Because the query presupposes without warrant, that existence is that to which it is possible to belong. Logic and parsimony suggest that existence is not that which is belonged to, but rather, is that which belongs. — Mww

But it’s not a presupposition, it’s a definition, existence is defined here as all that exists. Existence cannot belong to anything else than existence. And what exists belongs to existence by definition. Your position is self-contradictory.

And here’s why: anything ever talked about, or thought about, is from the perspective of human rationality. — Mww

In all those cases, the commonality is the existence of something outside us. — Mww

This thread is about finding truths that are valid now regardless of what we assume. As I said solipsism hasn’t been disproven, yet you assume it is false, you assume humans exist even when they aren’t perceived, you assume things exist beyond experiences that are had, you can believe that if you like, but don’t pretend that your belief is true no matter what.

“Existence is made of parts” is true now no matter what is assumed, you disagreed in an earlier post, if you still disagree then show how it could be false now, Metaphysician Undercover and I have proven that it cannot be false now, unless you find a flaw in the proof then you have no ground to say that it is false. And so if you arbitrarily claim that something proven true is false, while claiming that an unproven belief of yours is true, that’s a problem.

And just in case, when I talk of “you”, I’m not presupposing that solipsism is false, because “you” could simply refer to a content of my experiences rather than a human being existing independently of me perceiving it. I do believe other beings exist, but for now we haven’t proven it’s true no matter what we assume, here we’re looking for what’s true now no matter what we assume.

We grant the reality of the moon without its perception because understanding thinks the moon exists, and thinks such without the aid of immediate experience. — Mww

You can think unicorns exist on the moon too, that doesn’t imply unicorns exist on the moon independently of the thought of it. Just because you think things exist beyond your experiences, does not imply in itself that things exist beyond your experiences.

In my philosophy book where I coined those terms ontophilia and ontophobia, I do say that I think ontophilia is the referent of theologically noncognitivist conceptions of God. Also nirvana, eudaimonia, ataraxia, etc.

The latter terms are less problematic because they are explicitly about a state of mind, while “God” sounds like you’re talking about something outside your mind, which is causing those feelings, rather than just talking about the feelings. — Pfhorrest

I'm not sure they are less problematic. For instance why wouldn't you say that objects are states of mind, instead of things outside mind that are causing their perception? It seems to me there is this widespread arbitrary assumption of interpreting feelings as internal states of mind, while interpreting other perceptions as showing us what's outside mind.

I would say a more coherent view would be to interpret feelings as perceptions too, as showing us something. And to not arbitrarily interpret some experiences as perceptions and some other experiences as states of mind, but to interpret all experiences as perceptions. All experiences would be the mind perceiving something. The mind wouldn't stem from the brain, rather the mind would act on the brain to control the body.

And then when you feel engulfed in love, you could interpret it as what's really happening, rather than seeing it as a mere state of mind, as an internal brain state. Love would be a real thing that we perceive, and when that thing passes through the body it is what would change the brain state, rather than the feeling being a manifestation of the brain state. The feeling could very well be telling you about something that the other senses do not see. There are plenty of things that the eyes see that other senses do not see, maybe feelings are senses too, ways of seeing things that other senses do not see.

I'm not claiming this is what truly is the case, but I'm thinking about it now, and for some reason it seems to make more sense to me than the usual conception.

I am confused because you appear to be making the same arguments I make, only you seem to think the problem is non-Christians and I think the problem is Christianity. Excuse me if I am wrong about thinking about you are Christian who is saying non-Christians are the problem. — Athena

As I said I’m not a Christian, I do not follow any organized religion. I don’t think the problem is non-Christians and I don’t think the problem is Christians either, I described where the problem lies: in the forces that seek to divide, to separate, to spread suffering. These forces can be present within both Christians and non-Christians. Examples of such forces are the desires and beliefs that lead to separation, to suffering.

When some Christian priests rape children or nuns, what they do is part of the problem. When non-Christians kill people or promote hate, what they do is part of the problem. When you say that the problem is Christianity, that’s part of the problem. There can be a horrible world with or without Christianity.

Are you arguing that there is a God? I have no problem with that. However, if you are arguing the Bible is anything but mythology, and that it is the word of God, then we have a disagreement. — Athena

As I said I wasn’t arguing that, the points I make are relevant whether you believe in a God or not. Personally I do believe that our usual senses do not show us the whole picture, that there is more that exists than what we usually see, that existence doesn’t end with the death of the physical body, but I don’t believe that everything that is written in the Bible or the Quran or the Torah is true, however I believe there is some truth in them, that it isn’t pure fantasy, that the people who wrote these texts had important things to share, things they understood or saw and that we misinterpret today.

Then you are not asking us to believe in Satan and demons and power of curses and reason for why we are not living in Paradise and why we need to be saved? — Athena

I’m not asking anyone to believe that the Devil exists, forcing people to believe something is one example of force that divides people and spreads suffering. I’m not forcing beliefs on anyone, I’m simply sharing things I have come to see and understand, important things that I didn’t use to understand, because they are hard to see, and that’s why I see it as important to help others see them too. In this thread I am attempting to highlight the underlying reason why social systems break down, which is the forces that divide, that separate people from one another, that separate people from their environment, that separate people from what they feel, and so on.

I’m calling these forces evil, you don’t have to believe that a Devil you don’t see is behind them, you can simply focus on these forces that you do see. However you choose to call these forces, if you ignore them you can’t explain why social systems break down.

I really can not think of feelings, thoughts, consciousness as matter. It can even be hard to believe in matter because everything is energy. However, I think you have argued yourself out of accepting the Bible as the word of God because without believing the story of Adam and Eve and the snake/Satan and the forbidden fruit, the whole Christian notion of being made different from all other animals and needing to be saved falls about. — Athena

I don’t believe that humans are fundamentally different from other animals, I believe that we are all beings with different abilities, different weaknesses and different appearances, but that fundamentally there is something that connects all of us, so indeed I don’t buy the whole notion that other animals were created to benefit man, the very idea of separating humans from other animals is another example of force that divides, which leads humans to cause immense suffering to other beings, and to destroy the environment. As I said not all is true in the religious texts, the people back then didn’t understand everything, but they did understand important things so we shouldn’t dismiss all of it.

"ignorance" means to ignore something. People who believe the story of Adam and Eve, have cause to fear Satan, and false information from a supernatural source, and forbidden knowledge. They tend to ignore science and the scientific method of judging truth. What you said is true and it is a good argument and to me, it explains what is wrong with Muslims and Christians. They can be holding a false belief and kill people believing it is God's will they kill the pagans and infidels or those Christians who have a different understanding of the Bible. Those who believe they can know the will of God, can be pretty dangerous people. — Athena

Yes the belief that we already know everything is a form of ignorance, and ignorance leads to false beliefs, and false beliefs lead to suffering. But there is not only ignorance in religious people, there is also a lot of it in non-religious people, for instance in the people who believe that science proves there is no God and no free will and no existence after the death of the body, or who believe that scientific theories are proven to be true, and this ignorance can be very dangerous too.

Wants wrong with calling them evil? They are Christians and Muslims who think they are doing the will of God. Are you wanting to call these religious people evil? Do we want to think of disease as evil spirits and watch for demons to come out of evil people? Do we want to eat without washing our hands but with faith that Jesus is protecting us and if we are saved we are protected? Do we want to believe Bush jr., Obama and Trump are made good presidents because of God and our prayers? Do we want to believe we are better people because we know the word of
God and those who do not agree with us do not have the right understanding of God's word so it is okay to use million-dollar bombs and destroy their most important cities? Killing people with weapons of mass destruction because their leader may be developing a weapon of mass destruction. We can do this but they can not? — Athena

Christians and Muslims who falsely believe that they are doing the will of God when they kill people aren’t evil, their false belief is due to ignorance, and that’s what becomes an evil force.

