Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]

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Topic:	Religions > Atheism
User:	"Dianelos Georgoudis"
Date:	02 Oct 2005 04:34:39 AM
Object:	Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]

Denis Loubet wrote:

"Dianelos" <dianelos@tecapro.com> wrote in message
news:1128062737.770563.140330@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...

Denis Loubet wrote:

"someone4" <glenn.spigel4@btinternet.com> wrote in message

[snip]

We have never detected awareness at all. There is no objective evidence
that you are aware.

That's actually a good point. You are absolutely right. I stand
corrected.

Now that we cannot justify the existence of awareness, where does that
leave
our argument about free will? Well, first off, now there's no need to
concoct a non-physical plane because awareness has been erased off the
blackboard and no longer requires an explanation.

I find this is an extremely curious statement. Awareness after all does
exist.

Does it? You said: "We have never detected awareness at all. There is no
objective evidence that you are aware."

Why then, in the face of a total lack of evidence, would I conclude that
awareness exists? Such a conclusion would not be justified. So if I am to be
intellectually honest with myself, I must abandon the claim of awareness.

Wow! I certainly admire your chutzpah.

You have no doubts you are aware, no?

Sure I have doubts. I hold nothing as 100% correct. Especially since you
made such an excellent point when you said: "We have never detected
awareness at all. There is no objective evidence that you are aware."

In what sense then has
awareness been "erased off the blackboard and no longer requires an
explanation"?

Since you said: "We have never detected awareness at all. There is no
objective evidence that you are aware."

On the contrary. Awareness is the most momentous fact we know and I can
imagine no other thing as important to explain.

Then why did you say: "We have never detected awareness at all. There is no
objective evidence that you are aware." What is a fact if not "objective
evidence"? Awareness cannot be both a fact and not a fact at the same time,
can it? You seem to be contradicting yourself.

