Religion brings wisdom? Tell that to a young girl being stoned to death for becoming pregnant. :worry: — jgill

You are being a little selective in your portrayal of religion. I'm talking about religion properly understood, in particular mysticism. People need to be intelligent and moral about how they practice religion.

Science vs consciousness? Scientists are not conscious? :roll: — jgill

Some of them are more conscious than so called religious people. I'm talking about consciousness of spiritual reality.

I'm guessing the path from the trick to the theorem just came from playing with the components. Right? — frank

Probably, yes. 'Geometry' means 'earth measuring' or words to that effect; geo = earth.

Do you know what happens to the mind in a process of sensory deprivation? It goes crazy. — David Mo

Because it is locked onto the body and is deprived of sensation. If the body dies the mind can escape the prison and return to its original state of non corporeal awareness.

You make it look like humans are devolving into lower and lower states of intelligence. Why do you call scientific truths, "primitive truths"? As far as anyone can tell, science is the new kid on the block and that kid seems to be leading the vanguard in our quest for knowledge. — TheMadFool

I don't mean primitive in a cultural sense I mean it in a physical, abstract sense. Science and mathematics are involved with the most basic primitive truths about the physical world and about abstraction. If society is a passenger liner, scientists are down in the engine room. The distinguished guests are in the upper decks, listening to opera and discussing more evolved things.

What's your answer? — frank

Probably came from algebra x² + y² = z²
3² + 4² = 5²

The mind is aware by itself. The body, which is an imitation of a mind, has five senses to imitate the mind's consciousness in a physical context.

More knowledge is automatically better. False. — Nuke

Knowledge needs to be combined with wisdom. That's where 'religion' comes in.

The problem is that scientists have done an excellent job of providing us with all kinds of goodies, and so naturally they have acquired significant authority. — Nuke

Someone said that if a fellow says three clever things, he is considered a genius. Scientists have become the high priests of the materialistic world view and their authority concerning primitive truths makes people think they are an authority on all kinds of matters.

Why are these other worldviews, you mentioned religion, fading away while science seems to flourishing? — TheMadFool

Many are now turning against the materialistic philosophy. I guess the people who are not really religious were always there, they are just coming out of the closet.

Yes. What other paths to knowledge are there? — TheMadFool

Consciousness. Many say that knowledge about spiritual reality and God can enter the mind, directly. This is the real division: the materialists say that only the intellect is a way to knowledge. Others say consciousness is also a way. The materialists reject this, often by putting up a woo argument.

There is also a difference between the kinds of knowledge we are talking about. Science is concerned with primitive knowledge about material things. Consciousness is concerned with knowledge about life and being.

This state of affairs in re the scientific worldview begs an explanation and the one that comes to mind is that scientific claims are considered incontrovertible truths, very unlike claims made by other worldviews — TheMadFool

Generally speaking science is true or close to the truth. But truth about what? About primitive aspects of the physical world. Science and mathematics are primitive and can't answer the more sublime ontological questions about being and meaning. Lately scientists have had the temerity to pronounce upon all manner of things that are, let's face it, above their pay grade. Dawkins & Co. making philosophically juvenile remarks about God, religion and spirituality etc. It is amusing, even comical. Dawkins is not a good philosopher. Hawking is far far worse. Very often scientists making comments about greater things are like mechanics, who presume their knowledge about engines, entitles them to pronounce upon literature. It don't work that way.

And why should they disagree? Is there some alternative that makes more sense? — jgill

For me the problem is not about science versus religion, per se. It is about knowledge and about ways to knowledge. Some people claim that the only acceptable kind of knowledge is primitive, intellectual, verifiable knowledge that can be shared and 'proved'. Others say there are other ways to knowledge (eg consciousness). The question is: is science the only way to knowledge? That's really what the division is about.

No, a perception is not the totality of consciousness. I can have an empirical perception, at the same time someone hallucinates. — MonisticIdealist

The analogy of a television illustrates the brain/mind duality. Suppose there's a tv and some guy starts experimenting on it and correlates various parts of the tv with sound and vision. His experiments show that the film on tv is intimately related to the components of the tv and he therefore concludes that the television produces the film.