There are many diseases we can cure without believing that evil spirits are behind them, but we shouldn’t dismiss too hastily the extensive evidence that exists for healing miracles, which conventional medicine doesn’t explain. Or the evidence that cats can sense when something bad is about to happen to you, as if they could see things that we don’t see, it isn’t clear that a better smell or better eyesight can explain how they know that.

It is clear that faith in Jesus or in some other being is not enough to overcome evil forces, otherwise some priests who dedicate their life to their faith wouldn’t rape children. And Jesus himself wouldn’t have been crucified if faith alone was sufficient. But that doesn’t imply that faith is useless. Same remark for the presidents, faith can be useful but it is not all-powerful.

People who believe a loving God would tell them to kill people or bomb cities are ignorant, again ignorance becomes an evil force.

Oh yes, we can explain why social systems break down. Civilizations are born and die and we know a lot about the cause and effect. — Athena

In order for a system to keep going, its different parts have to work together, in harmony. If different parts work against one another, if there are forces that disrupt that system, if these forces become stronger than the forces that keep the system going, then the system collapses. We have to focus on these forces, otherwise we will keep addressing superficial problems instead of the root cause, and neither capitalism nor socialism nor communism nor anarchism will work as long as we don’t address the root cause.

And the best reason for opposing Christianity is these people hold false beliefs and do not look for the truth outside of their belief, just as you explained in paragraph 4. — Athena

Vilifying Christianity will create division, which will create suffering. Christians have mostly good intentions, good intentions in themselves aren’t a problem, false beliefs are. And we all have false beliefs, not just Christians. But they aren’t wrong about everything, and we aren’t wrong about everything either.

We all have to work together, they should be open-minded but we should be open-minded too. Open-mindedness doesn’t mean believing whatever we’re told, but not believing that we already hold the whole truth, and so being open to what others say, being open to discussion, without looking to force one’s beliefs onto others.

However forcing someone to be more open-minded is not a solution, if they aren’t open-minded they will perceive you as a threat and then it creates a conflict, and if you don’t defuse it it escalates and then it spreads suffering, and suffering generates more suffering and so on. And keep in mind that many Christians do not condone the killing of people or the bombing of cities. Evil forces can infiltrate in insidious ways, there is a tight balance to find, in order to move as a whole towards more understanding, more collaboration, more harmony, more unity, towards truth.

I think your theory of good and evil has some merit, but that doesn't stop people taking on self-defeating values, and defining good-for-them and evil-for-them in self-defeating ways. — bert1

Yes I agree with this, but the fact people can be mistaken about what’s truly good and what’s truly evil does not imply that good and evil are fundamentally relative, that there is no such thing as true good and true evil. For instance taking advantage of others for one’s own personal gain can be seen as good from the point of view of the person doing it, but from the point of view of many other people enduring it it isn’t good as it creates suffering.

So God might, in a sufficiently revelatory mood, remind us that good is unity and evil is separation, but we can still disagree, no matter how foolishly. — bert1

Yes we can disagree, but then we pay the price as a whole as we move towards suffering as a whole. There can still be some people feeling good while global suffering increases, but eventually the ones who feel good end up paying the price too. And we don’t have to see it as a single loving God punishing us (which seems incoherent), if the loving God is doing his best then it’s simply evil that is spreading because we’re letting it spread.

And God himself must value separation, or we would not exist (on the assumption of a creator God of course). — bert1

Yes, unless again it’s the evil God who values separation and suffering while the loving God attempts to prevent it and to move back towards unity. In that view without separation we would still exist, we would all be united as the loving God himself, whereas now we are a part of him who got separated from him by evil, and evil attempts to move us towards his side.

I’m not asking anyone to believe that this loving God and this evil God truly exist, but I find a lot of things make sense that way. Even if people don’t want to believe in them, I think we can still come to agree on the sort of things that contribute to spreading happiness and on the sort of things that contribute to spreading suffering, and see that they aren’t purely relative.

we can replace god with science, because you do not worship science, because everybody is equal and there is no spirit in the sky, man — Athen Goh

Don’t you see that people invoke science to say that people aren’t equal?

Also, both scientific and religious conclusions are based on empirical evidence and on beliefs.

As one example of belief shared by many who believe in Science, the idea you mentioned that everything that happens in existence reduces to laws, that everything behaves according to these laws. That’s a belief. The fact that some things seem to follow laws does not imply that everything follows laws. You can assume it if you like, and try to explain everything in terms of laws, but don’t pretend it is less of a belief than the idea that a being is responsible for these laws and that not everything reduces to these laws.

Science and God aren’t incompatible. If you believe they are incompatible, that’s a belief not backed by empirical evidence.

Yes, that's it exactly! The difficulty is that, in ontophobia, you can't access the quality, for lack of a better word, of ontophilic space. You can only see it conceptually as something opposed to the ontophobic. So it has no fullness, or reality of its own. It seems to just be [non-ontophobia], a conceptual void defined in terms of its opposite.

I think, for those of us prone to severe mood swings, there's an art to figuring out how to leave conceptual 'anchors' that let us stay connected when you can't access that ok-ness. I find that I can 'know' that there is a kind of 'full' memory I can't access,that is presently barred from me. Knowing it's real, but for some reason barred, helps me realize that a limited depressive state is not as comprehensive as it pretends to be. That probably wouldn't have worked when I was younger but seems to work now that I've seen the depressive state run its course enough times. — csalisbury

I like how you put it, it has interesting parallels with something else.

You talk of two distinct spaces that are opposed. In one space there is difficulty, suffering, things are not as comprehensive as they pretend to be, and you can’t access the quality of the other space, it is barred from you. In the other space this suffering isn’t there, you are OK, you see more clearly. In one space you feel disconnected from the ok-ness, in the other space you feel connected to it.

In order to remember that this other space exists, you say you need to figure out how to leave anchors so that you remain slightly connected to that space even when you aren’t in it.

Many people think like you, but they use different names to describe it. What you call ok-ness, they call love or light. What you call anchors, they call faith. What you call ‘full’ memory, they call truth.

You’re rediscovering what so many others have discovered, people that modern society tends to dismiss as believers of fairy tales, as irrational people, but they talk of profound things, not mere fantasy.

I would say suicide is what happens when one suffers more than one can handle. Depression, anxiety and hopelessness are all forms of suffering.

There are many things that can help, but what really helps depends on the situation. For some people it will be to feel loved. For some people it will be to feel that their life serves a meaningful purpose. For some people it will be to understand things that they didn’t understand, to identify a false belief they had. For some people it will be to take some medication. Or a combination of those.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, maybe the best tool to help with depression is psilocybin. It has worked for many people for which nothing else worked, studies have shown that. The thing is that it can help you feel loved, help you feel that your life has a purpose, and help you understand things you didn’t understand, all at once. That’s why it works so well. But obviously do it in a safe place, and don’t do things like driving after taking it, but that’s also true of other medications.

Well, you seem to disregard any point I make about intelligence until I give a robust definition for intelligence, which I can't do. Understandable, I guess. But irregardless of what general intelligence is, we do test people in very specific skills, like most major areas of science. — Qmeri

Note that I didn’t disregard your points, I addressed them, maybe you misunderstood me. My argument didn’t rest on your lack of a robust definition for intelligence, I proposed that we could define intelligence as a measure of how good one is at maths, memorizing, and IQ tests. My argument was then based on that definition.

