PeterJ

As someone who tends to push his luck on this forum sometimes and who can get a bit annoyed trying to overcome what might be called 'scientism'., of which there is surprisingly litte here but some, I would agree with Swansont and Moontanman about the need for a bit more science in the discussion. ResistET - You say "Many of you in this thread dismiss anecdotal evidence as unreliable. Yet, most of the evidence is anecdotal because we’re dealing with extraterrestrial forces that have technology much more advanced than human beings'. Like many others you write, I cannot make any sense of this statement. I would have assumed that everybody in the world knows that anecdotal evidence is unreliable,. The world would be a very different place it it wasn't. And the level of advancement of a technology is not the deciding factor in whether evidence for its existence must be anecdotal. Otherwise a rainforest indian would be unable to prove that the LHC exists. I think you would do well to adopt Moontanman's position, which appears to be balanced, scientifc and sensible, and which does not make me think that all UFO fanatics must be on LSD. (I've seen two, btw, one that I can find a few explanations for and one that utterly baffles me still.). Mind you, there's only anecdotal evidence for consciousness, yet it is presumed that it can be studied scientfically, But that's another can of worms.

Hmm. From a dictionary... "a continuous sequence in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other, but the extremes are quite distinct" and "a series of events. changes, features etc that all have a particular quality to different degrees" By these defintions my use of 'continuum' is plain wrong. . But to me these defintions describe an imperfect continuum, where some property is continuus but not all. I was using the word to mean a perfect contimuum, where no properties differ, Seems I need another word for this. . . ,

I see what you're saying. I appreciate that we can define a continuum in ways that would not make it a Leibnitzean unity. But how can we call something a continuum and then say it is infinitely divisible? How can say that an infinitely extended spacetime is made out an infinite quantity of unextended parts? For me a continuum would be the very opposite of a collection of parts, and an infinte quantity of 'ghosts of departed quantities' would not be big enough to measure. When we assume otherwise we end up wtih a paradoxical spacetime. Your answer explains how we can deal with this paradox in physics but it does not make it go away. I believe that this paradox arises because we are reifying a spacetime that is not really there, and that spacetime appears paradoxical to us because its existence as anything more than a conceptual imputation would contradict our reason. That is to say, it would be our concept of spacetime that is paradoxical and not the phenomenon itself. This would explain why, in metaphysics, it can be demonstrated that the existence of an extended spacetime would contradict our reason. This is the central problem of metaphysics, that our usual idea of 'existence' is paradoxical. In this case our notion of spacetime is bound to be paradoxical. It seems inevitable to me that spacetime will remain a paradoxical idea in physics until the problem is solved in metaphysics. It is not that physics cannot solve it, but it is such a deep problem that any solution would have to take the form of a fundamental theory and thus a metaphysical one. In metaphysics no exclusively physical theory works. If it did then metaphysics would be unnecessary. So there seem to be two solutions for spacetime, Either we say that it is a mystery, for how it can be both a series of points and a continuum at the same time? Or we say that it is neither, and that it is our concept of spacetime that is paradoxical, not the phenomenon itself. , Some physicists have expressed doubts about the reality of spacetime, and I think they;re on the right track. At any rate, this would be my approach to answering the question about why all Higg's bosons aren't always in the same time and place. For a fundamental theory there would be no time and place for them to be, just as metaphysics would suggest. I believe that this is what Zeno was trying to show us all that time ago. There is something very odd about our folk-psychological notions of space, time, motion, change,and so forth, which is that we cannot make sense of them. . . . . ,

Ah. Not just me then. This naive question has bothered me for a long time. It's not particularly associated with the Higgs field, Any theory that has space as a collection of points seems to run into this problem. Logically, it seems to me, spacetime must be a continuum, but a continuum would be a unity, and as Leibnitz points out a unity cannot have parts and so cannot be extended,. Maybe this seems like idle hair-splitting or useless philosophising in this context, but I feel it may tell us something very profound about spacetime.

I'd agree with the point about theists, Christians and Muslims and so forth, being sometimes more inclined to follow the morality of their culture than their professed religion. But then, we should be careful who we call Christians. Christians do not start unnecessary wars, for instance, so when they do we have a choice between saying that they are disobeying their own teachings on morality, or that they are not Christians. I prefer the second interpretation, but either seems justified. The point about the gospels being untrustworthy because they were written many years after the death of Jesus, assuming he was an historical figure, may not be very relevant. The morality of the NT is what it is, regardless of any historical Jesus, and the non-cannonical gospels do not present a different morality. We can examine the moral teachings without worrying about where they came from or when they were written.down. ,. . .