But this is not true. Correlation is not causation. The film is broadcast to the tv from a remote station. The television only structures the information so the human eye and ear can understand. The television does not produce, it configures.

If the mind is a non physical entity what is the brain for? It is there to enable the mind to partake in physical reality. And for this the brain needs to configure the mind's consciousness in human terms; it translates the mind's thoughts into a human context and allows the mind to engage with the physical world.

For this, a physical analogue of consciousness is required. This analogue is the five senses. The senses provide information from the physical world to the mind. But the mind is conscious in its own terms; it is aware, over and above physical consciousness.

There are strong arguments for this, the Wall of Woo notwithstanding.

All the misnamed "butterfly effect" means is that in a discrete deterministic iterative system, very small changes in the inputs can lead to huge changes in the outputs. It's mathematically true and easily reproduced. The Mandelbrot set provides a striking example. Starting points extremely close together may have strikingly different evolutions under repeated applications of the transformation rule. — fishfry

I tend to agree. The Butterfly Effect is observed in isolated abstract systems but in the real world there are a myriad of butterfly effects cancelling each other out. eg in a galaxy of stars there are numerous Lagrange Points where gravity is cancelled. One Butterfly Effect can be cancelled by another before it gets going.

Maybe there's a deeper principle like this, where everything happens for a reason. — InPitzotl

I don't think Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle undermines determinism. What humans can or can't measure don't say much. Likewise with radioactive decay. It is a function in quantum spacetime but we measure it in physical spacetime. What is 'random' in physical space time does not need to be random at its source. It is very easy to create mathematical functions that generate seemingly random results where the input is perfectly ordered*. So these are not arguments against determinism. What human beings can determine or measure does not have any bearing on whether events are truly deterministic.

If the physical universe is deterministic and mind is non physical then mind can create a non deterministic event. Say a rock rolls down a hill. That, the determinists would argue, is purely deterministic. But if a person, with a mind, decides to put his foot out and stop the rock, that is not physical determinism. If mind/soul are non physical then non deterministic events can be possible.

*eg. X³ modulo p where p is prime and X = 1, 2, 3...
Here are the results for p = 43 with input 1, 2, 3...Input is regular but output is random.
The function calculates the remainder when X³ is divided by 43

1
8
27
21
39
1
42
39
41
11
41
8
4
35
21
11
11
27
22
2

Political liberty is not the same thing as free will, of either a compatibilist or incompatibilist sense. Those are three separate things. — Pfhorrest

I don't imagine they are. I'm talking about free will in a mental/spiritual/moral sense.

Whether or not free-will exists comes partly down to how you define it, and what you consider to be "you", the self. Even if you're a deterministic process, you're still making decisions based on who you are. You are simply doing what it is in your nature to do. — Malice

This is a thread I started on this subject some time ago-
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4458/determinism-and-mathematical-truth/p1

Could be but why desire that? — TheMadFool

Because the alternative is slavery.

So the problem is semantical rather than grammatical. That makes more sense. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I'm saying you can call it a spacetime or a universe, it comes to the same thing concerning what I'm saying about the loss of information.

Leibniz: I see your point. If some things don't have an effect then there's the possibility that our brains or minds, if you like, could be, through understanding, sequestered in a cause-empty environment, sealed off, as it were, from all influences and that makes us free. — TheMadFool

Perhaps free will means the ability to be a free causal agent.

When he talks about the woman with Alzheimer's she is not losing consciousness, she is losing her memory.

There is a writer (forget his name) made the assertion that civilization has added nothing to make our lot better. We were healthier and better off before we came out of the forest. There's a lot of truth in that. One of the most awful things about modern capitalism is that it does not provide creative lives for many people. My response to the system is to be real smart about how I interact with it.

Programming, chess, mathematics and other games do help you to think with precision. Anyone who wants to philosophize would do well to learn to think with clarity.

