which would make us creators. Yet, atheists have asked me why do I need a Creator? They ask, why can’t I accept a universe that just IS? So, here I am, taking their IS idea and running it all the way out in my thinking, trying to remove from it any traces of choice or creation, trying to remove any traces of nobility and distinction between humans and rocks, and I want to stay on that goal until I can assess in discussion which atheists will join me in it? Who here will delight in where I am taking this godless model of mine? Anybody joining me yet?
The eventual and underlying point that I guess I am heading towards is: Can there be creation in this universe, or not? Do galaxies really get formed or are they merely a reformation of existing matter? Are embryos actually created, or just a reformation of existing matter? Is free will an ongoing creative activity initiated by beings or only endless physical reformations in a mindless universe? Do we exists as sentient minds? Is ego not some subjective concept but an actual physical condition employed by the universe as one way to manifest itself in all of its multiplicity of expression? Word salad again?
Quote:
Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER
The theistical knock - on is that human thought is of such a higher order than even chimps that only a god couldha dunnit. It is a persuasive argument and could be true, but it doesn't need to be. Animal consciousness is of a surprisingly high order, with empathy, anger, even mourning. And yet all identifiable as part of evolved behaviour that helps survival of the individual, group and species.
And that traces back (like life itself) to the reactions that has lizard hunting bug and bug racing off. And that traces bacl to molecules combining and recombining, and atoms doing what they do. An 'evolution' as far back as we can helpfully speculate.
Animals have a lot of the traits we think of as human emotion and reasoning, though ours is really quite amazing. It enables us to devise methods of transcending the perception -limits that evolution dished out to us.
In a way, like abiogenesis, First cause and perhaps some universal constants, human reasoning is a handy gap for God. But it doesn't need to be. Though we don't have the explanations yet, that doesn't mean that it has to be a gap filled with 'God' rather than 'unexplained'.
Let me know what you think about this. And you know it isn't just you and me and Mordant. There are thousands of people reading what we discuss. Your views matter.
I think from where we stand, here on Earth, roughly two thousand years after the events of the Bible, we (er, those of us without prior bias) have cause to flip a coin as to what to believe. The eyewitnesses from Jesus Christ’s time have all died and they did not have i-phones with cameras and memory chips but only papyrus leaves and the like. Their storage devices were caves and earthenware jars and no GPS to find them. We are stuck with that. We try to make sense of what we think we have (canonical Gospels versus Gnostic Gospels, for instance). We try to recreate a timeline, comparing data and supposing other data. We add to all of that the feelings and beliefs of millions of believing people in what they believe and what they say they have experienced. We are aware of mass hypnosis as a possibility so what if it’s mass hypnosis at work?
How can I take my faith to the edge like this, in words and intellectual acknowledgment of precariousness, yet pull back to a comfy spot and walk the earth as a Christian? How do I consider myself an intellectual if I believe in that which I cannot prove? How do I reconcile this stuff? I don’t. To quote myself from elsewhere: There are too many verses and too much obscure context in the Bible for any one human being to sift through, and so everybody keeps arguing the Bible. I believe something went on with Jesus as opposed to believing nothing went on. Someone once said that whether a believer or non-believer, both positions require a leap of faith. I have an ace in the hole, however. I have a personal experience that is amazing to me, and I have a witness to it. And that tells me that something is going on, beyond the ambiguities of this life.
Last edited by sylvianfisher; 06-18-2016 at 09:40 PM..
My mind is part of reality. I do not assert that it is in a "physical space outside of the universe" which is an oxymoronic label in any case. The universe IS all physical space; there is no physical space outside it. Whatever, if anything, is outside it, is confined to the realm of speculation, by definition. That is the problem for all supernatural claims; "supernatural" is self-disproving. That which is outside or above nature is not discussable; that which is discussable is within nature and not outside it. As soon as you start talking about god's characteristics and attributes, he no longer belongs to the supernatural realm.
It is obvious that the universe contains, e.g., rocks and other non-sentient, non-conscious objects, I just don't happen to be one of them. Also, me happening to be conscious has nothing to do with whether the universe is conscious. Just as my body containing many pounds of bacteria and viruses and other critters does not make my body alive or conscious -- and those organisms will not prevent me from dying one day, or even from losing consciousness short of death. Consciousness is a property of sentient organisms and is emergent from life that meets certain prerequisites.