It seems churlish to see this as good news, but I do. I have never come across anyone so caught up in their own dogma or committed to such a collection of heterodox views. It is not a coincidence that he mangles both Kant and the Buddha. It is the same misunderstanding in both cases, and the same refusal to do the research before setting opinions in stone. It must be difficult to ban people and not something you'd ever want to do, but in this case I could never see an option and congratulate you for biting the bullet.

I mean things we can say about morality that are not contingent on culture, geography or particular circumstances. Doesn't matter what they are, I was just suggesting that we should not simply assume there are none. ,

Tar - Hi there. What you say above makes much sense but there is another way of looking at all this. Have you considered the idea that 'inner' and 'outer' is not a fundamental distinction but a conceptual construct? It's a tough idea, but it would be necesssary for Buddhism's 'theory of emptiness' and more generally for nondualism. I mention this because it does away with the need to reify or 'have faith in' either 'inner' or 'outer' as the supreme reality, and thus with the need to argue about which is to be preferred or which is more real. Here's an interesting and easy to run experiment. Usually we feel as if we are seeing the world 'out there' from a location 'in here', just as you assume, such that 'I' am infinitessimal and 'my world' is infinitely extended. But this can't be right. What we are 'seeing' from 'in here' is an approximately infinitessimal structure of electro-chemical signals inside our heads. We have never seen anything 'out there' and never will. This is why solipsism is unfalisifiable. It is easy to forget that what is 'out there' is always something we infer, not a truly empirical phenomenon. As you say, there is some faith involved. If the world that seems to be 'out there' is just these e-c signals, then who is 'seeing' them and where from? If we say that the seer is just another collection of electro-chemical signals somewhere else in the brain/mind then we have an infinite regression of neural signals or higher order thoughts and this is absurd. The need for a better theory makes it interesting and necessary to test the assumption that we are, in fact, 'in here' looking out at a world 'out there'. There must be some sense in which 'you' are on the outside of 'your world', after all, even if it is only in the trivial sense that 'you' are located somewhere else in 'your' brain than what 'you' are 'seeing'. Our seeing encompasses all that we see. . So, sometime when you are out walking on your own, preferably out in the country with a big view, the top of a mountain would be good, ideally on a summer night staring up at the vast canopy of stars, just stroll along trying to figure out whether you are inside of your world looking out or outside of it looking in. This may take a bit of practice, there is a knack to being able to see it both ways, a switch that needs to click, but I think you'll find that after a while it becomes very difficult to decide which it is. Logical analysis cannot decide, since both externalism and internalism fail in philosophy, This suggests that some form of compatablism may be the answer, a middle way view. But I think you have to do the experiment to see the problem. In philosophy it's all too easy to start by assuming that we are 'in here' looking out and not even notice we've done it. If we do the scientific tests, however, examine our awareness of the world first-hand and taking nothing for granted, then we find that this is not a necessary assumption, and that even our own experience of the world cannot show it is more than an assumption. . At any rate. it would be a mistake to think that mysticism is the pursuit of the 'inner' as opposed to the 'outer', or even the prioritisation of one over the other. It is the pursuit of a state of being where one can see that there is no 'inner' and 'outer', never was and never will be. If there is ever any doubt about what nondualism says about philosophical issues such as this one, then it always endorses compatabilism. In philosophy global compatabilism.is what it is. This makes it very easy to figure out what doctrines such as Middle Way Buddhism, Taoism and so forth say about philosophical problems, and it saves a lot of bother when trying to disentangle inconsistent presentations of these doctrines,. . . My apologies to the OP. Not exactly relevant to the question.

Immortal - Please do not speak for Buddhism. You do not understand it. You do even like it, I'd be amazed to discover that you'd ever taken an interest in it, since most people who do quickly gain a better understanding than yours. If I were a moderator you would have been banned years ago. It is not a surprise that you do so much talking here and not on a Buddhist site, where you would not get away with such nonsense. You do all religion a disservice by your ridiculous pronouncements and arrogance. You make religion look like idiocy. Karma is defined in one introduction to Buddhism as 'volitional action, lit., action, deed'. Seems clear enough. On what basis did you patronisingly disagree with Prometheus when he gave this definition? . Well, I would mildly disagree.here. As far as practice goes it would not be necessary to hold any beliefs at all, whether about cosmology or anything else. Beliefs may even be detrimental, causing confirmation bias and restricted thinking etc. But if we are to accept the soteriological claims of the Buddha then we must accept his cosmology, since those claims could only be true if the universe is as he says it is. But, as you say, what really matters to the practitioner is the soteriology, not the cosmology.

This assumes that there are no facts about morality. Not everyone would agree that there are none.

