Which is less insane for you: eliminativism (eliminative materialism) or panpsychism? Some say that eliminativism is the most consistent and proper materialism.

As to matter, it could not create itself; therefore, it emanated from an immaterial existent. — val p miranda

That would no longer be materialism. I wanted to start as a working hypothesis merely from materialism, which can represent in the end actually a wrong view.

@Bartricks It must also be said that panpsychist discussion and reasoning is still in an early stage of development. Therefore, there may be some truth in your detailed objections for the time being. I was only concerned with the basic idea.

I am an idealist. So I think everything that exists is either a mind or a state of mind. — Bartricks

Now I understand you better. You reject materialism in general. And if you are not argumentatively convinced by the rescue attempt of materialism with the help of panpsychism, then that is completely philosophically fine.

As an idealist, you must consider a materialism without panpsychism even more absurd and insane, no?

How would a panpsychist explain the incredibe fragility of our consciousness? — hypericin

Good question. I don't know. I recommend you google Philip Goff, who does a good job of explaining panpsychism. I was just concerned with the basic idea without problematic details.

Between the non-living and the living there also seems to be an infinite gap. Panpsychism is a modern vitalism. — hypericin

Not sure about your first sentence. That's why I had quoted Nietzsche in my original post:

"Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is only a form of what is dead, and a very rare form." (Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science: 109 Let us beware. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

The linguistic distinction between alive and dead could prove to be questionable. Things are rather neither alive nor dead. These features are possibly only human attributions. On the other hand, I could consider all things as dead or all as alive.

The latter is called hylozoism, according to which matter is alive in a certain way. The question is: Is vitalism merely a hylozoism or merely a panpsychism or both?

To your second sentence: I think that panpsychism need not be associated with vitalism. It is only about the sober and neutral attribution of conscious experience to material entities.

Many thanks. :) — Manuel

Thank you for the appreciation. My intention was to present Mainländer as a legitimate possibility of thought, because he is completely disregarded by academic philosophy and is regarded merely as a philosophical curiosity that is not to be taken seriously.

The first is the fact that material objects do not appear to be in the business of having conscious states. It is prima facie implausible that minds have shapes, or thoughts locations. — Bartricks

To the first sentence. In terms of cultural history, people were initially animists. Therefore, one cannot say that panpsychism is counter-intuitive. Material objects indeed appeared to be in business of having consciousness.

To the second sentence:

I must look at material objects as I look at other people. I assume that another person also has conscious states like me. However, I cannot really make out a place of consciousness, but I assume that the other has consciousness. I can do the same with material objects. I assume consciousness to them, although I cannot find a direct location for it.

For supposing that all material entities have conscious properties does precisely nothing to overcome the intuition that no material thing has them. — Bartricks

Panpsychists want a change in our intuition. It is not impossible that something like this can happen culturally.

The other problem is the problem of getting out what you haven't put in. If conscious properties are thought to emerge from material objects, then one might think that this cannot be unless the material objects already have such properties, for otherwise have a kind of alchemy.

Panpyschism would solve that problem - if problem it be - becuase now everything has conscious properties and so nothing has been gotten out that wasn't there in the first place. — Bartricks

That is the point I am making in my response to you above.

It solves it at the cost of insanity, of course: for it is plainly absurd to suppose that every material thing has conscious states. — Bartricks

One might say that this is just an attitude or stance. This is perfectly fine. But your mindset does not have to be unchangeable within you.

But note that this would presumably apply to all manner of other properties associated with having consciousness, such as the property of being morally responsible. I mean, that property - the property of being deserving of blame and praise - can surely no more 'emerge' than consciousness can. So it would seem that a well motivated and consistent panpyschist will have to hold that everything is morally responsible. When Basic Fawlty thrashed his car for breaking down, he was giving it its just deserts, it would seem. — Bartricks

The panpsychist would say that consciousness has more to do with experience. Intentionality, which makes the feeling of moral responsibility possible, would be something which comes along somewhat later. Your remarks here are somewhat unfair and uncharitable to panpsychism. The panpsychists see it more differentiated.

