Gees

Ten oz; Hi. What "filter" would you prefer I use? "Unsoiled?" I don't think I said, "unsoiled". What I am looking for is information that has not been enhanced by human arrogance and ego. There are a surprising number of people who firmly believe that evolution is valid, but also firmly believe that humans are the only ones who are conscious. They make varied arguments to explain this "magical" difference in humans, including language, the ability to make our mark on the Earth, and even "God" for the religious ones. These ideas influence thinking and form a basis in many theories of consciousness. I call bullshit. If evolution is valid, then there was a progression from the simplest life forms to the more complex, and all life has at least some things in common that causes life. The easiest way to avoid falling into the ego trap, is simply to include all life in my considerations. They can if they have wives. Thank you. I appreciate your saying so. I am not looking for absolute. I am looking for what is true that reflects what is real. You are not talking about social truths or little white lies here -- you are talking about political truths. You are talking about "might is right", "survival of the fittest", or the pack mentality. You could maybe call it the dark side of social behavior, but it is no less real. In each of the above examples, you are concerned with the "leadership", and leaders can acquire a lot of power. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Another truth. I wasn't talking about Fossey. There was another woman, and I don't remember her name -- maybe Goodall? Not sure. Anyway, she actually lived with the gorillas and learned how to be accepted by them. I remember the documentary about her, and she stated that it was a very good feeling to know that the silverback leader of the group would actually protect her. She also was allowed to occasionally "babysit" the young ones, which was quite an honor. And some people say they are fine because they are fine. That's right -- there are many reasons. The truth that you are denying is that you must listen, listen, listen. Then you must respect their rights and their privacy. It appears that you have a problem with lies that goes beyond Philosophy and into the realm of the personal. Gee iNow; Thank you. +1 Gee

Eise; That is not what I meant at all, and did not mean to imply that you know nothing about consciousness. When I noted a difference in our studies, what I was saying is that we are working off of different premises. I also noted that "fundamentally" we are in agreement. Of course not. I do not know how to make a link to a posting. For the record, let it be known that there are lots of things that Gee does not know -- this is one of them. (chuckle) If you are feeling kindly, or if someone else is, you might send me a PM with very explicit instruction as to how to do this. Think of an elementary student and dumb down the instruction as much as is possible. But I found the post in the thread Philosophy (split from Sam Harris) on Page 5 toward the bottom of the page. I did not get the quote exact, but I got the gist of it correctly. The actual quote is, "??? Can it be wrong and true??? Please explain." I forgot about all of the question marks, but remembered that you were asking for clarification. Sure it is. But it is no factor at all in the existence of consciousness -- an important difference. We did not create consciousness with language, we created language with consciousness. Some theories of consciousness seem to not notice that "important" difference. I did not dispute your claims, I only divide them differently because that is what is required for me to stay true to my premise. Wisdom does have an important holistic aspect. But what is holistic? Holistic is the thought process that understands how things relate to each other. That means there has to be "things", separate things that relate -- these "things" are truths. You are going to argue that age does not make us wiser? Because I can know a truth that I personally experienced, but can not prove. If no one else experienced it, and I can not prove it, how could it be made objective? The nature of truth is subjective. Gee

Tub; Why? I thought we were starting a prolix club. Does this mean that I also have to control myself? I put a + on your post simply because I appreciated the call. I had started to feel like the girl, who "went all the way", but did not get a phone call the next day. Take your time about responding. One of the things that I enjoy about talking to you is that you actually take the time to think. Gee

Tub; continuation: Agreed. If a person is looking for The Truth, they are going to come away empty handed or with a story that they can believe. Looking for singular truths is more like searching out information, and there is a lot of information in the Bible. One of the things that I noted, especially in the Old Testaments, is that they accepted and understood who and what we are psychologically. I found examples of this repeatedly, and not just in metaphor. They seemed to have a more honest evaluation of human nature, whereas we now seem to think that human nature is what we want it to be. (chuckle) Anyone who studies psychology would see this. Probably not surprising as psychology studies emotion and Religion studies emotion. Do I see some of Jung's ideas in your above paragraph? I am not sure about calling it an "undivided conscious mind" as I think there are divisions in the unconscious aspect and divisions in the conscious aspect of mind so I am not sure that any mind can be called "undivided". Possibly the Garden of Eden itself could symbolize a unified one-ness. But I agree that the ego or rational aspect is the development that allows us to lose innocence. It could be that the separation, or individualization, is what actually causes the loss of innocence. And causes the ability to recognize evil. As I stated before, this could be an explanation of the development of a person, but it could also be the evolutionary development of species, as both go through this procession. It is interesting that animal behaviorists study a specie's ability to deceive as an indicator of the development of their minds. I don't know the chorus and never studied copyright law, but I will bet that the Administrators of this forum know the laws. You know, I never questioned why truth was so important to me. Are you saying that we are trying to reconnect through truth? It is that internalizing philosophy that you use at work, so now I am going to have to analyze my feelings on this. Thanks a lot. You are making me work here. My take on this is a little different. Have you noticed that Religions always talk about "good vs evil"? The problem with this is that good and evil are not opposites, the opposite of good is bad. So what is the opposite of evil? Innocence. An earthquake that kills hundreds is not evil. A flood that washes away all you love is not evil. But a lion may be evil, and a human can definitely be evil. Why? Because evil requires intent, and an earthquake or flood does not have intent. But evil does not come from within. To understand my thoughts on this, think of a soldier in a war killing, mutilating, and crushing his enemies. He could very well appear to be evil. He might even think himself evil in the aftermath when he remembers what he has done. But that evil that he sees in himself would not come from him, it would be a reflection of how others view his actions. For himself, if he were honest, he would know that he was just reacting to the insanity of war as war is insane. For a man to be evil, there has to be some person outside of the man, who names the man as evil. We do not think of ourselves as evil, as evil is a second party designation. Someone else has to believe that we intended to do wrong and be evil. This is why innocent children never confront evil, because they do not recognize it. They can only be frightened or hurt, but they have not yet "eaten the fruit", have no ego, and can not read intent into another person's actions. So they can not name the other person as evil. If all are innocent, then there could be no evil in the Kingdom of Heaven. There could be no evil anywhere even if bad things happen. You have too many different ideas stuck in here together for me to give any response that would be less than a book. (chuckle) In the first paragraph, I should tell you that I am fairly certain that reincarnation happens, so I see things in that paragraph that are more than you have described. In the second paragraph, I am not sure what the "startling implications" are. If we are looking for truth in ourselves, my opinion is that it is in the unconscious aspect of mind, and the conscious (ego) is what we have to get around in order to find any truth. The conscious mind is the liar. The manipulator. I certainly don't think you are "bonkers", but if you are going to continue to be so interesting, maybe you should write shorter posts so I can answer them. (chuckle) Gee

Tub; Hi. I finally get to address your post, although I am not sure I can do it justice. It is such a pleasure to be able to discuss religious topics with someone who is not a Knipperdolling, and also does not go brain-dead with denials and stuttered incoherency. Every time I read your post, I find other points that I would like to address, but that is not possible in this format, so I will just try to show how I came to similar conclusions, but traveled a much different path. If I am reading you correctly, you work a kind of Continental Philosophy approach where you tend to internalize your thoughts, whereas I work Western Analytical Philosophy, where I analyze the hell out of everything. (chuckle) In my early studies of consciousness, I realized that most people think that consciousness is thought, specifically intentional thought from the rational mind. This is not so -- as consciousness is so much more. It is thought, yes, but it is also knowledge and memory, and also awareness, feeling, and emotion. In the thread, Consciousness and Evolution, I explained that I had divided these six concepts by how they work into two divisions. Thought, knowledge, and memory make up one division that is the static part of consciousness; awareness, feeling, and emotion make up the second division which is active, works between things, and is motion. We also know that emotion causes bonding. Religion is the Discipline that studies spirituality. What is spirituality? It is awareness, feeling, and emotion -- the second division of consciousness. The active division. The division that causes bonding and causes all life to be bound together, which is why AI is not really conscious. If AI did become conscious, it would also become spiritual. Which means that it might worry about dying and have temper fits. (chuckle) I can't say that I am a religious person, as the only thing that I do religiously is drink coffee, but I can say that I am spiritual. To deny people the right to their religion is, in my opinion, foolhardy and short sighted, as all people are spiritual and can need/use spiritual guidance. I can't see it as a religious book and have to view it as a history book in order to not corrupt what I learn from it. About 40 some years ago, some Jehovah Witnesses came to my door. I was polite and talked to them because I knew they thought they were doing the right thing. One of them told me that Jesus did not come to save us, but to save the Jews. This did not seem right to me because my early Christian teachings said otherwise. He gave me a notation of where to look in my Bible, and after he left I did look. He was right. This was rather shocking to my younger self and was the first time that I questioned whether or not the Bible and my religion were in agreement with each other. Most people do not realize that there is a lot in the Bible that they are completely unaware of, and that many of the things they are taught by their religions are from church doctrine, not from the Bible. We are not talking about a nefarious plot here, but an effort to take text that is thousands of years old and make it acceptable to current life. This is why I have to separate religion from the Bible, because I am aware of this discrepancy. Spirituality, just like humanity and evolution is in constant change. It is fluid, like consciousness is fluid. Although this change is slow, much slower than Science, it is still change, so someone must decide what is classic and what is not, what is acceptable now and what is not -- this becomes church doctrine. Remember that when Jesus died, his very small church was not established. He only worked three years. His believers and followers multiplied until they became a force that had to be addressed. So there were two Counsels (I think) one was in Constantinople and the leaders there looked for ways to merge this new religion with the pagan religions, which is why some pagan holidays are also Christian holidays. I think it was St. Augustine, who was a prolific writer (300 to 400 AD) who finally developed the church doctrines that carried the church through the dark ages. It was at this time that poor Mary Magdalen became a prostitute/whore -- hundreds of years after her death. She continued to have that reputation until the 1970's. Although St. Augustine did some wonderful work, much of which is still respected today, he also screwed up a few things. He did not like those pagans, Plato and Aristotle, and taught that the only thing necessary was belief in "God". This idea curtailed science, rational thinking, and encouraged the Dark Ages. Anyone who did not accept "God's" or the church's word was in danger, spawning "witch" hunts, inquisitions, and even the Crusades, as he also thought fighting for "God" acceptable. The ironic part of St. Augustine's doctrines regarding fighting for "God", was that it allowed the Crusaders to go into the Middle East, kill the non-believers, steal all the gold they could carry, and find the works of Plato and Aristotle. You see, the Muslims, not being stupid, recognized Plato's and Aristotle's work as the valuable things they were, so this work was preserved. The Crusaders came home with gold, but also with a wealth of new information and ideas, including a new math idea that had to do with a "0". These new ideas filtered through the church clergy gaining popularity until finally Aquinas arrived, wrote new more rational church doctrine, and opened the doors to the Enlightenment. There is actually much more than this, but this is a synopsis of what I can remember. So yes, I view Religions and religious items as history, because that is the only way I can understand them without corrupting the information. Have you read Holy Blood, Holy Grail? If not, I highly recommend it. I haven't read it in a while because it is one of those books I loaned out and never got back. It started out as a BBC documentary, if I remember correctly. Apparently it was popular, so they did another, then another and finally decided to research enough information to write a book. This book documents the life, death, and aftermath of Jesus and implies that Mary Magdalen was his wife. Of course, the church denied all of that, but could not deny that there is absolutely no indication that Mary was a prostitute/whore, and so they retracted that idea from their teachings. They also could not deny that Mary was actually a woman of noble birth and suitable as a wife to Jesus, as she was Mary of the city of Magdalen. They also could not explain why Mary would be walking around with Jesus, his Mother, and the wives of his disciples in a time when that would not have been allowed for a single woman. Anyway, the book documents Mary's arrival in France with her children, after Jesus's death. It also documents powerful families that married Mary and Jesus's offspring so when they said, "of the Blood", they meant it quite literally. They actually used this connection with "God", Jesus, to become kings because they could trace their lineage back to The Blood of Christ. It is an interesting book. The Da Vinci Code was based on information from this book. I can't finish this tonight. I knew I would have trouble focusing, so I will address the rest of your post tomorrow. Thank you for your patience. Gee