I do agree there is a non-physical universe of energy. — Becky

I think it was Bohr that said it is meaningless to say where a particle is outside detection. Where was it before detection? Nowhere. If by 'where' we are talking about a location in the physical universe then it was nowhere because a particle is not in the physical universe until it is detected*

Detection is when a particle collides with the physical universe/spacetime. This collision is registered as a trace effect on, for example, a photographic plate. Prior to the registration the particle was 'elsewhere' but not in the physical universe.

*Specifically, they are never in physical spacetime, they only leave trace effects here.

What if you see something new that you have no associations for? Even a kitten is fascinated by the world around it and it is all new. We have two kittens at the moment. They relish discovering the new with which they have no associations. Yep, he's a Zombie ok.

If consciousness was only a collection of associations how could you ever become conscious unless you had associations to make and you can't have associations unless you are first conscious? He's definitely Zombified.

I'm trying to impress on you, but without much success, that consciousness is the root of creativity.
Consciousness unifies and integrates information.
Creativity unifies and integrates information — Pop

Yes, I agree entirely. This is what the word 'inspiration' means. Making art works is about making metaphors, symbols and images of spiritual reality. We are conscious of spiritual reality and we make physical images of it. I think we are saying much the same thing.

Well, no. There is still only one universe, with two descriptions. — Banno

It depends on what 'universe' is referring to. If we are talking in terms of geometry there are two spacetimes, quantum and physical. As far as measurement is concerned it comes to the same thing. I find that conceiving things in terms of two spacetimes makes things easier to grasp. When it comes to measurement the difference is semantic.

Wow! How would you prove that? — Becky

I'm just going by what the scientists tell us. If a quantum event is n-dimensional and the only way to physically measure it is in a 4-dimensional world, n - 4 dimensions of information are lost.

Take a 3-dimensional object. Project its shadow on a 2-dimensional surface. You can see that 1 dimension of information is lost.

That's very interesting that each time an event is created, information is lost while passing down to our universe. However, I argue that in this external universe, information cannot be reasoned about using our conventional techniques as events in that space are "brute facts without explanation". — bizso09

Mathematical physics seems to be one way into the quantum universe, which is why it is so successful.

The question of identity assignment is one such problem that is not possible to answer using a logical framework. — bizso09

Suppose you are in a restaurant with another person. You are both in the same external reality but your experience of it is different from the other person's experience of it. For example, he is looking at you and you are looking at him so these are two different experiences. Your experiences are different because you both have different perspectives or points of view, on the same reality. So maybe the 'you' is largely a point of view on the world.

The double slit and various related experiments do come close to suggesting the universe likes paradox. But probably we just don't understand what's going on. — Marchesk

A post of mine from the thread 'Existence of an external universe'-

There are two spacetimes, quantum spacetime and physical spacetime. Quantum spacetime is an n-dimensional spacetime (it has been suggested n = 10 or 11). Physical spacetime is 4-dimensional. This effectively means there are two universes.

The physical universe is an emergent property of the quantum universe of energy. It is 'conjured up' from quantum spacetime.

When there is an n-dimensional event in the quantum universe that event is reduced from n dimensions to 4 dimensions so n - 4 dimensions of information are lost. More so, a quantum event is registered in the physical universe as a physical trace effect. eg a spot on a photographic plate is a trace effect. But these trace effects are necessarily physical 4 dimensional objects in the physical universe while the event that caused them is an n-dimensional event in the non physical universe of energy. So physicists are reduced to trying to measure an n-dimensional event with a 4-dimensional ruler. No wonder quantum physics is weird.

'One infinity'. — Marchesk

One anything. One {0} and off you go...

Numbers are made by iteration and partition.

Start with- "/", iterate: "//" and so on: "///////////////..."

Partition each step:

/, //, ///,...

= {/}, {//}, {///},...

In Arabic numerals-

1, 2, 3,...

I do not understand creativity that is not an expression of consciousness - please enlighten me. — Pop

I'm talking about art in cultural terms. Generally speaking artists do not become seized with a desire to express something. It is more fundamental than that. It is a desire to create. It is a human need to feel that we create our own lives. Expression, in cultural terms, is just sharing the image (art work) with others. It is not the primary motivation. But it follows, naturally, because art inevitably expresses the contents of the artist's consciousness.