I explained how people who have a very high intelligence by these criteria can be stuck in false conclusions. I explained how there are many instances where most people who have a high intelligence are wrong whereas many who don’t have a high intelligence are right. Based on this, we shouldn’t demand of people who are measured to have a lesser intelligence to trust people who are measured to have a higher intelligence. Sometimes the intelligent ones are wrong, and the less intelligent are right.

So this is one good reason to not blindly trust people who have a high intelligence. Another good reason to not blindly trust them is that they are also better at deceiving and manipulating people if that’s what they wish. Yet another good reason to have a bias against them is that their superior intelligence often makes them feel entitled to impose their own beliefs onto people of lesser intelligence, and to arbitrarily dismiss what people of lesser intelligence say.

Now if you agree with these three reasons, why do you see it as a bad thing that people of lesser intelligence do not blindly trust the ‘intelligentsia’? It’s not a bad thing to not blindly trust them, it’s a healthy thing.

And why may they be more trusting of people who are not part of the ‘intelligentsia’? Because these people aren’t as good at deceiving, and because they usually feel less entitled to impose their beliefs onto others without listening.

As another counterpoint to what you are saying, there are also people of lesser intelligence who do blindly trust people of higher intelligence. Politicians appeal to the masses by saying things such as “I believe in Science”. Advertisers give as a selling point that “scientists say...”, or “science shows...”. They do that because many people do blindly trust what is labeled ‘science’ or ‘scientific’.

Most people wouldn’t want someone dumb to run their country or some critical system, they do value intelligence. But they don’t value only intelligence, they also value other things, for instance they don’t want to be governed by an emotionless robot who has 200 IQ and superhuman memory, they also want someone who cares about them, why would they trust someone of high intelligence if that person doesn’t care about them?

Politicians are good at deceiving people when they are campaigning, to make them believe that they care about them, but more and more people are waking up to the lies, as they see time and time again that promises aren’t kept and things don’t change, so people aren’t as dumb as the intelligentsia would want them to be.

Please consider the word "evil" is tied to supernatural powers, and therefore, the word can be problematic. — Athena

Can we adjust that to a supernatural belief in good and evil supernatural powers is problematic because it promotes ignorance and results in well-meaning people doing the wrong thing? — Athena

The idea that microscopic germs exist and cause diseases used to be seen as a supernatural power, because we couldn’t see them and the idea seemed far-fetched at the time. Or the idea that continents drift. Or the idea that rogue waves exist. And many other examples. What we call supernatural is usually that which we believe does not exist, then when we come to believe it exists we stop calling it supernatural, when we come to see it or come to understand how it acts on what we see we stop calling it supernatural and start seeing it as natural, as really existing. Something we call supernatural now may not be seen as supernatural in the future.

Now when I talk of evil I’m not asking anyone to believe that there are forces we can’t see and can’t explain that are responsible for all the conflicts and the suffering in the world, we can focus on what we do see. For instance we do see that there are some desires and beliefs that contribute to unite people, to protect life and spread happiness, whereas there are some other desires and beliefs that contribute to divide people, to destroy life and spread suffering. We can see these latter desires and beliefs as natural forces, and we can call them evil forces.

Now where do desires and beliefs come from? People who believe in materialism say that they are the results of chemical reactions in the brain, of particles moving according to laws of physics. Whereas people who believe differently say that desires and beliefs do not come from particles, that they may be influenced by physics but that they are also influenced by other things which we do not see with the eyes. The idea that desires and beliefs solely come from laws of physics is a supernatural explanation itself, because we don’t have evidence of that, that’s a pure belief. But regardless of what we believe on the matter, regardless of where desires and beliefs come from, when we talk of evil we can simply focus on some desires and beliefs without necessarily assuming that there are unseen entities who work to make us have these desires and beliefs.

And I wouldn’t say that believing there are things we don’t see or don’t understand promotes ignorance, on the contrary it prevents us from believing we already know everything, it keeps us open-minded and keeps us thinking and looking. There are some people who like to remain ignorant by looking to explain nothing, and there are people who like to remain ignorant by believing we already see everything. But the idea that we don’t see or don’t understand some things in itself doesn’t promote ignorance.

And so I don’t see what’s wrong with identifying forces that contribute to divide people, destroy life and spread suffering, and what’s wrong with calling them evil. Some of these forces are some desires and beliefs. There are other evil forces we can identify, and there can be other such forces we are yet to identify and understand. If you don’t like the word ‘evil’ you could use another word for it, maybe you have suggestions. But the reason I call evil the elephant in the room is that if we keep ignoring these forces, we can’t explain why social systems always seem to break down no matter what we try.

Although, we do have guite a lot of ways to measure things associated with intelligence objectively, like math, different forms of memory, and countless other things. And while the measurements will never be a perfect assessment of general intelligence (not least because we don't have an objective definition for general intelligence) they are good clues of what one can functionally do with their intelligence. And people who in their lives do badly in these measurable things, seem to distrust intelligence more. — Qmeri

Well what is true intelligence? If you define intelligence as being good at maths, having good memory and being good at IQ tests, then by definition someone good at those things is intelligent, but does that necessarily imply they are better equipped to find truth than other people? There can be extremely intelligent people by these criteria who are stuck in false conclusions because even though their logical reasoning is flawless and their thinking very quick, they have started from premises which are false.

We have the intuition that truth exists, that there is a way reality really is like beyond appearances, but until we have found the whole truth we’re all walking in the dark. A given premise may be able to explain a lot of things, but it may be a totally different premise that will allow to explain everything. Many intelligent people (intelligent by the above criteria) believe in materialism, does that mean they are more likely to be right than people who believe differently? Materialism is a belief too, it does not logically follow from the laws of physics, it follows from the belief that the laws of physics can explain everything. As I mentioned there are plenty of historical examples where what the majority of intelligent people believed was simply wrong, and people who were judged as less intelligent were right. So I wouldn’t say that people who are measured to be less intelligent on these criteria are inherently less trustworthy. I wouldn’t say trustworthiness is correlated with intelligence.

Basically you haven’t shown that people who score badly on these criteria distrust intelligence itself, you’re simply mentioning that on average they tend to have different beliefs than the people who score well on these criteria, which in itself doesn’t prove that the beliefs of the former are false while the beliefs of the latter are true. They don’t distrust intelligence, they simply have their own beliefs, and they may distrust people who have a better ability at deceiving and manipulating, an ability which is positively correlated with scoring well on these criteria.

In reading Einstein's work, he includes a disclaimer:
"That light requires the same time to traverse the same path A to M as for the path B to M is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which I can make of my own freewill in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity." — sandman

Indeed, but what he says is valid only as long as nothing travels faster than light. If we ever find something that travels faster than light, we could use it to measure the one-way speed of light, and then his postulate may not remain valid.

The appeal to science for support of materialism is fallacious because comprehension of the operation natural world is not proof that the world was not created by a supernatural being. The Judeo-Christian assertion is that increased knowledge of the natural world leads to increased appreciation of the Creator's genius. No scientific experiment can falsify that assertion. — GeorgeTheThird

I agree with that. But going even further, if sometime in the future we manage to show that there are things that happen within a living body that don’t get explained by the physical laws that apply to particles, for instance if we show that some particles within a living body break these laws, then that would be evidence that a living being is more than the particles that make up its body, that there is a fundamental difference between life and non-life. But I’d say that anyway experiencing feelings already shows that we are more than a body, feelings aren’t a bunch of particles, they are something else.