Eise; It is a pleasure to talk to someone who has been trained in Philosophy, and I think that on a fundamental level, we are in agreement on most things. There are differences however, but I think that they mostly stem from two things: The first is that you were formally trained and I was self-taught, so we often say the same things, but use different words. This is just semantics. The second difference is caused by our differing subject matter. You study Science and I study consciousness and mind. This is what I suspect leads to our real differences. Example: In another thread, you asked the question "Can truth be wrong?" The question confused me and at the time I thought that it was a ridiculous question. Of course truth can be wrong, just ask any homosexual what he has to do to be right. Lie. If he tells the truth about his sexuality, he will be wrong in most people's eyes. But this is not what you were talking about. Upon further reflection, I realized that in Science truth is correct or valid, so saying that it is wrong would not make sense to you. I probably stated something prior to your statement that caused you to wonder about my thoughts, and you were just trying to clarify. I expect that we will run into differences like this again, so I will watch for them. (chuckle) All I care about is if it is right. When you study a subject that is as vast and complex as consciousness, and also has so many different ideas and concepts attached to that subject, with very little that is actual knowledge, any simple truth becomes like precious pearls. So if "truth is a reflection of reality" is true, then it is good enough for me. We divide things differently. Early on in my studies, I realized that limiting studies of consciousness to "human reality" is a sure fire way to invite human arrogance and the human ego into the study. Many studies of consciousness have done this, and the "human" factor has done a great job of corrupting the evidence, so I consider all known life when studying consciousness and this helps me to find evidence that is more valid. We agree on the first point, if we assume this is about causal reality and not the quantum reality -- whatever that is. The second and third points, morality and aesthetics, are both produced by emotion. Since I have determined that emotion is in fact real, I also see these as reflections of reality. The fourth point, honesty, is somewhat debatable. I have not yet determined that thought is real, so it may not be a reflection of reality and may simply be a reaction to reality. At this point in my studies, I see thought as a tool that is used to manipulate reality, but does not necessarily reflect it. This is because there is imagination, not real, but there is also knowledge, real. A psychologist could tell you that the rational mind can lie, but the unconscious aspect of mind does not know how to lie, so there is also reality in the unconscious, which happens to be activated by emotion. So this point is very debatable as to reality and the reflection of reality. Actually, I have not been mixing different kinds of truths, but separating them. In the points that you named above, your divisions are specifically from the perspective of humans, Science, and from the rational mind's observation, so they are quite limited. What I have been doing is more like a mechanic tearing down an engine to examine and classify all of the different components that make up an engine. I have been taking different kinds of truths and classifying them and giving them a value as to their reliability. This is how I learned what wisdom is, by breaking it down. When my last computer crashed more than a year ago, I lost a great deal of my work, but I think that I remember where I posted an early copy of A Measure of Truth, so if I can find it in another forum, I will post it here. Maybe it will help you to understand what I am trying to do. You misunderstood me here. What I was asking was if truth and lies are not subjective, then what are they? They are certainly not objective. Gee Gwb; Journalism is supposed to be about truth, but I suspect it is just as much about economics and politics. It is also true that writers and workers need to get paid. It is also true that sensational headlines cause more attention. It is also true that the "squeaky wheel gets oiled". It is also true that editors, publishers, and owners can have a preference as to the "squeaky wheel". It can be difficult to find a journal with enough integrity to put these other truths behind journalistic truth. Gee

Ten oz; Hi. Much of what you stated is true. It does not matter the size or attitude or belief or culture, language, or even race of a group of people. All of these things can be factors that cause them to group, but have little to do with social truths. Persons can also move from one group to another, like people who work to be accepted into a higher social/financial group -- "social climbers". There is much that is transient and fluid about being in one social group or another, but there are also some truths. Whether you want to rub elbows with the rich and famous, live with a primitive tribe, or go and live with the gorillas like that lady scientist did, you will have to learn the mannerisms and social niceties in order to be accepted. This is simple truth. This simple truth is also a social truth. It is my thought that the reason you have to learn these mannerisms is because you have to be part of a large group at the same time that you have to maintain your private self, so it appears these social rules are about levels of intimacy and regulating the duality of the larger and individual selves. I can think of two groups that do not work well within the strictures of social groups. The first is very young children, as they do not always follow the rules, nor do they expect others to follow social rules and can be accepting of unsocial behavior. I suspect that this starts to change around seven years old, as that is when they attain the development of mind that would require privacy. It is also when a child learns to lie. The second group is the mentally disabled. Many people are uncomfortable around the mentally disabled because they don't know how to talk to them, and they don't know how a mentally disabled person will act or react. Their mannerisms and statements are often outside the boundaries of social niceties. If you can think of something that I missed here, let me know what it is. Of course this is about me, and I am "conflating" nothing. What I have been doing is trying to show you that you can not objectify someone just because they are disabled or sickly or elderly. These handicaps do not change who we are; they do not take away our right to respect for our wishes or privacy. Following is what you wrote: "The type of lies you described leads to people dying prematurely and or catching their families off guard when they pass suddenly. If you have had elderly relatives who have passed or are currently worried about elderly relatives who still live alone and you fear probably shouldn't" Look at your words that I underlined. Are those words about protecting the elderly person, or are they about protecting the relatives of the elderly person? It looks like you are saying that I could have a car accident and die catching my family off guard, but I am not allowed to die of illness or old age and catch them off guard. And what right do you have to determine whether or not your elderly relative should live alone? Maybe your relative worked for decades paying off their home and thinks that they have the right to die there? I am sure that you are a nice person, who really cares about relatives in need, but I am not sure that you are well enough informed. The first and most important thing you must do is listen to the needs and wants of your relative. Then you must understand that taking that relative out of their home means that they can never return. Few people can afford to maintain their home while living in some kind of protected community. From there it is usually a short and quick trip to a nursing home. With so many women working, there are few families that can take in an elderly relative and provide the care necessary. So my advice is, if she says she is "fine", then accept that. Gee

Dimreepr; I really don't like to debate things with you because, although your "logic" alternately amazes and amuses me, it rarely makes sense to me. I will try to give you my thoughts on the following, and hopefully, my thoughts will make sense to you. All of the above is opinion. 1. Opinion is not true, philosophical opinion is based on truths, or it is garbage. In Philosophy when someone states their "opinion" it is their position attained after careful study. 2. Wisdom is not true, wisdom is a compilation of truths. I explained this on the first page of this thread, and you did not challenge it. 3. No one knows everything, so no one is wise in all things -- except people who lie and claim wisdom in all things. The above statements all reference your inability to know when someone is lying to you. This appears to be an area where you are not successful, so my suggestion that you attempt another methodology for finding truth might be worth considering. Anyone can be lied to, and we don't always catch the lie, but that is not a problem that I often experience. My problem was that I too often caught the lie, and developed a reputation with my family and friends as a person that it was not wise to lie to, because they would be caught. It was my husband, who convinced me that knowing a person lied did not mean that I had to state that the person lied. This is not true. This was a response to my statement that Judges judge cases. I would be very surprised if even ten percent of cases were put before a jury, and suspect that it would be less than one percent. There are a lot of reasons for this. The higher courts like the Supreme Courts don't have juries, as the Judges are the jury. The Circuit Courts (county courts) are courts of equity (fairness) and probably have the most use for juries in law suit cases, criminal cases, and cases appealed from the lower courts. Even so, Court Procedures, attorney's strategies, and costs can eliminate juries from many cases. Then one must consider that these courts also judge Family Law, Probate Law, and Juvenile Law. Juveniles don't have Constitutional rights, juries do not probate a will or grant guardianship, juries do not grant a divorce or custody or establish paternity -- Judges do this. The District Courts (city courts) are courts of law, not courts of equity and juries are often irrelevant. You do not get a jury trial for a traffic ticket, or for violating a City Ordinance like refuse on your property, nor are juries necessary for Landlord Tenant disputes. Only Criminal cases would need a jury, and that depends on whether or not you follow Court Procedures and send in your Request for Jury along with your Answer to Complaint, and if your attorney thinks to win the case on sympathy or social concerns (jury) or if you are more likely to win on points of law (judge). Gee