OK. If I understand you correctly, your definition of existence is:
- Something exists only if it can be objectively detected (i.e. there
is objective evidence for it).
It's not completely clear what is meant by "objective" but I suppose
you would agree that an objective detection or evidence is something
that a scientific instrument can record.
Let's not overlook the fact that the definition above results in an
infinite regression: after all in order to know whether the objective
evidence itself exists or not, we would need to obtain objective
evidence for it too. Let's solve this problem by claiming that only a
finite depth of recurring pieces of objective evidence is needed, like:
"Something exists only if there is objective evidence for the objective
evidence for the objective evidence for it."
as
Now, you are familiar with the type of logical argument called
"reduction ad absurdum", or in other words that no true statement can
imply absurdities. I think this also applies to definitions, after all
a definition that implies absurdities is not a very useful one. So
let's see what the definition above implies.
First of all, obviously, it implies that God does not exist. But that's
ok, many people think so anyway.
Further, it implies that beauty does not exist, after all it cannot be
objectively detected. We must assume that beauty exists only as
processes in the brain of the people who experience it. Therefore
beauty in any sense will disappear when the last person dies. (Of
course, everything exists as an idea, including God, the perpetuum
mobile, and pink unicorns - but here we are interested in existents
that exist as things by themselves.)
The definition above also implies that numbers do not exist, for they
cannot be objectively detected. Again they only exist as ideas in the
brains of people, i.e. as some particular structure of synapses or
maybe some specific electrochemical processes therefore. Therefore
numbers in any sense did not exist before the first mathematical
thought ever thought.
What about the curvature of space (as Einstein's general relativity
posits)? Does it exist? At first it may seem so, but observe that
Newton thought that space is flat, and some scientist in the future may
come up with a better theory than Einstein's and claim that space is
zig-zag, or maybe a fractal. Now, what objectively exists does not
shift in or out of existence depending the latest scientific theory, so
we recognize that the curvature of space does not really exist by
itself, but represents only a model: an idea within the brains of
scientists - it too exists only as electrochemical processes in
brains, and it too will cease to exist when the last person dies.
Generalizing the above argument we immediately see that physical laws
too do not exist. I am sure you can fill in the details.
What about physical objects that are not immediately visible to our
senses, such as an electron? Do electrons exist? Now, quantum mechanics
teaches that an electron is a wave that has a non-zero amplitude in all
points of physical space, i.e. when an electron moves it passes through
every single point of space, albeit with different probabilities. Now,
no such thing has been objectively detected (and no real existent does
such magical stuff) so electrons must also be models created in the
scientists' brains for explaining what truly exists, for example the
beeps of an electron detector.
Of course, one may naively think that an electron detector detects
electrons, and that electrons do exist and only the electron properties
do not really exist except as scientific models. Only it is absurd to
claim that something exists but its properties (i.e. whatever we know
about it) do not, so the only reasonable thing to do is to only accept
the existence of things that can be detected directly - and not only
indirectly. After all if we allow for indirect detection (e.g. that the
beep heard records an electron because of this or that scientific
argument) then we open a backdoor through which anything can be made to
exist. For example one could claim that a machine that records the
symmetry and other characteristics of a face, detects the beauty of
this face. Or that the fact that the electron detector can actually
display the number or beeps is evidence that numbers exist.
Actually, up to now we haven't detected a really absurd implication of
the above definition. Sure, it does imply that neither beauty, nor
numbers, nor curvature of space, nor physical laws, nor electrons
really exist, which does contradict the colloquial way we use the word
"exist", but you can dug in your heels and claim that these are all
indeed just ideas and exist only as physical structures in the brains
of people, and that we colloquially use the word "exist" in a
metaphorical sense.
Things really get hairy when one applies this definition on oneself.
For example your sense of redness cannot be objectively detected, so it
does not exist - even though very curiously you do see redness, which
means that in your waking hours you very often see something that does
not exist. Indeed your definition of existence implies that the whole
of your awareness does not exist (hence you denial of awareness). So
neither does your free will exist. Neither does your sense of self.
So, in what sense exactly do *you* exist? You may say that your body
exists, but how would you know that? After all, you are not aware of
your body (your awareness does not exist, remember?). But suppose you
used the curious argument that even though your awareness does not
exist you are aware of things. Even then you could not use your
awareness of your body to argue for its existence, because a) you are
also aware of redness while redness does not exist, b) it's all
subjective anyway. So, puff!, by your definition it seems you don't
exist anymore. And this is the absurd implication of your definition,
because you cannot think yourself out of existence. Descartes would be
appalled.
Incidentally there is one more argument why "I exist" and "My body
exists" cannot be equivalent statements: I am absolutely certain about
the former, but not absolutely certain about the latter (see the brain
in a vat thought experiment).
Now, let's leave that flawed definition behind, and reconsider how
matters stand. Physical existence is physical sciences' concern and
field of study. Existence in general though is one of the basic fields
of study of philosophy (called ontology). From Plato to Bertrand
Russell it was well known that physical existence does not exhaust
reality. (By reality I mean the set of all existents.) Here is what
Russell (the well known logician, philosopher, and mathematician, and
one of the brightest minds of the twentieth century) wrote when
discussing the nature of matter: "When it is said that light *is*
waves, what is really meant is that waves are the physical cause of our
sensations of light. But light itself, the thing which seeing people
experience and blind people do not, is not supposed by science to form
any part of the world that is independent of us and our senses" [i.e.
the physical world]. Observe then that as he points out we use the word
"light" to denote two different things: a) light itself, i.e. our
subjective sensation (or sense-data as he put it) of light, and b) by
analogy what in the physical universe causes this sensation. Clear
thinking requires that we should not conflate the two. Russell goes on
to say that colors, sounds, and so on (i.e. all our sensations) are
absent from the scientific world of matter (see: "The Problems of
Philosophy" pag. 29 of the Oxford University Press paperback edition).
So if these parts of awareness called light, colors, sounds are absent
from the scientific world of matter, it means that the world of matter
does not exhaust everything there is. Russell, like the first modern
philosopher Descartes, taught that what we immediately know is our
subjective sense-data and that all other knowledge we discover is based
on these (as he carefully put it: "subjective things are the most
certain" - page 18 ibid). Indeed it is self-evident that we all start
with our subjective awareness and on this foundation we build the rest
of our knowledge including what we today colloquially call "objective"
knowledge. So to deny the existence of your awareness is not only
obviously impossible but also tantamount to denying your capacity for
knowing anything at all.
Now physicalism (or materialism, i.e. the ontological position that
everything is physical or that there are no kinds of things other than
physical things) is a very recent development mainly of the second half
of the twentieth century. It is so rife with paradoxes that it seems to
me that physicalism is less based on reason and more on a psychological
reaction to the great success of physics in the past century (created
by philosophers blinded by science like a deer by the headlight). The
many intents throughout the last decades to fit awareness within a
physicalist paradigm of reality has been so unsuccessful that one of
the more prominent members of that movement (David Chalmers) has
started proposing that consciousness must be considered a fundamental
principle of physical reality - which is another way to say that
consciousness does not fit in the physical universe that physics today
studies and that it is necessary to add something to our view of
physical reality in order to account for it. So it seems there is basic
agreement already and we are down to semantics: some say that
consciousness shows that reality is bigger than physical existence, and
some say that we must add something fundamental to physical existence
to account for consciousness.
So let come back to your last paragraph: I had written:

On the contrary. Awareness is the most momentous fact we know and I can
imagine no other thing as important to explain.

To which you responded:

It seems to me that by "fact" we denote knowledge that is completely
certain, at least for all practical purposes. By that measure
consciousness is the most factual of facts. The very existence of the
physical universe is less factual in comparison.
So, I would like to keep insisting that as consciousness is the most
momentous fact there is, intellectual honesty requires that we try to
understand it. (It's not important in the context of this post, but I
claim that the only way to understand consciousness is through the
concept of God. The fact that most religious claims are mythological,
superstitious or dogmatic is irrelevant, and should certainly not keep
us from this most momentous quest for understanding.)
Now, above I have criticized your definition of existence (at least as
I understood your thinking). It's easy enough to criticize when one is
not proposing something better. So here is the definition of existence
I would like to suggest:
- Something exists only when it explains something we experience.
I understand "explain" in the general sense of "making sense of", or of
detecting order or a pattern in the more superficial data of our
awareness. This can best be elucidated using examples from our own
experience and how we managed to make sense of it:
Let's go back to when we were newborn babies. At that time we couldn't
focus objects in front of our eyes; we were only aware of a soup of
visual stimuli. Little by little we discovered order in this visual
field, and - as we today know - we created synapses in our brain to
efficiently detect that order. For example we learned to quickly
organize the pixels of or visual field and detect the presence of, say,
an apple. So we learned to detect the "apple pattern" in our visual
field. Playing with apples, and with balls and stones and water, we
detected a deeper pattern, that of "things fall down". Later in school
we learned about gravity, which is an even deeper pattern in our
experience of the world around us (i.e. with more explanatory power)
than simply "things fall down". Gravity is not really a visible and
concrete pattern and it is therefore not really a physical object, but
is a deeper pattern that explains the how and the why of the movement
of more superficial patterns such like apples, stones, cannon balls, or
planets. Playing with the same kind of superficial patterns such as
stones and coins, we discovered (or were taught) other kind of patterns
related to counting and adding things together. The adding pattern is
indeed very conspicuous: every time we put three coins (or stones or
beans) together with two more coins (or stones or beans) and count the
elements in the resulting pile we always get five! This is a most
important pattern, deeper than the coin/stone/beans patterns because it
applies to all of them. We call this type of pattern depending on its
level of abstraction number, addition, or math.
Normally we say that all these patterns "exist", because they represent
relatively stable patterns in our field of awareness; they allow us to
make sense of the incredible variety of things we experience. Some are
superficial patterns like apples and coins, some are deeper like
gravity or numbers. Finally some patterns are so deep that they cannot
really be pointed at or taught about, but still represent levels of
organization we all manage to detect in our experience - such as
beauty. So we say that apples exist, gravity exists, numbers exist,
mathematical laws exist, and beauty exists.
The idea of "evidence" too represents a pattern, indeed a very deep
one. We empirically find that things do not exist independently of each
other, but normally interconnect and interlock with other patterns.
Therefore we expect the whole of reality to be interconnected. We get
immediately suspicious if something is claimed to exist simply hanging
in there by itself and with no apparent "connections" to other
existents. By the time we reach adulthood we have created a mental map
of reality that is a web like relation of patterns, and we expect any
further knowledge to extend that web or make it stronger. The fact that
atheists, for example, get so suspicious about the existence of God or
of beauty as things by themselves is that they don't detect the pattern
in the case of God, and they don't see how the pattern connects to
everything else that dominates their web of knowledge - the physical
universe - in the case of beauty.
Our thinking related to pattern recognition follows some patterns
itself - empirical patterns that we find help us think in a more
effective way. For example if A and B have roughly the same explanatory
power but B contradicts other existents we know, then we choose to
believe in the existence of A rather than of B. Similarly if A is
simpler than B we choose A (the Occam's razor). Also, B does not "fit"
as well with the web of the rest of existence then we choose A.
Finally, as a matter of fact, we often accept an existent on the power
of somebody else's opinion. So most people who accept that space is
curved do so because they trust scientists and not because they have
studied general relativity themselves and have directly experienced the
great explanatory power of curved space. Personally I believe that four
colors suffice to shade any flat map even though I haven't read the
relevant mathematical proof. Actually nobody really has, for it is
partly generated by computer, but I do trust the mathematicians who
worked on this, and they trust the computer. We simply know more about
existence than what we have time finding out ourselves. The web of
patterns that we find covers all reality is complemented by the web of
trust in the opinions of other people. In a way we think with more than
just our brain. That's maybe unfortunate but that's how it is.
As a final point, not all existence is equal, but depends on the myriad
factors we use to arrive at the relevant knowledge. The existence of
myself and the current state of my consciousness are absolutely
certain, but the existence of the physical universe is just a little
less then absolutely certain (we may exist as a brain in a vat). Going
very roughly from more certain to less certain existence we can point
at numbers, then beauty, then physical laws, then classical
near-experience physical objects such as apples, then galaxies, then
electrons, then curved space, then tachyons, then the ten spatial
dimensions of string theory, then the objects of dreams. The idea that
all existents can be neatly divided into two groups, objective things
whose existence is certain and subjective things whose existence is
not, is a gross oversimplification. It is also a very detrimental
belief, as often ontological discussions digress to fights about
objectivity.
Interestingly enough existential claims can be falsified even in those
cases where whether the claim is true or false would make not
difference whatsoever to what we experience. It is sufficient that
these claims make a difference to the quality of our understanding (for
example if we can apply the mental laws of non-contradiction,
simplicity and interconnectedness of reality to evaluate them).
Examples of such claims that are not experimentally falsifiable, but
can be evaluated nonetheless are:
- 1618 invisible dragons live in my garage (false)
- Only I am conscious and every other person is a zombie (false)
- The physical universe existed before anybody was around to think
about it (true)
- Everybody has the same subjective sense of redness (true, i.e. the
inverted spectrum hypothesis is wrong)
- The earth was created 6009 years ago including the much more ancient
looking fossils (false)
- We all exist within a computer simulation (false)
- We need a brain, or some comparable physical process, to be conscious
(false)
- Under general anesthesia we are fully conscious, even though several
parts of our brain are dormant and even though we cannot remember
anything afterwards (false)
- There is one absolute reality independent of our state of knowledge
of it (true)
- God exists (false or true - depending on the definition of God, see
bellow)
Now, if you think about each of these statements you'll see that it
makes absolutely no difference to what we experience right now whether
the statement is true or false. Nevertheless studying how well each of
these statements fits within our existing web of understanding we can
in principle decide whether the statement or its negation fits better.
Above I gave the truth values according to my own thinking; of course
you may disagree, but at least there is a common ground we can use to
discuss such disagreement. Also, above I simply recorded true or false,
leaving aside the important factor about how confident about each
judgment I am, i.e. how well each statement fits or does not fit within
the rest of my understanding. Fortunately most reasonable people would
agree about the basic features of this web of understanding (after all,
we assume that we experience life basically the same and that our
pattern detecting capabilities are similar), so I believe that the
above definition of existence can serve as the foundation for broad
agreement about these difficult ontological questions.
Now to the question of the existence of God. If by God we understand an
explanatory principle necessary for understanding the physical world,
then, after the recent advances of physics, we must conclude that God
does not exist. (The projected TOE - theory of everything - seems to be
completely different than the traditional descriptions of God.) If, on
the other hand, by God we understand an explanatory principle necessary
for understanding the whole of our experience (including our
consciousness, its qualities and structure) we must conclude that God
exists. A few comments: In either definition we posit that God is the
deepest pattern or the most overarching explanatory principle possible,
but the first definition is clearly inadequate because it overlooks a
huge part of reality. The second definition is the appropriate one, and
after some thinking the presence of God (the perfect being) becomes so
conspicuous that I would put my confidence in it higher than my
confidence in the existence of the physical universe. Incidentally the
advances of the physical sciences turn out to be helpful because they
teach were not to look for the God-pattern.
To finish this long post I would like to suggest a claim about
existence that is not falsifiable neither experimentally nor mentally:
- Things that exist (e.g. the physical world) would exist even if no
mind existed to know about that existence.
This statement may appear to make sense, but is in fact meaningless
because it claims knowledge about something (the existence of a thing)
while positing a context in which no knowledge is possible. That's
nonsensical. You cannot claim something where fundamentally nothing can
be known.
.