At the level of individual particle events, the universe is a black box. We have learned how to push the buttons and read the gauges on the face of the box, but we have no idea what is going on inside the box. — GeorgeTheThird

Well we describe how things change, but that doesn’t explain why they change, what makes them change, why they follow laws. Either some being is making them follow these laws, or the fact they follow these laws would be forever unexplainable. Personally I’d go with the first option. After all we are beings who create change through what we do, so maybe the change we see that doesn’t come from us comes from some other being.

Coercion has to be acceptable in order to prevent coercion otherwise there would be unrestrained violence (e.g. we need to be able to use force as necessary to stop people from murdering, for an obvious example). But yeah, the ultimate goal is to de-escalate and minimize coercion, so if there are non-coercive solutions those are preferable. — Pfhorrest

Attacking someone is coercion, protecting someone isn’t. Regarding your example, people attempt to murder for various reasons, they usually do not wake up one day and randomly decide to kill some random person, understanding the reasons can help de-escalate a situation without having to physically hurt anyone. In extreme cases it can be necessary to physically restrain someone, but even then to prevent it from happening again there are better ways than locking up the person for many years.

Anyway that’s not what I was referring to, I was referring to the fact that often the same people who are coerced by capitalism want to coerce others through socialism, that won’t solve the underlying issue.

That's like saying that the mighty won't stand for anyone else to gain any strength. And it's true they'll usually try not to, but that doesn't mean we have to just let them get away with it, and oughtn't fight back. — Pfhorrest

In the rest of my post I specifically said we don’t have to accept this state of affairs, that we can change things, but not by fighting back with the same weapons that they use, that ultimately won’t work.

Literally speaking, it actually does. That's why that's an idiom: backfires are a firefighting technique used by real firefighters, and (speaking as someone living in the only unburned area in the middle of the footprint of the largest fire in California history) they work. — Pfhorrest

Come on that was a metaphor, if you add fire to a fire it doesn’t stop the fire, the technique you mention is not at all a suitable analogy, we can go into that if you want but that would probably be a waste of time for both of us, why are you focusing on these superficialities?

Wealthy people coerce others to work for them. If you coerce wealthy people so that they redistribute their wealth, now they are coerced too. Or as another example, if there is a revolution and the oppressor becomes the oppressed, well there is still oppression occurring, the underlying issue isn’t solved, only the new oppressors have the illusion that it has been solved. Or if someone hates you and you hate them in return, that doesn’t de-escalate anything. That’s the kind of examples I was getting at.

So the ultimate solution is to ensure that people support good things and oppose bad things. But that starts with figuring out what's good and bad in the first place, what we should support and what we should oppose. — Pfhorrest

Indeed, or in other words figure out what are the things that lead to peace, harmony, happiness, and what are the things that lead to conflict, division, suffering. Which I call good and evil.

Gosh, I love what you have said, and I will stick to the problem of overpopulation because of what this does to how we behave and experience life. In small numbers, everything is managed on a personal level, The rules are informal and 100% managed with social pressure. The word civilization means city life and that is a large number of people organized by formal laws. In the city and with laws, life is impersonal. We can look away from the starving mother and child, and go about our lives as though they don't exist. The rich have a reality totally different from the dirty masses, and they come to believe their difference means they are superior and they are more deserving. I am sorry to say, but Christianity reinforced this division of people and slavery. Jesus would be so hurt by today's reality and how good Christians believe they are doing very well, but "those people", the dirty masses are unworthy. — Athena

Certainly overpopulation is problematic, however I think it would be wrong to see it as the root cause of the division and indifference you're mentioning. If the dynamic of the society isn't healthy at its core, then overpopulation only exacerbates the problem, but it would be misguided to think that if there were many less people we would suddenly all be nicer to each other. You can have a few people oppressed by a tyrant, it doesn't take many people to be divided. There are people who willfully hurt others, they aren't indifferent but they aren't nice either.

I agree that religions have been used as a tool for evil purposes by some people, but pretty much anything can be and has been used as a tool for evil purposes.

Oh my, I am a Senior Companion. That means for $2.65 an hour, I pick up an older person and take this person shopping or to doctor appointments, or to a nutrition site for lunch. The idea is to keep them engaged with the larger community, independent and happy. It is very difficult for me when these very sweet people, often Christians, point at the homeless people we pass and say unpleasant things about "those people". I tried to get them to stop that or to see it differently without offending them. — Athena

I'm not sure if you got the idea that I'm a Christian, I do not follow any organized religion in particular, and I wouldn't say that all Christians only spread love and kindness, it seems to me you yourself spread more of it than the people you mention.

Well, it will be interesting to see how they react to me being homeless. I am not sure how well I will be able to be "professional" when I no longer have a home to come to and feel like a human being, instead of like a wounded animal in danger. :wink: — Athena

It saddens me that you are going to be in this situation. Overpopulation or not there is no excuse for people to be indifferent or to exploit others. It seems obvious to me that if everyone cared for one another homelessness wouldn't be a thing, except for those who want it. And I see how most people walking by the homeless ignore them, just focusing on themselves and often on petty pursuits. But then again many people live a difficult life, for various reasons. I mentioned evil as the root cause, apparently that word is taboo for some here, however you wouldn't be in this situation if there were only loving and caring people, and I don't think it's controversial to point out that there are plenty of desires and beliefs that contribute to spreading suffering.

I really hope things will get better for you, is there really no one you know that can let you stay at their place?

I’m not willing to discuss religious conspiracy theories - flagged. — I like sushi

A few questions for you:

1) What religious conspiracy theories are you referring to?
2) Why do you feel the need to flag something you're not willing to discuss?
3) Do you feel that censoring things we're not willing to discuss has a positive impact on society?
4) What would you say is the underlying reason why capitalism, socialism, and anarchy do not work?
5) Do you think that your post is philosophically relevant?

I do agree that a person who is not that intelligent is in a precarious situation. An intelligent person can identify true intelligence with his intelligence. What can someone without that skill do to distinguish between a person who actually understands something and someone who who just pretends? I really don't have an answer for that. Make basic education better? Make everyone more intelligent? People being aware of their intuitions against intelligence couldn't hurt? It's a complex problem, but acknowledging it as a problem is the start. — Qmeri

There is an even bigger problem: how can you tell if you are truly intelligent, or if you simply believe you are because you aren’t truly intelligent?

The underlying problem is, as always, what is true? If we don’t assume that truth exists, the world would quickly turn to hell (hopefully you agree with this, at least). So if we assume that truth exists, what is true? People disagree about plenty of things, for various reasons. It is not hard to see that you aren’t other people and they aren’t you, we are all different in some way, we lead a different life, we have different experiences, so why assume that we see more or understand more than these people? We can’t even tell for sure what they experience, in philosophy that’s known as the problem of other minds.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t move towards truth, but at least it means that we should be more humble, not believe that others have nothing to teach us about existence, they may have gone through experiences we haven’t gone through, seen things we haven’t seen, understood things we haven’t understood, and so it’s important to listen to people, not just tell them what to believe while assuming we know better, sometimes others are the ones who know better and forcing our beliefs onto them simply spreads suffering. But at the same time we must not believe whatever people say simply because we can’t tell for sure whether they’re right or not. There is a careful balance to find, keep an open mind, not too much, but don’t close it too much either.

Then find what you can agree on with other people and move from there. If someone doesn’t agree with your group, don’t exclude them, find what you can agree on with them. And so on.

Whereas the elitist mentality is counterproductive, it is stuck in dogma, spreads them forcefully, and arbitrarily dismisses important insights or discoveries that other people attempt to communicate.

There is no "difference that makes a difference" here, and I think this is the important lesson, which also shows the silliness of those who bitch and moan about how counterintuitive and just wrong relativity is. The fact is that relativity does not contradict our everyday experience. Ask yourself, what would have been different from your point of view if simultaneity was absolute rather than relative?