Silvestru; Hi. I apologize for being so late with my response. I started this yesterday, but life got busy. Thank you for this. I appreciate the feedback, because if only the people who disagree respond, then I don't know if anyone understands my point. I have always used metaphors to explain my thoughts; I know this because people have commented on it since my teens. Metaphors are great because they can give a fuller more rounded understanding of the explanation, and are especially useful in a forum where I don't know the experience, training, or perspective of the reader. But they can also cause misunderstandings, so I will have to be more careful. Agreed. This thread was a kind of test. I specifically chose a subject that would be acceptable as a Philosophy topic and would not cause too much dissent. It has worked out well, and I have learned things, and passed out a lot of up votes, as I firmly believe in positive reinforcement. But many of my ideas are not nearly so conventional. How does one determine whether their ideas are unconventional or unreal? Well, one would have to discuss those ideas with other knowledgeable and open-minded people. I am a holistic thinker. The simplest explanation of holistic thinking is that the person sees the relationship between things more clearly than the things themselves. Holistic thinkers are especially useful in studying things like ecosystems, because the relationship between different life forms is what perpetuates the ecosystem. What has to be considered in ecosystems, and life, is that cause and effect is not so direct; it is more like an influence that causes gradual change or perpetuates the system. This is what I was looking at in the thread Dinosaurs, Deuteronomy, and Ebola -- the relationship. In Freud's idea of infantile sexuality, I see the influences of religion, WWII, Science, and the consequential laws that tried to correct the problems, leading to the breakdown of families, breakdown in society, SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), a bad work ethic, divorce, suicide, and probably even influences the problem of kids going into schools with guns. These things may seem unrelated to you, but when I look at them, I see a bonding issue that has been ignored. Then there is consciousness, which I am pretty sure has properties and works with physical matter and forces. This was the original reason I came to a Science forum, so that I could study the ways that consciousness and physical reality connect. I think it will be a while before I feel confident enough to address these issues. My lack of confidence is not because I am unable to explain or argue my points, it is because I have no way to counter the "click-it squad". I have to count on other people to protect me and my unconventional ideas. This made me smile. You have done a great job of putting all of the issues of right and wrong into a single paragraph. You may notice that all of the issues above could be described as political, social, or moral issues. In this thread I have described these as "truths". Why? Because they are and always will be true. We may describe pirates or Marines as good or bad, and that designation may well change, but what will not change is why we designate them as such -- the reason -- emotion. That is what I learned in this thread. Political, social, and moral issues are all the same in that they all work through the unconscious, or subconscious, mind and are all activated by emotion. These are all emotional issues, so the problem that I have been having, regarding truth, right, and wrong, is the same one that Science has to deal with. But removing emotion from a study of chemistry is, I think, a little easier that removing emotion from a study of consciousness/religion. Emotional issues will always be with us because emotion is real. While trying to determine what is real and what is not real, I realized that something that is real causes effect; it also actively works at balance. Emotion does both of these things, as does matter and forces. Talk about embarrassing, of the three Disciplines, Science that studies the physical, Religion that studies the spiritual/emotional, and Philosophy that studies thought and knowledge, Philosophy studies that which is the least real. Truth is easy, it is just a reflection of reality. Just like consciousness is easy, it is just communication. Yet these two "easy" subjects have been stumping us for thousands of years. (chuckle chuckle) I don't know squat about physics, but agree that absolute truth is not attainable because absolute knowledge is not attainable. It is interesting that you talked about stepping out of space and time. If you study the unconscious aspect of mind, you will learn that it ignores space and time, does not even acknowledge it. The unconscious is massive, has an unbelievable amount of information and is not rational at all. It processes information in "infinite sets", works information by comparisons of same and difference, and makes little sense. If you are interested, you can look up Matte Blanco in Wiki for an interesting but short read on the unconscious. My knowledge of the unconscious aspect of mind is most of what allows me to accept the possibility of the Holograph Universe, or the illusion theories of consciousness, as they seem comparable. But even if all information exists, and I am not convinced it does, it would still not be knowledge, because it would still not be knowable. Gee Shauno; I can see most of your points, but can not see that Religious truth is objective and absolute. If it were, doesn't that mean all Religion would be in agreement? Gee

Migl; This first post of yours was after my post regarding the Europeans and the American Indians. It was next on my list to respond to, but I added your most recent post because I am finally on Page 5. The following is my thinking out loud. In your last statement, what you are describing could be called "might is right" -- an old concept. But is it true that might is right? If I beat a person down or kill them, am I right because I won? I doubt that the local police would see it that way. On the other hand, might is right, survival of the fittest, and only the strong survive are very old concepts that reflect the reality of humans and other species. History tells us that we tend to follow a strong leader, and that at one time a leader was chosen because of his intelligence and/or physical strength, although now it may be because of his financial or political strength. (We are social animals and have a kind of pack mentality.) And we like to be on the "right" or winning side of things. Science tells us that many species protect the strength of their specie through the might is right concept, especially at mating season. This ensures that the strongest or most wily gets to reproduce. Truth is a reflection of reality, and history and Science tell us that the above concepts are real, so there is truth in these ideas. But what is that truth? How can one nation decimating another nation be right, when one neighbor decimating another neighbor is wrong? To kill is wrong, but to kill in self defense is not wrong. I suspect that this is a matter of perspective, more than perception. The survival instinct in all species is the number one directive -- we must survive. Instincts work through the unconscious aspect of mind and are activated by emotion. The unconscious is communal and is also where our prejudices and biases are formed. So since we are a social specie, if we perceived a threat to our larger self, the unconscious communal self that understands things through "same and difference" and is the source of bias and prejudice, then it could justify war -- to protect the larger self. So wars are fought for land, water, food, or just to protect our way of life. They are fought because the larger unconscious aspect of mind perceives a communal threat. This is why politicians beat the drums of war to build up the fears and perceived differences between peoples in preparation for war. So what I named political truths or social truths are in reality emotional truths which activate a response through the unconscious. A lot. Philosophy is not that different from Science, nor is truth that different from fact. If Science uses different approaches and different testing but still comes to the same conclusions about a fact, that simply reinforces the validity of the fact. Truth is the same. If you study Nature, you will find that when she finds something that works, she tends to repeat it. What do we know about the basic plot of the story of the Garden of Eden? Well, Adam and Eve were just chilling in the garden, when this "snake" came up to Eve and talked her into eating the fruit of the "tree of knowledge". She convinced Adam that it was pretty good, and then they became aware of things that they hadn't been aware of previously. I don't know what the symbolism of the "snake" is, but I know a guy in another forum who studies symbols, and he may know. So what we have here are people, who were not aware. They made a choice about knowledge and became aware. Anyone who studies psychology or psychiatry will understand that this is about the rational aspect of mind. The rational mind allows us to have two things (that I know of) that we did not have previously. The first is choice, as the unconscious aspect is reactive but does not allow for self-directed choices based on knowledge. The second is knowledge and awareness of that knowledge. A daffodil has knowledge, it knows how to grow, reproduce, pull nutrition and water from the earth, and react to the sun, but it does not "know" that it has this knowledge. It possesses consciousness, as all life is conscious, but it has no awareness of knowledge. Knowledge like that takes a brain and a rational aspect of mind. But we are not born with a rational aspect of mind. I think it is developed by age seven. Coincidentally, religions often put the age where a person can be expected to make choices at seven -- so they did get some things right even before psychiatry taught them. Psychologists have looked at the story of the Garden of Eden and understood that this is a metaphor about the rational aspect of mind. Tub obviously agrees, as do I. Remember that I stated earlier in this thread that Religion is a study of consciousness? It is. When I study consciousness, I include all conscious life, so the evolution of mind is rather important to me. I wonder how old this story actually is. The Bible starts out with the creation of Earth, so I wonder if this story is some corruption of a previous story that tried to explain the differences in thinking that developed "?" thousand years ago. So this may be a metaphor about the development of a person's mind, or it might be a metaphor about the development of mind in humans in general. It is noteworthy that Science will use a child's mind for comparison to other species, ie., a chimp has the mind of a 3 year old, or an orangutan has the mind of a 6 year old, etc. So I am not the only one who looks at mind from this perspective. Then there is the battle of the sexes. Many scholars have concluded that the story of the Garden of Eden is also about Lilith. Lilith was supposed to have been a powerful leader, maybe a priestess or "witch", who lost her power around the same time that men started to develop priesthoods and gained power over societies. This theory has some support because the more ancient religions seem centered around women as being the "keepers of life" or the naturally "magical" beings that provided sustenance, the continuance of life, or all that was good. You may notice that the Bible seems to have a subtle, yet ongoing, war against women in general. I am certain that a lot of men are very comfortable with the idea that the change from matriarchal societies to patriarchal societies coincided with the development of the rational mind. (chuckle) I have my own ideas on that subject, but I suspect that the story of the Garden of Eden evolved and changed over time to include and reflect whatever was happening at the moment. When writing was invented, it stabilized the story. imo Gee