All I was trying to understand between us is, to my way of thinking, your mind exists in the universe, as do the minds of the other seven billion people on earth, therefore the universe is not self-unaware everywhere. This distinction is important to me because, in discussion, it seems people often exclude themselves as part of the universe (!) in the things that they say about the universe, as if the universe has characteristics that do not overlap with those of the people themselves. That cannot be true. I would correct them to say that the universe has the characteristics they give it plus the characteristics they give themselves. This point can be quite important in following what people are saying.
You made me smile, thanks.
All I was trying to understand between us is, to my way of thinking, your mind exists in the universe, as do the minds of the other seven billion people on earth, therefore the universe is not self-unaware everywhere. This distinction is important to me because, in discussion, it seems people often exclude themselves as part of the universe (!) in the things that they say about the universe, as if the universe has characteristics that do not overlap with those of the people themselves. That cannot be true. I would correct them to say that the universe has the characteristics they give it plus the characteristics they give themselves. This point can be quite important in following what people are saying.
Mordant and others here use the category error nonsense to buttress their belief that consciousness is nothing more than an emergent phenomenon no different from anything else within our material reality. Of course, the fact that it is not remotely like anything else within the dead and lifeless material of our reality doesn't slow them down one bit.Apparently their "God of emergence" can "poof" anything into existence irrespective of the basic composition of reality. It is quite amusing, then, to see them accost theists on their "poofing" God.
]All I was trying to understand between us is, to my way of thinking, your mind exists in the universe, as do the minds of the other seven billion people on earth, therefore the universe is not self-unaware everywhere.
The universe contains entities that are self aware. That does not make the universe itself alive, much less aware of anything. Anymore than a dead corpse is alive because there are bacteria, protozoa, etc., living within it. I see no basis to ascribe an attribute of a part to the whole. If you want to go to those places then it seems like you'd be better off asserting that consciousness is a universal characteristic of the universe that we are individualized expressions of. While I see no reason to think that likely to be true at this point, at least it makes far more categorical sense as a hypothesis.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sylvianfisher
]
This distinction is important to me because, in discussion, it seems people often exclude themselves as part of the universe (!) in the things that they say about the universe, as if the universe has characteristics that do not overlap with those of the people themselves.
I do not exclude myself from the universe by pointing out that I am contained within it. In software development this is known as "composition" and it is a very useful concept to know what class definitions (blueprints) are contained within others. Each software entity has its own properties and "awareness" (data) that generally have zero to do with the entity within which it's contained. Containership is the sole relationship between the two.
What you are talking about I would call "inheritance" which is a different kind of relationship where a child inherits the characteristics of the parent ... but you are doing it in reverse it seems, suggesting that the parent inherits the characteristic of the child. I suggest you would get further in advancing your concept by reversing the direction of inheritance by making consciousness an attribute of the parent which is "inherited" by the child.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sylvianfisher
]
That [the universe has characteristics that do not overlap with those of the people themselves] cannot be true. I would correct them to say that the universe has the characteristics they give it plus the characteristics they give themselves. This point can be quite important in following what people are saying.
Well I appreciate you pointing this out so that I can follow the idea you're advancing but as I mention above, that doesn't make it compelling to me. I live in a house that contains furniture. There is no bleed-through from the house to the furniture (or for that matter, from the furniture to the house). My furniture doesn't have plumbing or electricity or a roof; my house is not covered in upholstery. One is simply contained in the other, nothing more.
Yeah, I’m just here talking as if we are all drinking coffee around my kitchen table. I haven’t much skin in the game beyond that. (I don't recognize the name "Paul" of whom you speak, btw.)
Yes, I am thinking about what limits there may be in this Universe-as-IS model that I’ve been describing. For now, I gently exclude your use of the word "evolved" so as not to include more than my model intends. In my model, yes, I aver that we humans and animals (and plants) are, okay, machines. I use your word machines carefully, in case it brings an obligation upon me that I did not foresee.
But, so are rocks machines, I suppose. Rocks, as an example, are blind-deaf-mute stationary machines. To the extent I say that we humans do not actually think, we humans only respond to what I previously referred to as our pushing inputs. It so happens that rocks have fewer parts to them and thus a narrower range of inputs to push upon their fewer parts. Rocks, like humans, also do not think. They also have no temporary biological parts, so rocks last longer before they reform into other matter. In my model, what we call biology is the manifestation of the universe of certain of its parts (humans and animal organs, plant parts) that respond to inputs not available to rocks and/or are particularly ineffective upon rocks. We are, perhaps, complicated rocks.