The standard theory of relativity says that simultaneity is conventional; there is no fact of the matter about simultaneity of distant events. — SophistiCat

For now. If we ever come to find out that faster-than-light communication is possible, then this relative simultaneity will be wrong. Sure people will still be able to invoke relative simultaneity in terms of this higher speed limit instead of the speed of light, but if we were all blind we could have also said that nothing travels faster than sound and we would disagree much more about say when a thunder occurred. We would have said that the time when the thunder originated is conventional, that we may choose it as having occurred a few seconds later or earlier, that there is no fact of the matter about it, and we would have been wrong. Not seeing things does not imply that they do not exist.

Similarly, one doesn’t have to assume that we won’t ever find anything that travels faster than light, so we don’t have to assume that what we see as conventional now will remain to be so in the future. And since absolute simultaneity is much more intuitive for most people, maybe those who complain about these people should be more humble, instead of trying to force the view that simultaneity is fundamentally conventional. Well, there is no maybe about it.

If it’s violent enough it would wipe the slate clean and allow a new system to form. — I like sushi

The more violent it is, the more counterproductive it will be. The military today is much more powerful than it used to be, things would really turn ugly, especially if other countries join the fight and then we got ourselves a world war with nuclear weapons, we really don’t want to see that. Then after all that, what would change fundamentally? The slate has been wiped clean many times in history, what would be different this time?

I’m pretty damn sure what the underlying problem is, but it’s hard to see an applicable means of countering it. Capitalism is in its death throes and I expect applying band-aids will help transition to something else because there needs to be a social paradigm shift toward what is regarded as ‘meaningful’ for most people. — I like sushi

In capitalism people are coerced, in socialism people are coerced too, the fundamental issue remains the same. What do you see as the underlying problem? I explained what I see as the underlying problem: evil. Capitalism and socialism and even anarchy would work great without evil. And none of them will work as long as we don’t address the elephant in the room: evil.

Likewise, it's possible that a being humans would call "God" could exist, who would know that there aren't any such things as gods, if that's actually the truth. That doesn't mean that the "God" we're talking about doesn't exist, just that he doesn't think of himself as a god. — Pfhorrest

But then if he’s omniscient he would know that humans would see him as a God, so he wouldn’t think they’re wrong for seeing it that way, he would know that from their point of view that’s how it looks.

Also if he exists and he isn’t all-powerful, maybe sometimes he impresses himself, like sometimes we achieve things we didn’t think we were capable of, maybe not all would be easy peasy for him. Which would explain why there is so much suffering, the loving God isn’t all-powerful. But if the loving God is much more powerful than humans and other life here on Earth, then he could prevent suffering if humans and other beings were responsible for it, so if he can’t then some other very powerful being must be ultimately responsible for that suffering, so if there is a loving God who isn’t all-powerful there must also be an evil God on the other side...

The assertion of "orthodox" quantum mechanics is fundamental probability: the laws of physics are statistical only; there is no cause for the outcome of any individual quantum interaction. — GeorgeTheThird

Yes I know, but that’s a belief, they haven’t proven it. It is possible that probabilities in quantum mechanics are not fundamental, that they are due to incomplete knowledge.

However as I explained, even if they aren’t fundamental, there is also something important that they haven’t proven, namely that a living being reduces to elementary particles that behave according to these laws. There is zero evidence of that, considering that experiments which test these laws involve a few number of particles, or small molecules, not living beings, it is pure belief to say that a living being reduces to elementary particles behaving according to laws, regardless of how quantum mechanics is interpreted. So the ‘laws’ of physics aren’t evidence for materialism anyway.

:up:

But coercion is never the solution, coercion is what got us there in the first place. The wealthy won’t let themselves be coerced into distributing their wealth. Many of them are blind to what you say for various reasons, for instance they believe they deserve what they have, they believe they are inherently superior to other people, they believe that if others want to stop being poor they simply have to work for it, or they believe that necessarily there has to be a minority at the top and a majority at the bottom so they want to stay at the top, or they fear that they might become poor again if they let themselves be coerced into giving their wealth, ...

So coercion isn’t the solution, coercing them like they coerce everyone else will simply increase tensions and lead to violent repression or revolution, fighting fire with fire doesn’t stop fire. And when there is a revolution through force, fundamentally things don’t change. New people get in power, and those in power are more easily corrupted, often they start feeling like they deserve to be there because they fought for it, and then they start feeling superior to others, and so on and a similar system gets perpetuated only with new individuals at the top.

That coercion isn’t the solution doesn’t mean that there is no solution, it doesn’t mean that we have to accept this state of affairs, but we have to think differently. There wouldn’t be a problem in the first place if people cared about their surroundings (other people, other animals, their environment) and not only about themselves. Obviously saying it doesn’t change much, it doesn’t make people who only care about themselves care about others, and again coercing them into caring about others would be counterproductive, but first of all it’s important to realize it.

Now why do many people only care about themselves? Because they have been hurt by others in some way and so they feel like they have to protect themselves from others, they feel like the others are the enemy and that they are owed nothing. Sometimes it gets to the point that they willfully hurt others. It is clear that many who are in power do not have our best intentions at heart, that they are moved by other desires. They’re not only doing what they do to increase their personal wealth, they are influenced by other forces, for instance lobbies that hold great power themselves, and have a strong influence on the laws that get passed, on how society functions.

There is plenty of evidence that some of these lobbies have evil motives. At some point we have to call evil evil, some acts cannot be excused as ignorance, or as the mere desire to protect oneself or increase one’s personal wealth, some acts are purely evil, stemming from a will to destroy people, to destroy life. It may be hard for some to accept, but there is also plenty of evidence that some people who have great power worldwide worship evil deities. I wish this was a false and crazy conspiracy, but it isn’t, if you look for the clues you will find them.

So when we realize what it is we are facing, there is no easy solution. Any system will be used against us, be it capitalism, socialism, communism, anarchy or whatever. Violent revolutions won’t solve the underlying issue. The only hope really, is to stick together against this evil, spread love and understanding, because there are forces that work to destroy this love and prevent people from opening their eyes, so as to make them obedient and willing slaves contributing to destroying the planet.

Well, I think the next move, after assuming "there is existence" would be to ask how we know there is existence. This will give us some idea of what is meant here by "existence". I think that we can go two ways here. We can refer to our senses, outside ourselves, and say that we sense things moving all around us, and this confirms "existence", or we can turn to the inside, like Descartes, looking at the passage of thoughts in the mind, and say that this confirms "existence". — Metaphysician Undercover

I would say we don’t even have to refer to motion, simply the sensation of ‘white’ would count as existence, even if nothing changes about that sensation, even if we think nothing about that sensation, even if absolutely nothing changes whatsoever.

Now I have to admit that this is an idealized situation, and in practice we don’t actually have that kind of experience (nor would we know if we have one, because if we are thinking about a sensation then our thoughts are changing even if the sensation itself doesn’t change, so that wouldn’t be a total absence of change).

So I can agree that “There is existence” and “Existence changes” would refer to the same truth, that existence and change are the same, that through the experience of change we reach the statement that “There is existence, there is change”.

we need to respect the fact that we have nothing but our own experiences with which to judge any conclusions about "existence", so we must give some credence to these generalizations if we even want to start to understand. — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed, I agree.

This is another principle I find questionable. How could a thing which is not made of parts, change? For a thing to change, at least one part must become something other than it was. How could this happen if the thing had no parts? — Metaphysician Undercover

The problem I see with this is that, if a thing which is not made of parts cannot change, why would a part change? A part of a thing is a thing too. And then we get into an infinite regress where each part of the thing requires parts in order to change, and themselves require parts in order to change and so on.