Tub; Damn, I'm impressed. You are turning into a very interesting person. Obviously you have given some time and thought to this issue and done some studying. Although I have not come to the same conclusions that you have in some of your points, I don't dispute them either. My perspectives on these points differ because my approach differs, but these differences are more additional, rather than adversarial. Old metaphors are interesting to study, not only because there is truth in them, but because the best of them carry more than one truth. The Garden of Eden is one of these. As you stated there is an internal psychological truth, but there is also an evolutionary truth regarding consciousness, and a historic truth that documents the male and female battle of the sexes that changed the matriarchal priestess societies into the patriarchal priest societies. I agree absolutely that it is knowing "how" to look, rather than "where" to look. But I still owe some other people responses, so I will think about your post and respond in a few days. I learned two new words today, Knipperdolling and ultracrepidarianism. (chuckle) Gee

Dimreepr; Maybe I should have been clearer. How do we know when a person is lying? Do we just assume everything is a lie, because we also lie? Do we just guess? And maybe pick and choose between truth and lies, selecting what we want to believe? For myself, I think that measuring the statement against prior statements, against circumstances, and for consistency helps to determine when a person lies. Well, hopefully you are not a real Judge sitting on the Bench. I like it when the Judges weigh and measure the evidence before making a judgment. Because it makes them feel bad, which was my point. Gee Ten oz; No. You are completely misconstruing the meaning and purpose of "white lies". Remember I stated that "white lies" are part of social truths, so what are social truths? We are a social specie, so we need interaction with others, but we are also private persons, so we need our privacy. In order to balance these needs, we have developed manners, social graces, little white lies, etc., that are used within societies to standardize levels of intimacy. Little white lies enable us to be friendly on a superficial level, without delving into the personal -- without intruding. I don't want everyone to know everything about me, and I certainly do not want to know everything about everyone that I meet. Being elderly does not change this, as we still like our privacy. It is not about denying information, it is more about mind your own business. There is nothing that prevents you from asking for a more intimate relationship. When Aunt Matilda says, "I'm fine." you can always tell her that you would really like to know how her surgery went and that you brought a foot bath and oils because you are going to give her a foot massage, because all ladies need to be pampered once in a while. She may accept, or she may decline thinking that she does not want that level of intimacy, or she may say that she would rather have her nails done if you have the time. If you care for her at all, you will accept her decision. If you don't accept her decision, you may be taken for a busybody. I have had three different relatives offer to have me come and live with them because they know that I am disabled and housebound. I declined. I am happier at home and like my privacy. But when my 17 year old granddaughter started showing up a few times a week, I knew that something was wrong. I learned that she had lost her paternal grandmother and was worried that she was going to lose me too. So we worked out a deal. She visits for one or two hours on Wednesday, because that is the day that the garbage goes out, and I can't get it out. Sometimes we cook; I taught her to make guacamole, which we both love, she makes pumpkin bread for me because I can't stir the batter anymore. Sometimes I wash linen which she folds for me and puts away. Sometimes we just talk and I tell her stories about her mother or my mother, or just tell her family history. She tells me about friends, and school, this is her Senior year. She works part time and is graduating this year, so she really does not have a lot of time for me, but she seems to need this, so I will give it to her. We can not stop death. The best we can hope to do is make memories. You know perfectly well, that I don't know you personally and have no idea of whether or not you even have an "Aunt Matilda". The "you" was meant generally, not specifically, you. When I was still a teen, I worked for about a year in a nursing home. In my early 30's, I worked with the mentally handicapped, so I do have an idea of what I am talking about. Most of the patients/clients had no visitors except at Christmas and maybe on their birthdays. Maybe 25% had the obligatory duty visit for an hour on Sunday afternoon, and some had occasional visitors off and on. The few who had regular visitation were the ones who were more active, more friendly, sometimes more fun. These are the few who were occasionally taken out to dinner, or to family gatherings, and had groups of visitors. These are the ones who hid their miseries. So are their families cold, cruel, callous? No. Most people are good, but it is very difficult to be constantly presented with pain and misery when there is NOTHING that you can do about it. It makes one want to leap up, grab a sword, and fight off the evil, but some things can not be fought and must be tolerated. Learning to tolerate it often means becoming indifferent to it, as that is what survival requires of us. You can say that this is wrong until the end of time, but that will not change reality. With my granddaughter, I am trying to balance between giving her some things to do for me, so she feels good, and not asking too much, so she won't feel responsible and obliged to continue when life gets busy. It is sometimes difficult, but I will keep trying because I love her. Gee

Tub; Scholarship? No. I think Dimreepr finally got one right. Too many beans makes a body windy. Or maybe it is from working with attorneys, who believe that anything that can be stated with 50 words can be better stated with 500 words. (You would think they got paid by the word) In reality, my long posts are probably aggravating to some people, but when I have a good day, I post as much as I can. A few days ago, I was on Page 2 and everyone else was starting Page 5, so I'm catching up. Truth is very simple; it is just a reflection of reality. Then the philosopher said, "What is real?" (chuckle) You're welcome, but it's not really praise -- just an observation. Thank you for this interesting piece of information. I knew that "d" had to come from somewhere. Gee Eise: Although I think your statements are limited as they mostly relate to Science, I agreed with everything that you said, until I read the following: If truth is not subjective, then what is it? You already stated that "'Truth' is not out there.", so it can't be objective. What are lies? Gee

Tub; I agree with the above and enjoy reading your posts because you add humor, but in a very on-topic way. I envy you that ability. But the point I want to discuss is your statement, "The truth is rarely pure and never simple." So how do we find truth? Philosophy spends a lot of time and energy analyzing and studying different ways to learn what is true, and has lots of theories about truth and knowledge. We do this so that we can learn how to take something that is rarely pure and never simple, and break it down into something that has validity and reflects reality. I think that mixing right and wrong with truth, before discovering what is true, can invalidate the truth that is found. We can corrupt it while searching for it so it will never be found. I study consciousness, so I study subjects that Science does not usually look at, including Religion. If anyone says that we can study consciousness without also studying Religion, they are either pulling your leg, or they are full of it. It is not possible to avoid Religion while working a comprehensive study of consciousness. Religion itself is a study of consciousness. In one of my threads, I referenced the Books of Law, Deuteronomy and Leviticus, from the Bible and was shocked by the reaction that I got. Some of the comments were beyond irrational. This surprised me because some branches of Science, such as Archeology, study the Bible and other old texts. When archeologists study something like the Bible, they find references to land or living conditions and cultural standards, then compare that information to things that they find, and what we know about reality now. This enables them to piece together truths about the reality then. Comparing Common and Classic truths is a big part of their work. Since I studied law, and had reason to investigate the Books of Law after studying law, I found that there is a lot more there than I realized. Everyone knows that the Bible says thou shalt not kill, but killing is more complex than that. There is accidental death, manslaughter, and murder, which are very different. No one expects text that is thousands of years old to explain these differences, but they would be wrong. The old laws define the difference between accidental death, manslaughter, and murder, and use the same concept to define these differences as we use today -- they used "intent". The more I read, the more I realized that the roots of our Common law, our moral law, in the various branches of law are deeply embedded in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Even more than that, I realized that the moral laws that we can not seem to get right, like abortion, the right to die, and dealing with the physically and/or mentally handicapped are not referenced in the Books of Law. I don't think it is coincidence that the issues we can not resolve are also not in the Books of Law. So there is truth in the Books of Law. I began to wonder how much truth was related to the other subjects, such as the food laws and the sanitation laws as they regard disease. This was the subject that I brought up in that thread, and of course, I learned nothing -- except that people don't like Religion. Some people say that the Bible is the word of "God" and everything in it is true; others say that the Bible is a bunch of nonsense made up to control lesser minds. I find both of these ideas invalid. So how does one separate out the truth, which is rarely pure and never simple, from the rest? Following are the steps that I would take to start this separation. Please note that I have no idea whether or not you have a religious preference, or what it may be, but I have no intention to offend anyone. Just looking for truths. 1. First separate out Religion. When I read the word "God", I interpret that to mean "the unknown author". When I read sinner, evil, punishment, etc., I interpret that to mean that this is bad for you/me/us in the opinion of the unknown author. When I read about heavenly rewards, goodness, innocence, etc., I interpret that to mean that this is good for you/me/us in the opinion of the unknown author. 2. If the Bible is not a religious book, then what is it? A history book, and history books are notorious for having a bias regarding history. This is because history books are written by people who wish to promote their own history, so they usually have a singular perspective, which must be considered. Also consider that the Bible is a book of books by various authors. These books were originally stories or scrolls, which were transcribed into books. And one must consider that there are thousands, probably tens of thousands, of scrolls in the basements of the Vatican, which may or may not be relevant to the history, so the books of the Bible have been preselected. One can not expect that this is a comprehensive history. 3. The book is also ancient, so time must be considered. They did not have Science as we do, and there was a lot that they could not know, but neither were they stupid. They could still observe their reality and see how cause and effect worked in their reality. They just sometimes attributed the effects to the wrong things, so when studying them, we need to look past what they attributed it to and instead focus on what caused their reaction in the first place to find any truth. 4. Culture shock is going to be an issue and must be considered. The people in the Old Testament lived in very harsh times compared to the times we live in. So when they say things like, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." they are acknowledging that children need discipline, challenges, and consequences. We know that this is true because it is still true today, only instead of beating the kid, we ground them to their rooms. Anyone who quotes that phrase and actually thinks that beating a child is necessary, is just a person who is using this as an excuse to vent their anger on their child. Hitting a child is rarely necessary. There are other examples that can produce culture shock, so when reading old text like this, one has to adopt a sort of Continental attitude. Otherwise you will find yourself judging the culture instead of looking for truth. So if one keeps the above rules in mind, we can find truths in the Bible. What we will be looking for are things that are also true now, or things that are commonly true in similar situations. Gee Strange; You know, that didn't look right when I wrote it, but it is St. Patrick, not St. Padrick, so I couldn't figure it out. And I was in a hurry. Thanks for the correction. I don't think I will make that mistake again. One down and a few thousand to go. Gee

