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: "Soul food"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	02 Oct 2005 06:00:58 AM

"Dianelos Georgoudis" <dianelos@tecapro.com> shamelessly dissembled:

It's not completely clear what is meant by "objective"

That's *your* problem.
------------------------------------------------
"The real dichotomy in today's world is between reason and religion.
The future of civilisation rests upon how many people realise that and do something about it."
D Silverman FLAHN, SMLAHN
AA #2208
.

User: "someone4"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	02 Oct 2005 03:06:21 PM

[snip]
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

Examples of such claims that are not experimentally falsifiable, but
can be evaluated nonetheless are:
- 1618 invisible dragons live in my garage (false)

I think your 1618 invisible dragons would have to be more than
invisible for it not to be experimentally falsifiable.
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- Only I am conscious and every other person is a zombie (false)

I am not saying that you are wrong, but how can you claim this is
false?
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- The physical universe existed before anybody was around to think
about it (true)

Again how can you say this is false, and does it include the
conception of God, or is 'anybody' just in regards to humans?
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- Everybody has the same subjective sense of redness (true, i.e. the
inverted spectrum hypothesis is wrong)

Just out of interest, how do you know this is true, why can what I see
as red, not be swapped with what you see as green for example?
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- The earth was created 6009 years ago including the much more ancient
looking fossils (false)

How do you evaluate such a statement?
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- We all exist within a computer simulation (false)

Again, how do you evaluate such a statement?
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- We need a brain, or some comparable physical process, to be conscious
(false)

While I believe you to be correct, how did you evaluate this statement?

[snip]
.

User: "Dianelos Georgoudis"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	02 Oct 2005 05:47:45 PM

someone4 wrote:

[snip]

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

Examples of such claims that are not experimentally falsifiable, but
can be evaluated nonetheless are:

Dear someone4, I can't answer your questions bellow before pointing out
the gist of my post:
1. That our worldview (i.e. our understanding of reality) consists of a
web of interrelated and interlocking patterns (where each pattern is an
existent) detected in our experience.
2. That the effective way to think about proposed existents is to
evaluate how well they extend or strengthen the already present web of
patterns.
3. That in order to achieve this we have empirically developed
effective mental practices such as non-contradiction, simplicity, and
good fit.
4. That this discipline allows us to evaluate such ontological
statements that are considered significant but that cannot be falsified
experimentally (i.e. within that part of reality we call physical
existence).
5. That this methodology can serve as a common ground for discussing
our differences of opinion, because we assume that each one of us
experiences life in basically the same way and that each one of us is
roughly equally capable of detecting patterns in that experience. Also
we empirically know that reasonably well educated people share the same
basic web of patterns.
To illustrate point 4 above I gave a list of non experimentally
falsifiable ontological statements, and my personal evaluation of them.
My hope was that the reader would apply the methodology above and
recognize that it gave reasonable results, which in most cases agreed
with the reader's previous opinion.

- 1618 invisible dragons live in my garage (false)

I think your 1618 invisible dragons would have to be more than
invisible for it not to be experimentally falsifiable.

Right. The claim of the existence of an invisible dragon in one's
garage is often compared to the claim of the existence of God in
alt.atheism; it's an insider thing. The idea is that the dragon is not
only invisible, but also insubstantial, and, in general, behaves
exactly as if it weren't there.
I reject this ontological claim because it does not extend or
strengthen my present web of patterns in any way. It does not violate
the non-contradiction principle, but it does violate both the
simplicity and the good-fit principles. Incidentally, the same argument
can be made for rejecting the existence of God, if defined only in
relation to physical existence.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- Only I am conscious and every other person is a zombie (false)

I am not saying that you are wrong, but how can you claim this is
false?

It would violate the simplicity principle. If I were to integrate this
ontological claim in my web of patterns it would complicate things
without adding any strength or breadth to it.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- The physical universe existed before anybody was around to think
about it (true)

Again how can you say this is false, and does it include the
conception of God, or is 'anybody' just in regards to humans?