So I would say that a thing can change, become something other than it was, and a thing may be made of parts which can change. If a thing could not change nothing would ever change, unless we arbitrarily assume that a ‘part’ is fundamentally different from a ‘thing’ but I don’t think we are forced to introduce this complication.

I'm trying to make some general categories by which we can classify things, and this is a distinction between spatial and temporal properties of a thing. Are parts necessarily defined spatially? Is the separation between one part and another, necessarily a spatial separation? Can we consider a temporal separation between parts?

Suppose a changing thing at one time fits one description, and at a later time fits another description. We say that it is throughout the entire time, always the same thing, but it is undergoing some changes. Now we have a period of time in which the thing is existing, and at each moment in that time period, it has a different description. Can we say that at each moment, what is described, is a part of "the object", which exists as the complete temporal extension? If so, then what constitutes the separation between these parts, allowing them to be distinct parts? Don't we generally conceive of such a temporal extension as a continuity of the object, without such separations? However, without such separations within the temporal extension of the object, it appears like change to the object would be impossible. Therefore we must conclude that there is separation between the temporal parts of the object. — Metaphysician Undercover

Considering what I said above (that a thing not made of parts can change, and assuming you agree), I think it’s a matter of convention whether we consider that a thing is undergoing temporal change, or whether we say that the thing is its whole temporal extension and that how it is at each moment is a part of the thing. Personally I prefer to see it as a thing undergoing change, since we experience the present, or said differently we simply experience what we experience. I think assuming that we can experience the future or the past would be an unnecessary assumption, since we can simply say that we can experience an image of what we think the future will be like, or an image of what we think the past was like, which is not actually experiencing what we will experience or what we experienced.

both aspects of existence, spatial and temporal, are composed of parts. In the spatial sense, we have the separation which arises from the two ways of apprehending existence, from the inside and from the outside. This produces a spatially defined boundary between the inside of the object and the outside of the object. This implies that the "existence" being described here, has parts. — Metaphysician Undercover

So again assuming you agree with what I said above, we don’t have to assume that the temporal aspect of existence is made of parts, that change is made of parts, we can simply say that there is change, and that the future and the past do not exist in a strict sense, rather they are experiences that are had in the present, they are part of existence now. This is of course not to say that everything that will ever happen and everything that has ever happened is already contained in existence now, but simply that we experience images of what we think will happen or of what we think happened, and these experiences are part of existence as long as they are had.

Regarding the spatial aspect, even without speaking of an inside or an outside, I think we can simply say that what we experience is not uniform, that parts can be distinguished, and even if we assume that these parts are an illusion, if there is such a thing as an illusion then that means there is both illusion and reality, which again are two separate parts, so no matter what existence (the way it is now) is made of parts, it is not one uniform thing, it cannot be reduced to a single thing that isn’t made of parts.


There is a lot I want to say about what a thing is, and its relation to the spatial and temporal aspects of existence, but I’ll save it for a later post as this one is already getting quite long. But basically, to say it succinctly, it seems to me that we couldn’t identify things, we couldn’t identify shapes, if there was no spatial and temporal correlations within existence, if everything was random including our thoughts there would be no shape and we couldn’t experience change, so it seems that the possibility of the very concept of thing requires that there are correlations within existence, which would be an additional truth of existence, that it cannot be completely random.

And if we even go further and use the idea that strictly speaking the future and the past do not exist, that only the present ever exists, a present that changes, then temporal correlations would actually be spatial correlations too, what we interpret as a temporal correlation would be a spatial correlation, in some way we would be creating the future. In some way experiencing an image of what we think the future will be like would contribute to making that future happen. And by using the earlier idea that a thing can change on its own, become something other than it was, then the reason there would be change is not that time exists, but that existence changes, existence becomes. I’m really liking where this is going and I want to keep exploring that further, it all seems to fit together.

But intelligence is peculiar in that practically all the systems we use to achieve trustworthy information require intelligence. So if we distrust intelligence, we also distance ourselves from much of the trustworthy information available. — Qmeri

We can’t achieve anything with intelligence alone, we also need to turn it into something, with the help of our body or of tools we create with our body, or by finding how to communicate important information accurately and efficiently to other people, so I wouldn’t say intelligence is somehow fundamentally superior to other abilities. Also intelligence is hard to define precisely, some people are more aware of what goes on around them than others, yet they aren’t said to be intelligent if they don’t express what they see in a complex mathematical formalism. The more intelligent is not always the one who is the more vocal about it.

And fundamentally it’s not a distrust of intelligence, it’s a distrust of people. People can use their intelligence to do great or horrible things. They can use their intelligence to make others believe that they have their best interest at heart in order to manipulate them or destroy them, or to make them accept things that they wouldn’t accept otherwise.

And you talk of trustworthy information, what is trustworthy information? In another thread you weren’t even willing to agree that “something exists” is trustworthy information, that it is truth, so if you won’t agree to that why do you expect people to blindly believe what others say simply because they pretend to be intelligent, simply because they pretend to be somehow more able, to be providers of truth?

Pretending to be a provider of truth is not enough. One has to gain trust as well. And when that trust gets eroded for various reasons, people become suspicious of claims that some authority (such as Science) wants them to believe.

You are at the level of existence and thought thinking of its own thinking. There is no right or wrong! Science has available evidence in repeated experiments and technology that comes from it. Not so in philosophy. There isn't even a defined methodology as in other social sciences (like the always striving-to-be-more-than economics department!). — schopenhauer1

I’d say fundamentally there is such a thing as right or wrong, true or false, but uncovering it is not a straightforward process, I liken it to one big adventure, one big enigma, one big puzzle, one big maze we find ourselves in and that we try to solve to see what’s hidden beyond, that’s how I see philosophy. I believe there is a solution to the puzzle, we just haven’t solved it yet, we’re trying all kinds of approaches, we manage to solve one small part and then we get stuck, so we go back and try other ways, other paths, sometimes we put different parts together and they fit perfectly, but they don’t fit with the rest so we keep trying, and the more we solve the more we see, the clearer we see, and I believe that the clearer we see the more mind-boggling it will be.

Philosophy is an important tool to get there, but it’s not the only tool, it must not be focused on thought alone, disconnected from everything else, it must take into account everything else, piece by piece and then everything together. Even practicing a sport or an art or a trade can be seen as a piece of the puzzle, because as we get better at these activities we discover ourselves, we discover how some subset of the world behaves and reacts to what we do, and then some people become able to do amazing things, things that seem like miracles, for instance the guy who climbed the nearly 1km high vertical face of El Capitan without a rope, or the things we have achieved with technology, these things seem like magic to people who do not understand how they work. And so I believe that as we solve the puzzle further we will be able to see, do, and create things that we would consider today as magic, as miracles, and the truth will be way more amazing and mind-boggling than we can imagine now.

Okay, yes I agree that there can be a distrust of people who seem intelligent, but more generally there can be a distrust of people who seem more able in some way, for instance of people who have a greater physical force, or people who have more power for some reason. And the reason for that is easy to see, when we don’t know someone well we don’t know whether they have good or ill intentions with respect to ourselves, so not blindly trusting that they have good intentions is a necessary way to protect oneself. Especially if the other person or group of people is seen to be powerful in some way.

Science is venerated by many people like a religion, including people who call themselves intelligent and people who call themselves stupid. The word Science is invoked by politicians and advertisers as if to say that whatever they say is true because it is backed by Science. Yet some philosophers are quite critical of many conclusions of Science, why is that? Are they less intelligent, more stupid than so-called scientists and than people who idolize Science, or do they see things that these people don’t see or refuse to see?