User: "Jim07D5"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	11 Nov 2005 11:32:44 PM

"Seeker" <not@home.com> said:

"Bob" <spam@uce.gov> wrote

On 11 Nov 2005 01:19:18 -0800, "Dianelos Georgoudis"
<dianelos@tecapro.com> wrote:

if there is a path to bliss isn't it very stupid or
crazy not to take that path? Personally, if I had to choose between
bliss and physics, I would choose bliss in an eyeblink.

Then why don't you commit suicide? It is the most direct path to
eternal bliss we know of.

Who knows that? Nobody knows what lies beyond life.

Not life.
--- Jim07D5
.

User: "Seeker"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	12 Nov 2005 03:00:42 AM

"Jim07D5" <Jim07D5@nospam.net> wrote

"Seeker" <not@home.com> said:

"Bob" <spam@uce.gov> wrote

On 11 Nov 2005 01:19:18 -0800, "Dianelos Georgoudis"
<dianelos@tecapro.com> wrote:

if there is a path to bliss isn't it very stupid or
crazy not to take that path? Personally, if I had to choose between
bliss and physics, I would choose bliss in an eyeblink.

Then why don't you commit suicide? It is the most direct path to
eternal bliss we know of.

Who knows that? Nobody knows what lies beyond life.

Not life.

Those who believe in reincarnation think it does, but they don't know.
Nobody knows.
.

User: "Jim07D5"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	12 Nov 2005 05:28:35 AM

"Seeker" <not@home.com> said:

"Jim07D5" <Jim07D5@nospam.net> wrote

"Seeker" <not@home.com> said:

"Bob" <spam@uce.gov> wrote

On 11 Nov 2005 01:19:18 -0800, "Dianelos Georgoudis"
<dianelos@tecapro.com> wrote:

if there is a path to bliss isn't it very stupid or
crazy not to take that path? Personally, if I had to choose between
bliss and physics, I would choose bliss in an eyeblink.

Then why don't you commit suicide? It is the most direct path to
eternal bliss we know of.

Who knows that? Nobody knows what lies beyond life.

Not life.

Those who believe in reincarnation think it does, but they don't know.
Nobody knows.

I was being technical. If what lies beyond the end of life is another
life, whatever it is that is reincarnated ain't beyond it yet. If
there is continuity of identity between successive lives, some sort of
mileau has to be imagined to exist between them.
--- Jim07D5
.

User: "Bob"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	12 Nov 2005 08:00:36 AM

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 11:28:35 GMT, Jim07D5 <Jim07D5@nospam.net> wrote:

That's Mysticism. There is no rational support for Mysticism. It is
based on Idealist fantasies where contradiction and causality are not
operative. IOW, it is random musing.
--
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!"
--Ben Franklin
.

User: "Seeker"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	13 Nov 2005 01:57:24 PM

"Bob" <spam@uce.gov> wrote in message
news:4375f4f6.72864031@news-server.houston.rr.com...

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 11:28:35 GMT, Jim07D5 <Jim07D5@nospam.net> wrote:

That's Mysticism.

The Universe is a mode of Being, and Being by its very nature is
eternal because if it were not then there would be nothing to cause it
to exist at some specific time.
That's mysticism.
.

User: "Bob"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	13 Nov 2005 04:09:12 PM

On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:57:24 -0800, "Seeker" <not@home.com> wrote:

That's Mysticism.

The Universe is a mode of Being, and Being by its very nature is
eternal because if it were not then there would be nothing to cause it
to exist at some specific time.
That's mysticism.