Seems to me that "free will" means that we initiate an action somewhere in the exercise of free will. That would make us creators of such actions. Which would make us creators. Yet, atheists have asked me why do I need a Creator? They ask, why can’t I accept a universe that just IS? So, here I am, taking their IS idea and running it all the way out in my thinking, trying to remove from it any traces of choice or creation, trying to remove any traces of nobility and distinction between humans and rocks, and I want to stay on that goal until I can assess in discussion which atheists will join me in it? Who here will delight in where I am taking this godless model of mine? Anybody joining me yet?
The eventual and underlying point that I guess I am heading towards is: Can there be creation in this universe, or not? Do galaxies really get formed or are they merely a reformation of existing matter? Are embryos actually created, or just a reformation of existing matter? Is free will an ongoing creative activity initiated by beings or only endless physical reformations in a mindless universe? Do we exists as sentient minds? Is ego not some subjective concept but an actual physical condition employed by the universe as one way to manifest itself in all of its multiplicity of expression? Word salad again?
I think from where we stand, here on Earth, roughly two thousand years after the events of the Bible, we (er, those of us without prior bias) have cause to flip a coin as to what to believe. The eyewitnesses from Jesus Christ’s time have all died and they did not have i-phones with cameras and memory chips but only papyrus leaves and the like. Their storage devices were caves and earthenware jars and no GPS to find them. We are stuck with that. We try to make sense of what we think we have (canonical Gospels versus Gnostic Gospels, for instance). We try to recreate a timeline, comparing data and supposing other data. We add to all of that the feelings and beliefs of millions of believing people in what they believe and what they say they have experienced. We are aware of mass hypnosis as a possibility so what if it’s mass hypnosis at work?
How can I take my faith to the edge like this, in words and intellectual acknowledgment of precariousness, yet pull back to a comfy spot and walk the earth as a Christian? How do I consider myself an intellectual if I believe in that which I cannot prove? How do I reconcile this stuff? I don’t. To quote myself from elsewhere: There are too many verses and too much obscure context in the Bible for any one human being to sift through, and so everybody keeps arguing the Bible. I believe something went on with Jesus as opposed to believing nothing went on. Someone once said that whether a believer or non-believer, both positions require a leap of faith. I have an ace in the hole, however. I have a personal experience that is amazing to me, and I have a witness to it. And that tells me that something is going on, beyond the ambiguities of this life.
Interesting read..have you met our Poster Arach?
Yes I like your term 'complication rocks'. That is essentially it. Everything is made of start stuff. Does a star decide to grow and die? Improbable - it does what it does through known physical processes. Do we decide what to do? It seems so and yet it is all down to the same actions that are causing atoms in a rock to do what they do. I suggests that our decisions are in principle no different (though more complex) than the fly's instinct to buzz off when a Gecko makes a lunge for it. It isn't even Life that generated decision to sit and be eaten or run. Life began as soon as the ancestor of DNA replicated. Evolution got some kick starts when cell 1 ate cell 2. When some sea -bugs fund they were in a global ocean (Cambrian) when the first dinosaurs looked around and saw the big reptiles had gone and the rodents when they noticed an absence of T Rexes.
p.s I strongly suspect that the Bang was one of an ongoing number of such events, and the wider cosmos in which Universes appear die is ongoing. But that is just a comfy personal theory, so don't ask me for evidence.
Personally speaking I have a method for deciding how much of the gospels to believe. It does leave a few tricky questions, but it says there was a Jesus, but not a Christ. So, while I don't deny your experience - as I do not deny NDE's, I may question what it signifies.
Not a lot of evidence there,one way or the other, but the correct thing to do when the evidence is lacking is to reserve belief, not to pick a favourite preference and claim it is true on Faith.
I also have a bit of an issue with the lamenting of loss of nobility of humans by saying that they are made of the same stuff as rocks. Does Einstein or Beethoven lose the nobility of their best because they are the same stuff as same ass-scratcher that never did anything useful? If anything understanding the staggering complexity of mere dirt molecules ennobles it as it does all nature.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Mordant and others here use the category error nonsense to buttress their belief that consciousness is nothing more than an emergent phenomenon no different from anything else within our material reality. Of course, the fact that it is not remotely like anything else within the dead and lifeless material of our reality doesn't slow them down one bit.Apparently their "God of emergence" can "poof" anything into existence irrespective of the basic composition of reality. It is quite amusing, then, to see them accost theists on their "poofing" God.