You say Science is the most trustworthy system of the planet, does it mean people were right to believe that continental drift is a ridiculous fantasy when scientists claimed that? Does it mean people were right to believe that rogue waves don’t exist when scientists claimed they didn’t exist even though there were reports of their existence? Does it mean people were right to believe that there is no such thing as microscopic germs, or no such thing as invisible matter, when that’s what Science claimed? Does it mean people were right to believe that we would never reach the surface of the Moon, when that was the scientific consensus?

From these few examples out of many, how can we reasonably say that what Science says (or rather what the scientific consensus says) is the most trustworthy system of the planet? Turns out that in these examples the people who disagreed with that consensus were the trustworthy ones.

The people who distrust the scientific consensus do not do so because they fear superior intelligence, but because they can tell that this consensus can be wrong and has often been wrong, no matter how forcefully the proponents of the consensus want to shove it down everyone’s throat. People who idolize Science remember the successes and forget the failures, and won’t know how much of the current consensus is wrong until much later.

In effect, yes. My experiences are not things that exist, they are merely the termination of a rational process. — Mww

I can understand why you would say that if you assume materialism right from the start, namely that your experiences are a manifestation of an underlying process occurring in a brain. Or even if you don’t assume the existence of a brain, you’re still assuming the existence of a rational process as being prior to experiences. But we don’t have to assume that, for instance solipsists and idealists don’t assume that.

However regardless of whether you assume materialism or solipsism or idealism or whatever, you do have experiences, which you may call perceptions or feelings or thoughts, they exist no matter what, these experiences are the source of knowledge, rather than things you may imagine to exist beyond. We can assume that these experiences stem from an underlying reality, but we don’t yet have certain knowledge about that underlying reality (solipsists still have to be disproven), whereas there are things we can certainly say about experiences, such as they exist, they change, and they are made of parts.

Saying that experiences such as feelings do not exist seems to me to be the start of a dangerous slippery slope. One doesn’t have to assume that feelings exist, experiencing them is the proof they exist. Assuming that they don’t exist is what is uncorroborated.

It only matters when one needs to distinguish between what it means for Neptune to exist, and what it means for feelings to exist. The two are so completely different as to require the meaning of existence to be just as different. If he doesn’t make allowances, he is left with one conception authorizing two completely different things in the same way. — Mww

Why would it be an issue to see experiences we call ‘love’ or ‘thought’ or ‘Neptune’ as all belonging to existence? We already separate them by giving them a different name. The issue would rather lie in assuming arbitrarily that they are so different that we won’t ever find any connection between them.

The skyrocketing cost of living has many causes, overpopulation is only one of them. If we collaborated with one another we would live much more easily, but we don’t.

I recall the example of Amazonian tribes who got evicted out of the forest so that some multinational could come and exploit its resources. In compensation these people were given a small house in a village outside the forest, closer to modern civilization. These people were interviewed and said that their life was much easier outside civilization, in the forest. Why? Because in the forest they only had to work 1-2 hours a day in order to hunt and cook food, and then they could do whatever they want, whereas in civilization they are forced to work all day long in order to pay for what they need to live.

When a few people own most of the land, most of real estate, and everyone else is forced to pay high rent in order to have the right to live somewhere, then the whole system becomes inefficient, people have to work all day long just to afford to live, and if something goes wrong and they can’t keep up and no one gives them a hand, they become homeless, within so-called civilization. One would think that if our civilization was so advanced this wouldn’t happen. It happens way earlier than it should if the cause was overpopulation. The main cause is people exploiting one another, and especially a few people exploiting the majority.

I don’t see quantum mechanics as showing that individual particle events do not have a cause.

However where I see physics offering no support for materialism is that it doesn’t show in any way that living beings are solely made of particles behaving according to the laws of physics. Experiments on particles are made precisely on particles (a small number of them), not on living beings, so there is zero evidence that there is nothing that goes on within living beings that breaks these laws. That’s where I see the gap. Materialism is a belief, not a conclusion that follows from the empirical evidence.

So are you saying that your experiences are not part of existence, because supposedly existence is “nothing more” than a necessary condition?

Also can you point out the theoretical premises I used that lead to the three truths I mentioned? From my point of view I made no assumption because all assumptions lead to these truths, these truths fall out logically, for instance if you assume they aren’t true now you reach a contradiction.

It seems to me that in order to deny these truths one has to deny logic itself, but then if we start denying logic hell ensues.

I'd be able to give a fuller engagement if there was an argument - or access to the posts, which I no longer do — StreetlightX

I think it’s sad that it’s impossible to recover posts that the moderation deletes, something that seems to be gibberish to someone may be quite important to someone else, so there should be the possibility for the poster to at least have access for a while to their posts that were deleted so that they can at least save it for themselves. We can’t judge how important something is to someone without being them.

Also as a suggestion I believe one should have the opportunity to appeal the deletion of posts, for instance in this case his posts seem to have been deleted forever and no one has the ability to judge them anymore. I’m not saying your judgment was wrong, but respectfully it might have been, and now we have no way to find out.

If 2.) is true, then one of the possible changes for existence is its negation. The negation of existence is, there isn’t existence, a contradiction. — Mww

As I said, they are true now but they may not be true in the future, I didn’t claim that they would be true forever, so there is no contradiction. You cannot even prove that 1.) will be true forever.

If 3.) is true, existence requires the existence of its parts, or, existence requires existence, an absurdity. — Mww

To say that existence is currently made of parts is not to say that there cannot be existence without parts, so I don’t see an absurdity. Care to clarify?

Existence is nothing but a necessary condition for the possibility of human phenomenal experience. Nothing more, nothing less. — Mww

That’s quite reductive, how are you going to prove that statement? Or are you merely stating your personal definition of existence and pretending that it’s more than a definition? It could also be said to be a necessary condition for any experience, that doesn’t imply that existence reduces to a necessary condition, it is more than that, the experience that you’re presumably having now is part of existence too.

The principle, "existence could not come from nothing", does not mean that existence was always there. When we say that something came from something else, we mean that the something else is other than the named thing. So what is implied is that existence came from something other than existence. This principle, that "existence could not come from nothing", again, is an inductive principle. it is derived from our understanding of how things come into existence through change. — Metaphysician Undercover

But something else than existence is non-existence, and what is non-existence if not nothingness? So if existence didn’t arise spontaneously, it must have been always there.

So it seems we have already reached three truths about this existence (they may not remain true forever but for now they are true):

1. There is existence
2. Existence changes
3. Existence is not one thing, it is made of parts

What more can we find?

I think it's simple
1- For every concept x there is a concept representing not x (!x)
2- So any "unity" we come up with and call x, there must also be !x
3- So for every "unity" we come up with there is a complementary concept — khaled

Indeed that might work too. I was going to say that the concept “orange” doesn’t have an opposite, but actually everything that is not orange can be seen as “not orange”. And if we say that opposites are an illusion, if there is “illusion” then there also is “not illusion”, namely reality. So no matter what this existence is made of parts, is not one single thing that changes.

However I believe that there could be happiness without suffering, it’s simply that “happiness” would be contrasted with “everything that isn’t happiness” rather than with suffering, so for instance it would be contrasted with colors and with other perceptions that aren’t inherently suffering. That’s why I believe there can be good without evil, love without hate.

We might remove the notion of "thing" altogether, and start with the assumption of existence. Then we say 'there is existence', and this is not to predicate existence of some thing, or something, it makes existence the thing, as the subject.

So we can avoid this necessary conclusion of dualism by starting from a slightly different perspective, saying there is existence, making existence a noun, the thing to be analyzed, instead of saying something exists, making existence a predicate. This allows us to defer the question of what is a "thing", until we have first determined what it means to exist. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK I’m on board with that, let’s say “there is existence” instead of “something exists”.

