Including humans? — Pattern-chaser

No I think we should all become vegan. Bio technology probably needs to improve first before this becomes feasible or palatable. It's a long term goal to have a planet free of killing.

Covered here I think:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4455/is-idealism-irrefutable/p1

There is no point to evolution — A Seagull

God decided it was too hard to design life from scratch so he decided to evolve it instead. That's what I'd do if I was in God's shoes.

So I'd argue we're not moving towards perfection, but rather away from it — Tzeentch

I think the most important metrics for human progress are quality and length of human life, both of which have been improved greatly by technological progress. We certainly cannot just go back to living the way we did 2000 years ago. Life was short and hard for most. The whole point of evolution is we are meant to achieve an optimal civilisation through the use of technology.

As a race we seem to take two steps forward and one step back. I agree the environment is currently retrograde. I hope it does not take some sort of catastrophe before we address the environment seriously. Environmentally friendly technology is the way to go. Nuclear fusion and nice clean energy would help a great deal.

I'd imagine the future as a mix between high tech and low tech; think glistening sky scrapers set in a natural forest landscapes; technology and nature in symbiosis is key for the type of planet I want to live on.

Through biotech and genetic engineering we can improve nature just like we improve technology. Most of nature's plants do not produce eatable food. Genetic engineering can change that. For example, grass which is completely useless to humans, could be reengineered to be tasty and nutritious. Or for example we can use biotech to neuter the spiders; I hate them and a spider-free world would be a big step forward for me and other arachnophobes.

If there were certain ways that God really didn't want us to behave then he probably shouldn't have made that behavior an option — Terrapin Station

You could argue that we need at least the illusion of free will for happiness. We'd feel like slaves if we had behavioural inhibitors fitted. Free will seems to require hell of some form?

I think hell would be for correctional purposes only. I have this vision I hope is not true. Hell is structured as an upside down pyramid. The worst people are at the pointy end (bottom), the best at the wide end (top). The sewage runs downwards in such a way that the worst person in hell experiences 100% of everyone else's waste products, the 2nd worst 50%, the 4th 25% and so on.

I think our conception of God is largely defined by the limits we attribute to ourselves. For example, omni-potence/science/presence is in comparison to the relative power, intelligence and presence we possess. — BrianW

I wonder how we first perceived of the spirit world, the world after death. We would have no first hand knowledge of that, but I guess we just took as an example of everyday life and mapped that idea into the new domain of after death. How did we come to think of what happens after death? Survival is our number one instinct and is programmed into us so I guess its just a natural link to make.

There is nothing new under sun the old saying goes.

I don't think you can manufacture a Disneyland Nature that is what I said earlier about fantasy. Fantasy allows us to inhabit what is not really the case. — Andrew4Handel

It's a long term project, but I believe with the help of technology, we can build an optimal world for both humans and animals. Optimal, not perfect (we have to be realistic). Synthetic meat you mentioned. Some sort of genetically engineered 'burger plant' is where we should be aiming. IE 'beef burgers' that grow naturally. On second thoughts it's better to neuter rather than kill existing carnivores.

Herbivores can be very aggressive — Andrew4Handel

The aggression is due to the presence of carnivores (humans mainly). I feel if the human race treated animals better, animals would be less aggressive. We prey on them. It's just conditioning. But I think technology can help hear too. If grass was genetically engineered to include say THC, any remaining aggression should be countered.

How do you explain humans history of of war, and slavery and genocide? — Andrew4Handel

I think we are very immature as a race. Historically though things are heading in the right direction. We have not had another world war. Human rights have improved. Slavery is mostly gone. We are evolving towards perfection.

I did not say death was positive; it's just a requirement for evolution to function (as I believe God intended) and it may not be the end of the world. Death is the start of life in the Eternal Return belief.

Animals in the wild die of things like being eaten, starvation, the weather, malnutrition and injury — Andrew4Handel

I view us as shepherd's of the planet. First we need to help ourselves (the human race) but then we need to help others (the animals). At the moment, we are the worst carnivores on the planet. We should all switch to a vegetarian diet. Once there is sufficient food for the human race, we can turn our minds to providing for the animals.