Mystic has had his erroneous thinking on this exposed several times. There is not only no difference in principle between the actions that power life and the actions that power non - life but no difference in principle in the actions that power non -life, the reactions that enable bugs to survive, the instincts that allow wolves to work in a pack and the mental activities we call 'consciousness'. And there evidence of this at every stage.
In an amusing way this is precisely the Mystic doctrine but, rather surprisingly, that doesn't suit. That is because Life and Consciousness has to have some divinely Woo quality that sets it apart from lifeless matter without the consciousness that nevertheless Mystic insists comprises all that is. The purpose of that is simply to have a reason to slap the "God" label onto what otherwise is simply nature.
Mystic, mate, that you dish out an objection that merely flags up your persistent misunderstanding of the argument and a persistent refusal to understand it - which doesn't even require that you accept it - though the Observed phenomenon of emergence should be evidence enough, pretty much makes your contribution to this particular discussion not very helpful.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-19-2016 at 01:00 PM..
The universe contains entities that are self aware.
You wrote "contain" and "contained" in your response. I still infer that you are promoting a separation of sorts, something akin to "The universe ends where you begin", if you cannot say that the universe consists of many things, including pockets of self-awareness among the rest of its vastness.
Your analogy of the house suggests to me that you believe the universe is a shell and not it's contents? Did you mean to say that? What's left to call the universe if you/we select from it the things it contains? Just to be cute, I'll say here that I have a hunch that when I tell people I am going home, that I am going back to my house, I think it's a safe bet that listeners infer at some level that I mean not just the structure but everything in it as well. I don't think they bother to envision an empty house.
I am not a software developer but I suspect that the term "software program" refers to all of its contents and not just some portions of its data but not others?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
I see no basis to ascribe an attribute of a part to the whole.
Well, you know, I have freckles on my face. I contain freckles. I see a good basis there to refer to me as a freckled person or as a person with freckles and no one ever decides this means that all of me is a freckle. I think it does not undermine anything to say that the universe has seven billion pockets of self-awareness to it. Pockets of consciousness. As a characteristic of it. Now, if I were to simply state that the universe has consciousness, to say it just like that, I think that does imply to most people that I said the universe itself has consciousness to its totality, everywhere. I wouldn't mean that. Yet, I can say I have freckles but no one infers I am freckles everywhere. Language is touchy, but of course the difference here lies in the fact that the parameters of freckledom have already been uniformly defined in most people's minds so they know how to think about it regardless of which way I say that I have or contain freckles.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
I do not exclude myself from the universe by pointing out that I am contained within it.
So, can I offer to you that a characteristic of the universe is that it has self-awareness in it? Does that wording dishonor your perspective?
Last edited by sylvianfisher; 06-19-2016 at 02:19 PM..
The eventual and underlying point that I guess I am heading towards is: Can there be creation in this universe, or not?
In the universe, there are only natural processes and that's it.
What we may like to call creation - such as a dam built by a beaver - is the result of millions of years of evolution that produced an animal that can make such a thing.
Mordant and others here use the category error nonsense to buttress their belief that consciousness is nothing more than an emergent phenomenon no different from anything else within our material reality. Of course, the fact that it is not remotely like anything else within the dead and lifeless material of our reality doesn't slow them down one bit.Apparently their "God of emergence" can "poof" anything into existence irrespective of the basic composition of reality. It is quite amusing, then, to see them accost theists on their "poofing" God.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER
Mystic has had his erroneous thinking on this exposed several times.
Would you please do me a big favor, Arq? When you make these blanket unsupported statements about my views (and you do it quite frequently) would you please preface them with "In your opinion"? You can NOT, on the one hand, acknowledge you do NOT have the requisite knowledge or understanding to rebut my views, but at the same time pretend that you CAN evaluate whether or not someone else has effectively shown them to be erroneous. It is quite irritating. Thanks in advance.