As for the panpsychism, he thinks that materialists have to consider it a real possibility, on pains that if you reject such a view, you are committed to the view that there is "radical" or "brute" emergence in nature, meaning some wholly new property arises which was not at all apparent in its constituent parts. — Manuel

This is exactly what I want to say: "radical" or "brute" emergence in nature is prima facie a theoretical metaphysical or epistemic problem. Although one can simply accept such things, one must nevertheless acknowledge their mysteriousness, that is, their problematic nature.

EDIT: I forgot to ask are you the same spirit-salamander from Mainländer's reddit page? — Manuel

Yes, I am the same

I still do not see what problem it solves.

If the 'problem'is something to do with material entities having conscious states, then how does assuming that material entities have conscious states solve that problem?

It doesn't make sense. — Bartricks

I can't explain it much better than that. Maybe I can bring the problem closer to you by asking you when you believe that consciousness in the sense of feeling or perception or mood experience appeared for the first time in the evolutionary history or natural history of the world.

I take it that you assume such a unique moment of the emergence of consciousness experience. Not to forget, we remain within the framework of materialism.

A non-panpsychistic materialist must think: There was nothing comparable with feelings, drives, moods and perceptions (by these I understand consciousness) in natural history for a very long time, and then suddenly such things appeared.

Anything that appears suddenly and erratically is in itself a problem. But between the non-conscious and the conscious there seems to be an infinite gap.

But because we assume materialism as a precondition, the appearance of consciousness cannot have fallen from "the sky".

Basically, it's simple logic. If the materialist defines matter as in every sense lacking subjective experience and as the only thing existing, but believes that at least with us humans there is subjective experience in whatever sense, then we have a problem.

It is the consciousness problem, not the mind-body problem. If I believe in materialism, then I assume that I myself am a complex matter entity that has become evolutionary. When I trace my evolution ontogenetically and phylogenetically, I arrive at some crude organic and inorganic stuff. If I understand this stuff in every respect as without consciousness, then I must nevertheless think about how I myself came to have consciousness. After all, it did not fall from the sky. It is philosophically elegant to assume consciousness already in that crude stuff. One must assume so also no sudden inexplicable jumps of consciousness.

@tim wood @TonesInDeepFreeze @SophistiCat @TheMadFool

Here again is a clarification to my original post.

I was first concerned with an ideal scenario for the dice game. This scenario has to be imagined in heaven, so to speak, where angels gamble. Maybe a Platonic-Pythagorean heaven with pure intellects gambling. Said heaven would be a single actual world in which pure harmony would prevail in the arrangement of everything and pure justice in the distribution of everything. The law of probability would be an infallible law here. The 1/6 probability for each individual die roll becomes a 1/6 surety. For there are no interfering factors and no manipulation in this heaven and no side of the dice would have any advantage in itself independent of the law of probability, which would be a law of certainty in heaven. If an angel now rolls the dice and the 6 appears, then everyone knows that in the next 5 rolls no more 6 will come. The only surprise for the angels, which there must be if it is to be a game of chance, would be that on the second roll they absolutely cannot tell whether the second roll will be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And if the second roll is a 5, then you know you don't have to bet on the 5 and 6 on the third roll. The 6 sixth would be clear. In heaven it would not be so exciting. After the 6th roll, it starts all over again and the greatest possible angelic tension sets in, that is, you can't tell if the 1,2,3,4,5,6 would come on the roll. The probability or surety would be 1/6 again. It would be maintained even with constantly changing gamblers. The gambler's fallacy would not be a fallacy here. And maybe there is a fair God behind all this, who sets it all up so deliberately. The angels could not perceive their God and His intentions, they might even be agnostic about His existence.