If you fall off a cliff you bang your head. All people who fall off cliffs get this 'punishment'. Is this unfair? Forget punishment and think laws of nature. It is naive to think that someone has decided what your punishment is going to be for your errors. Okay. some religious people think of it in these terms, but such a view is not necessary. The price of a lack of virtue is a disordered soul, says Socrates. This is a better understanding. There are just causes and effects, and it is not necessary for Christians to assume otherwise. Repenting in a true sense is sufficient to overcome the consequences of past actions. Seems perfectly fair to me. It's the various understandings of the word 'repentance' that causes problems if there are any. This is why I find that a study of Buddhism is very useful for unlocking the meaning of Christian teachings, which in many respects are less clear and less well developed. Jesus only had two years, and his message got lost almost immediately. Buddha had forty, and a body of monks to preserve the message intact.and to continually refine and clarify it. It;s too big a topic to delve into properly now, but I would just note that the criticism here seems to be aimed at a particular interpretation of the scriptures, namely that of the critic, one that is hopefully soon to be consigned to history.

I;d say 'linguistic' is the wrong word and would swap it for ;'intellectual'. Then your two statements might become true in some cases, depending on how you define 'faith'. They may be even more interesting if you swapped 'faith' for 'knowledge'. .

Some argument please. Repentance properly understood does away with the karmic consequnces of past actions. Any crimes still happened, and they were still crimes. .. Some examples of immorality and contradictoriness would be useful. Are you sure it isn't your interpretation that causes the problem,?

I see what you mean and roughly agree. But reality cannot be self-contained since then reality would be the container and not the contained. This is Russell's paradox. The solution would be to get rid of the idea of 'contained' and 'container'. Certainly one would have to follow Schopenhauer and not reify the subject/object distinction.

I think you are misinterpreting what the sages and prophets mean by 'the Law'. Usually they would mean the same as what Buddhists, Sufis, Taoists etc mean, which is the laws of Heaven and Earth. not the law as written down by God in a notebook somewhere or in the Bible. The laws never change. Nobody can change them, As for anger, there's nothing wrong with it in itself. Have you not heard of 'righteous anger'. But it should never be a loss of self-control or lead to harmful behaviour. The law does not say that sinners should be stoned. Can you imagine God writitng that down in his rulebook as he planned the universe? What an utterly ridiculous idea. There would be no act or form of behaviour that is against any 'law'. It would all be dependent on motive and circumstance. We really must get rid of this idea of some bewhiskered cosmic judge sitting in judgement on us. This is naive medieval folklore, a failure to see through the simple Biblical words to what is really being said. I suspect things would be a lot less confused if Jesus had taught for forty years like the Buddha, rather than just two. As it is, I'd say that a study of Buddhism is the best way to understand Jesus and the BIble. Many Christians I've spoken to have said the same. We are not simple fishermen, and Buddhism allows us to delve intellectually in a way that is difficult if we stick only to the Bible.

It depresses the hell out me to see religion being so poorly defended and so mindlessly attacked. It is completerly pointless telling people that we know the truth and that other people should roll-over and believe it. This is not facebook. And if we want to attack religion then this cannot be done from a position of ignorance. The objections here are toothless. Yes, I'm arrogant. Or maybe it's confidence. But I'm also sympathetic to sceptics and believe they deserve sensible responses and not appeals to superior knowledge or textual authority. So go for it Immortal, Let's hear some sound arguments.

Yes. It would be a mistake to equate 'God' with a being. As Heidegger point sout, there is a persistent tendency in philosophy to confuse 'beings' with 'Being', and he calls it 'no mere error'. But to criticise the Bible for mentioning six days is daft in the extreme. It's a miracle that we don't all believe that babies are found under gooseberry bushes.

Hmm. Buddhists persecuting Gnostics? Not something I've ever come across. It would be quite difficult to tell them apart. Evidence for Gnosticism, or the knowledge that comes with gnosis? There's loads of it. But it takes a little effort to see that it is evidence. If we understand what the knowledge claim actually is then we see that the problem of consiousness is evidence. As is the the problem of scepticism, freewill, ethics and origins. The fact that science cannot find a fundamental theory for anything is evidence if we interpret this to mean that we're not looking at Nature in the correct way. Just passing thro.though - I do not wish to defend Immortal's view. .

I'd say so. If there is no freewill then what else could cause a present event but past events? But even if there is freewill the same would be true. We could act as we want, but would we be free to choose what we want? And if we are, do we exercise that freedom? But it;s a big 'if'. As an idea determinism does not work any better than freewill. For this reasom most philosophers go for some form of compatabilism. This would be my position. .

Lol. Almost cetainly true I'd say.

