Whatever exists that seems evil to us must be good from the point of view of an all powerful being, otherwise it wouldn't exist. No comfort there for us, but it's consistent. This entails that the theist must embrace the fact that from God's point of view, any kind of suffering is good. It's hard to love God, if loving God is even a coherent concept. — bert1

Or maybe there is a loving God who isn’t all powerful, because there is an evil God competing with him...

Evil is always evil-from-a-point-of-view. — bert1

Not quite. When all things move towards unity, from any point of view all things are seen to move towards us. When all things move towards separation, from any point of view all things are seen to move away from us.

Now if you agree that unity is correlated with feelings associated with good (love, happiness) and separation is correlated with feelings associated with evil (hate, suffering), then good and evil aren’t relative, they are absolute. In many situations one can be mistaken for the other, but there are situations in which the two cannot be mistaken because they appear the same from all points of view.

I like your idea. It’s sad to see all these knee-jerk reactions whenever someone puts forth an original idea that goes against the beliefs of materialism.

Well I’m on board for the idea of the clock, but I would say that the idea that the universe could be completely computed from a color-based language is problematic, because for instance how do you compute a feeling?

I am with you on this one Mike.

We can come up with all kinds of weird theories to account for observations, for instance we could come up with the theory that other human beings do not exist when we do not observe them, and the theory could still be made to match observations accurately, but is that desirable? Since we have another theory that says that other human beings exist even when we don’t observe them, does that mean that they both exist and do not exist when we don’t observe them? No, it has to be one way or the other, there is a way that reality is even if we don’t see the whole of it, otherwise everything both happens and not happens at the same time, everything both exists and does not exist at the same time, and everything stops making sense. There is existence rather than non-existence, and we can’t be mistaken about that. Whatever experiences we have, these experiences exist. Not all is relative.

So regarding special relativity, we can also account for observations in a weird way such that each twin ages more slowly than the other, but is that desirable? Is there really no underlying reality and everything is relative? No! We are not forced to see it that way. Many people believe or want us to believe that relativity proves everything is fundamentally relative, they are wrong. Special relativity can be formulated in a way such that there is one absolute reference frame, meaning that we have a theory that is empirically equivalent to special relativity (it makes all the same observable predictions), without all the stuff that doesn’t make sense. Where the theories differ is only in their description of what happens beyond our observations (for instance how much each twin is really aging at each moment of the trip).

That theory is the Lorentz aether theory. Contrary to a popular misconception, the concept of the aether has not been disproven. In fact, the cosmic microwave background radiation that permeates all space can be interpreted as an aether. And even Einstein had reintroduced an aether in his theory of general relativity.

According to the Lorentz aether theory, there is one absolute frame of reference. Then we carry out all calculations relative to this absolute frame of reference. If the absolute frame happens to be where the home twin is, then the traveling twin ages more slowly at every moment (because he is moving relative to the absolute frame). If the absolute frame happens to be the frame in which the traveling twin is on the first half of his trip, then the home twin ages more slowly on the first half (because he is moving relative to the absolute frame), but the traveling twin ages much more slowly on the second half (because he is moving twice faster relative to the absolute frame). No matter the state of motion of the home twin relative to the absolute frame, there is always one reality and the result is always that the traveling twin ages more slowly, with the same result as what special relativity predicts.

That theory explains all the experiments that are considered tests of special relativity, and it explains experiments such as the Sagnac effect or thought experiments such as the twin paradox in a way that is intuitive, whereas special relativity has to resort to convoluted explanations that leave a feeling of uneasiness and give rise to the sad mentality of “shut up and calculate”.

I believe that the Lorentz aether theory is not the end of the story, however for now it is an alternative to special relativity that works just as well experimentally and that makes sense. I believe special relativity is an approximation of a more correct theory, so in the same way I believe the Lorentz aether theory is an approximation of a more correct theory.

Special relativity postulates that light travels at the same velocity in all inertial frames and that physical laws are the same in all inertial frames, but if we accept these postulates then we have zero clue as to where to go further to find a more fundamental theory. Whereas the Lorentz aether theory explains these postulates by saying that light travels at the same velocity in all directions only in the absolute frame, that objects moving relative to that frame are length-contracted by a given amount that depends on their velocity in the aether, that clocks run slower by a given amount that depends on their velocity in the aether, and that gives us lines of inquiry to go further. We can ask why are objects physically contracted when they move in the aether, and why are processes such as those taking place in clocks slower when they are in motion in the aether? And move from there and search in that direction.

There is something special about it. “Something exists” is about our world. It is not necessarily true, because in principle it is possible than in the future it stops being true, that in the future everything ceases to exist. But now it is true.

Whereas “all white unicorns are white” is logically necessary, is true by definition but it doesn’t say anything about our world. We can also say “if there is nothing then there is nothing”, yes sure, awesome, but that doesn’t deal with our world. “Something exists” is a true fact about our world, now, and that’s important.