Again, my sloppy writing. I meant other persons and not God. Here is
how I judge this claim: Interconnectedness abhors discontinuity. To
assume that the physical universe came into existence in all its
glorious complexity at the very instant the first person started
observing it is a monstrous discontinuity as compared to the ordinary
view that the physical universe started at the big bang and slowly
evolved stable matter, planets, chemistry and biology.
Now, you may think that my reasoning sounds like subjective taste.
Please observe that all reasoning is based on testing to see what works
and what doesn't in one's subject matter. Our subject matter here is a
map-like web of mental patterns and how it can best be extended or
strengthened.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- Everybody has the same subjective sense of redness (true, i.e. the
inverted spectrum hypothesis is wrong)

Just out of interest, how do you know this is true, why can what I see
as red, not be swapped with what you see as green for example?

I think by now the gist of the methodology is clear. Assuming that
others see an inverted spectrum complicates matters without adding
nothing of value to our web of patterns.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- The earth was created 6009 years ago including the much more ancient
looking fossils (false)

How do you evaluate such a statement?

Interconnectedness abhors discontinuities.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- We all exist within a computer simulation (false)

Again, how do you evaluate such a statement?

Again, unnecessary complication.
In proposing a definition of existence and a methodology for deciding
ontological claims that are not experimentally falsifiable, I think
that I am not really adding something new but rather *illustrating*
what we have always being doing anyway when thinking about existence.
For example I think that most people would instinctively agree with all
my judgments above up to now. I only hope to have shown why we all
agree. We can now venture into deeper waters. My ultimate goal is to
posit the much debated existence of God in a meaningful context in
which agreement can be reached.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- We need a brain, or some comparable physical process, to be conscious
(false)

While I believe you to be correct, how did you evaluate this statement?

Very very simply, because I know all there is to know about my
consciousness long before having detected the brain-pattern. So the
former cannot require the latter.
In the past I have had trouble elucidating this point, so I wonder if I
may be luckier this time after having projected the whole process of
learning about existence into the geometric process of extending a
jigsaw puzzle-like game of interlocking individual patterns.
Incidentally, I am happy you already agreed with that last example -
I had ordered the examples from easiest to hardest as it were, and this
last claim is quite unpopular. There are other examples I found to be
even harder to "fit" than the God pattern (or maybe depend on the
previous realization of that pattern), but I prudently left them out of
the original post. These include the continuity of consciousness after
death, and, hardest of all, the question of who (besides humans and
God) is conscious.
.

User: "someone4"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	03 Oct 2005 05:05:19 AM

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

Examples of such claims that are not experimentally falsifiable, but
can be evaluated nonetheless are:

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- 1618 invisible dragons live in my garage (false)

someone4 wrote:

I think your 1618 invisible dragons would have to be more than
invisible for it not to be experimentally falsifiable.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- Only I am conscious and every other person is a zombie (false)

someone4 wrote:

I am not saying that you are wrong, but how can you claim this is
false?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

It would violate the simplicity principle. If I were to integrate this
ontological claim in my web of patterns it would complicate things
without adding any strength or breadth to it.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- The physical universe existed before anybody was around to think
about it (true)

someone4 wrote:

Again how can you say this is false, and does it include the
conception of God, or is 'anybody' just in regards to humans?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- Everybody has the same subjective sense of redness (true, i.e. the
inverted spectrum hypothesis is wrong)

someone4 wrote:

Just out of interest, how do you know this is true, why can what I see
as red, not be swapped with what you see as green for example?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

I think by now the gist of the methodology is clear. Assuming that
others see an inverted spectrum complicates matters without adding
nothing of value to our web of patterns.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- The earth was created 6009 years ago including the much more ancient
looking fossils (false)

someone4 wrote:

How do you evaluate such a statement?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

Interconnectedness abhors discontinuities.