As for carnivorous animals; I think we should cull them all. Any overpopulation problems can be dealt with via chemical neutering of the offending species.

the idealist's claim (original post) that the existence of the external world cannot be proved is irrefutable.
— philosophy

No it's not — creativesoul

Agree. Define the mind as the conscious thread of activity plus memory only. Then when in a conversation with another, you can extend "I think therefore I am' to 'You think therefore you are'. That proves the existence of separate consciousnesses; IE separate minds as I defined them.

I suppose you could counter argue that all the minds are physically colocated.

But there is much to creativity, and very little to my understanding of it, so.... :wink: — Pattern-chaser

I don't understand it either but intuitively it feels like a network of concepts. We draw links between existing concepts to create 'new ideas'. Like I've just done; taken a concept from computing and linked it to the concept of the mind. All new information comes in via our senses I think; it seems we can't generate a purely abstract idea without drawing on existing knowledge?

Can anyone think of a perspective that makes life/reality or the world a moral and desirable state of affairs? — Andrew4Handel

We are social animals and we depend on each other to succeed. Division of labour etc... So we have an inbuilt interest in caring for each other. I believe humans are fundamentally good because good is the most logical position to adopt. There is some simple math behind good and evil (which is covered here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4395/defining-good-and-evil/p1) and good is mathematically better.

If only we could extend the care for one another attitude to the animals; as the dominant species on the planet we are running a prison camp where the prisoners (animals) are killed and eaton. Not cool. If anyone else finds out about what we are doing here on earth we could be in trouble.

Everything we imagine or generate in our minds is a product of an already existing element — BrianW

I believe you are correct; our minds seem to link existing concepts and map concepts across domains rather than creating new concepts.

I tried to think of a counter-example. What about God? Perhaps we pick up the concept from our earthly father and project it into the spiritual domain. The spiritual is largely a human invention though but perhaps we have just cross-domain mapped existence into the realm of the dead and come up with the concept of the spiritual?

If time did not have a start then an actual infinity of time has passed so far which is impossible. So it seems time has a start. Something must of caused time to start. The end of time is the only thing that can cause the start of time (Big Crunch->Big Bang).

So the universe is a beautiful eternal circle and it seem it needs no input from God except that it all looks so designed. So that leads us back to timeless change. It's like Sherlock Holmes said 'Once you eliminate the probable, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'; timeless change is improbable but seems to be required?

More to the point, what was the raw material God used to make the Big Bang, how could an immaterial being manipulate the raw material, and where did the material come from in the first place? — Herg

I'm a materialist so I'm expecting any God to be material.

Where did the matter come from:

1. In the beginning, there was God and some stuff and he made the universe from stuff
2. In the beginning, there was just God and he made the universe from himself
3. In the beginning, there was just God and he used creation ex nihilo to create the universe
4. In the beginning, there some stuff and the stuff made God (Boltzmann Brain)

I don't really buy 4 because we've established time has a start so there is no infinity of time to magic up a Boltzmann Brain. Number 3 is just magic IMO. Number 2 is Occam's Razor.

Why can't the fact that there is something rather than nothing simply be a brute fact? — Herg

Because 'Something' is so non-Occam's razor; the simplest model is 'Nothing' and with that model, nothing requires explanation. The fact that there is something defies logic and requires an explanation. The two I have I am not too happy with:
- Anthropic principle. There must be something else we would not be here
- God did it somehow
I'm not happy to leave it as a brute fact when its such a pivotal question.

A deity no doubt had the motive, and may arguably have had the opportunity, but what was the means? — Herg

I am a fan of the explanation that the universe is merely a giant game of Conway's Game of Life which God initiated through the big bang. The stars provide the energy for life and the planets provide the living surfaces. Hence just like in Conway's, God watches life evolve.

If you put yourself in God's shoes for a moment, what would be the ideal design for the universe? Having here plus heaven plus hell is not very Occam's razor. Why have three places to existence when one would suffice. However, it might be God decides the ideal design is not the most simple design so includes heaven and hell too. I can only imagine hell would be for correction rather than punishment with miscreants released to heaven after being cleaned up for a period in hell.

If time is defined in relation to physical change — Metaphysician Undercover

Speed of light speed limit law (speed = distance / TIME) applies to everything in the universe so I think we can define time as a fundamental part of the universe as in space time rather than change.

It appears time started at the big bang; the intense gravity would have cause time to come to an almost stop at the big bang. Certainly time cannot stretch back indefinitely from the Finitist Eternalist viewpoint - it must have had a start.