Now we come to hell and its dice-playing demons and devils. The law of probability here would not only not be a law of surety, but rather a law of improbability or unsurety in every respect. It would be just a world of chaos and disharmony and injustice of all distribution of anything. The 1/6 says nothing here when rolling the dice and is simply based on self-deception. It could be here that for all eternity only the 6 is always rolled or that it never appears for all times. In the former case the probability for 6 would be 100%, in the latter 0%. A superordinate probability calculation, i.e. a meta-probability, would not help here either. Perhaps one could assume that all devils want to influence the dice fall to the disadvantage of all other devils by means of psychokinesis. And now and then Lucifer as ruler will intervene absolutely arbitrarily likewise to the advantage or disadvantage of one or the other.

Now to my original OP question.If our world were more like the heaven I described, the gambler's fallacy would not be an absolute fallacy. In a merely practical or pragmatic sense it would be a fallacy, but not in a theoretical one. This would only be the case in hell.

Ultimately, to better understand probability in our world, you have to better understand the world.
If there is only one world, which is completely determined, then the probability is only a relative value. If the many worlds interpretation corresponds to the truth, then the probability seems to me to be absolute. With every roll of the dice, 5 new real worlds would then begin to exist.

It's not mathematically correct and there's no reason to think it's empirically correct. In an empirical situation, if you suspect that one side of the coin has an advantage, then after a side comes up, one would expect that the probability of it coming up next is higher not lower. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Okay, I've realized that I'm wrong here. Thank you very much for all your comments.

That is an expectation but it is not ensured. — TonesInDeepFreeze

This is undoubtedly true for humans, I have now come to realize that as well. But how would it like with Laplace's Demon? From his point of view?

If you thought probability is meaningless, wouldn't you be just as happy if the doctor told you that the chance of surgery survival is 1% as if he told you it was 90%? — TonesInDeepFreeze

Yes I would, nevertheless the connection of the mathematical probability calculation with reality still seems strange to me. At least we seem to assume some at least semi-fixed patterns of events in the world. From these patterns we then generate probabilities.

In the case of the dice, one would say that it is quite evenly shaped, without one side having more weight than another. And one would say that when you roll the dice, you always make a different roll. And if I now roll the dice 600 times, it is very likely that an approximate uniform distribution will result. This must be due to the laws of nature and the absence of any attempt to influence the dice. The 1/6 seem to be the mathematical expression for it (laws of nature and the absence of the manipulation).

If there is nothing beyond, why wouldn't it come back to its beginning? — noname

What would that look like exactly?

Probability is a measure of uncertainty. Where you can make a perfectly reliable prediction, you have no need of probability. — SophistiCat

How would you philosophically explain and describe the probability 1/6 in the dice rolls. What is the 1 here, what is the 6 and what / and how do they relate to the real world?
I have come to the conclusion that it is all very baffling and perplexing because you get to questions of chance and determination.

Albert Einstein's most famous quotes is, "God does not play dice". Is this to say that there are basically no probabilities in the world. And that our probability formula is empty and meaningless. Because as was said here, with the dice in infinite duration a 6 could never come.

But if you start off assuming that the probability of each possible outcome in a single trial is 1/6 and then end up concluding that the probability of a particular outcome in the next trial is more than 1/6, then you have contradicted yourself. — SophistiCat

Why? I actually wanted to say that the probabilities after the first throw change steadily and minimally. So if I rolled 6 on the first roll, the probability of a 6 appearing again on the second roll would be minimally lower. Lower in the sense of something like 0.0000000000000000000001. This is not meant to be mathematically correct.

So real coin flips are nowhere close to what you think perfect coin flips ought to be. In fact, perfect coin flips would have to be manipulated to produce an alternating sequence: heads, tails, heads, tails, etc. Anything else would violate your criteria of perfection. — SophistiCat

You are right, the perfect toss would always produce the same result.
This perfect throw could be accomplished also only by a presupposed God.
My imaginary god would arrange it in such a way that with two coin tosses in each toss case once head and once tail appears.