Not so. It's Scholastic Philosophy also known as Existential
Metaphysics. That statement above was about ontology.
Look it up for yourself.
--
BOYCOTT SONY!
SONY IS TRYING TO TAKE OVER YOUR COMPUTER!
HOMELAND SECURITY TOLD SONY TO CEASE AND DESIST!
YOU DO THE SAME - BOYCOTT SONY!
.

User: "Jim07D5"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	13 Nov 2005 04:38:58 PM

(Bob) said:

On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:57:24 -0800, "Seeker" <not@home.com> wrote:

That's Mysticism.

The Universe is a mode of Being, and Being by its very nature is
eternal because if it were not then there would be nothing to cause it
to exist at some specific time.

That's mysticism.

Not so. It's Scholastic Philosophy also known as Existential
Metaphysics. That statement above was about ontology.

Look it up for yourself.

As at the following?
http://radicalacademy.com/adiphilscholasticismessay2.htm
--- Jim07D5
.

User: "Bob"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	13 Nov 2005 08:35:21 PM

On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:38:58 GMT, Jim07D5 <Jim07D5@nospam.net> wrote:

That's mysticism.

Not so. It's Scholastic Philosophy also known as Existential
Metaphysics. That statement above was about ontology.
Look it up for yourself.

As at the following?
http://radicalacademy.com/adiphilscholasticismessay2.htm

I love it! A perfect example of what happens when you adopt the wrong
Worldview - you get GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).
The retards who write crap like that can't even prove they exist. In
fact it is likely they don't even know themselves.
Physics and metaphysics is based on the Worldview of Existential
Realism, which imposes constraints on what can be real.
--
BOYCOTT SONY!
SONY IS TRYING TO TAKE OVER YOUR COMPUTER!
HOMELAND SECURITY TOLD SONY TO CEASE AND DESIST!
YOU DO THE SAME - BOYCOTT SONY!
.

User: "Jim07D5"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	13 Nov 2005 11:03:57 PM

(Bob) said:

On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:38:58 GMT, Jim07D5 <Jim07D5@nospam.net> wrote:

That's mysticism.

Not so. It's Scholastic Philosophy also known as Existential
Metaphysics. That statement above was about ontology.

Look it up for yourself.

As at the following?
http://radicalacademy.com/adiphilscholasticismessay2.htm

I love it! A perfect example of what happens when you adopt the wrong
Worldview - you get GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).

Ain't it the truth.
--- Jim07D5
.

User: "Bob"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	12 Nov 2005 07:57:35 AM

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:00:42 -0800, "Seeker" <not@home.com> wrote:

Those who believe in reincarnation think it does, but they don't know.
Nobody knows.

You are placing far too much emphasis on the impossibilty to know with
absolute certainty. But it does not take absolute certainty to know
that nonexistence is the only condition possible.
Your self awareness is the result of brain activity. If you imagine
otherwise then it is up to you to support that claim. When the brain
ceases to operate, your self awareness ceases to exist. And because
that condition is permanent you return to the condition from which you
came, nothingness.
--
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!"
--Ben Franklin
.

User: "Seeker"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	12 Nov 2005 05:27:06 PM

"Bob" <spam@uce.gov> wrote

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:00:42 -0800, "Seeker" <not@home.com> wrote:

Those who believe in reincarnation think it does, but they don't know.
Nobody knows.

You are placing far too much emphasis on the impossibilty to know with
absolute certainty.

I think that limitation deserves ackowledgement.

But it does not take absolute certainty to know
that nonexistence is the only condition possible.

That sounds like absolutely certain terminology.

Your self awareness is the result of brain activity. If you imagine
otherwise then it is up to you to support that claim. When the brain
ceases to operate, your self awareness ceases to exist. And because
that condition is permanent you return to the condition from which you
came, nothingness.

I don't know where I came from, you assume it's nothingness, and that's
probably right, but I don't know.
.

User: "Bob"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	12 Nov 2005 11:31:53 PM

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:27:06 -0800, "Seeker" <not@home.com> wrote:

I don't know where I came from, you assume it's nothingness, and that's
probably right, but I don't know.

Then the best you can do is asume what is probably right.
Now do you appreciate the absurdity of our existence - that we cannot
ever know where we come from.
--
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!"
--Ben Franklin
.

User: "Seeker"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	13 Nov 2005 02:30:47 AM

"Bob" <spam@uce.gov> wrote in message
news:4376cf88.29320578@news-server.houston.rr.com...

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:27:06 -0800, "Seeker" <not@home.com> wrote:

I don't know where I came from, you assume it's nothingness, and that's
probably right, but I don't know.

Then the best you can do is asume what is probably right.

Almost, but that's not exactly how I prefer to look at it. When confronted
with something unknowable I prefer to say "I don't know" and leave that as
the basis for further considerations. If pressed of course, I will say what
I think is most probable. Needless to say, I am an agnostic, not an atheist.

Now do you appreciate the absurdity of our existence - that we cannot
ever know where we come from.

Yes, actually I definitely can see now how that could be seen as absurd. I
wouldn't get too hung up on it though. Our consciousness, which I would call
our existence, is most likely a function of our brain, so it began to
manifest as our brain formed.
.