It could be argued though, that if God created the universe there must
be a start somewhere. Many, given the evidence would place creation
back at the 'Big Bang', after all, there is scientific evidence
supporting the 'Big Bang', and the universe does indeed appear old.
This does indeed seem to conflict with even the essence of what we are
told in Genesis.
Though we are aware, and awareness has no shape, size or coordinates
within the physical plane, so it makes sense to think of a dimension of
awareness (the spiritual plane). With awareness we seem to have free
will, i.e. we are a causal agent within the world.
The laws of nature however seem to be deterministic. There appears to
be causes for the effects that we see.
If God created the universe, God also created the laws of nature.
There is then the question of why? Why did God create the universe, and
place souls (aware entities within it)?
One answer might be that it is a game, between God, and the Devil, to
see which it is better to be, selfless or selfish.
Anyway, getting to the point, given the initial state and the laws that
govern the universe (if indeed they are deterministic) all future
states would be determined until souls were placed into the game.
Therefore if you were God, would you sit around for billions of years
watching the board set itself up, or would you simply set up the board,
in the state it was determined to be, before souls were introduced?
The point being, is that if the board was set up in the state it was
determined to be, before souls were introduced, it would fit in with
all scientific evidence (and appear old), and also the essence of what
was said in Genesis (the universe is in a true sense young). This
conception also gives a purpose to our existence (to choose between
selflessness and selfishness).
Anyway, not sure if what I have written makes sense to you, but I would
appeal to points 2 (the conception gives purpose to our existence, and
makes sense with regards to man made problems the world) and 3 (in that
if fits both the scientific evidence, and the essence of Genesis).
I'm not expecting you to agree with the conception by the way, I am
suggesting though that it is not a straight forward evaluation.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- We all exist within a computer simulation (false)

someone4 wrote:

Again, how do you evaluate such a statement?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- We need a brain, or some comparable physical process, to be conscious
(false)

someone4 wrote:

While I believe you to be correct, how did you evaluate this statement?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

I'll be looking out for your posts. I wish you all the best with your
endeavour,
Glenn
.

User: "Dianelos Georgoudis"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	04 Oct 2005 10:31:53 PM

someone4 wrote:

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

[big snip]

- The earth was created 6009 years ago including the much more ancient
looking fossils (false)

someone4 wrote:

How do you evaluate such a statement?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

Interconnectedness abhors discontinuities.

Well, not really. This is not terribly relevant, but as far as we know
the physical universe is fundamentally not deterministic. It only
*seems* to be deterministic on the level of the big objects (such as
stones) we interact with in our daily lives. Modern physics teaches
that the results of any experiment are always probabilistic, but with
larger sizes the expected outcome will happen with almost (but not
quite) absolute certainty. For example, if you let a stone free in the
air in front of you it's not quite correct to say that it is going to
fall; to be exact one should say that it will fall with extremely high
probability. (If the physical universe were deterministic the stone
would always fall.) There is an ongoing discussion about these matters
in the thread "Omniscience and free will" in alt.philosophy.

If God created the universe, God also created the laws of nature.

There is then the question of why? Why did God create the universe, and
place souls (aware entities within it)?