There is no upper limit on how long a streak can be. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Any long streak of luck would always be thought of in the context of a larger sequence of rolls. Maybe I roll the 6 a thousand times in a row, but in that context, which is perhaps only a theoretical one, the 6 may not occur again for the next thousand rolls. However, it seems to me that one must always add an imaginary closed overall context to every throw, in which all numbers are evenly distributed.

Purely mathematical probability is not taken necessarily to be matched every time by real world outcomes. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I had tried to think about the ontology or metaphysics or reality behind this probability thing, which can be described clearly mathematically, about which you have a real understanding, as I see. One approach to make this 1/6 probability clear for each number in the roll of the dice would be to think that six possible worlds, or only theoretical worlds, are thought of in each roll. We just don't know which world we are in during the roll of the dice. In the world where the 1 appears, in the one with the 2 and so on? If finally the 6 comes, we know that we "are" in world with the 6. I could imagine it in such a way too. Because it would explain the "1/6" philosophically.

Take the simplest example of a coin toss. The chance of heads is 1/2. But that does not entail that heads comes up exactly 50% in every experiment. — TonesInDeepFreeze

What would actually be, if the experimental external conditions of the tossing machine and coin always remain exactly the same? Only one side of the coin would appear, let's say heads. The perfect coin toss would be one-sided. Let's find another setting of the machine, which only leads to always bring out the other side, number. Now we could set the machine so that it always alternates the conditions. First like this, then like that, and so on. Surely here we could say that there is a 50% probability? Since we are not gods, we would have to deal with probabilities in spite of the machine set up.

(Your understanding of probability is way off though. — SophistiCat

Let's assume 600 rolls. What would be the most probable result of an ideally rolled ideal dice? An absolutely even distribution? So 100 times the 1, 100 times the 2, 100 times the 3 and so on to 100 times the 6? Or 0 times the 1, 200 times the 2, 50 times the 3, 150 times the 4 and so on until the sum is 600?

I would say that the ideal dice must give an absolutely even distribution. If it were a little less ideal, you might have 99 times the 1, 101 times the 2.... . In other words, small unevenness. For example, the completely anti-ideal die would give 600 times 5, and all the others 0. The absolutely anti-ideal dice would have an infallible tendency to exclusively one number.

This means that probability is not based on complete chance, but on strict laws of probability. That is, if I have already rolled the 3 100 times in a row, the 3 should not occur again according to the ideal rolled ideal die. The probability in this case would be 0. The chance would consist in the fact that one cannot know which of the other numbers occur, but the probability law forbids that the 3 occurs again. — spirit-salamander

Is this way off? You can try it yourself at home. Roll the dice 600 times and write down the results. There will be an approximately even distribution. Now my argument was about a dice as a thought thing, the perfect dice rolled perfectly. The distribution should be perfectly even. If this were not the case, one would have to conclude that there was manipulation involved.

The idea that the outcomes of a coin-toss will "balance" out i.e. you'll get an equal number of heads and tails is based on infinity. — TheMadFool

I find the concept of infinity problematic with the idea of probability. The idea is that at infinity all the numbers on a die have fallen equally. But the infinity knows no completion. It goes on and on. Therefore it would generate a bogus argument.

In other words, yes the gambler is correct in expecting a tails after a streak of heads but what he can't know is when his streak will end. — TheMadFool

The gambler's mistake, in my opinion, is that the probability of tails coming after a series of heads implies only a minimal increase in probability. He erroneously considers it to be very high. So if there is a long series of heads, the chance of tails is possibly only minimally increased. But nevertheless increased, in which the player is right. But for him not sufficiently increased to beat the bank.

A probability is not a surety of what will happen. A probability of 1/6 of the occurrence of the six doesn't ensure that the six will occur within 6 rolls. — TonesInDeepFreeze

But probability cannot completely exclude surety. After all, the surety consists in a certain probability. Let's take the 1/6 probability of rolling a number like 4. The surety lies in the fact that 4 occurs at about 17,7 percent chance. If a probability of 1/6 for the occurrence of the six does not ensure that the six occurs within 6 rolls, then the 6 could never occur. That would be theoretically possible, wouldn't it? It would not be ensured that the six occurs in 60 throws, not in 600, not in 6000, and so on. But what is the point of using probability if it is not reliable? My examples referred to an ideal dice, which is ideally rolled. Thus, those odds of 17.6 percent would always have to be ideally fulfilled as a thought construct. Whether I roll 6, 60 or 60000 times.

I understand scientism to be metaphysical naturalism, not methodological naturalism; the latter is just science. Are you wanting to make a distinction between metaphysical and ontological naturalism? — Janus

Now that I read your distinction and question, I have to think about it again.

Most people see themselves as good. This is just not the case. I think we are born with both potentials but tilt towards evil. Anything too add?
We suppress our dark side too fit into society. I believe good takes work. — Caleb Mercado

I agree with you, and two quotes come to mind:

"68. “I did that,” says my memory. “I could not have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually—the memory yields." (Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil)

"The prayer: ‘lead me not into temptation’ means ‘do not let me see who I am’." (Arthur Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Representation: Volume 1)

I also think that even the kindest and most even-tempered person has the potential for mean-spiritedness and cruelty, and to take pleasure in it.

But evil could become weaker and weaker with each generation.

Then would either anticipate the need for the other? — Don Wade

You can also bring in the fringe science here, and say that both always operate within a morphogenetic field (Rupert Sheldrake) that provides unification and communication between the two.

However, I will ask to what extent does the idea of an outsider, as a person who sees differently, make sense to you? — Jack Cummins

I like the perspectives of intellectual outsiders. But they often make the mistake of absolutizing their insights, of looking at them monocausally or of hastily setting them as a foundation of a system of thought. At that point, there seems then to be something fanatical or irrational about them, even though they have grasped something brilliant and ingenious perhaps only in a "small" respect, but which gets lost in the public discourse because of their appearing confusion.

Then would either anticipate the need for the other? — Don Wade

Good difficult question. Maybe not. Basically, the retina itself is like a small brain and the brain by itself is like a sense that can respond to stimuli. So both are of the same essence, but in humans they operate together for complex external world perception. The cooperation has been laid down in the genetic blueprint.

How the development and the interaction of both looks like might be observed empirically at the example of animals with a special microscope camera. [edit: corrected some wording mistakes]

Phylogenetically you are right, but ontogentically, concerning humans, maybe not.

I think both the optic nerve and the neurons of the brain belong to the total nervous system of the organism. Because the optic nerve, like the sense of touch, is the access to the outside world and the brain is the external world data processing entity. Therefore, neither can precede the other in development. Both have developed simultaneously.

An interesting question would be where the color qualia take place. In the eye or in the brain?

I find an absolute wave/corpuscle duality problematic on philosophical grounds because it seems to me that reality must consist in different forms of a single substance. — Enrique

This reminds me of the following passage:

"It's beginning to look as if everything is made of one substance-call it "quantumstuff"-which combines particle and wave at once in a peculiar quantum style all its own. By dissolving the matter/field distinction, quantum physicists realized a dream of the ancient Greeks who speculated that beneath its varied appearances the world was ultimately composed of a single substance. Some philosophers said it was All Fire; some All Water. We now believe the world to be All Quantumstuff. The world is one substance. As satisfying as this discovery may be to philosophers, it is profoundly distressing to physicists as long as they do not understand the nature of that substance. For if quantumstuff is all there is and you don't understand quantumstuff, your ignorance is complete." (Nick Herbert - Quantum Reality: BEYOND THE NEW PHYSICS)

In any case, like Plato said, philosophy and ethics should guide politics and other aspects of life IMO — Apollodorus

Okay, from a practical, pragmatic or realpolitik point of view, it doesn't matter how philosophy is taught. The main thing is that real results are achieved. I agree with you there.

It is nonsense, completely illogical, and fundamentally contrary to good science, for anyone to say that "waves might be substrate-less", regardless of your appeal to authority. — Metaphysician Undercover

That may be. But nevertheless there are physicists who think so. In any case, there is a controversial discussion about it:

From the above linked paper Waves and fields in bio-ontologies:

"While waves travelling in material media are perplexing, they are much more straightforward than electromagnetic waves such as light waves, where there does not appear to be any material medium involved. In these cases, we will argue that they are themselves material entities, which participate in their own wave processes"

From Classical Fields: Are They Real?

David Griffiths: "What exactly is an electric field? I have deliberately begun with what you might call the “minimal” interpretation of E, as an intermediate step in the calculation of electric forces. But I encourage you to think of the field as a “real” physical entity, filling the space around electric charges. Maxwell himself came to believe that electric and magnetic fields are stresses and strains in an invisible
primordial jellylike “ether”. Special relativity has forced us to abandon the notion of ether, and with it Maxwell’s mechanical interpretation of electromagnetic fields. (It is even possible, though cumbersome, to formulate classical electrodynamics as an “action-at-a-distance” theory, and dispense with the field concept altogether.) I can’t tell you, then, what a field is—only how to calculate it and what it can do for you once you’ve got it. [5, Sec. 2.1.3]"

"Against Fields
fields only introduced to account for the motion of particles.
fields not directly observable.
ontological status:
• stuff, substance?
• properties? of space-time points?
• new ontological category?
interpretation of the field as non-existent.
formulation of retarded distant action theory.
inconsistency: self-field"

From Johannes Röhl:

"I discuss two options for fields: fields as qualities of points or regions of space or spacetime and fields as substantial entities in their own right. Finally I get to waves as entities dependent on fields or spatiotemporal patterns of fields."

That is a gross oversimplification. — SophistiCat

Okay, you're right. I was going by what I assumed was a consensus that may have existed in philosophy since Aristotle. In fact, I think if a survey were done today with academic philosophers, most would "abhor" the infinite mundane.

In the West Aristotelian dogma began to crumble during the Enlightenment, and in modern times the infinity of space, at least, was thought to be pretty much self-evident. — SophistiCat

Giordano Bruno could also be mentioned. Not directly enlightenment, but strongly influenced the Enlightenment.

Nowadays you would be hard-pressed to find a physicist who denies the possibility of some type of infinity on principle. — SophistiCat

My point was about philosophers.

Why is this "philosophically irritating"? (He is stating the mainstream position on the matter, BTW.) — SophistiCat

And therefore possibly philosophically irritating.

The existence of waves necessitates the conclusion that there is a substance (commonly referred to as the ether) within which the waves are active. — Metaphysician Undercover

It doesn't have to be seen that way. I have only indirect voices of physicists about the nature of wave fields via the work of the German philosopher Gerold Prauss:

"[...] Physicists emphasize, that »constant passing and arising« of a force or energy in a wave field, as in electromagnetism, has to be considered as movement without any substrate, which is nevertheless from one side something caused and from the other side something causing." (my translation from Prauss' main work "Die Welt und Wir")

And:

"»The electromagnetic waves are not based on oscillations of any substance. They are spatio-temporal structures which do not need any material carrier«. It is rather about a »change of the field energy« which is to be understood as a »constant passing and arising« of it." (my translation from Prauss' main work "Die Welt und Wir")

Waves might be substrate-less. That is, they may not be like the waves in the water, which is the substrate for the waves. They are only waves.

In any case, this is controversial, as the discussion shows:

Johannes Röhl - Ontological categories for fields and waves
https://subs.emis.de/LNI/Proceedings/Proceedings220/1866.pdf

Classical Fields: Are They Real?
https://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~bohmmech/Teaching/ontologyofphysics1415/classical_fields.pdf

Waves and fields in bio-ontologies
http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-897/sessionJ-paper24.pdf

Against the field ontology of quantum mechanics
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/15476/1/wf-pw%20v99.pdf

It is interesting that Aquinas thought that it would be better to be in hell than not exist at all. I think that I would prefer not to exist. I remember when I was growing up that someone suggested that hell would actually be about not existing at all. It was the first time that I ever considered the possibility of nothingness, and it struck me as a better option, although I was not entirely sure. — Jack Cummins

I agree with you. My non-existence before my conception was certainly not bad as such, but an eternal state of absolute agony seems really bad to me. Even Socrates in the Apology speaks of death as absolute annihilation in a positive way:

"If at death the person becomes unconscious, it will be like a very deep, dreamless sleep. And who does not enjoy that? In that case “death must be a marvelous gain”—the best rest and relaxation anyone has ever had (Apology 40c)." (Ehrman, Bart D. - Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife)

someone suggested that hell would actually be about not existing at all. — Jack Cummins

Perhaps this someone was a Seventh Day Adventist, who believe in annihilationism, which was most likely inherent in original Christianity:

"Toward the very end of the Old Testament period, some Jewish thinkers came to believe this future “resurrection” would apply not to the fortunes of the nation but to individuals. If God was just, surely he could not allow the suffering of the righteous to go unrequited. There would be a future day of judgment, when God would literally bring his people, each of them, back to life. This would be a resurrection of the dead: those who had sided with God would be returned to their bodies to live forevermore. Jesus of Nazareth inherited this view and forcefully proclaimed it. Those who did God’s will would be rewarded at the end, raised from the dead to live forever in a glorious kingdom here on earth. Those opposed to God would be punished by being annihilated out of existence. For Jesus this was to happen very soon." (Ehrman, Bart D. - Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife)

I think like Schopenhauer. Whoever was created from nothing without being asked should have the right to return to nothingness:

"A God creates a being from nothing, assigns him prohibitions and commandments, and because these are not followed he is now tormented throughout all eternity with every conceivable torture, for which purpose he then indivisibly binds body and soul (City of God [by Augustine], Book 13, ch. 2; ch. 11 at the end and 24 at the end), so that the torture of this being could never destroy him by disintegration and thereby allow him to escape it, but instead he lives forever in eternal pain – this wretched fellow made out of nothing, who at least has a right to his original nothingness, his last retreat, which cannot be so bad in any case and should after all be safeguarded for him by rights as his inherited property. I at least cannot do otherwise than to sympathize with him. –" (Schopenhauer on religion)

The opinion of Aquinas and his successors, the Thomists is also criticized:

"For instance, I think that traditional Thomists are entirely sincere when they argue that God could not have forborne to create souls he had predestined to eternal torment, and certainly could never now allow them peacefully to lapse again into nonexistence, on the grounds that it would constitute a kind of parsimony or jealousy on his part to withhold the gift of being—a gift he possesses in infinite plenitude—from anyone. For the Thomist, being is the first good, higher than any other, inasmuch as God himself is subsistent Being, and so, even for a soul in hell, nonexistence would be a greater evil than perpetual agony. Of course, this is ridiculous; but it helps fill in one of the gaps in the tale. A gift that is at once wholly irresistible and a source of unrelieved suffering on the part of its recipient is not a gift at all, even in the most tenuously analogous sense; and, speaking for myself, I cannot see how existence as such is truly a divine gift if it has been entirely severed from free and rational participation in the goodness of things. Being itself is the Good itself, no doubt. But, for creatures who exist only by finite participation in the gift of existence, only well-being is being-as-gift in a true and meaningful sense; mere bare existence is nothing but a brute fact, and often a rather squalid one at that, and to mistake it for an ultimate value is to venerate an idol (call it the sin of “hyparxeolatry,” the worship of subsistence in and of itself, of the sort that misers and thieves and those who would never give their lives for others commit every day)." (Hart, David Bentley - That All Shall Be Saved)

However, the whole idea of fear of death is so central to the ideas which we develop about it. The Egyptians had complex beliefs and rituals surrounding death. They saw it about journeying towards underworlds, and seems that most religious thinking goes back to the Egyptians. — Jack Cummins

Maybe the ancient Egyptians with their immortality mania messed it all up.

Even within Islam, as far as I understand, there is a belief that the terrorists, who get killed themselves in the attacks which they carry out go straight to heaven. So, the views people have about death have profound implications for the way people live. — Jack Cummins

According to Islam, everyone goes to hell first. Muhammad will be an advocate for Muslims at the divine judgment so that they might be brought from hell to paradise.

Before Islam, there were many Arab poets who wrote about death and the ephemeral nature of life. Mohammad wanted to put an end to this and declare it as an erroneous belief.

The selected quote from Oppy does not say as much, though. — Janus

Oppy at least made a distinction between methodological and ontological naturalism. The latter could also be called naturism. And the former scientism.

The "faith is just people trying to get over their fear of death," trope never made sense to me in light of Calvinism. How could an idea of God that creates and assigns the vast majority conciousnesses to eternal suffering be comforting? Death is just the beginning of your woes, and even if you might escape the torments of Hell, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it yourself.

That's more nightmare fuel than anything else. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think it is probably explained in Calvinism that if you have faith and show it or are willing to have it, then you are one of the called ones, some of whom God then chooses for salvation. Most, according to this doctrine, are not called in the first place. It's basically a clever psychological trick to get people to believe.

At their deepest core, traditional Catholicism and Protestantism are not much different than Calvinism.

For Thomas Aquinas, for example, it is better to be in hell than not to be at all. To think like this solves a lot.

In general, I suppose that the Christian religion and Islamic religion are an expression of the denial of the absolute death of the individual. It is still more comfortable for them to believe in immortality even in the face of a hell. Because hell can possibly be avoided if you have faith.

It is interesting that true religious believers are not afraid of death as annihilation (that seems to be completely outlandish and far-fetched for them), although evolutionarily and culturally it must have started that way. At the example of the "death fear" of the animals this can be shown.

Such statements by Greene as these are philosophically irritating:

"If space is now infinite, then it always was infinite. Even at the Big Bang. A finite universe can’t expand to become infinite."

https://twitter.com/bgreene/status/839112447923486720?lang=de

He seems to advocate the quilted multiverse model:

"A universe with infinite spatial extent will contain infinitely many mini-universes. An infinite number of these mini-universes will be exactly like our own. Welcome to the mind-blowing nature of infinity – and the sometimes equally mind-blowing nature of the multiverse, which is a common theme among the books in this month’s column. First up is Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality, which explores nine variations on the multiverse theme. Of these, the type of multiverse that arises as a consequence of infinite space – Greene calls it the “quilted multiverse” because regions of space will repeat like patterns in a quilt – is actually one of the easiest to comprehend." https://physicsworld.com/a/between-the-lines-multiverse-special/

In other words, the dimensional lines are straight and therefore the Universe is potentially infinite. — Gary Enfield

Thanks for the reply, it seems to me then that Brian Greene explanations are very misleading.

Thanks for the clarification. Brian Greene didn't mention that.

So if you could create a spaceship that is faster than the expansion of the universe, then that spaceship would hit a provisional end of the universe.

What's wrong with my definition? — Bartricks

Nothing wrong, but I think my definition is more accurate.

Your definition would have the absurd upshot than any and all who believe in entities with causal powers are thereby naturalists. — Bartricks

Only with the addition that those entities can causally act on all other existing entities, and in turn can themselves be acted upon by all others. I don't think that's absurd for determining naturalism.