User: "Colin Day"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollowdebate]	19 Nov 2005 12:58:34 PM

Bob wrote:

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:00:42 -0800, "Seeker" <not@home.com> wrote:

Those who believe in reincarnation think it does, but they don't know.
Nobody knows.

You are placing far too much emphasis on the impossibilty to know with
absolute certainty. But it does not take absolute certainty to know
that nonexistence is the only condition possible.

Your self awareness is the result of brain activity. If you imagine
otherwise then it is up to you to support that claim. When the brain
ceases to operate, your self awareness ceases to exist. And because
that condition is permanent you return to the condition from which you
came, nothingness.

Death isn't nothingness, unless the worms eat me.
Colin Day aa #1500
.

User: "Bob"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	20 Nov 2005 11:27:36 AM

On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 18:58:34 GMT, Colin Day <cday3@sc.rr.com> wrote:

Death isn't nothingness, unless the worms eat me.

Your brain ceases to function. Your capability for self awareness is
no longer present. You no longer exist as a sensient being .
--
BOYCOTT SONY!
SONY IS TRYING TO TAKE OVER YOUR COMPUTER!
HOMELAND SECURITY TOLD SONY TO CEASE AND DESIST!
YOU DO THE SAME - BOYCOTT SONY!
.

User: "Colin Day"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollowdebate]	21 Nov 2005 11:00:55 AM

Bob wrote:

On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 18:58:34 GMT, Colin Day <cday3@sc.rr.com> wrote:

Death isn't nothingness, unless the worms eat me.

Your brain ceases to function. Your capability for self awareness is
no longer present. You no longer exist as a sensient being .

But again, why do you put existence in time?
Colin Day aa #1500
.

User: "Bob"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	12 Nov 2005 07:55:05 AM

On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 21:02:56 -0800, "Seeker" <not@home.com> wrote:

Nobody knows what lies beyond life.

That is incorrect. In the first place, it is a categorical absolute
statement, which makes it incorrect right out of the box.
We could nitpick about the reality of absolute truth all day but there
are degrees of truth based on likelihood. For example, there is a
finite probability that all the air in a room could rush to one
corner. But it is vanishingly small so we extrapolate it to zero
probability and claim it could never happen.
Similarly, although we cannot know with absolute certainty what
happens when we die, it is very unlikely that anything will happen
other than we cease to exist. Prior to our existing we did not exist
so it should not come as any surprise that once we stop existing we
return to the same condition as before we existed, namely
nonexistence.
If you want to propose something other than nonexistence, it is up to
you to offer support. I do not have to defend my proposition any more
than I just have. And I do not have to know it with absolute
certainty.
If there is something after we die, then I will take it as a surprise.
I am certainly not going to let a bunch of pedophiles and homos in the
clergy try to con me into behaving like they do just because they
claim there is some kind of life after death and they hold the key to
heaven in the form of buggering little boys.
--
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!"
--Ben Franklin
.

User: "Publius"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	12 Nov 2005 02:08:28 PM

(Bob) wrote in news:4375f279.72227125@news-server.houston.rr.com:
Bob --- check this out:
http://www.blacklightpower.com/theory/theorypapers/NatureChemicalBondRevisited%20102805.pdf
.

User: "Bob"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	12 Nov 2005 11:10:22 PM

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:08:28 -0600, Publius
<m.publius@nospam.comcast.net> wrote:

spam@uce.gov (Bob) wrote in news:4375f279.72227125@news-server.houston.rr.com:

Bob --- check this out:

http://www.blacklightpower.com/theory/theorypapers/NatureChemicalBondRevisited%20102805.pdf

There is an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence supporting
orthodox quantum mechanics. But that does not mean new ideas should be
rejected outright - just treated with healthy skepticism.
The literature abounds with articles attempting to modify the laws of
physics, and unfortunately most of them are dead wrong. However, now
and then along comes one which is not dead wrong, and it is worth
having to sift thru the others that are wrong.
Usually the reason that a new physical law is discovered is because
there is some kind of serious problem with existing theory. For
example the Ultraviolet Catastrophe in classical physics was the
impetus for Planck to discover quantum mechanics. His fiddling around
with discrete electromagnetic modes resulted in a correct explanation
of black body radiation. Another example is the discovery of
relativity which Einstein pursued to explain the problem that
Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism were not Galilean invariant. Then
there's the Dulong Petite limit problem, the specific heat of diatomic
molecules problem, etc.
There is nothing wrong with the explanation of chemical bonding, at
least not that I am aware of. You might not like the orthodox
explanation but that is no excuse to concoct a different one when
there really is no need to do so.
Physical laws work on the principle that if it isn't broken, don't fix
it.
--
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!"
--Ben Franklin
.

User: "Dianelos Georgoudis"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	14 Nov 2005 08:39:38 AM

Seeker wrote:

"Bob" <spam@uce.gov> wrote

On 11 Nov 2005 01:19:18 -0800, "Dianelos Georgoudis"
<dianelos@tecapro.com> wrote:

if there is a path to bliss isn't it very stupid or
crazy not to take that path? Personally, if I had to choose between
bliss and physics, I would choose bliss in an eyeblink.

Then why don't you commit suicide? It is the most direct path to
eternal bliss we know of.

Who knows that? Nobody knows what lies beyond life.

