PeterJ

I didn't say religion was about terror, and I certainly didn't mean to suggest that many people become religious in response to terror. Nor did I say all religiously-minded people are seekers after truth. But the core of religion, which many believers never approach for fear of what they'll discover, is the abandonment of the ego and, in a sense, of life itself. The journey has terrifying moments that are well attested and described. . Someone here once recounted an experience at the dentist during which he came face to face with the void, and could not proceed for fearfulness. This is what I was meaning, the journey towards knowledge can be frightening. Note that when I use the word 'believer' it is not entirely flattering. Of course many people believe religion is about believing all sorts of things, but this is what one could call lay-religion, the Sunday part-timers.and dabblers, those who pursue fantasies of magic and superstition. or what the Vedas disparagingly call the 'hymn-reciters'. This is definitely an aspect of religion, especially where it becomes dogmatic, that is wide open to criticism. But as educated people we ought to be able to see past this. .

Hi Stormier I see where you're coming from, and you hold a common view. Unfortunately your post displays a dire lack of knowledge of religion. What you say would be true for some religious doctrines and some religious people. For instance, there are parts of Buddhist doctrine that are openly acknowledged to be taught as a comfort rather than as the precise truth. But then, some scientists deny all religion on the basis of no knowledge, and we do not accuse science of being a comfort blanket just because a few people use it as one. The point is, when it comes down to it, is that if we find a religious doctrine or belief a comfort this would have no bearing whatsoever on its truth or falsity. So calling religion a consolation for our sorrows is not a criticism but a compliment. If you think that this is all it is, then this view is easily overcome by a bit of googling. In reality, religion is often completely terrifying, and no comfort at all. For religion at its best one is asked to face the facts and to verify them. This is no picnic. But yes, for many 'believers' consolation and comfort would be more important than discovering the facts. There is a reason why ignorance is often confused with bliss.

You seem to have hit on the idea that to see the world as it is, free of linguistic and conceptual baggage, requires bypassing the discursive intellect. It's an idea that goes back to the dawn of recorded human history. Maybe you should try objectless meditation, to get a feel for what lies under the linguistic and conceptual clutter.

I only just found this thread, It's an interesting one. My original comment about the difference between being real and being fundamental was woolly because I didn't want to get into a debate about the definition of the words. It seems, though, that I mostly agree with Swansont. The word 'real' is difficult. I would use it to mean non-contingent or independently existing. Or, maybe we could say that a thing is not real if it can be reduced. So, with Beaudrillard, I'd say that money is not real in this strong sense. A ten pound note is just a bunch of anonymous electrons, and it might as well be a fifty pound note for all they care, or a horse. 'Fundamental' for me would mean irreducible or independently-existing (not a relative phenomenon). So for me a reducible phenomenon would be not real and not fundamental, while an irreducible phenomenon would be real and fundamental. In this way 'real' and 'fundamental' would mean the same thing. We see this use of the words in Bradley's book-title 'Appearance and Reality'. Reality would be that to which everything else reduces, and would be the only phenomenon that is non-relative, non-contingent and irreducible. Briefly. if a phenomenon can cease to exist then it would not be real or fundamental. I'm not sure of the importance of this issue, but clarifying how we are each using the words must be a useful exercise. Edit: Another thought. Beaudrillard calls that which is left over once we reduce the unreal phenomenon of everyday life the 'Desert of the Real'. That is, when we look at them closely they are not there. What is there is an empty desert devoid of features. This leads us straight into mysticism, but I won't go there.

I would propose that the freewill-determinism dichotomy is a category-error, that this is why neither idea works, and that this would be why so many philosophers opt for compatabilism. It is also worth noting that for the perennial philosophy the terms of the debate are entirely different and this dilemma is avoided. This was the view of freewill endorsed by Schrodinger. He's worth reading.

I think we need to be careful to distinguish between Gnosticism and gnosticism.

Schneibster - Your answer says that matter appeared in the universe, and that explains how it appeared in the universe. How is that a 'pretty good answer'?

It's over my head most of this, but a few thoughts... I would recommend Hermann Weyl's book on the continuum. He is clear. Time is not an empirical phenomenon but a creation of reason and intellect. He draws a careful distinction between the arithmetical view of time and the view by which it is a true continuum. For Weyl all co-ordinate systems would be emergent. His view has explosive implications for all sorts of things but it seems to be largely ignored. Still. at least Fred should be able to call on Weyl for support. Swansont makes the point that being real and being fundamental are not the same thing. I think this is wrong, but then I use the words differently. Time may be real in some sense but it cannot be fundamental and so cannot be independently real. All in all I'm with Fred on this. Time is a philosophical problem and I see no use in referring to scientific experiments (Pauli etc) for support for any particular view of time. Rather, I'd say the foundations of analysis are a sensible place to start, following Weyl's lead.

Quite right Swansont. This is why I predict that physicists will sort out the problems of philosophy before professional academic philosophers do. They seem to be stuck in a permanent rut, while physicists seems to have more courage. I just wish they'd move on more quickly. But the really interesting books on philosophy, or having the greatest implications for philosophy, seem to be more and more written by physicists.

To make ex nihilo creation a scientific idea would require a redefinition of science and its method. Better to keep it as a metaphysical conjecture, I'd say, and leave the definition of science alone. The idea doesn't work in logic so it won't ever work in science. I wonder why anyone would adopt an idea that is so obviously perverse. .

Clothes in Heaven? Lol. Might as well have asked who manufactures the harp-strings. Some questions are just too naïve to have an answer.

Oh okay hoola. I thought you were talking about a space that could be 'filled'. It makes sense to me to say the void is void of information. It is void of everything. And yet, here's the thing, the void is supposed to underlie existence, so it must also, in some way, be full of everything. This dilemma shows up in analysis as the problem of whether the continuum is an extended series of points or a true continuum. If the former, then it is not a continuum. If the latter, then it is not extended. Neither view of the continuum works in metaphysics, and only one works in mathematics, and this problem mirrors the 'void' problem we are discussing here. We could say that the true continuum, the continuum of intuition and experience, is the void for mathematics, since it would be prior to the numbers. The 'umanifest' point was this. If we want a fundamental theory of what is manifest, we need a theoretical primitive that is unmanifest. Or, if we want a theory of space-time, we have to start without it. The void serves the purpose, as long as it is unmanifest. To say it is devoid of information content is, I think the same thing.

Hmm. It seems bang on topic to me. We must have quite different perspectives on the problem.

Hoola - I'm not trying to suggest that the void exists, or make any claim about origins. I was just suggesting that if we define the void as being extended in space-time then it cannot have preceded space-time. Only if it is unmmanifest would it become useful for a fundamental theory. The basic issue is that in order to reduce space-time we need a 'prior' state of no-extension. The issue is a hot one in the foundations of analysis where the continuum would take the role of the void, and it is easier to see the seemingly paradoxical problems that arise for it. Daniel - Buddhism and Taoism are religions as you say, and concerned quite properly with soteriology before all else. But they offer us a fundamental theory that can be stated in quite ordinary philosophical and scientific terms. Any soteriological doctrine needs a solid metaphysical foundation and must be more than simply an appeal to experience. Otherwise we could make no argument for it, and as far as anyone else is concerned might as well just be making it up. I feel you make a mistake by assuming that your interest in the fundamental building blocks of our thought processes can be separated from an interest in the origins of being and the nature of Reality. For a vast number of people they would be the same topic, and it cannot actually be shown that they are not. Hoola's 'watcher' would be prior to the conceptualising mind, which might be suggestive. Also, just to be a pain in the neck, I would question the idea that all of Nature can be 'broken down into fundamental parts'. I would say that the phrase 'fundamental parts' is an glaring oxymoron. It assumes that the continuum of space-time is modelled by the number line and can be fundamentally described as a set of locations in a co-ordinate system. For Hermann Weyl and also for Tobias Dantzig (Einstein's favourite mathematician), this would be to confuse the true continuum with a construction of the mind. They would say that the true or empirical continuum is not extended, and that any attempt to assume otherwise gives rise to well-known self-contradictions.

A true void would be inconceivable. It would be a void concept, or conceptual void. Of course, we can define 'void' how we like, but normally the word 'void' means void. It would not have the same meaning as 'empty space'. If the void is an empty space then it cannot have been there prior to the emergence of space, and in this case it would be a useless concept in philosophy and physics. . Daniel - I can't follow your ideas about 'ARU', but I think you'll find much the same idea in Buddhism and Taoism, and even in Kant and Hegel. The categories of thought would be reducible, and their proliferation would be the evolution of the world. George Spencer Brown's book 'Laws of Form; deals directly with this issue. We could think of it as symmetry-breaking. His book, as with many other books on mysticism, are about the making of distinctions, and of how this creates our phenomenal world. This seems to be in line with your ideas.

Daniel - You suggest that the void would 'tend to be filled in every direction due in part to the effects of gravity'. This is where science goes wrong , in my opinion. A true void, like a true continuum, is not extended. Hermann Weyl explains this clearly in his famous book on the continuum. You're talking about a big space that can, over time, become filled due to some process. This is not a void. A void is void of extension, motion and change. From Weyl's point of view you would be confusing the arithmetical continuum, which is a creation of Reason, with the real thing. A void is a unity, and a unity cannot have parts, points, moments, locations and so forth.

I cannot see why the speed of light is 'illogical'. Counterintuitive yes, but not a reason to throw away our tools.

Right at the start of things, it is difficult to see the difference between the laws of logic and the laws of physics. If the law of the excluded middle had not have been there from the start, then the Big Bang might have occurred, not occurred, and neither occurred nor not-occurred.

Nice point hoola.

phyti - No, I'm definitely not restating the TPC. And I cannot prove that there are a finite quantity of twin primes. In fact I would expect there to be an infinite qty. It is, however, possible to show that there is no reason to suppose there is a finite quantity, and that it is possible that they are infinite, and the question here is whether it would be of any use to show this. John - We seem to have finally sorted our misunderstandings. The question now is, as you say, can someone with a better knowledge of number theory do it? I really do not know. I've emailed an academic who was helpful to me a similar question a few years back, but no reply as yet.

You may be right about this John. If so my question is answered. The problem is that as yet I can't see quite what you're saying I think I should have specified the set of primes S as being all primes below R. Iow, S would include 2 and 3. How would you go about showing that relative to S (as newly defined) there are always two consecutive twins? If you can do this I'm sorted.

Hi Prometheus I suggest you read what I wrote quite carefully. Unless I made a mistake, at no point did I take a stance on consciousness and matter. I took a strong view on people making wild and unsupported statements. Of course we may question the validity of Buddhism as a credible source of ideas. We'd be a damn fool not to question it. But when I say that Buddhist doctrine on the issue at hand is unfalsifiable, I mean that this is a demonstrable fact. If it were just my opinion then I would have said so. I don't think we should not be allowed to state one of Wittgenstein's facts just because the word 'Buddhism' appears in the sentence. When someone states a proposition about mind and matter that would render Buddhist doctrine false they display a certain naivety. They are not doing science but metaphysics, and clearly they do not know much about it. This is fine, it's not of interest to everyone, but you cannot just wade into someone else's specialism and start making statements that would, if they were true, mean that almost all the experts in the field are idiots. Professional metaphysicians are unable to falsify Buddhist metaphysics, and the Mind-Matter problem is well known as being as yet undecided in western philosophy. In this case, we should be cautious when we make statements about this problem, and be careful not to close off research possibilities by confusing our beliefs with what we actually know. Experimental bias and all that. It's a bigger problem in philosophy than in physics. .

Sorry John. I don't understand your objection. What does your argument prove? I can't discern this.

Right. So, let me get this clear. 1. There is no such thing as metaphysical analysis. 2. Scientists are not allowed to talk about facts if they relate to Buddhism. 3. A person is not allowed to make comments here unless it is to give their own opinions. Now I know the rules I can see why there's a problem. Here's my view. 1. Metaphysics is analysis. That's what it is. For many people it would be a science. 2. A person is a blithering idiot if they think that it is wrong to mention Buddhism on a science forum, and not thoughtful or honest enough to be worth talking to. 3. To restrict oneself to giving ones opinions.is a sure recipe for a pointless discussion and lots of unnecessary arguments,. I rarely visit this site unless it is to check a bit of mathematics or.ask a naïve technical question, This is because it is the worst forum for debate of all those that I know. It is awash with people who make discussion impossible, as we see here. Don't mind me then. Let's have a discussion along the lines that seems to be preferred. You're wrong. So there. (Stamps foot petulantly). Consciousness is made of cheese. Your turn. Note. I did not come here to discuss consciousness. I gave up doing that on this forum some years ago. I struggle to see why this prevents me from commenting when someone posts incorrect and profoundly unscientific remarks on a topic. I can refer to facts, and do not need to give an opinion. Or so I thought. It seems that the facts are not important here, and if they concern things of which we don't approve then even mentioning such facts is off-limits. So much for life-long learning. More like life-long bending people's ear on topics that we can't be bothered to learn about. . How about raising the standard here? Would nobody be up for this?

There is no scientific evidence either way, Strange, so I'm not sure how you arrive at your position. Metaphysical analysis suggests that matter and mind are co-dependent, but this is not decisive. The teachings of Buddhism on this matter are unfalsifiable, however, so you'll be banging your head against a brick wall for a thousand years if you try to prove some other theory. Please note that I have not given my view on the ontology of consciousness and matter here, and don't intend to. Where is this evidence you speak of that is consistent with only one point of view? The only evidence I know is consistent with my view, obviously, since I take careful notice of evidence, but maybe there's some evidence I don't know about. Stringjunky - I don't see your comment as contradicting the idea that consciousness is like energy. although it would have interesting consequences.