So geopisa, why didn't you explain yours? You started this...

Mine represents my history. I was educated in a Calvinist school and was taught good science. Then the church (mine included, but perhaps not the school) seemed to declare science some sort of adversary. When forced to choose between science and dogma, it's science that's going to win.
Anybody recognize it? Clues are all there.

That and I like the background as an example of something that isn't yellow, a fantastic illustration of the difference between naive realism and representative realism.

There’s no need for the supposed “stuff”. No particular reason to believe in it. I suggest that the alleged “concretely” fundamentally existent “stuff” is as unnecessary an assumption as the old phlogiston.

The assertion of its fundamental existence is an unnecessary assumption, making Materialism, Physicalism, Naturalism lose, in a comparison by Ockham’s Principle of Parsimony. — Michael Ossipoff

I generally favor the position you seem to be promoting here. You say (in a reply to litewave) that you like to avoid the word 'exist', but despite the lack of consensus on its definition, you need to supply one of your own.

My first and only thread (so far) attempted to deal with that question, and litewave suggested existence and possibility being the same thing, which I found unsatisfactory since it precluded almost nothing except trivial self-contradictions. But I saw few better attempts.

How is the cosmological argument resolved? The whole if-then seems to form a chain headed by an initial condition of some sort. From that, without further instantiation, yes, all, including consciousness, follows. Wayfarer's objection above assumes an unstated dualistic view, and I agree that the two views are not compatible with each other.

I have very limited web access the next few days, so my responses might be slow.

Do you have a link? — T Clark

Hard to find links that don't spin an interpretation of the data, but this is brief description.

Nice post, but I'm curious about where we might disagree.

In the double-slit experiment, the detection of the photon at the back screen is not the only interaction that occurs in the system. It's just the obvious one since it involves someone observing it.

However there are also the distinct photon/slit interactions that occur. These constitute "measurements" between the photon and the apparatus independent of observer interaction and so also result in branching. The observed interference effect when we detect the photon on the back screen just is the interference of those branches (which is quantified as the sum of the wave amplitudes from both branches). — Andrew M

My interpretation of double-slit differs, but being an interpretation, there's no fact to it.

The measurement on the back screen results in one point, not a pattern, and only repeated runs reveal such a pattern. I would say the slits do not constitute a measurement, and that the photon is not a classic 'thing' that goes through one or the other. It is nothing but a wave function with probabilities of where it will be measured, and that function results in a wave interference pattern beyond the slits. The slits alter the wave function but no more. The guy observing the screen has nothing to do with the measurement. Consciousness is not part of the experiment.

I asked the question, what would a 'branch' be, in relation to 'a universe which branches'. That's a much bigger deal than a 'thought experiment'. — Wayfarer

Let me take a shot if I may, since I have interest and this model seems most plausible to me. I agree with AndrewM's responses except for the double-slit one just above.

In relation to the universe, a branch is simply part of it, like the Sicilian Defense is a branch of the set of outcomes of chess, all one set, but a branch from which positions resulting from Queen's Indian Defense are disjoint. You seem incredulous that from the subjective viewpoint of one chess opening, the other ones are less existent. They're just nonexistent from that subjective viewpoint.

Some splitting event (measurement) occurs forming multiple outcomes at only that point. The universe is not cloned. The difference between the two grows at up to the speed of light, so a minute after the cat experiment measurement, the exact same sun shines on both. The lab guy is also the same, but only if the cat is still in the box, else the lab guy is split as well, each knowing a different outcome for the cat.

So the live-cat branch (a bubble confined to the box or not) has no causal relation to the dead cat branch. Hence I (a particular state of the whole that is more than 'me') have no awareness of other parallel states of my personal history, despite sharing an identical past (not a copy of a past state) at some point.

They have built a Schrodinger's box, but not one that holds a cat. The before-before experiment relies on taking a measurement, but not revealing the results of it for a time, which requires effectively such a box. Any other QM interpretation seems to require the ability to alter the past to explain that experiment.

Stuck at first question. I do have a meaning of life. It is not on the list, and none-of-the-above is not an option. None of the options listed is even close to my philosophy.
What is divinity? Sounds like they want a definition. Are they asking if I believe in God? But they ask that several questions later.
What happens after Death? I presume they mean 'to me', but again, my answer is not up there.

I scored epicureanism in the end, which spell-check doesn't like.

In the latter case, depending on whether I could still be in pain or not, and assuming "not," I'd do all sorts of crazy things that I wouldn't try otherwise--jump out of an airplane without a parachute, free dive all over the ocean, hike in the middle of lion country, etc. — Terrapin Station

I had the same sort of thinking, but I don't think any of these activities would be fun since they involve no danger. Without the concept of danger, nothing can be thrilling.
I find it interesting that the two answers (between can-be-killed and not) gather such opposite responses. A life with danger is worth taking the care to preserve, and the one most like the typical description of our afterlife on the new earth results in futile attempts to get back what was lost.

Totally agree - I wrote an article recently about free will and actually concluded that it's simply impossible in the sense that people think of it normally. Not sure what you think of determinism haha a lot of people tell me to stop being stupid when I spurt on about how there is no legitimate choice! — James McSharry

You didn't answer the question. OK, we both think identity, or the 'self', is not a thing. But what then makes me now responsible for an act done by a person yesterday (with whom I do not share numeric identity), but which is consisdered 'me' ?

This is a SoT thread, so would I no longer be responsible if enough 'parts' have been replaced? I have little to none of original matter I had when I was a child so does that mean I am not responsible for the acts I did then? I bring up responsibility because that is the primary use of what the ship has: a legal identity. To claim you've solved the problem is to be able to track the legal identity of a ship through it getting its parts (all) replaced, through the discarded parts being built into a new ship, and through cloning events. If I am cloned, which half gets to keep the job?

Anybody can claim the self is not a phyiscal 'thing'. That's not a solution if you stop there.

To quote from the summary page:

"I believe that .self. and .mind. have been conflated to give rise to this problem. It is not that the mind is physical such that the self is physical. The mind is the collection of experiences that make up my qualitative existence. The self is a more nuanced concept, identifying the relationship between previous versions of me.

Because there is nothing physically the same about me now and me ten years ago, there is no thing that is the same about me now and me ten years ago. Therefore, the concept of self cannot be a part of the category of thing. To borrow the language of Gilbert Ryle, I think considering the self as a thing would be to make a category mistake"

I can reasonably agree with this. Free will debate also results from a similar category error. But there is a functional 'self', so what is it that makes this physical instance of a person responsible for say some act done by some different physical instance in the past? That is an identity, and what makes it stick when parts are replaced?

Don't forget "The moon is made of cheese. I will execute anybody who disagrees". Eventually the human race breeds children with an intuitive belief in a cheese moon.

You'd be amazed at the success of that form of argument.

If something is going to call itself a debate then logical fallacies should be exposed and avoided. — Andrew4Handel

Both in debate and in quest for truth, yes. But in the third class (which doesn't particularly belong in the public arena), the goal is neither truth nor to win a debate, but to support whatever beliefs meet one's own goals. In that arena, logical fallacies are an indispensable tool, and the opposing view is eliminated via negative reinforcement of one sort or another.

For example it is quite possible that someone could argue that the moon was made of cheese without making a logical fallacy and someone could make a logically fallacious argument defending the contrary position.

First person: I assert the moon is made of cheese. Second person: I assert that rock moons are greyish. The moon is greyish, therefore it is rock, not cheese.

The former is incredibly weak, but not fallacious. The second is fallacious. Is that what you mean? That wasn't exactly subtle, but yes, debates often proceed on lines like that, with a little salesmanship to make it sound convincing.

I don't think cold, hard, clear argument has emotional appeal.

Sometimes it does, especially if the assumptions are falsifiable.

The purpose of debate is to start with opposing conclusions and argue from there.
Contrast this with a quest for a better truth which does not have a specific goal that must be met.

So, we now have two alternatives: God and Chance.
— TheMadFool
That's nothing more than your personal assumption. What if I say the Universe came into being because of events happening in a possible Multiverse or whatever? Also doesn't your god have free will? Can't your god do creation by chance? Why couldn't it? — Noblosh

This argument is actually one of the oldest ones, and still one of the best despite its repeated refutation.

It started with what we observed around us: Why is the Earth so beautiful and obviously designed for us? There was God and chance and since the chance was absurdly low, God was the only alternative. Then somebody realized those light dots were other suns and came up with the possible multiplanet theory, and the low odds of this planet's perfection suddenly gets multiplied by the number of planets. The flaw in that theory is that it presumes we're here because this is a nice place, and not that this place is nice because here is where we are. That flaw violated the bias that we are a purposeful creation. The argument was accepted only when another low probability dice roll was detected and it again could be assumed that there was only one roll. The bias was successfully reestablished.

Anyway, the 'order' of the universe is not that low-probability thing. That there is a finite number of kinds of things, yet a lot of each, speaks of no agency at all. A car has lots of parts, mostly different, but a few standard small things like stitching and screws perhaps. The universe does not exhibit that sort of purposeful order at all. It grossly fails at its task of providing us a home since we so completely confined to this limited place which we've inevitably destroyed beyond repair.

Need to define ordered.
— noAxioms

The presence of patterns - qualitative and quantitative. — TheMadFool

A clean room would seem to lack most patterns like animal tracks across the floor. Instead we have the lamp on the table, no dust to hold the patterns, and all the toys clumped where they belong, which the storm could well have done.

Yes, a room (clean or not) speaks agency to me, but not the patterns or the quantity of them. It is mostly due to me being human and a room being a human artifact. Of course I recognize the work of my own kind. I don't see how this is an analogy at all.

We have no idea a black hole is a singularity. Maybe it is a big drain hole into another universe? To say a black hole at its core is infinitely dense and hot is weak speculation at best. To suggest that infinite density and temperature ever existed (anywhere or time) is speculation as well. The drain hole sounds more plausible than infinitely dense. — Thinker

Didn't say the center of it. I referred to the event horizon, a place where our classic rules of time and space do not work out to the usual values. Not sure if there are any infinities there, but the geometry rotates and time becomes negative and strange relations like that.
Sure, there's another singularity at the center, but that one really stretches the typical definitions of existence and again, doesn't seem to have a meaningful value that can be interpreted as temperature.

Is a singularity a infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past? — Thinker

No, A singularity is a point where equations do not yield meaningful results. The singularity is a reference to the physical one of which you speak, and no, density and temperature are effectively meaningless at that point. There is no temperature without space to define motion. There is no meaningful density without nonzero mass and the universe has a net total mass/energy of zero. It is only at other points where there is variance and velocity that these measurements become meaningful.

My knowledge of inflation theory is limited. I do not know if there is meaningful classic distance and temperature during the inflation period, or if our inflation bubble is posited to initially be a dimensionless point. Most classic physical measurements do not have meaning during that first picosecond or so any more than they do beyond the event horizon of a black hole (another singularity).

But I was exploiting your comment to make a much more general critique of all arguments for or against existence of all kinds. — unenlightened

I like your general critique. The first postulate pretty much can be whatever you're trying to prove. The original ID arguments were little better: If something seems to have a purpose, the purpose must serve that which I'm trying to demonstrate, therefore the thing I'm trying to demonstrate.

I recently created my one and only thread because I failed to find a way to argue for or against existence. The only real response was a consideration of all possible things existing, which mean God and everything else except blatant self contradictions. Unsatisfied, I've abandoned the effort for a time.

Isn't this just being moral? Society agrees that it is bad to litter. Littering then becomes immoral. If the society feels it needs a god to back the morality, then they print the word of that god and put something in it that implies the badness of littering. If you choose to ignore the standard, society might decide on a deterrent, even if it amounts only to disapproval of the group.

The idea of a singularity is absurd. That everything, essentially, came from nothing – defies all logic. I would like to hear why it is mathematically impossible? — Thinker

The idea of a singularity says no such thing. It is simply a point where the mathematics no longer yields a meaningful result. The tangent function for instance has regular singularities. That is not a statement that something is coming from nothing.

If there is something, there is a somethinger. — unenlightened

Agree with the absurdity of that, but I guess I was commenting the second line. There is order, and there is disorder. We're not at either extreme.
It seems to dismiss the watchmaker argument that certain things suggest purpose, and that purpose must be not be self-serving. It benefits Earth not at all to be pleasant to us, therefore it was designed to be a pleasant place for us. You call it a somethinger. I call it a zookeeper, and it assumes humans needed a habitat in which they could live.

But it's not all luck from down here in the human condition... Humans die all the time because life and our environment aren't perfect (in fact they're still works in progress) — VagabondSpectre

You make it sound like the perfect environment would not include death.

No it isn't. No one reasons that people are responsible for something just because it's ordered. — Terrapin Station

The watchmaker argument is not about order. It is about apparent purpose even to an observer that does not know about watches. TheMadFool's argument differs in that is about (undefined) order, not about purpose.
The universe is not clean, it is full of things strewn about and dust. There are directions one cannot see distant stars for all the dirt in the way.
The universe is not well arranged or tidy in any way that a room might be. It is merely clumped much like a room would be after being hit with a flood.
I don't see the argument from order at all.

I wouldn't say that it's not possible, but that (a) it's not justified, and (b) it's not how people actually reason. People infer makers for watches etc. because they know what they are and how they're made. They don't infer makers for watches solely because watches are "ordered." I find that idea nonsensical. — Terrapin Station

The watchmaker was indeed very much how people reason, and it was a strong argument until Darwin found a cleaner solution. The argument presumes you don't know what a watch is or its purpose, so it is not an argument about you finding a watch on a beach.
Of course TheMadFool is presenting the room being assessed by another human, not an alien with no prior knowledge of what a room is. So your presentation of the watch thing does match his.

I agree but (correct me if I'm wrong) scientists say that had the mathematical relations of the universe been even minutely different life would be impossible. What I'm saying is, the universe is designed for life. — TheMadFool

This is the strong version of the ID argument. Yes, the universe is very poorly designed for life, making up for its deficiencies with sheer numbers, but yes, the tuning is fantastic. This is my zoo argument, to which I got no response. The original argument (before the fantastic tuning coincidence was known) drew this exact conclusion by how well Earth was suited for our existence. Clearly it was designed for us. Now why did that argument fall out of favor but this tuning argument (the exact same argument) lives on?

I'm quite sure that atheists subscribe to some form of loose scientism. — TheMadFool

Dislike the word, since it is a religion.

That means they think science is a more valid perspective on the universe as compared to religion. However, they ignore/fail to notice that science too is based on inferring ''all'' from ''some''. It's called induction.

No, induction infers all from "all we've measured so far", not from "some".

If the room is ordered, there's an orderer — TheMadFool

Need to define ordered. Ice is very ordered water molecules, but there is no orderer, and in fact the creation of ice does not require an input of energy but instead releases it. Science has a definition of 'ordered', and the universe tends towards disorder. A tendency in the other direction would imply the orderer.

Sorry, I got pretty far behind.

Let me ask you a simple question. What inference do you draw from a clean room? — TheMadFool

Any room at all implies it being a product of a human, just like bird-nest implies bird, in any state of tidiness. One can gauge how long it has been since it has been occupied by perhaps the dust levels, but the tidiness speaks nothing to me on these terms. I would get the same vibes from a messy room.

Good point. But a magnet needs to be applied in the right way for order to emerge. Who(?) does that but a conscious being?

No, they don't need to be pre-oriented. Throw magnets randomly and they arrange themselves. What do you think a crystal like ice is?

The reasoning of everybody (myself very much included) is hampered by those irrational beliefs. I have rationally worked around some of that, but I don't believe my own conclusions at a core level. It is a plausible answer to the Fermi paradox. Lies make you fit. Learn enough truth, enough to actually believe it, and you cease to be fit, and evolution knows how to deal with an unfit thing. Philosophy is dangerous.

Not if you value reason as much as me. — Sapientia

I apparently hold multiple sets of mutually conflicting beliefs. One is a rational belief set that is effectively along monist-realist lines, and which strangely leads to the same sort of comfort that others find with their religion. The other set is more part of my core programming, and is not particularly open to correction. It seems I am a product of a process that produced fit things over things aware of truth. Belief in certain lies makes one more fit. So comfort seems not to be the base goal since I personally get it more from the realist set of beliefs. But making choices for the benefit of that carrot on a stick in front of me seems to be unavoidable. So I believe in the damn thing on an irrational level despite the rational part of me knowing that the carrot is just bait. Truth seems to serve nobody's purpose here.

Besides, it's not even a choice. I'd have to be brainwashed.

Yes, I think anybody part of an organized religion has been brainwashed. It is not hard to do. Goes on in politics all the time. People by nature want a story that provides comfort, however obviously fictional and inevitably accompanied by a plaid suited salesman who finds a way to sell it to you. Hence my approval for the reason for the belief. But such logic has no place in a forum like this where preferences hold no weight. I have a preference for vanilla, but I don't offer that as any evidence that vanilla is the true answer to the flavor debate.

The difference is that NO-God is really much less satisfying speculation. That is why I prefer the opposite. — Thinker

Now that is a good reason to believe, and I agree with the logic.

I beg to differ – integers are a man-made invention – they do not exist in time and space – only in the mind of man. Show me another example of something that is orderly without causation? — Thinker

Not talking about human concept of integers, but the integers themselves, whether they have ontological existence of their own or not.

But since you limit me only to objects within this cause-and-effect sort of universe, your request is unfair. I can only point to the universe itself which started as a completely orderly singularity all neat and tidy in one place, and it progresses from that to a mess of clumps strewn randomly about, and finally to timeless heat death with no order at all. Cause and effect seem not to necessarily order anything.

You didn't respond to the primary criticism, that your conclusion of the laws of physics bring about order follows from the premise of cause and effect being part of physics.

Why speculate at all? — Sapientia

You beat me to it...

I speculate there is a God - I can not prove God. — Thinker

What is the point of contributing to this thread then? You must think you have some sort of argument, even if not proof.

Sapientia hypothesizes that the moon is made of cheese. That at least suggests a way to verify or falsify the claim, making it a more viable hypothesis than one that makes no predictions. Indeed they have sent somebody up there and verified that it is in fact, not made of cheese, at least not in the spot they chose to sample.

My post illustrated the ID argument, which was put out as evidence (not proof) of God. So I used the same logic to point out several other conclusions that are equally supported by that logic. The argument has us in a zoo created by God who is not so hateful to put trees in the fish exhibit, etc. The fact that we're in the correct exhibit is presented as evidence for a designing God who wants good environments for everything, and not random exhibits as would have resulted from the zoo being populated from a random physical process.

No - speculate there is a God. — Thinker

That's what I meant. Read the whole thing in that light.

Cause and effect are part of physics. Therefore the laws of physics bring about a degree of order. — Thinker

The second one by no means follows from the first. Cause and effect do not necessarily bring about order. Order can be had without cause and effect. The integers are nice and orderly, all equally spaced and whatnot. No cause and effect made them that way.

Additionally I see order in our planet. The following factors - distance from the sun, the atmosphere, plenty of water and food, good air to breathe, gravity, etc. These are orderly conditions. — Thinker

This suggests God must have made this planet orderly for us. If no God, we'd have been stuck on a place that is disorderly like Venus perhaps (lacking in about half those qualities). Is that what you're suggesting?

That't pretty much the original argument: Look at what a perfect place that was given to us for our home! Must have been made for us. Look at the purpose evident in a living thing! Must be a purposefully created thing. What a better explanation popped up, they tried to bend the watchmaker argument to the universe, which actually exhibits none of the apparent purpose ascribed to it in this thread. Throw a bunch of objects out there with attracting properties and you are amazed that it clumps? You call the clumping tidiness? Be more amazing if it did something more unexpected than that.

The tuning thing seems purposeful, but nobody has brought that up, and the argument again is about as powerful as noting how well the conditions on Earth are tuned for human existence.
There must be a God making each environment perfect for each thing, else you'd find trees where the fishes are and sometimes monkeys having a tough time in the arctic and such. Someone up above purposefully made sure the home of each of these things was pretty nice.

There is order in the universe.
There is cause and effect in the universe.
Order is a function of cause and effect. — Thinker

Is that last line an assertion or a conclusion? If the latter, it doesn't follow.

But you'd have to assume that it doesn't require work to make the universe tidy. — Terrapin Station

The tidying of the universe indeed does not require work. Instead of requiring energy, it releases it. Hydroelectric dams harness the negative work required to make the water all tidy and in one low place.

I understand entropy as a measure of ''disorder'', so I don't umderstand how a tidy room has lower entropy while a ordered umiverse has higher entropy. Can you clarify (please keep it simple). — TheMadFool

Entropy is a measure of energy available for doing work, as opposed to energy not thus available. It requires work to make a room tidy, but not to make matter go downhill and gather naturally into clumps. A neat pile of rocks in a flat place like Hunebeds are a sign of conscious agency. The same pile of rocks at the base of a mountainside is not.

Why would ordered/disordered be flipped there? — Terrapin Station

It requires work to make the room tidy, but matter strewn about randomly would result in far more energy available for work, mostly due to potential energy of not being so deep in all the gravity wells.

The tidy room is a lower entropy state compared to the messy room.
The more ordered universe is higher entropy than the a universe with stuff strewn randomly about. The comparison thus fails.

The argument also applies our intuitions about entropy against a system (God's world) where there is no such law.

I don't see the analogy. If God is real, then all things are evidence of God. If God is not real, then all things are evidence of not-God. You cannot choose X is evidence of God, and Y is evidence of not-God, as if heads means God, and tails means not-God. We have no choice in the matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your statement is dead on except the last bit about not having a choice in the matter. That comes first, and then the analogy fits. Choose that God exists, and then all things are evidence of that. Choose that God doesn't exist, and everything (the same things) become evidence of not-God.
Either way, it is heads I win, tails you lose. A game where the outcome is already set before it is played.