Probably you mean "Nobody knows what lies beyond death."
Many people think they do. Of course they can be wrong, but then again
almost all knowledge is not completely certain either.
You may ask, how is it possible to know what lies beyond death; nobody
has gone beyond death and come back to tell us. And even if somebody
said she had, why should we believe her?
On the other hand, almost everybody agrees that there exists sand on a
planet in a galaxy in the other corner of the universe. How can we know
that if we haven't traveled that far to find out? Scientists know
what happened in the first seconds of the physical universe, and they
pretty much foretell the future: for example they say that our sun will
go supernova in a few billion years from now. How can we possibly know
these things, so far away in time?
The question I would like to discuss here is how can it be at all
possible to know what happens to consciousness after death. First of
all let's understand what we mean by this question, starting at the
beginning. We are conscious beings with an experience that has two
important characteristics: it is orderly and it is public. The order
makes it possible to make sense of our experience and model a world,
and also makes it possible to affect our experience in a predictable
way (say, I can will my hand to throw a stone and see the stone sail
through the air). By "public" I mean that we decide (for reasons
that are not relevant here) that there are other consciousness
experiencing as we do, and affecting our common experience the same way
too. So, for example, when I will my hand to grab a stone and throw it,
this act does not only affect my experience (I see my hand move and the
stone fly) but also, potentially, the experience of other similar
consciousness (named people) near me. And vice versa, when I experience
another's hand throw a stone I deduct an act of will on that other
consciousness' part. So even though we cannot directly experience
other consciousness, we can experience the effect other consciousness
have on our common - public - pool of experience.
Growing older we observe a very stable pattern in our experience: that
at some time other consciousness permanently stop affecting the public
pool of experience: The bodies associated with each consciousness stop
moving and ultimately decompose. We call that pattern "death". By
induction we recognize that at some time our consciousness too will
stop affecting the public pool of experience, that our physical bodies
will stop moving and will ultimately decompose too. So we can predict
that at some point other consciousness will experience our body not
moving anymore. So the question is: what will happen to our
consciousness when it stops to affect the common pool of experience?
Now, all people of normal intelligence model the public pool of
experience as the physical universe, and themselves as a physical body
existing within this universe. Unfortunately, after creating these
eminently useful models, most people quite erroneously come to identify
themselves with their model of a physical body - and somehow forget
that they are consciousness. So after observing the destruction of
other peoples' physical body at death they reasonably assume that at
the destruction of their own body their experience too will cease; not
only their body will die but also they themselves. Of course that's
in principle a possibility. We have not ourselves yet died so we
don't know what happens afterwards, and one possibility is indeed
that our experience will cease, i.e. we won't be experiencing
anything else. The other possibility is that experience will continue,
possibly in another public pool (which must be distinct than this one).
Up to this point nothing more can be said except that there are these
two possibilities. It's hardly meaningful at this point to assign
probabilities. Of course, those who identify themselves with their
model of a physical body think that with almost absolute certainty
their experience will cease when their body dies. For the few who do
not identify themselves with their model of a physical body this is
very much an open question.
It is possible to know something more about what happens to
consciousness after it stops affecting the common pool of experience?
As we have often discussed in this thread, we learn to understand and
to usefully act by detecting patterns in our experience and by slowly
creating a web of such interlocking patterns. A sub-web we have
successfully created is the model of the physical universe, i.e. of our
experience of physical things, which is often called objective
experience (seeing apples, etc). This sub-web reaches space and time
much further than our personal experience. It is our confidence in this
sub-web of patterns representing physical existents that makes it easy
for us to confidently make claims about physical existents at space and
time far away from us, such as sand existing on a planet in a galaxy
far away, or that our sun will go supernova.
Now we also have some knowledge about our own consciousness and its
structure and try therefore to integrate this knowledge into the same
web. Before attempting to do this we must choose between some
hypotheses. One popular hypothesis is that consciousness is contingent
on the physical universe, i.e. that the understanding or explaining of
consciousness is ultimately based on our knowledge about the physical
universe. There are many different ontological theories in this sense,
but they all share this common hypothesis. All these ontological
flavors can be called "physicalism" as they put physical knowledge
at the base of one's web of knowledge. This popular ontology has been
distinctly unsuccessful in explaining consciousness, and while we are
unable to integrate all our knowledge in one contiguous web we won't
be able to confidently answer deep questions about any part of it -
not only the question of what happens to consciousness at death, but
also, for example, why the physical universe exists.
As an aside, the most ardent physicalists think not only that
consciousness can survive death, but that they know how to achieve
this. It's a matter of technology: simply identify those brain
processes that are consciousness and upload them into a more durable
material substrate, for example a silicon computer. These people claim
this very seriously and using solid physicalist argumentation. They go
as far as to predict that this will be the future of humanity: to have
the various billions of minds uploaded into computers to lead a much
more intellectually fulfilling life, not to mention one of much greater
duration. And if the computers get too old, simply upload the relevant
processes into newer models as to practically live for ever.
Coming back to the matter of contingency, an alternative hypothesis is
that the physical universe is contingent on consciousness, i.e. that
the understanding or explaining of the physical universe is ultimately
based on our knowledge of consciousness (and that understanding
consciousness requires even deeper principles). Here too we find
various ontologies, but they all share this hypothesis. All these
ontological flavors can be called "idealism", as they put our
knowledge about consciousness at the base of all knowledge.
Consciousness of course is in fact at the base of all knowledge in the
operative sense that all we know is built on conscious experience.
After realizing this obvious fact it is I think easy to see that
therefore the web of all knowledge must have at its base knowledge
about consciousness (physicalism tries a feat of mental contortionism:
to explain consciousness based on the physical knowledge that is
discovered through consciousness itself). Anyway my unsubstantiated
claim is that idealism does allow one to integrate into one coherent
web of knowledge both physical knowledge (the sub-web the explains
objective experiences) and knowledge about consciousness (the sub-web
that explains subjective experiences).
I don't need to substantiate this claim (that idealism works and
physicalism doesn't), because my goal here is only to show how it is
at all possible to answer questions such as what happens to
consciousness at death. A web of explanatory patterns makes it possible
to answer questions even when no direct experience is present (actually
that's the point of the whole effort that goes into creating this
web). That's how we know about the existence of things in galaxies
far away, or about the existence of physical things at times much
earlier or much later than our experience. If one succeeds in building
a web of knowledge that integrates in a coherent whole both physical
knowledge and knowledge about consciousness then one can similarly
answer questions about consciousness at a time earlier or later than
the one experiences, or to answer questions about consciousness not
one's own.
One final issue: Why is it possible to answer difficult questions about
physical things just by creating a sub-web of knowledge about them only
- and we first need to integrate both the sub-web of physical
knowledge and the sub-web of knowledge about consciousness before being
able to answer difficult questions about consciousness? Well, for
answering the question of what happens to consciousness after death we
need that integration because this question covers both consciousness
and physical existence. Even more than that, I doubt if there are
meaningful questions about consciousness that are not related in some
way to physical existence. After all what we are currently conscious
about is only physical existence, I think. Our consciousness seems to
be bound to physical existence like an embryo to the umbilical cord :-)
.