Dimreepr; This is one of the reasons why truth is measured. We know that people lie. How do you think we know that? We measure their statements against prior statements, the facts of the situation, the consistency of their own statements, etc., and what we know about them. Lies can be uncovered. And why do you think that is? Why would someone not want to face or admit a truth? As Koti keeps saying, the truth really does not care, so why would someone care about a truth to the point of denying it? Because it makes them feel bad. It makes them think that they are wrong or maybe bad, and no one wants to be wrong or bad, so they deny the truth. That is the main point of this thread. Are truth, right, and wrong related? The better question is: Should they be? Can truth be mingled with right and wrong without being corrupted? I don't see how. When you mix truth with right and wrong while defining truth, what you end up with is moral truth -- or maybe you could say religious truth. I don't remember anyone worrying about whether facts are right or wrong, they simply are facts, or they are false. Philosophy studies truth; we don't like to see it corrupted. In most of my threads, I find that the membership is more interested in opinions regarding right and wrong than they are in any truths. Opinions are not worth squat unless they are based on truths, and those truths have to relate to the topic -- because truth is relative. In my thread Powerful Men, Beautiful Women, and Sex, I learned that sexual harassment was bad and a problem for women. That is all very interesting, but the thread was about power, and the last time I checked, Page 10, the members still had no idea of what a woman's power actually is or why governments and societies work so hard to control that power. It became a useless thread that did nothing more than take some rep points from me -- a waste of my time. In my thread Dinosaurs, Deuteronomy, and Ebola, I learned that a lot of members have issues with religion and can not discuss anything related to religion without becoming quite stupid. I learned very little about disease, nothing of it's relationship to ecosystems, or whether or not bacteria and viruses can actually influence the self-balancing of ecosystems much like hormones self balance file forms. I was too busy addressing the member's statements on the right or wrong of religion. Again, I lost rep points and wasted my time. In my thread Consciousness and Evolution, I had learned and did not state my ideas up front. Instead, I let the membership ramble on for seven pages while they debated whether or not all life is conscious, even though Philosophy and Science have both confirmed this is so. I am assuming that people either do not want to understand that they are consciously on a similar level with all life, or they do not like the idea of eating things that are conscious, which would be where the right and wrong of it comes in. Luckily, I had Tar covering my back and countering the down votes, so I got to finish the thread and even learned a few things -- mostly from Tar. I would like to do a thread on Freud's ideas about infantile sexuality. I think there are some truths there that have been overlooked, but are very important to our families, our society, and our future. Can you imagine what kind of a nightmare that would be? People love to hate Freud, and everyone insists that infants are innocent, but sexuality is bad (a religious view) so infants can't be sexual. Between all of the finger pointing and rights and wrongs, I would never be able to get to the points that I would like to make or learn anything. Truth would be irrelevant. So I wrote this thread in the hopes that I might be able to convince a few people to extract their ideas of right and wrong from the Philosophy threads. And maybe I could learn how to present my ideas in a way that does not trigger these responses, but still has integrity and holds my interests. Gee Strange; I agree, it is not simple. I tend to understand truth and visualize it as a reflection of reality. When I say this, you might think that I mean a large screen or mirror that reflects reality back, but it is more like thousands of mirrors. There is at least one reflection for every question asked, and many times there are more mirrors relating to that question because the question has more perspectives or consequences than just one answer. Some of the mirrors reflect motion as they are related to time. Some are clear, other are more or less murky, and still others are blank when we do not know the truth of the matter. When we all see a clear, static reflection of something, we tend to call it a fact and say that it is objective. There are some truths that we see clearly and commonly, but they are not facts. I call these Common Truths, as they are common to many people within certain groups, or they are common to situations. There are also Classic Truths, which are truths that have stood the test of time. Time is very relevant to truth because of change, but also because when there is no change this improves the reflection's clarity. This is why long-held beliefs are difficult to change, because every day that passes makes the reflection more clear, more trustworthy. This does not just hold true for religious beliefs, but also for the belief that the sun will rise in the East, and you will wake up in your own bed. I also designated Acceptable Truths as truths that could be relied upon because at least three different things pointed to the truth of it -- preferably three different types of information. I believe that Science uses a lot of Acceptable Truth and some Common Truth. There is also Simple Truth, which is just whether or not a person lied. There are Designated Truths, which are measures or directional truths that we establish so that we can measure and weigh reality. Science uses a lot of Designated Truths. Then there are Universals, which are universally true. There are Laws of Physics and Nature, which are pretty valid. There may be more, I can't remember. When I wrote the thread, A Measure of Truth, I was looking for some way to define and classify types of truth and the reliability of different truths. I concluded that if a truth could be called Acceptable, Common, and Classic, it would be reliable enough to form a premise. I like some hip-hop, and I like some opera. That is the truth. Truth is not right or wrong, it simply is. Gee iNow; I agree with you. The biggest differences between Philosophy and Science are their procedures or processes. The procedures differ because Philosophy puts it's work into the all important premise and believes that starting off with truth is likely to lead to more truth, but starting with a false premise is almost guaranteed to produce garbage. Science puts it's work into the testing and believes that many things can look like they are true, but testing can sometimes prove that they are garbage. My thought is that when we start with Philosophy's truth and end with Science's testing, we are damned good and the results are very reliable. That is my inner philosopher talking. Gee Ten oz; When I was talking about "white lies", I stated that they were part of social truths. When you go to visit Great Aunt Matilda and ask, "How are you?" Do you really want to listen to an hour of complaints about her gall bladder surgery, her arthritis, her loss of hearing, her aches and pains, her worry about death, and her missing her favorite soap opera because you showed up at the wrong time? Or would you rather hear, "I'm pretty OK. How are you?" Even if you insist that you would be deprived of the information and want to hear Matilda's complaints, I can assure you that it will only happen once or twice, because the third time you will stop visiting. Great Aunt Matilda knows this, so instead she will tell a few social lies. Gee Koti; I agree that the truth does not care. I can not agree that it is absolute as I can not know that. I have issues with theories of everything as they tend to cherry pick the layers of onion that suit their theory. Gee

Koti; +1 Because you have obviously spent some time considering truth as is evidenced by many of your posts in this thread. Yes. In my threads regarding consciousness, I have learned that people can only deal with so much truth, so it is often necessary to give them little pieces and let them stew on those ideas for a while. I am reminded of the movie, A Few Good Men, where Jack Nicholson states, "You can't handle the truth." (chuckle) A few years back, in another forum, I wrote a thread entitled, A Measure of Truth. In that thread I tried to establish rules that would help me to define and understand what is true and what is not true and how I would determine and measure truth in order to create more valid premises. In this thread, I had noticed that many people seem to confuse right and wrong with truth, so I wanted to explore that idea. What I have learned is that there are social truths, political truths, emotional truths, and others that I had not previously considered. These truths are often related to right and wrong, so they can be confused with right and wrong; this thread has already given me much information and much to think about. Well, knowledge is subjective and truth is knowledge. If you remove all of the people and all of the conscious life, can there be knowledge? Can there be truth? How could you possibly know or prove it? You can only know something if there is someone to know it. That makes it subjective because knowledge and truth both require a subject. I don't agree that truth is unreliable, but will acknowledge that it can be elusive. This is why we need philosophers and scientists to help us find it. Truth is measured. This is why we can say that something is more true than not, or more or less true, or somewhat true. I don't remember anyone ever telling me that something is somewhat a fact; it either is or isn't a fact, so I think we can find a decent consensus in some things. Gee Strange; +1 For understanding that truth is complex, and I think I owe you a point anyway. In the thread, Science is a Subfield of Philosophy, Itoero made it very clear that truth was subjective and therefore unreliable and unprovable. I think that this recent example is what brought it to my mind, but I have heard similar arguments before. Truth is relative, so it also relates to time. What was true a moment ago may not be true now; what is true now may not be true in a moment. This makes some truth as changeable as the wind -- which may be blowing now, but not in an hour. Regarding right and wrong, I am reminded of an old movie that I saw many years ago about Jim Thorpe. (I think I have that name right -- Burt Lancaster played the part of Thorpe) Anyway, he was an American Indian, who won a lot of medals in the Olympics and then had them taken away from him. In the story, he was in a "white man's school" with another boy and they were discussing their history books. One boy said, "Why is it that when the white man wins, it is a great victory, but when the red man wins, it is a terrible massacre?" He had a point. For that matter, what were they doing in a "white man's" school? Well, that is easy to understand. When the Europeans "discovered" the new land, they did not seem to notice that more than 300 tribes and nations of people had already "discovered" it. What the Europeans did notice was that the red man was different. Being linear thinkers, the Europeans realized that because of this difference, one group had to be wrong, and the Europeans did not intend to be wrong. That made the red man wrong by virtue of his existence. Putting the children in a "white man's" school was just another way of trying to make the red man more right. Which part of the above do you think is not arbitrary? Where is truth in this morass of right and wrong? The nature of truth is subjective and that makes it relative. It is relative to time, perspective, and circumstance, but more than that it is often measured and even balanced with other truths, so it is difficult to know. I think that when people do not trust truth it is because they do not know whether or not it is truth, or they don't recognize it. Gee Migl; +1 For making a good point. Digging around in a mess does not often solve much, but it can bring things to light. Although Koti, Strange, Ten oz, and Dimreepr are all blind in this scenario, they can still talk and type, so they can share their findings. Maybe we can learn something about the elephant by sharing our thoughts. That is what forums are for, aren't they? Maybe we should hurry this up before Dimreepr gets wet. Gee There are other posts that I would like to address, but this is St. Patty's day and I have Murphys, Heffernans, O'Gradys, and O'Briens in the family tree, so I will be busy for a while.