In my previous posts I tried to show that everything we know about
existence represents the discovery of stable patterns (we call
existents) in our experience and how these patterns interrelate. I
compared this to playing a game of jigsaw puzzle where each piece is an
existent, and I explained that learning consists in both detecting a
pattern and detecting how it interrelates with our previously
constructed web of patterns. Also, patterns can be found within
patterns and even within the effective methodologies of connecting
patterns (of course, this goes far beyond the analogy of a jigsaw where
we can at most have two levels of patterns: the pieces we connect and
the picture we get after interconnecting them).
Now, I claim that all we can know about existence is discovered through
this process. Observe that the process is orderly, i.e. there is some
kind of sequence in that process and one can't make wild jumps in it.
For example one may have heard other people speak of the deepest and
most overarching pattern of all, God, but if one doesn't arrive at this
pattern oneself then one does not really understand it and therefore
all attempts to think about it are a haphazard process of trying to
make sense of other peoples' words. Even worse, some people who have
not detected the God pattern themselves may nevertheless express ideas
about God, which are based on words by an even more remote party.
That's, I think, why there is so much confusion when one discusses God
in rational terms. (Reason, by the way, is not the only path to become
aware of God, but the path of reason, or if you prefer the
philosophical path, is the one we discuss here.) Incidentally, this
type of thing happens not only in spiritual discussions (i.e.
discussions about patterns that cover consciousness too), as many
people argue about physics based only on hearsay too.
I am saying all this, because it seems to me that before even
discussing the deepest pattern (God), we should fist be quite clear
about more superficial patterns, such as the physical universe and how
it relates to us. So, even though I think I understand your question
above "Why did God create the universe, and place souls (aware
entities) within in?" I think that the question itself has some
problems that need clarifying first in order to avoid confusion. By
soul or "aware entity" you mean consciousness, but why would you say
that our consciousness is placed *within* the physical universe? Our
path towards knowledge starts (and is contingent on) our consciousness;
and the existence of the physical universe is one of the first patterns
we discover in what we are consciousness about. So it is clear that the
physical universe is placed within our consciousness - and not the
other way around. This much should be completely obvious: that the
physical world exists in our consciousness and not our consciousness in
the physical world. And this not because of some philosophical
argumentation, but because of the very condition of our existence.
Also your question above gratuitously introduces the idea of creator
God; it's not necessary to have discovered the God pattern before
wondering why - what connects - what is the meaning - of the
physical world existing in our consciousness. In fact this is a very
important question because it tries to make the first tentative
connection between what we know about what we are conscious about (i.e.
the physical world) with what we know about our consciousness itself
(the quality of its awareness and interaction with the physical world).
So this question is the first step in the quest of trying to find if
there is this overarching explanatory principle called God.
So I suggest that a cleaner form of your question is this: Why does the
physical world exist in our consciousness?
To try to answer this question (or in other words to try to find a
deeper pattern that connects our consciousness with the physical
universe it experiences) let us first assume that the physical universe
did *not* exist in our consciousness, i.e. that we weren't conscious of
the physical universe. It seems clear that this state of life would be
one of utter stupidity: being conscious without something to be
conscious about. Maybe after a very long time one might become aware of
oneself (even though I doubt it), but even then one would stay for ever
contemplating one's unchanging self. So it seems quite clear that what
the presence of the physical universe in our consciousness makes
possible is to learn; or in other words to make possible the start of
our path towards knowledge described in the previous posts.
So, it is learning (i.e. the possibility to attain knowledge) that
explains the presence of the physical universe in our consciousness. Of
course this is a very tentative connection. The next obvious question
would be: To learn what? This is a pregnant question. If you would only
consider the physical world itself the answer might be: "to learn
physics", but if you consider the whole of your experience of life the
question becomes much more interesting. If you think about how it is to
be alive, all the pain and joy, all the doubts and all the facts, the
presence of things and the presence of people - the whole enchilada -
I think you will come to the conclusion that what the whole of our
experience is uniquely efficient for is learning virtue. Here I am
omitting quite some argumentation that I think cements this conclusion;
let me know if you would like me to elaborate.
So I suggest that the answer to the question "Why does the physical
universe exist in our consciousness?" is "In order that we learn
virtue". I claim that one can come to this conclusion without having
discovered the God pattern, in other words while being an agnostic to
the question the existence of God. On the other hand, as you can
imagine, when one does find the God pattern, this answer plays a role
for discovering first that God has intentionality (i.e. is a
consciousness) and then that God is good.

One answer might be that it is a game, between God, and the Devil, to
see which it is better to be, selfless or selfish.

Well, I hope I shall not disappoint you or make you suspicious, but I
have not found any Devil pattern. The truth I have found is completely
free of fundamental evil as it were. From the way that Devil concept is
used I gather it rather means the absence of a pattern.

Anyway, getting to the point, given the initial state and the laws that
govern the universe (if indeed they are deterministic) all future
states would be determined until souls were placed into the game.
Therefore if you were God, would you sit around for billions of years
watching the board set itself up, or would you simply set up the board,
in the state it was determined to be, before souls were introduced?

The point being, is that if the board was set up in the state it was
determined to be, before souls were introduced, it would fit in with
all scientific evidence (and appear old), and also the essence of what
was said in Genesis (the universe is in a true sense young). This
conception also gives a purpose to our existence (to choose between
selflessness and selfishness).