Now the purpose of this thread is to show that in order to account for this current existence, there is necessarily a duality in it. This isn’t to say that there cannot be existence without a duality, but that in this existence there is a duality, that it is impossible that it is all united as one, impossible that there is no fundamental separation in it.

This is the problem I refer to, in distinguishing a multitude of things from one single thing. If things are isolated from one another, then we must assume some sort of substance which isolates them.
In each case there must be something real which separates the thing, or else they are not really separate things. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK I get your point, yes indeed they wouldn’t be separated if there was nothing separating them. Important observation.

We might start with "existence in the now", as you say, and this is what I request above, to consider "existence" itself without reference to things. The problem here is that we cannot dismiss induction, as you request. If we are to proceed with any sound premises we must derive the premises from experience. We cannot make up imaginary assumptions of what "existence in the now" is, which are not consistent with our experience, so we must produce premises derived from induction, in order to have sound principles. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes indeed, we cannot completely dismiss induction, we simply have to recognize that induction doesn’t necessarily yield conclusions of universal validity, but that it may help us get closer to such conclusions, and even if we have no proof of that we can keep faith in it and see where it leads, and we can see that it is a tool that helps us and that has helped us.

What we can say about "existence in the now", is that things are changing, and we conclude that time is passing. To deny this would be to accept an unsound principle. Therefore, I read your second paragraph above, like this. A thing which is composed of parts necessarily is influenced by something else. That "something else", is whatever provides the separation between the parts, such that they can be called individual parts. So what we observe, as time passes, is that a thing's parts are always being influenced by something else, something other than the thing itself which is making the parts into a whole. The "something else" is making the parts into distinct individuals. And, unless there is an absolutely perfect balance between the force of the thing which makes the parts into a whole, and the force of the other thing which makes the parts into separate individuals, we cannot say that this thing is unchanging.

Furthermore, we can refer to observation, and induction, to say that such an absolutely perfect balance does not exist. This is because we have no examples of a thing that is composed of parts which remains unchanging. So this idea, of a thing composed of parts which is unchanging, is an ideal, an absolute which represents nothing real. If we adopt it as a principle because it might be useful for comparison (as the basis for a scale or something), we must remember, and be careful not to accept it as a principle of what "existence in the now" means. This unchanging thing is an abstraction, removed from "the now"; the principles of "the now" we only know through induction. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK, yes indeed in order for there to be a thing made of parts there needs to be some way to distinguish those parts, but if that thing never changed then we would never distinguish those parts. So a thing made of parts cannot remain unchanging forever. Thank you for making me realize that, that’s really important to see.

And indeed we can say that “there is existence” and that “existence changes”. However this doesn’t yet imply that existence is made of parts, because we haven’t proven that one thing cannot change. A thing made of parts necessarily changes eventually, but a thing not made of parts may change too.

And so what I want to prove, or rather what I believe can be proven, is that this existence is not one, that it is made of parts. And I believe you have brought an important piece of the puzzle by showing that a thing made of parts cannot remain unchanging forever, I believe that will be a key part of the proof.

And in order to prove that this existence is not one, that it is made of parts, I believe we can prove it by contradiction. That if we assume that existence is one thing that changes, we will be led to a contradiction.

Within what we experience, within what we see, we see a multiplicity of things, for instance the sky is separated from the ground, the day is separated from the night. I don’t think the proof is as simple as saying that we couldn’t distinguish anything from anything else if there was only one thing that changes. Or is it? If there was only one thing that changes, everything would be necessarily uniform, would change while remaining uniform everywhere, such as all white and then all black and then all orange?

But we might still say that this is an illusion, that what we perceive to be separate parts are in fact the one existence perceived at different times. But if there is such a thing as illusion and reality, then there is a duality, how existence really is and how it appears. And so no matter what we’re led to the conclusion that this existence is made of parts, that it cannot be one single thing changing.

Do you agree? Do you see holes in that proof?

That’s one way to see it. I wouldn’t say good is defined against evil, I wouldn’t say that we couldn’t feel happiness if we couldn’t feel suffering. But indeed there is some sort of duality in existence, good/evil, happiness/suffering, love/hate, unity/division, ..., this isn’t to say that one needs the other to exist, but for now that duality exists.

I noticed this duality, and then my train of thought was, could it be possible that this duality is an illusion and that deep down there is fundamental unity? But I came to the conclusion that the duality is fundamental (in this existence now), that it is impossible to see unity as the basis of it all, which is what I explained in the OP. And I feel it is an important conclusion.

It would be nice to formulate a simple proof, that there is not fundamental unity at the basis of this existence (be it a single force, a single consciousness, a single being, a single particle, ...), but instead that there are at least two things at the root of it all. I was hoping that some of you would help me formulate that proof, but up to now this discussion hasn’t really progressed in that direction.

Not true. We have arrived at an infinite number of absolute truths. Some examples: No bachelor is married, No circle is a square, etc

I believe "something exists" is one of these trivial truths. Trivial because they're true by definition — khaled

As I said on the last page, “something exists” isn’t true by definition, because it is possible that in the future everything ceases to exist and then “something exists” will stop being true. But for now it is true. It is not defined to be true.

Now how about “at least two things exist”? It may not be true in the future, but can you show how it might be false now?

What makes you assume, multiplying a hole with a mound is in any way logical?

My understanding of quantum physics is almost zero. But I can understand the concept of an electron and a positon jumping simultaneously out of a void and disappearing back into a void.
That is as far as my knowledge goes I am afraid. — ovdtogt

What makes you assume it is logical to say “zero total energy” implies nothingness? The way energy is defined, it can be zero even when plenty of things exist. I was attempting to show you that.

The electron and positron are not jumping out of a void. What seems to be a void is not a void. If you go in interstellar space, there is still the light and gravity of distant stars passing through. If you go in intergalactic space, there is still the light and gravity of distant galaxies passing through. Even if you are far enough from them that you don’t see any with the naked eye, they are still passing through, and you can detect that with the help of some instruments. What they call a void is not a void, that’s a misnomer. The electron and positron do not jump out nothingness. The space between galaxies is not nothingness, so the space in the solar system or in a laboratory here on Earth is decidedly not nothingness, even if they remove all molecules from some box there is still radiation and gravity coming from all around.

I do agree that functionally "Something exists" is a useful realization. But when we don't consider it's utility for us and just consider whether being mistaken about it when you accept it is somehow more logically impossible than with any other logical necessity, we are wrong. — Qmeri

But how could we be mistaken about it? Even if we believe we are mistaken about it, that very belief implies “something exists”. So we could be mistaken about the belief that “believing something implies something exists”? But if we’re mistaken about that one too then something exists. What if we’re mistaken about “if we’re mistaken about that one too then something exists”? But then something still exists. And so on and so forth.

I’m all for leaving open the possibility that we may be wrong about such and such thing, because we might discover something in the future that we hadn’t realized, however in this case that isn’t possible. If we think, something exists. If we make an assertion, something exists. If we see anything, something exists. If we refuse logic, something exists. If we don’t use language and close our eyes, something still exists. At that point keeping saying “maybe nothing exists” is not an extreme form of open-mindedness, it is a willful denial of existence, of truth, it is the will to prevent the construction of anything, in some way it is the will to destroy existence itself.

That is why I will not accept the possibility that “maybe nothing exists”. No. Something exists. It may not be the case in the future, but now it is the case. You or others can deny it all you want, I won’t force you to change your mind if your goal is to make people believe that truth cannot be known, but you will not change mine.