There are more responses than I expected, and I like to think about your posts before I respond. So I hope you will all give me some time to respond appropriately. Thank you for your patience. Dimreepr; Although I have not studied it extensively, I am aware that Yin and Yang is a study of balance in life and Nature, which means that it is wisdom. Are you saying that since everything ends up balancing itself, that truth is not necessary? Or that it is not relevant? Or that it changes? The word, Philosophy, translates to "love of wisdom", and wisdom is just an advanced level of truth, so truth is very relevant. Science takes facts and compares and adds them up to calculate "statistical facts" which are used in Science. Wisdom is similar. Philosophy takes truths, accumulates them, then measures them against other truths and balances them with other truths, then walks them through time. If we do this correctly, we end up with wisdom. I'll give you a small seemingly insignificant example: I was reading old adages (old wisdoms) many years ago, when I read, "Always build your house East of your field." I thought to myself, this one does not apply to me as I am not a farmer and don't build houses. A week or so later, as I was driving to work, squinting, and playing with my car visor, I was thinking that since it was Winter, I would also be fighting to see on the way home from work. I told myself that if I ever changed jobs, I would look for one West of my home. It was at that point that I finally understood the old adage. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Truth Most of us have to work, and many have to travel to that work. Truth A farmer works from sunup to sundown. Truth Traveling to and from work every day of your work life with the sun in your eyes is damned irritating. Truth So build your house East of your field, or find work West of your home. Life is irritating enough, no sense adding to it. You do have a valid point. Truths about good and bad, and right and wrong, are balanced in wisdom, so there is a connection there. +1 But none of this invalidates truth; if anything, it supports the validity of truth. Gee Puppypower; This made me smile, because you do have a point. +1 When I watch TV the only thing I see as much as advertisements for new drugs, is advertisements from attorneys wanting me to sue someone because of badly-tested drugs. This shouldn't happen, but it does. Many people like to tell me that Science does not deal in truths, but in facts. This is both, true and false. There are many different kinds of truth. In reality facts are just static objective truths. In Science, you also have scientists, which means that you have people. When you have people, you have social truths and political truths and even emotional truths. This is unavoidable. The good news is that most "lying" that is done about facts in testing can be discovered if the procedures that Science values are used properly. White lies come under social truths and are necessary in any society. Whether she is lying for herself, her child, or both of them, applies to motivation and would be better studied by a psychologist. I don't know why you think this is "short term thinking" as social lies are necessary to promote the smooth continuance of societies. I don't think I can agree with your first sentence, and the rest has turned into a ramble. There are many kinds of truth; facts which are static and objective, wisdom which is enduring and very long term, and the truth that is relevant to now. There was a time when I could say that I was five years old, and it was the truth -- it would not be the truth if I stated it now. The nature of truth is subjective, and it can be relevant to time, perspective, and type of truth. I can agree that Conservatives have long term values and Liberals have shorter term ideas, but fail to see how this relates to truth. You seem to be stating that one group's truth is more valid than another group's truth. That is about judgment, not truth. I don't agree with any of this and think you are trying to rationalize love. Good luck with that. Gee

Little Johnny's Mother told him that it was bad to tell a lie -- that it was wrong. Little Sarah's Mother told her that it was bad to tell a lie -- that it was wrong. As they grew, Johnny and Sarah learned that sometimes it is good and right to tell a lie, because the truth could hurt people. These are called "little white lies". When they matured, they learned that some bad and wrong things can be good and right. Like killing people is bad, except when it isn't and you get a medal for it. Fighting is bad, except when you have to. And stealing from people is wrong and bad, except when you call it taxes, or maybe insurance, or maybe even stocks. So in my opinion, all of this mingling of good and bad, right and wrong, and truth and lies has led people to believe that truth is as changeable as the wind, so it can not be relied upon. Many people have told me that truth is subjective, so it is not reliable. As a philosopher, I see a lot of value in truth and use it extensively to work Philosophy. So I would be interesting in knowing why other people do not trust truth. If you would give your opinions, and the reasons why you hold those opinions, maybe we could discuss it. I will check back tomorrow. Gee

Airmax14; Welcome to the Philosophy section of the Science forum. I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and I study consciousness. I can not answer the questions regarding Science, but it looks as though Strange and Koti can, so they can help you understand. I can, however, talk about the Philosophy that is in that article. First, let me state that any "theory of everything" is very unlikely to be valid. I would go further in stating that it may be impossible for it to be valid except as a "belief". Why? Because once you study it and track down the particulars of the "theory" a "theory of everything" ends up denying perspective and subjectivity. It denies the individual perspective and subjectivity that comes with each of our bodies. The only way to avoid this is to purport that we are a bunch of "souls" floating in our own reality waiting for a body to inhabit -- which is Religion's belief. But even most Religions do not see us as "floating souls" and expect that "souls" are created -- by "God". So be very skeptical when anyone says, "theory of everything". Also consider that if death is just an illusion, then life is also an illusion -- or nothing is real. This is NOT a new idea. Various illusion theories go back as far as Plato's time and have been considered off an on through the ages. You can look up "solipsism" in Wiki, which will give you a general idea of some of these "theories". Remember that Science is not a belief; it is a working, growing study of reality, so as it learns it changes. This means that sometimes a new concept will be discovered, like the double-slit experiment, and will generate a great deal of hypotheses and even speculation attached to the idea. It often takes some time before Science truly understands it. You noted that the article was old, so I suspect that it was written at a time when we knew about the double-slit experiment, but did not fully understand it yet. I am not sure that anything actually ends -- it just changes. Gee

Hypervalent_iodine; I did not write that insulting Religion is OK because I accept that idea; I wrote it to remind myself to not jump in when I felt Religion was being insulted -- unless I felt it was absolutely necessary. I am not religious. I am not even sure that one could stretch my ideas enough to call me agnostic, but I respect Religion and see the value in it. As a philosopher, I understand the need for balance between the Disciplines, Science, Philosophy, and Religion, so I respect all of them equally. I just love Philosophy more. To be critical of a person's faith IS insulting, because it implies that they are somewhat stupid. The members in this forum do not insult religious people in much the same way that Trump does not insult Mexicans. We can suppose that like minded people just gravitate to this forum, or we can suppose that people, who are not like minded do not stay. I know which one I think is more likely, but that is not the point here. What are the forum's goals? What is the owner of this forum trying to accomplish? If it is to promote Science to the point where it is above and separate from the other Disciplines, then these goals are being accomplished and no change is required. If, on the other hand, the separation of Science causes a limitation in the thinking and knowledge of the membership, then this separation can lead to stagnation. What I want does not really matter, as it is not my forum. There are other forums, and I can rotate between forums. Most forums lean toward either Religion, Philosophy, or Science, so it is hard to find one that is well balanced. I think that the key to balancing a forum is a well mannered and respectful membership. Gee Silvestru; You are very kind to say that some of my posts influenced you, but if you want to study Philosophy, you should know that to master it takes a life-long effort. I am not trying to discourage you, just making sure your expectations are in line with reality. You can learn a lot without being a master, and you can discuss your ideas without knowing everything. There is only one currency that has any value in Philosophy, and that is "truth". When a new philosopher finds their first truths, they get very excited and start waving their truth around like it is a flag. I am sure that some of those philosophers wave their flag of "truth" in the Science forum and drive the membership crazy. I am certain that in my youth, I did similar things. But eventually, we learn that truth is not like a flag, it is more like a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. The nature of truth is subjective, so that makes it very relevant to perspective. Something that might be true for you might be false for me; it can be true in one circumstance and false in another. Like murder is bad (truth) but in war or self defense it is good (truth). The same holds true for "truths" in Science. I study consciousness and can truthfully tell you that consciousness is "God", and mind, and a product of the brain, and Nature, and the supernatural, and part of all life, and unknowable, and illusion, and probably the source of cause and effect and reality. How can all of these things be true? Yet they are. Of course, consciousness is a difficult subject that has stumped the minds of our greatest thinkers for tens of thousands of years. I have no hope of resolving these "truths", but the work is challenging and fun, so I enjoy it. Once you come to terms with the idea that truth is subjective and relative, then you can start to compare truths in order to get a better picture of the over-all and balance the truths. If there is any ultimate truth, it is the truth of balance in my opinion. When you can balance your truths, you are finally on the path to wisdom. I love the quote you have from Tar on the bottom of your posts and smile every time I see it. It is sooooo Tar. Tar's father was a psychologist, and Tar himself studied philosophy and specifically studied the philosopher, Kant, so his background was perfect for understanding my concepts in consciousness. He is more Science minded, I like Philosophy -- we agreed on very little. But I found him to be intelligent, opinionated, argumentative, tenacious, open to new ideas, and possessed of integrity, so he was a perfect foil for my ideas. He is also a good friend and understands friendship. Gee Migl; I just realized that you are Canadian, so now I have to thank you. After 9-11, I decided that I should thank any Canadian that I met for the support the people of Canada gave to the US. When my government panicked, got stupid, and decided that airplanes were forbidden to land, we had a lot of commercial airplanes filled with Americans and running out of fuel. Canadians gave us permission to land and be safe, then they fed us, sheltered us, got needed medications, called our families, and some took their own cars to drive Americans home. I think air traffic was locked down for a week or so. It is nice to know that your neighbor has your back when trouble comes. So thank you, and please pass this along to your neighbors, relatives, and friends. Some of us remember. Eise specializes in Philosophy of Science, so I would expect him to have a good handle on Science. We have talked, and although we don't agree on everything, he is a good philosopher. I study consciousness, so I suppose you could call my studies Philosophy of Mind. Philosophers are too opinionated to agree on everything. (chuckle) When I was writing that list, I was thinking about experiences I had when I first joined, so maybe some of the ideas could be tempered. Also consider that insisting that I am a (not formally educated) philosopher in a forum that does not understand Philosophy was kind of like waving a red flag. (chuckle) I don't post a lot because I have MS (Multiple Sclerosis) which sometimes gives me bad days, or weeks, and makes me tire easily. That is the bad news. The good news is that I would not be here at all if I did not have MS and could get out of this chair more often. Thank you for the feedback. Ethics is a strange forum. I understood the study of ethics to be the study of what is good and bad about the way we regulate our laws, policies, and procedures. It is my personal opinion that when a specific group behaves badly on a regular basis, some bad law or policy is often behind this behavior. Ethics is supposed to help us identify the problems. I retired from law and have a pretty good understanding of it, but I received most, if not all, of the down votes in that thread on posts that were about law. They may not have liked the words that I posted, but they can not deny the truth of them. So if someone reads those posts, are they going to assume that the information is invalid, or are they going to assume that the down vote posters did not have a clue? For myself, I would like to know who votes on my posts, so that I can figure out what the vote is actually worth. It is nice to know that there are other people, who realize that guns don't go around sneaking up on people and shooting them. They actually stay wherever you put them and are pretty obedient. I have argued this topic in other forums, but would not do it here because of the down-vote system. Gee