Well, I don't understand why comparing what we today know with the
Genesis account is so important. Books form part of what we experience,
and they often represent knowledge discovered by other people - so
they are quite useful for learning. But if you are interested to learn
in a book about the origins of the physical universe then the Genesis
account is surely not the best place to look for that knowledge. At
least not if you follow your reason - which is our chosen path in
this thread. Incidentally, it is good to note that Christianity affirms
that reason cannot contradict spiritual truth (by "spiritual truth" I
understand all patterns close or implied in the concept of God).

Anyway, not sure if what I have written makes sense to you, but I would
appeal to points 2 (the conception gives purpose to our existence, and
makes sense with regards to man made problems the world) and 3 (in that
if fits both the scientific evidence, and the essence of Genesis).

I'm not expecting you to agree with the conception by the way, I am
suggesting though that it is not a straight forward evaluation.

Well, I think it is. I claim there is a straightforward path between
the whole of our experience and the deepest spiritual truths.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- We all exist within a computer simulation (false)

someone4 wrote:

Again, how do you evaluate such a statement?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

Again, unnecessary complication.

In proposing a definition of existence and a methodology for deciding
ontological claims that are not experimentally falsifiable, I think
that I am not really adding something new but rather *illustrating*
what we have always being doing anyway when thinking about existence.
For example I think that most people would instinctively agree with all
my judgments above up to now. I only hope to have shown why we all
agree. We can now venture into deeper waters. My ultimate goal is to
posit the much debated existence of God in a meaningful context in
which agreement can be reached.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- We need a brain, or some comparable physical process, to be conscious
(false)

someone4 wrote:

While I believe you to be correct, how did you evaluate this statement?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

Very very simply, because I know all there is to know about my
consciousness long before having detected the brain-pattern. So the
former cannot require the latter.

In the past I have had trouble elucidating this point, so I wonder if I
may be luckier this time after having projected the whole process of
learning about existence into the geometric process of extending a
jigsaw puzzle-like game of interlocking individual patterns.

Incidentally, I am happy you already agreed with that last example -
I had ordered the examples from easiest to hardest as it were, and this
last claim is quite unpopular. There are other examples I found to be
even harder to "fit" than the God pattern (or maybe depend on the
previous realization of that pattern), but I prudently left them out of
the original post. These include the continuity of consciousness after
death, and, hardest of all, the question of who (besides humans and
God) is conscious.

I'll be looking out for your posts. I wish you all the best with your
endeavour,

My endeavor is to show that "God exists" is a reasonable statement,
indeed a statement that carries a clear and unique meaning. Also to
show that as any other existent, the existence of God can and must be
based on explaining our experience of life. Finally to show kind of a
roadmap of how our everyday experience of life can be connected to the
existence of God, and also to the properties of God. What motivates
this endeavor is my frustration with the current state of the debate
between atheism and theism which puts in evidence the absence of any
common ground for reasonable discussion.
Nevertheless I expect this endeavor to be quite unpopular. On the
atheistic side because it has almost become an article of faith that
religion cannot be an enterprise of reason, and on the theistic side
because recently and very unfortunately the idea has taken hold in many
parts that God's revelation is to be found in the Bible. In fact, and
quite trivially, God's revelation is to be found in the whole of our
experience, and the Bible is a very small part of that experience.
Also, it seems to me, that anybody who values reason must come to the
conclusion that many parts of the Old Testament, which forms the
biggest part of the Bible, are really primitive (not to say
mythological) accounts, motivated more by the desire of justifying
Jewish nation building than the desire to search for truth. Most (if
not all) peoples in the past created such mythological accounts to
explain their roots and strengthen their cohesion, and it is a very
unfortunate accident of Western civilization that the Old Testament has
been raised to a status far beyond its reality.
.