Think of it this way: you are using logic against an argument where the whole point is that we can always fail at logic. Logical necessity of existence is a good logical necessity. But like with all logical conclusions - whether they are about a logical necessity or anything else - we could always just be mistaken. People make mistakes about logical necessities quite often. — Qmeri

But the particularity of “something exists” is that even if you believe you are mistaken about it, it still implies that “something exists” is true because in order for something to be mistaken something has to exist. It is important to see that not all truth is relative. Even if you don’t accept the argument, discussing with me or reading words is a proof that something exists.

If you don’t accept anything as a proof, then what do you accept? If you accept something, by definition something exists. If you don’t accept anything, how do you decide what to do?

One can surely keep saying “nothing exists” no matter what we say to them, yet by their very assertion they contradict themselves. They may not see it, but they’re still doing it. In another thread you explained clearly how fundamental contradictions are impossible, and I agreed, so if you have the ability to see contradictions you should have the ability to see that asserting “nothing exists” is a contradiction. Or you can simply keep repeating that we don’t know that but that won’t ever get us anywhere.

Now I presume that you do philosophy in order to reach some goals. These goals presuppose that something exists, and that there are things that can be known. You may keep disagreeing and keep saying that we cannot know, but deep down you know it’s true.

The way I see it, the first two absolute, fundamental truths are:

1. Something exists; which leads us to also be certain that
2. Something is aware of existence.

They could potentially be the same thing - depending on what it means to ‘exist’. — Possibility

Indeed, I would say that in the most general sense they are the same. Because for instance what would it mean to experience a color or have a thought without an awareness of it? In any experience there is some level of awareness by definition.


I thought that the truth of “something exists” was uncontroversial and that we would debate on the truth of “at least two things exist”, however it seems that some people already don’t agree that “something exists” is true, but that’s good, it shows that the truth of it isn’t that obvious to some and that’s why it’s important to help them see why it’s true.

So it is impossible that you have just evaluated all of your experiences, thoughts, definitions of certainty and existence and proofs and everything else incorrectly and that you are just thinking things that don't represent anything? — Qmeri

Again, even if you evaluate everything incorrectly, there is still an evaluation occurring. If you think things that don’t represent anything, there are still things that are thought. However you twist it, there is something occurring.

1 and -1 together are zero. Zero is nothing but 1 and -1 are something. — ovdtogt

Yes -1 + 1 = 0, but -1 * 1 = -1 for instance, why do you assume that a sum of energies equal to zero implies nothingness? That’s an arbitrary assumption. As I said it is possible that the total energy of the universe is constantly zero, yet you agree that the universe is not nothing, so clearly a sum of energies equal to zero does not imply nothingness.

In nothingness there is no such thing as energy, in nothingness energy isn’t equal to zero it doesn’t even exist. Something being equal to zero doesn’t imply that nothing exists. If I have 2 apples and you have 2 oranges, and I give you 2 apples and you give me 2 oranges, I now have 0 apple and you have 0 orange, does that mean that the apples and oranges have ceased to exist? No, the apples and oranges have moved, whereas their total number has remained constant. Same idea with energy, energy changes locally while its total number remains constant, we’ve defined that number to be 0 because it’s neat but we could have picked any number as long as we remain consistent in the calculations.

That is a misconception. It does not fluctuate between positive and negative Two particles (positive and negative) briefly come into being and disappear again.

"This allows the creation of particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation — ovdtogt

See the first sentence in your link:

“a quantum fluctuation is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space”

A temporary change in energy, meaning that on small scales the energy doesn’t stay constantly at zero, and it doesn’t become only positive either, so it does fluctuate between positive and negative, it becomes positive in a tiny volume while it becomes negative in another tiny volume nearby, and that fluctuates, the same location is not always only positive or only negative.

We might always be just talking words that don't represent any kind of truth and no one just realizing it. — Qmeri

The words still exist, if the words are an illusion there is still the illusion that there are words and the illusion is something, ...

Or one can simply be mistaken in that evaluation. — Qmeri

If one is mistaken then one exists, if an evaluation is made then that evaluation exists, if that evaluation is incorrect it is still an evaluation, if the evaluation of the evaluation is incorrect it is still an evaluation, if it is incorrect that it is an evaluation it is still something, ...

If fallibility is accepted as a possibility, then even "something exists" is not absolutely necessarily true, since one could just be failing to understand what those words even mean. You can never prove that you have evaluated your proofs correctly. — Qmeri

Even if you fail to understand what the words mean, you can still see that something exists without expressing it in a language. There are thoughts, there are experiences, even if I don’t name them. You don’t need to evaluate a proof that there is something when experiencing is the immediate fact. Call it experience, call it thought, call it existence, call it however you want or call it nothing at all, it is still something.