StringJunky;; Hi. That's OK. I wouldn't know what to do with "fame, fortune and glory". (chuckle) I have met other people who have that ambition in assorted forums, but it does not bother me to help them. Some have asked to use my ideas and words in their various books or blogs or whatever, and I tell them to go ahead and use it if it will help, just try to not corrupt it. When I put an idea in a forum, I see it as being public knowledge from that point on. As far as "peer review" is concerned, do I even have peers in this forum? There are not many philosophers here. There used to be, because I remember reading older threads when I first started here, but I do not see much concerning Philosophy recently. Most threads are a comparison between Science and Philosophy, not actually working threads that are the subject matter of Philosophy. I would welcome some "peer review" as it regards consciousness, as I still have a great deal to learn. The problem that I am running into is that people want to critique my ideas, but they do not have the background to do so, and they also want to down vote anything that they do not understand. I only have 30 points, which is the most I have ever had, so if I write a thread and people down vote it, then I write another and people down vote it, I could very quickly find myself in the red with no credibility. I have already walked away from some of my own threads and left them incomplete. It is not "peer review" that makes me walk away, because I can argue my points and eventually people will see what I am talking about, or I will learn something -- but I can not make the down votes disappear after I have finally made the members understand my position. I tend to have complex ideas that are multi-layered and hard to follow, especially if the other parties do not have the background that I do. This is no one's fault, but it does make the up-down voting system a problem. I can write threads that are fun and very interesting, lots of them, but the trade off is losing my credibility. Or I can not write threads and retain my credibility. Not much of a choice. Gee

Because I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and this is a science forum, I did not feel any obligation to vote on the issue. Most people, who have read my posts already know my view on the "click-it squad". I would also like to say that I do not see much value in the vote, as the people who are in the forum are reasonably happy with the way the system works, and the people who are not happy with the system have mostly left. So I predict that the vote will be self-confirming and retain the system. The one point that was brought up in this thread, about people arguing with accepted Science, makes sense to me. I can see that it would be frustrating to have to repeat over and over something that has been well established in Science. In my recent thread, Consciousness and Evolution, I worked through seven pages, seven full pages, before I could get the other members to understand that all life is conscious. There are different levels of consciousness, sentience, awareness, sensing, perceiving, whatever, but it is all consciousness. Even after repeatedly telling them that Science confirms this, and explaining that a biologist, a micro-biologist, and a neurologist all confirmed this, there were still arguments. One might wonder why I bothered to work so hard on this. It's simple -- I can not demonstrate the possible connection between consciousness and evolution if the other members do not know WTF consciousness actually is, as they tend to confuse it with the rational aspect of mind. The new ideas don't start until page eight and go through to page ten. A ten page thread that, at most, has only three pages of worth. So I do sympathize with the arguing problem. On the other hand, in Philosophy, it is necessary to know how to make an argument. Telling a philosopher that they must work Philosophy without making an argument is like telling a scientist that they must work Science without using experiments. Absurd. A lot of people in this forum know how to argue, but few know how to make an argument -- with the exception of mathematical arguments. Would it help to post some instructions on how to make a philosophical argument? You did ask for opinions, and philosophers always have lots of opinions, so please consider. There are a lot of posts about new members having problems in the forum. The perception seems to be that new members do not know enough about Science, so they make mistakes until they learn, then their problems with down votes cease. Nonsense. This thinking assumes that new members are uneducated, that they are not professors, scientists, teachers, philosophers, or other educated people. It assumes that new members have nothing to contribute. It also assumes that the old members know more than the new members. I am pretty certain that I know more about consciousness than most members and did when I joined. There may be a few members, who know as much as I do, but I have seen no one who knows more. Of course, you could say that consciousness is not studied in Science as that topic is covered by Philosophy, but there are a surprising number of titles in the Science section with the word "consciousness" in them. It hasn't been that long since I was a new member, so I will tell you what I remember. Notes To Gee: 1. It is OK to insult Religion, Philosophy is just fluff, but do not say anything against Science or you get a down vote. 2. It is always important to be respectful, well mannered and proof your work, but in this forum be very careful how you word things because if it is possible to twist your meaning, someone will and you get a down vote. 3. Tell everyone that you are a scientist, not a philosopher, and deny any belief in "God". (I couldn't do this and got a lot of flack for being a philosopher.) 4. Never complain to a Moderator about a member who has a high rep -- no matter how they are acting. It will backfire. 5. Always agree with the popular opinion -- or DON'T POST. Posting opinions that are unpopular will earn you a down vote. 6. If you ever get three down votes on a post -- GET OUT OF THE THREAD. Tar never learned this one, got about 40 down votes in one thread and left the forum. I will miss him. 7. Avoid the Religion forum as they are all fanatics. Some hate religion, some love religion -- but they are all fanatical about it. 8. Avoid Ethics as that forum can be summed up as "If you would just think like me, act like me, or be like me, you would be ethical." (chuckle) I don't know what maggot in my brain caused me to recently write a thread there, but it didn't work out. I wrote a thread about power and entitled it Powerful Men, Beautiful Women, and Sex. Apparently I did not know that the Powerful Men were being mean to the Beautiful Women Sexually, so it was a thread about sexual harassment. By the bottom of the second page, I apparently was the cause of this harassment. Who knew? 9. Stay away from Politics unless you can think of it as a newspaper and not post. 10. If you ever need a few up votes, go to the Science section, look around for something that interests you, and then profusely thank whoever answered your questions. Sucking up in Science is always good for an up vote. 11. If you found Swansont in a thread in Philosophy, you could often be more open and honest in that thread because people tended to behave when he was around. In this thread, I learned why they behaved. (chuckle) One thing I will say is that Swansont apparently had a lot of power, but I never saw him abuse it and believe he possesses integrity. He is not the only one, and I don't mean to single him out as I see integrity in many members. I just noted early on that people behaved themselves around him. 12. Do not start your own thread. It is suicidal. It is OK to question, but if you start a thread with an idea in mind, you are going to be attacked. For some reason, members in this forum take an original idea as an assault on their authority, so they attack. If I followed these rules, my rep points went up. It did not have a damned thing to do with learning Science. Gee

Itoero; I apologize for being so late with my response. It's been busy here. This is what I don't like about the idea that Science deals only with the physical, and Philosophy deals only with the mental. This division leads to ideas that give people the impression that Science is not allowed to think, and when it does it stops being Science, and Philosophy can not consider the physical, and when it does it stops being Philosophy. These impressions can make Science look a little stupid and turn Philosophy into fluff. I don't like it and find little truth in this division. When you say that "people believe", you need to consider what that belief is based upon. If the belief is based upon observations, experiments, or known facts from Science, then it is Science. I don't know diddly-squat about photons, but suspect that if Science has a belief about photons, there is a reason for that belief. Bullshit. Science is a result of a "philosophical study". The scientific method is a result of a philosophical study. Math is a result of a philosophical study. All knowledge is a subjective opinion. Objectivity is simply a consensus of subjective opinions. Such a little question. It seems that I should be able to answer it with a little answer, but as far as I know, there is nothing like the "scientific method" that encompasses all of the rules in Philosophy. Because Philosophy is so open and covers so much, it would probably be impossible to set down specific rules without limiting Philosophy, or cutting out part of the study. I know that different philosophers have worked out rules that cover what they are specifically studying, but I was not formally trained in Philosophy, and I don't know much about all encompassing rules. What I can give you is a generalization of how I work Philosophy, and this is comparable to other philosophers' work. Philosophy is worked in steps, when I do it, and generally starts out with an observation or experience. 1. Am I sure it happened? Was it a fluke of lighting? Wishful thinking? My imagination? A misunderstanding? A misinterpretation? So the first step would be an evaluation of my self and the observation or experience, so that I can determine if it actually happened the way I think it did, and is a valid inquiry. 2. Is it a consistent happening? Are we talking about coincidence or a fluke that is once in a lifetime? Is there consistency? A recognizable pattern? A commonality? If I can find a consistency, then that lends weight to the idea that it may be true. At this point, I would probably try to work out a premise. 3. What do others think? There are few ideas that are brand new, so I now need to investigate what other philosophers or scientists have to say on the subject. I may find that my "truth" is already known, just not by me. If it is not known, does it conform to other truths that are known? If it does, then that lends more weight to the idea. If it does not conform, then I have a problem, because a "truth" that does not work in context is unlikely to be true. 4. If it does not conform. It may be that I am wrong. It may be that everyone else is wrong. (Not likely) Or it may be that both are right, but there is a circumstance or perspective that causes the divergence in thought. So when this happens, I get to go back to 1. and analyze and reevaluate my "truth", then I get to go over the known "truths" until I have a good understanding of them, so I can find the place where the divergence occurs. This is a lot of work and can take years or a lifetime to thoroughly understand the concepts and see why they don't work together. 5. Then I get to make my argument which sets down the reasons why I think my "truth" is valid. Or it sets down the reasons why my "truth" diverges from other known truths, and under what circumstances this divergence can be expected to happen. While working steps 1. through 5., I will use critical thinking and analysis to evaluate the ideas. Formal logic does not usually come into the considerations until after the argument is made. I suspect that your "photon" troubles would fit into step 4. above. Strange; Yes. That is exactly what they are doing. Logic can not answer the question of "God", so when people claim to be using logic with this idea, what they are actually doing is rationalizing. I believe it was Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, who called logic a schoolroom tool used to evaluate the consistency of a student's argument. I certainly agree with his assessment. What many people fail to consider is that logic is a linear process. Logic puts information in sequential steps from one idea to another, so it is great for checking consistency, as Heidegger noted. But logic can not give you the starting point or ending point as it is an internal process. If you wanted to prove some unknown with logic, where would you place the steps to get to your unknown answer? How could you possibly know in which direction to go? You can not line things up so that they go nowhere. Logic can be used to evaluate a philosophical argument because the parameters of the argument are set within the argument. Theoretically, the argument contains all of the pertinent information, so there are no unknowns. The great flaw in logic comes with lack of information. Like the five-year-old boy, who has been observing the road for his entire life and sees no danger in it. He thinks that Mom and Dad are worry-warts. His observations are good, his logic is fine, but he has a serious lack of pertinent information. Gee

There seems to be a great deal of defense and explanation regarding Science in this thread, but little defense and explanation regarding Philosophy. Since this is the Philosophy forum, that will not do. Itoero; Philosophy is not subject to anything? There are no rules? Anything goes? Imagination, dreams, fantasies, and speculations? Assumptions, lies, beliefs and biases? Existence whether real or imagined? Knowledge whether true or false? None of it has to be true? Philosophy may encompass many subjects, but it is also subject to rules. It is a Discipline -- a Discipline that studies knowledge, or what is true and real. If we are going to look at Philosophy as anything that has to do with knowledge, then yes, Science would fall into that description, but then so would everything else. This makes your title somewhat pointless, as everything could be described as a "subfield" of Philosophy if you are going to look at it from that perspective, which means you "cherry picked" the subject that would fit your purposes. There is not a great deal of truth in "cherry picking". You are missing the point. Science and Philosophy are part of each other and always have been. Take the example of an eighteen-month old toddler dropping food off of his high-chair tray, and watching it fall. For a few days, he will be fascinated with the realization that it always goes down. What is he doing? An experiment (Science). What is he learning? The truth of his reality (Philosophy). He will take this information to another level when he tries to get off the couch -- more experimenting, more learning. We ALL use Science and Philosophy, and have used them for most of our lives. All of Science uses Philosophy because evidence needs to be interpreted, put into context, and understood or it has no value. All of Philosophy uses Science because without the evidence that Science provides, it is a little difficult to tell what is Philosophy and what is imagination. The Disciplines of Science and Philosophy are just advanced forms of learning, so they are taught at higher University levels. The recent separation of the Disciplines is more a matter of procedure than anything else. The procedure, the scientific method, allows for a superior ability to learn the facts about objective reality. These "facts" are very relevant and valuable to philosophers. You could say that Science studies objective facts, and how these relate to us subjectively, and Philosophy studies subjective truths, and how that relates objectively. Well, it might explain things in your mind, but in my mind it looks like you lost a "science" argument in the Science forum and decided to reinstate it in the Philosophy forum. Do you think that the Philosophy forum is a platform that you can use to attack Science? Because anything goes in Philosophy? This is starting to look like a Speculations thread to me. Lord Antares; This I can agree with. This paragraph has a great deal that I disagree with, so I have pulled out three sentences, which I will respond to below: "In philosophy, there is no truth, nothing you can universally agree upon." Philosophy studies "truth", so there is a lot of truth in it. What you need to understand is that "truth" is subjective. If you are looking for truths that are "universally agreed upon", then you are looking for facts and objectivity. Science studies objective facts and is very good at it. But Philosophy studies subjective truth and it is an elusive subject requiring intensive study, discipline, and a high degree of integrity. There are Common Truths in Philosophy and there are Universals, which are things that are universally true, but the study is generally subjective. Since we all have a subjective self, it could be said that a study of truth has some value, as denying our subjectivity, our selves, is not generally a good thing. An example might be when we denied the subjective selves of Black people in the early history of the US, which allowed us to deny their human rights. That was an example of bad philosophy, although I don't know that we can blame the "bad philosophy" on philosophers. It may have been economics. Philosophy would have been what turned it around. "Almost every opinion is as valid as every other and in most cases, nothing to be correct about; it's just views on different things." In Philosophy, the word "opinion" has a specific meaning, much like in Science, the word "theory" has a specific meaning. Opinion in Philosophy is much closer to hypothesis or theory, as it is based on a specific argument. In Philosophy, you make an argument that puts your experience, training, reasoning, logic, and any evidence into a formal argument. (This argument is much like an experiment would be in Science.) This argument would result in an "opinion" that would be your "position" on the matter. Other philosophers would then look at the argument and question or dispute anything that seems to them to not be true, much like other scientists would dispute the veracity of an experiment. This is how the various "opinions" are formed. Since many of these ideas are not yet testable, the various "opinions" either gather support and evidence, or they start to disappear. "There is no opinion in science, there is only fact" This is not entirely true. All facts and all evidence needs to be interpreted and put into context or they have no value. I'll give you an example: 27. "27" is a fact, but it is evidence of what? Is it my age, my IQ, my inseam? Facts need to be in context, they need to be interpreted, which is why knowledge, truth, and Philosophy always have been and always will be part of Science. Actually, there is a good deal of support for the "theories" that you named above. I don't agree with them, but have not yet come up with a good enough argument to shoot them down. I expect that we will get the answers. OldChemE; I don't think the comparison has any merit. StringJunky noted that barbers evolved to become the first surgeons, but surgery is not medicine. I would like to suggest that the first medicines came from "white witches", who used herbs to treat their patients. And let us not forget the "witch doctors", etc. Although many of the herbal treatments were invalid, others were valid and the beginnings of medication as we know it today. Gee

1x0; If you do not mind, I would like to keep "intuition" out of this thread. A few years back, in another Science forum, I worked a thread on Instincts, and intuition was part of that thread. Even though I worked with some very bright people, both scientists and philosophers, what we learned is that there is so much misinformation, assumption, history, and down-right guesswork attached to the ideas of instincts and intuition, that it is impossible to base any understanding on these concepts. When I talk about instincts, I limit it to survival instincts, as that idea has some evidence and support from Biology. One thing that we do know is that emotion, instincts, and intuition are all reactive and originate in the unconscious aspect of mind -- which is not well known or well understood. Maybe. First problem is do we know that space/time contains ALL energy? If it does, then what could have started the Universe? Nothing? Second problem is with the word "observable". As discussed before, observation and awareness are dependent upon space/time in order to exist, so how can we get outside of space/time in order to "observe" what was there prior, or what it is made up of? If I understand your ideas correctly, you are flexing between the ideas that space/time originated from nothing, or it originated from information. This is why you are trying to find physical attributes in information, so you can understand how it became energy and matter. Yes? You are not the first person to come to these conclusions. It could be argued that the Holographic Universe, the dream or illusion realities, and even the "God" theories are very similar. They are all based on the idea that information caused everything, but we still can not find any reason to accept that information has physical attributes. A lot of us can't let it go. Energy and matter have a relationship with space/time in that they exist in space/time, and they all seem to change or evolve in some way. Early in the thread, you mentioned that you thought information also evolves/changes. I agree with this, which is why I have problems with theories that state everything is predetermined. The only ideas that I can see that seem to be predetermined, are the basic rules that I mentioned earlier, which are the rules that determine balance. It is this idea of balance that I think caused the Universe and extracted reality, as we know it, from chaos. This reminds me of the idea that time and space extracted the rational conscious aspect of mind from the unconscious aspect of mind. In evolution, the rational aspect of mind was much later in life's development. So the idea that the Universe evolved from a timeless reality seems to be reflected by the conscious mind evolving from a timeless unconscious. This brings me to the idea that the unconscious mind works through emotion, and emotion does seem to have some properties and some influence on matter. No. We do not know what emotion is; many people think that it is Nothing. It is obvious to me that either "nothing" existed, which I have trouble accepting, or that we just don't know what that "nothing" is. I'm betting we just don't know . . . yet. As BR-549 stated early in this thread, everything is charge and balance. It is my thought that the tension between charge and balance is what causes movement, growth, evolution, and change, which leads to complexity. "Everything in proportion to Nothing" is a concept, not a reality. Gee