We can't be located in the brain, as the body is located in the outer world. Even if you said "I am my brain" you still wouldn't be saying "I'm in my brain." The brain would be in the body, not inside the brain.

And yet, part of us is inside the brain. If you can't take away any part without destroying the whole, it's also sensible to say that we are inside of electrical impulses, as well as being electrical impulses.

We have this annoying habit of dissecting everything into its constituent parts, though.

Matter could very well just be how mind happens to seem, but it gets confusing if you look at it in terms of linear time. Linear time should be thrown out the window, as it isn't really real. The truth is that mind has always existed, and "before" and "after" are ridiculous concepts.

And, as far as dissection goes, and everything's codependency, there's no reason to assume that the entirety of the universe could exist in the absence of any part.

So, in my opinion, we are the body, and every atom of the body...every electron, as well as the action of electrons jumping orbits...and part-in-partial to every last photon of the universe as well.

So, we can't be located, and "YOU" or "ME" is something we cling to out of sheer terror. But matter and time are not as they seem.

The Earth itself (and the Sun) are hurtling through the galaxy. If we could get another perspective of ourselves, all we would see is a blur, like a car going by at 29,000 miles per hour on the highway.

It's been determined that location and velocity can't ever be precisely measured. And what you're really left with is a phantasm. And the truth, as I see it, is that we are spirits living in a spiritual world that becomes mundane to us through familiarity.

There are really limitless directions to travel through time, though, which has dimensions, just as traveling through space is traveling through time.

Nuff said, but, really, as far as scientific understanding goes, I doubt we've scratched the tip of the iceberg.

I didn't find an explanation in this.

Are we dealing with a lack of anything?

I would argue that... Well, first I would argue that everything is living, but barring that...the lives of the deceased still have an immeasurable impact and influence on the present and future.

This is what I term "the spirit." Though, to me, the "soul" is the physical body.

In my opinion, if something exists, ever, it is eternally "real" and nothing, not even the passage of time, can make it "unreal."

Some people just can't accept that it's a mystery, a dead space of reason, pure illogic underlying everything. But we must. We must embrace mystery and move forward from there.

Probabalism was a way to try and force determinism onto a mystery, IMO. The maths add up...until they don't.

Agree completely. Probabilistic notions maybe especially...contrived formulas for Platonic, as you put it, "realities" that are neither here nor there.

It's all rigidly fixed academia, though.

I don't know, but I steadfastly refuse to believe time comes in literal bite-sized intervals... That doesn't make sense on so many levels.

My intuition wants to say there is no real passage of time, and that this all occurs in the same space (or lack thereof, as it were) at once.

Ultimately, I think we can take bites out of truth and be led where we may, but ultimate knowledge is just out of our league.

I feel like the brain generates thought as a qualitative result of direct communication with the environment.

It practices thought, and can generate language, but this is all sourced from interference outside the head. It isn't just a perfect reasoning machine.

*hugs the universe* They'll never figure you out.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if all philosophers are, indeed, sophists.

I think he said he knew nothing to elevate the self-esteem of the people he spoke with. He would allow them to pontificate to "a fool" so that they themselves better understood what they DID know. And thereby he did understand love well.

People transcend time all the time. Just watch a movie. You'll witness people who have been dead for generations still believing they're real. ; )

Of course there permeates an eternal now but the human mind is divided into portions of time for the sake of its own sense of continuity. There is only change as a constant and time need not always be considered an appropriate axis.

Oddly, I have been present for three years and have long discarded a continuum as an actuality. But that is a conversation for another time.

Sorry, the button for "reply" is too small on my screen.

There could be infinite, separate dimensions of time, all moving in discrete directions.

That's what I believe, but the simple fact is we just don't know. But to speak of "endings" and "beginnings" as though they are the sole means of imagining reality would be disingenuous.

Agnosticism is greater, because it's acceptable that one may be disinterested in the existence of God.

Theism is acceptable, as it's wholly acceptable that one has an interest in God.

Atheism? What's that. Theism doesn't preclude an interest in science or humanity.

Atheism doesn't seem to preclude an interest in dogma or fighting.

It's just the staunch belief that this one particular possibility can't, in any form, exist.

All premises revolving around a limited framework of linear time, they're fundamentally gobbledygook. It isn't sensible to speak in terms of before and after. There is only what is.

Actually, that's not really the definition of possible. It has to be an outcome that could occur. Before you flip a coin, it's possible heads or tails could happen. But, one of them won't. Hence, one is a possible outcome that will never occur in the context of the single event.

You're gonna have a hard time proving things could occur that never do occur.

Technically, only events which do occur were ever possible. It's easy to say something "could happen" -- just as easy as it is to lie, I suppose.

In order to explain consciousness, which seems to require Time in which to exist, one must explain Time itself.

It isn't enough even to find that neuron by which it is activated/deactivated.

Over my head. My propensity is to see things in black and white, that it's not possible to imagine anything completely impossible, technically speaking.

That by definition of something's being "possible" it must exist, or otherwise it's impossible.

But I really am not making the connection here of what you're telling me. I get that there's a breakdown of logic, but to me that's just the fundamental viewpoint of the observer, and we are not creatures dictated by pure rational thought on the subtlest level of simple being awareness.

We can if we want -- there's nothing that absolutely forces us to, however.

There can be doubt, philosophically, that we even truly know we have brains. (Though I admit we do have smarts.)

Um...I think we need to remember, though, that we're not just brains -- we're these whole bodies, we really are. The fact that we are bodies is and isn't contained in the brain. And if the body is a computer, it's a robot.

But since we imagine robots with free will, we should give ourselves the benefit of the doubt that our inner experience is richer than any mundane vision of mechanism -- it's not just wholly expendable, it's worth something more than any sum of its parts. That is, if one chooses to define the parts as ordinary...

Oh neat. I wouldn't say it is that, either. Scientifically, it's really something we're still trying to understand. You don't have to believe it was God, though, on your own terms.

Still, anyone who tells you they understand what it was like is lying to you.

Even if it were to be taken for granted that linear time is the best time (or what have you) the rate of expansion being discussed is nothing like a "bang" and incomprehensible to the human mind.

You know...did it make a sound at all? Did it sound like a bang or a zipper being unzipped?

I'm against the whole taking the Bible absolutely literally thing. God never was the property of man. There are things I choose to believe God is, but among these is "more than anything written thereof."

A higher power was conceived of and brought ancient sages much insight. But, to be reasonable, there were always poets and storytellers.

I don't take Genesis completely literally, though there is probably more to the allegory than meets the eye. If I took enough drugs I could probably become convinced of my own perceptions of the beginning of all creation, y'know? And I might try to make it beautiful to read and accidentally, thereby, make it impossible to understand out of historical context.

God's existence doesn't hinge upon its accuracy, but let's be realistic. And at the same time be highly whimsical, because human history IS weird.

Like Ezekiel -- lazy to just dismiss...but...WTF?

To enable richer diversity in thought, we really should rely on the term "seems to" more often. The Universe seems to have begun to expand exponentially.

Because, truly, we can't accept that things are as they seem to us here. What can seem like expansion could just be a movement in another dimension farther away from the initial starting point.

View it like a CD for instance. If the initial starting point is one place on the CD with a laser hitting it, in the next moment it could be anywhere on the CD, and the independent information would have seemed to expand for however many bytes the CD is. And we may not even be dealing with a CD as such, but a "format", if you want to call it that, of information that is light years beyond our reckoning.

I don't even like to think about it really. It's too much. I'm glad we don't know. There's a lot here for us to explore...we shouldn't be tinkering with some of this stuff.

The Big Bang began as a theological concept. There's nothing about the Big Bang that is exclusive of God. There's nothing about the "Big Bang" (which is ridiculous terminology for an event our small minds can't possibly fathom) which proves "God does not exist."

They've tried to invent notions in which all of this could occur in the absence of any soul whatsoever, which is fine and dandy, I suppose. It still doesn't predict anything -- it can't -- and it isn't science.

To examine it using pure reason, though, we need to attempt to understand the universe from a scope that goes beyond the limits of our linear understanding of time. And I think we can do this, a little bit. Not completely...I don't think the human mind can or should understand that.

But yeah, to comprehend a beginning at all is to experience the universe from a three dimensional perspective, which our greatest minds have told us isn't a comprehensive perspective to possess.

What some less scrupulous minds are doing is to point to the Big Bang as "the beginning" in and of itself, as though it's understood. This works on the general populace, who don't really think much. They hear a scientist say, "The Universe began at the Big Bang," and think, "Wow. These scientists KNOW EVERYTHING. LITERALLY EVERYTHING." No. Beyond the first few seconds of "the Big Bang" (whatever that's supposed to mean) proper scientific minds readily attest to the fundamental principal that, even mathematically, they have no description whatsoever for what was actually going on.

They can make up weird ideas however much they want, but truly your guess is as good as mine or anyone else's.

Absolutely, but it goes way beyond Biden. Social media itself is a way to monopolize speech. Notice the decline of internet forums like these and the virtual death of chatrooms.

They want to offer us the sole outlet by which we communicate freely, and then to dictate how we communicate within their networks. And thus, to dictate how we communicate in the real world.

It's all just silly, of course...we're not a bunch of crazy people. But it's like...they don't want us to be individuals or have individual creative thought AT ALL. Which is just...sociopathic. And I can't imagine that we're actually being controlled by sociopaths, so I must assume we're being controlled by idiots.

The thing outside of itself is actually very natural to us. We are the thing (persons) living in a universe (outside). We are "the thing" outside of itself.

Unless we are purely in the mind, which is every bit as amazing.

New to this convo., but I only see God as needing replacement with another name for the same thing. Try "Omnimax." A lot has been attached to God that isn't exactly pure. People with nascent, for lack of a politer term, minds have tried to hijack the entire concept of God to their own ends.

But in its subtlest form, there's no reason that God/Omnimax need be replaced. As a religious interpretation, sure...the Omnimax isn't bound to any man's law or reasoning (though the two may indeed comply.)

Yet, still, nothing in Science has cast any aspersions on God, not as an inceptual concept, anyway.

I feel it's a vaccine for something that's going to mutate, and that we should be developing a natural immunity to. I think it's creating a virus that will be larger than the one we have now.

Scary, though, I guess... People haven't been dropping left and right, though. There aren't wheelbarrows full of corpses on the street, exactly.

And I just do feel like we're obeying the Karens on this one. You gotta deal with death in the world, you just do, it's a fact of life, sorry. They can't accept that, and the world's gonna end up suffering untold for it. For their false sense of security.

I think the answer is that the universe is really self-sufficient. God or the universe is really chicken or egg, though, and doesn't matter. It's all an eternal system that feeds itself, and the Big Bang is only a perceived "beginning" from a limited three dimensional framework for how physical reality works.

We must think outside the confines of linear time -- that's where answers lie.

No. Just no.

Which is totally irrelevant anyway, as I'm speaking of truth in terms of things that exist, and falsehoods in terms of things that don't.

Nonsense, even on your terms, can't create false realities, or false positives.

What are you rolling your eyes at, dude? What I said is absolutely accurate. Even if it's just the state of affairs that the baby is mimicking someone's speech.

No one has ever verbalized anything that has no context whatsoever. Except maybe Nixon.

There is a major difference between words being accurate and words being true.

Words don't carry such weight that they can create non-realities.

Objectively speaking, the details are irrelevant.

Everything that exists is real and therefore true.

The idea that nonsense can't possibly be known to be false or true is itself nonsense.

All language, even baby talk, refers to some state of affairs.

But that's irrelevant, as the existence of nonsense would still be known to be true or false.

In other words, all things that exist are facts and true by mere way of having existed. Even falsehoods are not false, if by false one means "having not existed."

Nonsense exists or it doesn't...

You are a soul. Our lack of perspective is what creates the confusion. Stop seeing the past as dead and gone, but a living thing.

All time coexists simultaneously. There are no true beginnings or endings; biology dictates nothing but longevity.

It might have something to do with the fact that language creates a perceived identity within, while the truth is not only are we "in" the mind, but we are "in" the cosmos.

I'm not sure what you mean. Nonsense is just another word for something that is untrue, and God could possibly know if something deemed "nonsense" is true.

There actually is a God, though.

I don't know. I almost needed a car as of late and found myself feeling jealous of people who drive Volkswagen Jettas. What kind of life is that!? A Jetta is like a company man whose soul is in question. I'd like to drive a vintage Beetle. That's something to harbor jealously towards. — the wonder

Totally. I've had a really rough life, and I don't really believe in fault and blame. I'm a forty year-old virgin, in fact, and my name is Andy. lol

And I don't care. I think incels are barking up the wrong tree if they claim to. Cause on the other hand, maybe they are just a bunch of dudes who just want sex.

I love Beetles. Have a toy transformer Bumblebee (except the Go-Bot.) They're a blast to ride around in, especially if they've got those old pleather seats.

Nothing good will come from so-called "incels".

I agree completely, but not everyone was born with the gift of logic like you or I.

Inceldom is a knee-jerk reaction. I can just see why it's happening.