User: "someone4"
Title: Re: Ontology in the Age of Science [was: Free will is of a hollow debate]	05 Oct 2005 06:22:51 AM

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

[big snip]

- The earth was created 6009 years ago including the much more ancient
looking fossils (false)

someone4 wrote:

How do you evaluate such a statement?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

Interconnectedness abhors discontinuities.

someone4 wrote:

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

Bohmian mechanics gives a deterministic description which explains all
phenomena governed by nonrelativistic statistical mechanics. That the
theory exists is proof that determinism can exist even at the quantum
level, and all the assurances that we were given that a deterministic
explanation was impossible were false.
Here is a link if you are interested
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/ , and there is another well
written essay by Jean Bricmont
http://www.fyma.ucl.ac.be/files/Turin.pdf regarding the issue.
That does not mean that we will ever be able to predict those events
however, as this would be limited by our ability as humans.
"Omniscience and free will" sounds different to what I am saying, it
sounds like it is going down the lines of if God is omniscient then
wouldn't it know what we are going to do etc, therefore have we really
got free will etc. In the conception I put forward, I would claim that
God does not know what we will do, though a multiverse of possibilities
could be considered.

someone4 wrote:

If God created the universe, God also created the laws of nature.
There is then the question of why? Why did God create the universe, and
place souls (aware entities within it)?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

That seems reasonable.
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

I am saying all this, because it seems to me that before even
discussing the deepest pattern (God), we should fist be quite clear
about more superficial patterns, such as the physical universe and how
it relates to us. So, even though I think I understand your question
above "Why did God create the universe, and place souls (aware
entities) within in?" I think that the question itself has some
problems that need clarifying first in order to avoid confusion. By
soul or "aware entity" you mean consciousness, but why would you say
that our consciousness is placed *within* the physical universe? Our
path towards knowledge starts (and is contingent on) our consciousness;
and the existence of the physical universe is one of the first patterns
we discover in what we are consciousness about. So it is clear that the
physical universe is placed within our consciousness - and not the
other way around. This much should be completely obvious: that the
physical world exists in our consciousness and not our consciousness in
the physical world. And this not because of some philosophical
argumentation, but because of the very condition of our existence.

I have no problem with that conception, though it does seem that there
is a persistant physical universe that is presented to all of us. So I
used the conception of our consciousness being placed within the
physical universe, in the same sense as players in a multiplayer
virtual reality game being within the game.
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

Also your question above gratuitously introduces the idea of creator
God; it's not necessary to have discovered the God pattern before
wondering why - what connects - what is the meaning - of the
physical world existing in our consciousness. In fact this is a very
important question because it tries to make the first tentative
connection between what we know about what we are conscious about (i.e.
the physical world) with what we know about our consciousness itself
(the quality of its awareness and interaction with the physical world).
So this question is the first step in the quest of trying to find if
there is this overarching explanatory principle called God.
So I suggest that a cleaner form of your question is this: Why does the
physical world exist in our consciousness?

Yes that does seem a cleaner form of the question.
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

To try to answer this question (or in other words to try to find a
deeper pattern that connects our consciousness with the physical
universe it experiences) let us first assume that the physical universe
did *not* exist in our consciousness, i.e. that we weren't conscious of
the physical universe. It seems clear that this state of life would be
one of utter stupidity: being conscious without something to be
conscious about. Maybe after a very long time one might become aware of
oneself (even though I doubt it), but even then one would stay for ever
contemplating one's unchanging self. So it seems quite clear that what
the presence of the physical universe in our consciousness makes
possible is to learn; or in other words to make possible the start of
our path towards knowledge described in the previous posts.
So, it is learning (i.e. the possibility to attain knowledge) that
explains the presence of the physical universe in our consciousness. Of
course this is a very tentative connection. The next obvious question
would be: To learn what? This is a pregnant question. If you would only
consider the physical world itself the answer might be: "to learn
physics", but if you consider the whole of your experience of life the
question becomes much more interesting. If you think about how it is to
be alive, all the pain and joy, all the doubts and all the facts, the
presence of things and the presence of people - the whole enchilada -
I think you will come to the conclusion that what the whole of our
experience is uniquely efficient for is learning virtue. Here I am
omitting quite some argumentation that I think cements this conclusion;
let me know if you would like me to elaborate.
So I suggest that the answer to the question "Why does the physical
universe exist in our consciousness?" is "In order that we learn
virtue". I claim that one can come to this conclusion without having
discovered the God pattern, in other words while being an agnostic to
the question the existence of God. On the other hand, as you can
imagine, when one does find the God pattern, this answer plays a role
for discovering first that God has intentionality (i.e. is a
consciousness) and then that God is good.