Yes, you're right. Sorry. But these things work both ways. I'm not appealing to authority. I'd like to discuss a specific instance of your choosing. This gives you a chance to pick your best example. I am not going to trawl back through your previous posts for an example that suits me. Even if authority should not be be our final appeal I do think it's worth noting that my view accords with Aristotle's and yours does not. It is possible that you underestimate him. He is quite well respected even today. Personally I consider his idealisation and formalisation of the way in which human beings reason a work of genius, But most people do not reason in his idealised way and do not apply his rules rigorously. They forget his warnings about the easy-to-make errors that can creep in. What you would have to do to in order to show that QM requires a modification to Aristotle's laws of thought is find an instance where two propositions take the form A/ not-A, where one of them is true and where according to logic if one of them is true the other simply must be false, and then show that in QM there are pairs of statements which obey this logical rule, but for which the scientific evidence proves that it is not the case that one is true and one is false. This would not be an easy thing to do. Heisenberg uses the example 'Here is a table' and 'Here is-not a table'. He argues that in order for both statements to be true or for both to be false, as they seem to be in QM for some cases of paired statements. we would have to modify Aristotle's 'laws of thought', or rules for the dialectic, in particular the law of excluded middle. But there are problems with this view. If a pair of statements does not obey Aristotle';s rule for a true contradictory pair, (such that one is true and one is false), then the laws of thought would not apply to it. It would be undecidable. It would be a category-error. For the pair of statements considered by Heisenberg it is not being proposed that one is true and one is false, and so no problem arises for logic or for human reason. Aristotle's rules allow for a logic of contradictory complementarity such as that used in QM without need of any modification, and he goes to a great deal of trouble to make this clear. Again I will mention Whittakers book on De Interpretatione, since I think any physicist would find it interesting and important in respect of QM. . The contradictory and complementary counterpart to A would be not-A, Thus, for example, if we take the simplest example of a seemingly paradoxical duality in physics, the wave-particle duality, we must be careful not to oppose the statements 'an electron is a particle' and 'an electron is a wave'. This is not a true contradictory pair and as a dialectical question it is a category-error. It is undecidable, Physics does not propose that one of these statements is true and the other is false. It proposes that the truth is a lot more weird than this. So the question here is whether there is an example from QM of a true contradictory pair of statements about the world where the data shows that it is not the case that one is true and one is false. The reason I feel strongly about this is that in my opinion it is precisely this misunderstanding of Aristotle's logic that prevents physicists from being able to solve metaphysical problems.and find a comprehensible interpretation for QM. The laws are forever being applied to category-errors with no regard for Aristotle, and thus certain ideas are rejected as unreasonable on the grounds of what is incorrect reasoning. Nature then becomes incomprehensible.

Okay. Sorry. I thought you wanted to understand the issues.

There you go. We don't know how non-intelligent objects can make intelligent life. It is called the problem of consiousness and it is intractable. It is intractable because the starting premise is false. There is no evidence that such objects can ever make intelligent life. There is just wishful thinking. Do you not see the fantastic assumption you make when you say 'somehow consiousness arises from them'. This is not science but philosophical conjecture. To be fair, most people in consiousness studies make the same assumption. But then most people in consciousness studies find the problem of consciousness to be intractable, and this may not be a coincidence.

This second para is not correct. If you examine Aristotle's rules carefully you will see that these contradictions you speak of are not true contradicitons as defined by Aristotle, and therefore are not subject to his rules. There is nothing in QM that requires a modification to those rules. I would recommed Whitaker's book on Aristotle 'De interpretatione' for an explanation for why QM is not a problem for this logic. The father of philosophy was no fool.

Shame. The study of solipsim is important for an understanding of morality, and clearly you do not know whether 'absolute certainty' is possible or impossible. . Schopenhauer explains the objective ground of morality. In the Foundation of Morality, Schopenhauer asks the question: How is it that a human being can so participate in the pain and danger of another that, forgetting his own self-protection, he moves spontaneously to the other’s rescue? How is it that what we think of as the first law of nature - self-protection - is suddenly dissolved and another law asserts itself spontaneously? Schopenhauer answers: this is the breakthrough of a metaphysical truth - that you and other are one, and that separateness is a secondary effect of the way our minds experience the world in the frame of time and space. At the metaphysical level, we are all manifestations of that consciousness and energy which is the consciousness and energy of life. This is Schopenhauer: "The experience that dissolves the distinction between the I and the Not I … underlies the mystery of compassion, and stands, in fact, for the reality of which compassion is the prime expression. That experience, therefore, must be the metaphysical ground of ethics and consist simply in this: that one individual should recognise in another, himself in his own true being … Which is the recognition for which the basic formula is the standard Sanskrit expression, ‘Thou art that’, tat tvam asi." Joseph Campbell and the Grail Myth in At the Table of the Grail, Ed. John Mathews Aristotle explains absolute certainty when he says 'true knoweldge is identical with its object'. The issues of knowledge and morality are intimately connected with the unfalsifiability of solipsism.