Quote:
There is not only no difference in principle between the actions that power life and the actions that power non - life but no difference in principle in the actions that power non -life, and the reactions that enable bugs to survive, the instincts that allow wolves to work in a pack and the mental activities we call 'consciousness'. And there is evidence of this at every stage. In an amusing way this is precisely the Mystic doctrine but, rather surprisingly, that doesn't suit. That is because Life and Consciousness has to have some divinely Woo quality that sets it apart from lifeless matter without the consciousness that nevertheless Mystic insists comprises all that is. The purpose of that is simply to have a reason to slap the "God" label onto what otherwise is simply nature.
QED!!! This is a perfect example of your lack of understanding of the implications of the very things you say about our reality. The amusing "Mystic doctrine" is the very thing missing from the materialist and scientific descriptions of the actions that power our reality precisely BECAUSE they refuse to consider the concept of God. Their failed intent is to describe even the actions of life using the same dead and unconscious actions and reactions to avoid engaging the concept of God. God is the PRINCIPLE that animates everything in our reality but will remain unnamed by science because if they state that our reality itself is conscious, that reveals God.
Quote:
Mystic, mate, that you dish out an objection that merely flags up your persistent misunderstanding of the argument and a persistent refusal to understand it - which doesn't even require that you accept it - though the Observed phenomenon of emergence should be evidence enough, pretty much makes your contribution to this particular discussion not very helpful.
Says the man who admittedly does NOT understand nor have the requisite knowledge to understand, hopefully for the last time without the mandatory IMO preface. For the millionth time, emergence is an observation NOT an explanation and is equivalent to "God poofed it into existence" but with a new name "Emergence."
Would you please do me a big favor, Arq? When you make these blanket unsupported statements about my views (and you do it quite frequently) would you please preface them with "In your opinion"? You can NOT, on the one hand, acknowledge you do NOT have the requisite knowledge or understanding to rebut my views, but at the same time pretend that you CAN evaluate whether or not someone else has effectively shown them to be erroneous. It is quite irritating. Thanks in advance. QED!!! This is a perfect example of your lack of understanding of the implications of the very things you say about our reality. The amusing "Mystic doctrine" is the very thing missing from the materialist and scientific descriptions of the actions that power our reality precisely BECAUSE they refuse to consider the concept of God. Their failed intent is to describe even the actions of life using the same dead and unconscious actions and reactions to avoid engaging the concept of God. God is the PRINCIPLE that animates everything in our reality but will remain unnamed by science because if they state that our reality itself is conscious, that reveals God.Says the man who admittedly does NOT understand nor have the requisite knowledge to understand, hopefully for the last time without the mandatory IMO preface. For the millionth time, emergence is an observation NOT an explanation and is equivalent to "God poofed it into existence" but with a new name "Emergence."
"Emergepoof" or "Emergedunnit". There ya go!
Oh, but...wait! It was still done by and through "All The Matter/Energy That Exists And Has Existed" (GOD)...so it's STILL God.
GOD does and is ALL.
It is, will always be, and always has been...the "All GOD Show", all the time.
Based upon known attributes, ALL is logically, reasonably, and definitively, "GOD". ALL objectively exists. Thus GOD.
There's the "evidence"! Though, some have yet to get hip to that.
Would you please do me a big favor, Arq? When you make these blanket unsupported statements about my views (and you do it quite frequently) would you please preface them with "In your opinion"? You can NOT, on the one hand, acknowledge you do NOT have the requisite knowledge or understanding to rebut my views, but at the same time pretend that you CAN evaluate whether or not someone else has effectively shown them to be erroneous. It is quite irritating. Thanks in advance. QED!!! This is a perfect example of your lack of understanding of the implications of the very things you say about our reality. The amusing "Mystic doctrine" is the very thing missing from the materialist and scientific descriptions of the actions that power our reality precisely BECAUSE they refuse to consider the concept of God. Their failed intent is to describe even the actions of life using the same dead and unconscious actions and reactions to avoid engaging the concept of God. God is the PRINCIPLE that animates everything in our reality but will remain unnamed by science because if they state that our reality itself is conscious, that reveals God.Says the man who admittedly does NOT understand nor have the requisite knowledge to understand, hopefully for the last time without the mandatory IMO preface. For the millionth time, emergence is an observation NOT an explanation and is equivalent to "God poofed it into existence" but with a new name "Emergence."
No, chum. I have done enough work to debunk you and others have done the same. It is not just 'my opinion'. You have been sussed.
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