I can understand what you are saying, but it relies on your assumption
that the reason for having the physical plane presented to us is to
learn virtue. I obviously have a different conception in that it is to
choose between being selfless or selfish, which I think are the
essential differences between good and evil. The conceptions might not
appear that different, as by understanding the wisdom of following the
selfless path, virtue will have been learnt. The subtle difference is
that if the physical plane were presented to us purely to learn virtue,
it doesn't seem to work too well for a lot of people and some don't
seem to get a lesson, for example, a child murdered at a young age.
This can be explained in my conception though as it being a game
between the Selfless One and the Selfish One, the two winds of
inspiration.

someone4 wrote:

One answer might be that it is a game, between God, and the Devil, to
see which it is better to be, selfless or selfish.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

It doesn't disappoint me, nor am I suspicious of you, you seem to be
following your conception honestly. I do however disagree with you that
there isn't any Devil pattern. The Devil I would simply call the
Selfish One, and I do see a pattern of selfishness in the world, from
the "greed is good" conception in the late 20th century, to the failure
of some parties to sign up to the Kyoto agreement, the idealisation of
being a gangster, our treatment of animals, the list goes on and on.
All the man made problems of the world have selfish inspiration at
their root. Even the conception that the universe is deterministic if
we can or ever hope to determine it, which was used to disguise the
fact, that scientific discovery has always pointed towards there being
causes for effects, by confusing our ability to predict with underlying
determinism. It was a selfish perspective to look at it from.

someone4 wrote:

Anyway, getting to the point, given the initial state and the laws that
govern the universe (if indeed they are deterministic) all future
states would be determined until souls were placed into the game.
Therefore if you were God, would you sit around for billions of years
watching the board set itself up, or would you simply set up the board,
in the state it was determined to be, before souls were introduced?
The point being, is that if the board was set up in the state it was
determined to be, before souls were introduced, it would fit in with
all scientific evidence (and appear old), and also the essence of what
was said in Genesis (the universe is in a true sense young). This
conception also gives a purpose to our existence (to choose between
selflessness and selfishness).

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

It is not important, it just so happens that the conception does unite
the essence of what is said in Genesis and scientific evidence. If the
Bible were looked at as the history of the two winds of inspiration
written by man, then we would only look for the essence of what was
being said, and could evaluate it accordingly. This is not a new
conception The Book of Tao (the selfless path) written by the Old Man
says:
The prophets are the flowering of Tao
And the origin of folly.
Therefore the noble man dwells in the heavy (base),
And not in the thinning (end).
He dwells in the fruit,
And not in the flowering (expression).
Therefore he rejects the one and accepts the other.
( If you are interested there is a good translation by Lin Yutang
http://terebess.hu/english/tao/yutang.html , the only criticism I have
of it is that where it says unkind, it would make more sense to me if
it said unbiased, though I haven't looked at the original chinese so I
don't know whether this is a valid change).

someone4 wrote:

Anyway, not sure if what I have written makes sense to you, but I would
appeal to points 2 (the conception gives purpose to our existence, and
makes sense with regards to man made problems the world) and 3 (in that
if fits both the scientific evidence, and the essence of Genesis).
I'm not expecting you to agree with the conception by the way, I am
suggesting though that it is not a straight forward evaluation.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

Well, I think it is. I claim there is a straightforward path between
the whole of our experience and the deepest spiritual truths.

I'm not saying there isn't, we just maybe disagree on what that path
is. I see a pattern of selflessness and selfishness, which I equate to
good and evil, and you don't. Thus our experience seems to lead us to
different spiritual truths.

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- We all exist within a computer simulation (false)

someone4 wrote:

Again, how do you evaluate such a statement?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

- We need a brain, or some comparable physical process, to be conscious
(false)

someone4 wrote:

While I believe you to be correct, how did you evaluate this statement?

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

someone4 wrote:

I'll be looking out for your posts. I wish you all the best with your
endeavour,

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote: