• Atheism


    The eternal yet... Sounds great. Like a never ending now.

    They won't show themselves. Yet...
    — Haglund

    That is probably because they don't exist.
    universeness

    Which is the question.
  • What is metaphysics?
    I can declare my absolute reality be the one for all, the universal one, and so can you
    — Haglund

    This is what dictators do. The difference between this example and dictators is that dictators do not admit that what they think belongs to their subjectivity.
    Angelo Cannata

    Dictators do not admit other absolute realities by institutionalized force and try to make everyone part of their objective reality. That's the real difference. I don't know what they think is part of their subjectivity.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    If the universe is assumed to be causally closed and contain a finitely bounded amount of information, then both determinancy and indeterminacy can be rejected as meaningless concepts on the grounds that neither concept can say anything normative or descriptive about a universe that is considered to be a complete dataset.sime

    Not sure I understand. Why shouldn't determinism be meaningless in such a universe? I understand that from the outside of such a universe all the events in that universe can be known. If you are part of it, your being in it prohibits knowing all happenings, that's clear. But while in it you can still say there is determinism. Without actually knowing what's determined.
  • What is metaphysics?
    In a philosophical context: how can you think that something is your opinion (“In my opinion I think...”) and at the same time think that it is not your opinion (“...I think that it is not just my opinion”).Angelo Cannata

    By changing the definition of absolute, universal, independent reality. Connecting it to our mind. So to me absolute reality holds for me. For you, for you. I can declare my absolute reality be the one for all, the universal one, and so can you.
  • Localized Interaction and Metaphysics
    This is where the trickery lies. Instead of recognizing, and accepting that when the model fails at the fringes, this means it is wrong, we produce "excuses" for the failings, exceptions to the rule.Metaphysician Undercover

    This is exactly what's going on around the interpretation of the muon g2 experimental results at CERN. Each time the experiment is pushed further, the adherents to the standard model try to recalculate the numbers to fit the event inti the standard. Which is fine, but at some moment it can't be upheld longer. At some point it becomes a silly enterprise. Like inventing new epicycles endlessly. Which can be done, for sure. But at what cost?
  • On The Origins of Prayer
    The origin of prayer could be the toddler's habit of her needy, pre-linguistic 'call' for her mother's tit and the soothing 'response' from her mother as the she suckles.180 Proof

    :lol: Is prayer basically a cultured crave for tit and milk? Gotta remember that one in church! I'll put an extra dime in the basket!
  • What is metaphysics?
    The consequence of taking into account the subjectivity that has been inevitably involved to produce the statements is that the statements cease to be universal, because they are implicated in the non universality of subjectivity.Angelo Cannata

    In a post-modernist style of reasoning, we could consider the universals to be universal for the ones applying them.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    Although it's dubious to say we observed something that's impossible. We'll tend to continue trying to make observations fit with logic somehow even if it takes decades as with quantum theories.frank

    You can observe something that's impossible but these impossibilities can turn out to be hallucinations, like a fata morgana, or they are just new possibilities. Like quantum mechanical phenomena were thought impossibilities from a classical POV. The mechanisms of QM are still disputed though. There even were infinite many worlds hypothesized to explain it's functioning.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    Everything with mass ‘feels’ time/change. Things without out mass do not - time does not exist for them.I like sushi

    Ah, you mean mass! I thought you referred to the mass of people... Yes. Photons don't experience time. They connect stuff instantaneously. Their finite speed causes cause and effect. Without a finite SoL, cause and effect, and hence time, don't exist. A logical cause! :grin:
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    What is called ‘logical’ in common parse has only a small connection to logic.I like sushi

    I assume you mean formal logic, taught to children with the "Johnny buys 3 apples, an orange...", "if 40 children in a room are... ...then how many...?" tasks to solve?
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    So you're drawing a line between the way we think and the way the world isfrank

    If logic excludes the middle, the physical reality might follow this or not. It depends on the physics involved. Logic can shape physical reality in all forms. Physical reality though can't shape logical reality how it wants. It's an asymmetrical relation. They can be glued together by observation. Physical reality has limits. Logic has no limits.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    Time is only a thing for mass.I like sushi

    Not sure I follow. Only a thing for the mass?
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation


    But logical reasoning doesn't necessarily relates to physical cause and effect. A logical cause doesn’t necessarily have a counter weight in the physical world.
  • Understanding the Christian Trinity
    The trinity is Neoplatonism.frank

    Christ being the shadow of God?
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    But again, how does it argue against my point - which was that our notions about logical implication and material cause share a reliance on counterfactual reasoning?apokrisis

    You said something about the logical law of the excluded middle. Physical reality not excludes the middle.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    One deals with physical reality (space-time), whilst the other cares not a jot for itI like sushi

    Precisely. Logical cause and effect are very different from the physical. Logic contains no physics. It's logical that you fall hard on Earth if you jump off the Moon. It's high.
  • Can minds be uploaded in computers?
    What's the difference between an emulation and a simulation?
  • Question regarding panpsychism
    God will show himself. In time.
    — Haglund
    I hope so, we can then throw it in jail forever for abandoning its responsibilities for so long.
    universeness



    Or maybe they show us how not to ruin the planet.

    But then, from where comes the stuff used in the explanation?
    — Haglund

    I don't know, need more time.
    universeness

    But when the final explanation is there?
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    Time is not a thing anywayI like sushi

    You can save time, fight against it, waste it, kill it, or collect it. You can measure it and it flies, while at other times time crawls. Time seems some thing.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    Even if you cooled such a system to near absolute zero, you could only constrain the thermal jitter.

    Just as if you could polish the dome to be near frictionless, you wouldn’t actually make it frictionless.
    apokrisis

    It's an ideal dome.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    Let's fill the kettle and put it over the flame. Physical cause says that the water will heat. But there is nothing logically contradictory in the water not heating up.Banno

    That would just mean the flame died or the gas was obstructed. But indeed, water not boiling in a kettle on a flame is no logical impossibility. Logic doesn't contain physics.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    That doesn’t exist. It is an abstraction.I like sushi

    So is quantum field theory. Abstractions have a point. The Norton dome shows cause and effect aren't that straightforward.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    But time doesn’t run backwards. So there is a lack of evidence for your counterfactual of the effect preceding the cause.apokrisis

    I just mean time could have run backwards. Effects could have come first.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    Nope. It shows that Newtonian idealism fails the reality test. The model doesn’t take into account the fact that the world of material objects also has irreducible thermal jitter.apokrisis

    The object is a point particle laying at rest in a vacuum on the apex. What thermal jitter?
  • Question regarding panpsychism
    Yes it can, in timeuniverseness

    But then, from where comes the stuff used in the explanation?
  • Question regarding panpsychism


    God will show himself. In time... :grin:
  • On The Origins of Prayer


    "Oh father in heaven, give us our daily bread!"
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation


    The Norton dome shows there is no cause of the rolling down.

    The gas example shows that cause and effect are dependent on the direction of time. It either runs forward or backwards. It's either cause preceding effect or effect preceding cause.
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism


    Chaos theory is about sensitivity to initial conditions. Vary them a tiny bit and you might end up in Bakerstreet instead of Trafalgar Square.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    Every time we observe an electron shot through two slits we see a flash of light on a screen placed behind it. Can we logically conclude that if we observe an electron going through two sliths implies a flash on a screen? If we have observed this happening before then yes. It's not guaranteed, but it's plausible. It's logical to plausibly assume there is a causal connection. But only in a physical context and assuming time runs forward. If time ran backwards it would have been retro causation. The mechanism of the causal effect isn't clear a priori. There could reside tiny creatures in the screen flashing a tiny flashlight every time they are hit on the head with an electron. It could also be that causation is teleological in nature.
  • What motivates panpsychism?


    I see, but still. Why should psyche, according to functionalists, be absent if the brain is in sleep mode? How can a material process, which according to them contains no psyche in it's base (dead, psycheless particles interacting), give rise to, say, consciousness of heat or cold? Say you know the complete pattern of material processes involved, and the environment they are situated in, how would this constitute an explanation?
  • What motivates panpsychism?
    My brain isn't doing the things that constitute consciousness, so it is no longer modelling its environment, or no longer integrating as much information, or whatever your particular functionalist theory of consciousness is. This is not consistent with panpsychism.bert1

    Why not? You being unconscious doesn't mean the psyche has left the material.
  • What motivates panpsychism?


    People just wanna keep their silly jobs in trying to work on something that just can't be explained. Keep up the myth that consciousness can be explained and that it's even important, and your work will be subsidized.
  • Understanding the Christian Trinity
    It's just the essential unity tying God, the father, Jesus, the sin, and their holy spirit. So the trinity is essentially a unity. What's so difficult to understand about that?
  • What motivates panpsychism?
    My contention is that it is separate from its environmentDaemon

    Don't you think we find ourselves in the middle? I mean, between the environment and our brain? So we are not separated from both? If we truly would be separated from the environment we would get diluted in space.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    The laws of thought are organised to arrive at the counterfactuality of the Law of the Excluded Middle.apokrisis

    Don't think so. The apple can fall to the right or to the left. But it can also stay in balance at the apex of Norton's dome.

    That being said, a gas in vacuum expands (forward causation, forward time) or it implodes (reversed causation, backward time).
  • What is metaphysics?


    It seems pretty clear to me. He says that in order to say anything is given you have to use your brain to say it's given. So the given is always a mental construction. Which overlooks the fact that there is a connection between the mental construction and the given. There are two mental constructions for change. It's us changing along a static reality, our particles moving along thee static pre-established solid iron worldlines in spacetime, or there is a dynamic reality of which we are part.
  • Can minds be uploaded in computers?


    Causal closure and energy conservation are no problem for mind extraction. If my soul is sucked out of me, my brain and body just move on in darkness. The pre-established harmony will just be broken.
  • What is metaphysics?


    You take my comment seriously? About being defeated. You do exactly the same as theists. Claiming without evidence.
  • What is metaphysics?
    I am fine with you not subscribing to it.Jackson

    Like I am with you not believing in god. But where is the evidence of these many worlds?