What I don't like is teachers telling art students things like 'art is about self expression' or ' art is about reflecting society'. These are not the primary motivations. The primary motivation is an innate need to create.

One of the great problems of modern capitalist society is that it does not cater for people's creative needs.

That's another kettle of fish!

I'm here because I'm interested in 'stuff' (I hardly need to define 'stuff'). I also want to know how to think properly. How does one think correctly about philosophy? Why are humans so bad at it? Proper thinking is best developed not just by philosophy but by mental exercises: logic, mathematics, chess...anything that exercises your mental abilities. I am here to see if I am thinking correctly by testing my ideas so see how people will react and to see if they are thinking correctly.

Thinking about very hard fundamental problems (like math problems) is a good way to learn to think logically. But for philosophy, some kind of mystical or intuitive insight is good as well as the logical stuff. Logic alone won't do it.

So why on earth would paradoxes be built into the universe? — Benj96

I don't believe they are. I think paradoxes are superficial. They are limitations on language and defects in human thinking. In Russell's Paradox the statement is:

"The set of all sets that are not members of themselves." Immediately we have a problem because the statement assumes that this entity is a set, but it is not, as the paradox shows.

It needs to be restated as:

"All sets that are not members of themselves."

Now we can ask the question What is this entity if it is not a set? See my entry on R.Paradox. in the mathematics thread.

You can create the number line with the null set. Let {0} = the null set:

{0}
{0}{0}
{0}{0}{0}
{0}{0}{0}{0}...etc

= 1, 2, 3, 4...:

Only demonstrable mathematical truths are domonstrably true. The jury is out on everything else (except 'I think therefore I am' and 'There is something').

So essentially any number would not refer to anything either? If so what does zero refer to? What differentiates 1 from 0? — Outlander

1 can count the 0. 'One zero'.

That you feel the need to create something - what dose that express?

What is the mind activity that leads you to create art? Is it not your consciousness? — Pop

Yes, you could say consciousness. But the primary motivation is not expression, it is simply to create. I suppose expression is inevitable on some level but 'create' is the motivation. "Reflecting society" is also something that creeps in but doing art 'to reflect society' is journalism

Information is power they say, and if this summarizes the concept of art then why would anyone just give power away to someone else for nothing? There must be more to it than that alone. — kudos

I suppose the artist reveals a lot by sharing his/her thoughts but we do that anyhow.

And he believes, not based on "faith" but on evidence, that Information is the essence of reality --- of both Matter and Mind; both "invisible transcendental" Energy, and visible tangible Matter. — Gnomon

I don't think 'everything' is information because that would mean that all that exists is abstraction and I don't see how abstraction can exist without substance. If information exists it must have some kind of substance (mind?) to keep it in being. You can't have 0s and 1s by themselves. You have to store them on something, even if that something is a mind.

The idea that "Art work is information about the artist’s consciousness," is sort of difficult for me to accept without qualification. If this were true, how could there be such a thing as art work to begin with? Because there would be no necessity for the artist to share information about their consciousness beyond some type of perversion. In addition, without some contribution from outward there can be no 'cast' of art in which to apply it's form. — kudos

I don't think it is perverse to want to share something good. It is natural. Yes, there are all kinds of influences that determine 'fashion' in art: art history, other artists, the world at large etc. But the essential aesthetic is deeper than fleeting fashions. As the OP says, art is about the artist's consciousness but the form of the image (art work) is often influenced by fashion in art. Art is creativity. An Art work is a bit messier when it comes to definitions because it has so many cultural influences.

When people say 'art' they are mostly talking about the image be it a painting or piece of music or sculpture. For me art is the inner process and the image/art work is a metaphor of that process.

Interesting...sounds like you are referring to Einstein's Block Universe theory, where time is just an illusion...(?). — 3017amen

Time is a geometric shape just like any object. Time, in human experience, depends on information reaching a certain point: where the human being happens to be. Human consciousness (at least physical consciousness) is located at a point in space and time flows as information reaches this point. But what if someone's consciousness could fill the whole solar system or universe. What would time be like then?