I don’t think time and change are the same; I think time enables change. Maybe there is some other way to enable change too? Photons are ‘timeless’ particles but their position and wavelengths change. Maybe god has inbuilt time?

If time was a natural loop (rather than created by god), we could have god existing all the way around the loop. So he could design standard model at/near start of time, then set off the big bang, then the big crunch, then time loops. Not as satisfactory as god creating time though. How did a natural time come about for instance? Time seems to need creation.

‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ - something extraordinary must of happened. There should logically be nothing. Can’t get something from nothing so something must of always existed but what? Was it time that always existed or was there a state without time? Why did something always exist then? Somehow I cannot imagine the universe in all its magnificence always existing without any involvement from god.

This causes me anxiety. How can I live my life (if I even exist) doubting that every thought that enters my mind as being real and true. — Kranky

You can assume other people are real which helps.

Starting with 'I think therefore I am', if you treat self as just the conscious train of thought of your mind, you can say 'You think, therefore you are' as when you are in a conversation, it is clear that the other 'voice' is a separate train of thought and thus a separate individual by the definition I used. So on this basis I think you can dismiss solipsism.

- They used to be called your right hand and wrong hand.
- Then it was changed to your right hand and left hand.
- Remember that right is what is right in the long-term and wrong is is what is right in the short-term.
- Then in politics, we have left and right parties.
- But the left-wing are longer term than the right-wing (more infrastructure investment, higher taxes).
- So actually left and right-wing are the wrong way around.
- And they are also misnamed: It politics it should not be left-wing and right-wing; it should be right-wing and wrong-wing.

Which makes it a lot clearer who should vote for! (the right party not the wrong party).

Animals are just like us, they having feelings, some are even more intelligent than us (whales, dolphins).

So when God says 'Thou shall not kill' he probably means animals as we as humans. So we don't need guns for killing animals either.

I have an assault rifle with high cap mags that helps me defend the U.S. Constitution from all enemies both foreign or domestic — hks

I think protection against your own government is the only valid reason for owning a weapon.

Could you not have a law that its OK to stockpile arms but illegal to bear them? That way the streets would be save (no guns) but you could still form a rebel army in case Donald Trump gets out of hand.

I have the motive of gaining knowledge and finding the truth. — Andrew4Handel

OK, those things give you pleasure then. So pleasure is a super category of these types of motivations

These are my opinions.

A paradox is indicative that you have an underlying logic error.

In the case of Cantor's paradox, Galileo's paradox, Hilbert's hotel, the Measure Problem, the underlying logic error is the assumption that actual infinity exists.

Thats all a pipe dream. Infinite sets do not exist. Take the natural numbers; it has no end {1, 2, 3, 4, ... }. So it's not completely defined; IE IT IS NOT DEFINED. So as soon as you try to do stuff with it, paradoxical stuff happens, like you start inventing magic numbers to represent its cardinality. Utter drivel.

This is really all covered on the infinity thread; I don' t really want to repeat it all here.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4183/do-you-believe-there-can-be-an-actual-infinite/p1

They want to show that there is no logical problem with an actual infinity — Walter Pound

There is a logical problem with something you can add to and not change. Nothing in the real world behaves like that.

Cantor and co associated the spinning head feeling you get when you think of infinity with god and they wanted maths to include infinity because of their faith. Unfortunately, the spinning head feeling is just due to the contemplation of something very illogical and not anything to do with God. We are left with a spiritually inspired branch of maths (rather than logically).

I read some of it; some people have a lot invested in infinity. They are defending the indefensible in my opinion. The axiom of infinity is the root cause of the problem; it just says an infinite set exists without actually proving anything. Yet its easy to prove that such a set cannot exist; it would have the cardinality greater than any number (which I proved was impossible above).

Potential infinity (as in calculus's limit concept) is a great tool. Actual infinity (as in set theory's transfinite nonsense) is not a useful tool; it just leads to paradoxes. Cantor's paradox, Galileo's paradox, Hilbert's hotel etc...

I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment. I've always felt that concepts link to other concepts in the mind and lead to new ideas. Cross domain fertilisation is part of the process. So I'm not sure truth is completely pathless?

What is expanding is the distance between galaxies, that's all we infer to expand, we don't actually observe some space substance expanding, the distance between galaxies can increase in an infinite universe, it's a bit of a misnomer to say that it is the universe that is expanding, even though that's a widespread misconception — leo

Don't you see how mad infinity is? It's larger than any possible thing. Yet we require it to expand; implying it was not larger than any possible thing.

that doesn't mean the universe can't go on forever — leo

That's not science, that's believe in magic. I'm a materialist and I do not allow science and magic to mix.

I suggest you read some of the infinity thread; actual infinity is marsh gas. For example, actual infinity, if it existed, would be a quantity greater than all other quantities, but:

There is no quantity X such that X > all other quantities because X +1 > X

Further, actual infinity does not follow common sense or mathematical rules:

oo + 1 = oo implies
1 = 0

Its just a mental concept and a mad one at that; actual infinity does not exist in the real world.

I think you're adding implicit assumptions there, why would a speed limit be required if the universe is infinite? (the universe could have been infinite at the time of the big bang already) — leo

The universe is finite:

- The universe is expanding so it cannot be infinite in space else there would be nowhere to expand to
- The universe started with the Big Bang 14 Billion years ago and has been expanding since then; it must have a finite radius
- Actual infinity is an impossibility (covered here at length: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4183/do-you-believe-there-can-be-an-actual-infinite/p1)

light moves slower in presence of gravitation (that's called the Shapiro delay — leo

Light has a constant speed; I understand the Shapiro effect to be spacetime dilation, which increases the path length the light has to travel; its does not slow down the speed of light.

We don't know whether everything obeys the speed of light limit — leo

But to be a normally functioning universe, a speed limit is required. Else it's possible to accelerate objects to infinite velocity and thus straight out of the universe. This was a flaw in Newtonian mechanics that is corrected by relativity.

So we must have a speed limit theoretically; empirically it is maybe the most well tested scientific constant. So the universe has time built into it.

Time is simply a measure of change, without change there is no such thing as the concept of time — leo

Time is fundamental to the universe. The speed of light speed limit (speed = distance / TIME) is obeyed by every particle in the universe and exists independently of change.

I believe in cause and effect so I think there is something in the prime mover.

I like probability and I calculate the likelihood of a creator of the universe is 97%. Does this make me a romantic too?

For the other points, I do not believe you understand the argument as you are still assuming time in your premises — The Existentialist

I am assuming presentism in my premises and then disproving it. For example:

Imagine an eternal being; he would have no start so could never exist. Being is possible we therefore conclude Eternal is not.

I've not mentioned time in the above proof.

Look at it this way: if your moment of birth was removed somehow, would you still exist? Everything, time and the universe included, needs a start.

Everything must have existed forever otherwise you arrive at massive philosophical contradictions — hks

What contradictions?

If you remove time, there is no prior moment, or subsequent moments. There is only this present moment. — The Existentialist

You can't completely remove time; there is 'something' there, whether you call it time or not, that allows movement and supports cause and effect. I will call it time. It must have a start because without a start the present moment is undefined. Think of it as the initial starting positions of all the particles in the universe. If that was removed, what is left? Something completely undefined. So eternity is rather like negative infinity; the start is undefined so the whole thing does not exist.

Also:

- If time did not have a start then an actual infinity of seconds has passed so far which is impossible

- Imagine an eternal being; he would have no start in time so could never exist. Being is possible we therefore conclude Eternal is not

- Intense gravity causes the passage of time to slow so time came to an almost stop at the Big Bang (strong candidate for start of time).

- A moment cannot of occurred infinity long ago, because there is no way for the effects of that moment to get to today (-oo + 1 = -oo), so all moments happened finitely long ago

If you remove time, you eliminate the need for a start — The Existentialist

I disagree. Would a moment exist if the moment before it was removed? Surely not. In fact all moments after the moment removed are undefined/cannot exist. So you actually need a first moment for a time series to be valid. That's the problem with eternity; it has no start so none of it exists.

So I still hold time has a start. Thats completely incompatible with Presentism BTW.

I think, therefore I am, — Noah Te Stroete

If you treat self as just the conscious train of thought of your mind, you can say 'you think, therefore you are' as when you are in a conversation, it is clear that the other 'voice' is a separate train of thought and thus a separate individual by the definition I used. So on this basis I think you can dismiss solipsism.