User: "Dutch"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	14 Nov 2005 06:53:02 PM

"Dianelos Georgoudis" <dianelos@tecapro.com> wrote

Seeker wrote:

"Bob" <spam@uce.gov> wrote

On 11 Nov 2005 01:19:18 -0800, "Dianelos Georgoudis"
<dianelos@tecapro.com> wrote:

if there is a path to bliss isn't it very stupid or
crazy not to take that path? Personally, if I had to choose between
bliss and physics, I would choose bliss in an eyeblink.

Then why don't you commit suicide? It is the most direct path to
eternal bliss we know of.

Who knows that? Nobody knows what lies beyond life.

Probably you mean "Nobody knows what lies beyond death."

Beyond the state we call life, not beyond the state of death, but during it.

Many people think they do. Of course they can be wrong, but then again
almost all knowledge is not completely certain either.

You may ask, how is it possible to know what lies beyond death; nobody
has gone beyond death and come back to tell us. And even if somebody
said she had, why should we believe her?

Many people have reported returning after being medically dead. The most
recent I heard about said that it was just like deep sleep, no tunnel, no
bright light or sense of overwhelming well-being, nothing.
[snip good stuff]

I think. Our consciousness seems to
be bound to physical existence like an embryo to the umbilical cord :-)

I agree, consciousness is an inherent part of being an animal. When our
synapses fire in a particular patterns they create consciousness. Abstract
thinking is a peculiar function of human consciousness.
.

User: "Teresita"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	02 Dec 2005 11:28:17 PM

In article <Ojaef.507788$tl2.469539@pd7tw3no>, Dutch says...

The universality of certain near death experiences across cultures suggests a
biological explanation, perhaps the reaction of any human brain to mortal
trauma.
--
Encyclopedia Teresita
http://home.comcast.net/~rubyredinger
.

User: "Bob"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	03 Dec 2005 07:56:31 AM

On 2 Dec 2005 21:28:17 -0800, Teresita <teresita@debian.org> wrote:

The universality of certain near death experiences across cultures suggests a
biological explanation, perhaps the reaction of any human brain to mortal
trauma.

You must not have seen the helmet experiments.
--
"One must realize that the world is a network of real and virtual
combat zones where the stakes are high, struggle is the primary
mode of being and only total victory is acceptable.
-- Sun Tzu, "The Art Of War"
.

User: "Dianelos Georgoudis"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	05 Dec 2005 02:56:45 AM

Teresita wrote:

In article <Ojaef.507788$tl2.469539@pd7tw3no>, Dutch says...

The universality of certain near death experiences across cultures suggests a
biological explanation, perhaps the reaction of any human brain to mortal
trauma.

I know of no experience that is not amenable to biological explanation.
Let's try to imagine how such an experience could be. Suppose there
were some special machinery that visually displays on a big screen the
exact state of my brain (or better still of my entire body). An
experience not amenable to biological explanation would be some
particular experience I could have (say hearing voices) while at the
same time not experiencing any change on the big screen. Is such
experience imaginable? I think it is, but if it came to pass I would
certainly conclude that there must be some defect in the machinery. Why
is that? Because as long as the best explanation I have for what I
experience is the physical universe I expect the "grain" of that
explanation to hold. By "grain" I mean the style or the
meta-pattern of all interlocking patterns that conforms my
understanding of the physical universe. This understanding is
admittedly imperfect, but I don't expect the grain itself to be in
error. For example an important part of that grain is that it is a
mathematical model. Another important part is that all I ex