If you reach the conclusion that nothing exists then how can you experience anything at all? If nothing exists how is it that you do something? You don’t have to accept the words I say as proof, you don’t even have to read words of think of words, you can see and understand without all that. But if you deny existence, as long as you do or experience anything you are contradicting your denial.

And indeed as ovdtogt says, accepting fallibility as a possibility is accepting something, it is doing something. But also failing to understand is failing to understand something, and evaluating a proof incorrectly is still doing something. You can’t deny existence without contradicting yourself constantly.

Even if you say that contradicting oneself is fine, contradicting oneself is still doing something. And so on and so forth.

Sorry Mark Dennis, I have just realized that you have been banned and I never got around to reply to your thread.

I really like your idea of linking intuition with forgotten memory, things we have seen but that we have forgotten, however there remains a tiny connection with what we have forgotten and the feeling of intuition is what happens when that connection gets strong enough that we get a glimpse of it, we don’t know where it came from because it was there the whole time but we didn’t see it.

You may have heard of the idea that we existed before we were born in another form, that in that form we could see and understand much more, but that when we came to inhabit a human body we became limited by the constraints of that body and we forgot almost everything. Where does this idea come from? Many people have had it, as an intuition, but then if it is itself a forgotten memory it may actually be the truth.

Sure there are intuitions that turn out to be wrong, but then later on we come to find out that they were actually right, and that we had thought they were wrong because we had false beliefs that led us to misinterpret what we observed, or because there are things we hadn’t yet seen.

So I do believe that intuition shows us part of the truth, it doesn’t show us the whole truth so we may interpret it incorrectly, but it’s something that is important to take into account. I have plenty of personal evidence of intuitions that turned out to be correct against all odds, or that turned out to be correct even though I was convinced they were wrong for a long time.

People disagree with one another because they don’t see the same things. We can use the same logic, but if we don’t make the same observations we don’t have to reach the same conclusion. However there are a few things that everyone can agree on (or come to agree on).

That is how something can emerge from nothing. — ovdtogt

But positive energy and negative energy are each not nothing. When they are exactly equal they aren’t nothing, it is only if both are zero that there is nothing.

For instance there is the hypothesis that the total energy of the universe is zero, in other words that there is as much negative energy in attractive forces as there is positive energy in repulsive forces, but clearly the universe isn’t nothing. When positive energy and negative energy are not zero, there isn’t nothing even when they are equal.

So even if we say that the universe emerged from quantum fluctuations that had zero energy as a whole, that doesn’t mean that it emerged from nothing, because these quantum fluctuations had both non-zero positive and negative energy. In the same way that this universe isn’t nothing even though it may have zero energy as a whole. It is wrong to say that zero total energy is nothing, because positive and negative energies are not nothing.

Quantum fluctuations aren’t nothing, otherwise we couldn’t detect them, they only appear to be nothing if we don’t look closely. Similarly we might say that there is nothing in an empty room, but really there isn’t nothing because there is air, there are molecules, which we can detect. And even if we remove all the molecules there is still something, which we can detect in other ways. The appearance of nothingness isn’t nothingness.

Thanks for the comment, at last someone is trying to challenge what I said without attacking me.

I think this second truth negates your first truth as contradictory to it.
[...]
we must consider the particular "things" which make up the multiplicity, the elements which exist in relation to one another. Since they are all particulars, they cannot all be the same thing. Therefore we cannot refer to these as "something" which exists, they are things which exist, and we no longer have the first truth "something exists" — Metaphysician Undercover

Note that when I say that “something exists” I’m not saying that “only one thing exists” but that “at least one thing exists”. So “at least two things exist” does not negate “at least one thing exists”, it is simply more precise, they are both true as long as we prove that at least two things exist.


Some thoughts on the rest of what you said:

If there is a multiplicity of things existing then they exist in relations to each other, and these relations are changing, as the passing of time, and relativity theory, demonstrates to us. — Metaphysician Undercover

There could be several things existing completely in isolation from one another, in which case there would be no relation between them. However I would agree that we couldn’t know of these things if they were completely isolated away, so regarding this existence I agree to think of existing things as being related in some way.

I wouldn’t appeal to the theory of relativity in the argument since it is based on several unproven assumptions, and here we are trying to find what we can be certain of regardless of what we assume. We can’t appeal to scientific theories which are based on induction which is unproven itself, so we’re left considering existence in the now.

An existing "thing" therefore cannot be composed of parts, because the thing would be changing, always becoming something other than it is. The thing composed of parts does not "exist" because it is always something other than it is as time passes. — Metaphysician Undercover

It could be that a thing composed of parts remains unchanging as long as it is not influenced by another thing, and that when it is influenced only parts of the thing changes. So I don’t agree that a thing composed of parts necessarily always changes.


Some thoughts on what you said to ovdtogt:

I don't think anything ever comes from nothing. Isn't that a fundamental truth? — Metaphysician Undercover

It can be doubted, maybe existence came from nothing or maybe it was always there. From a limited point of view within existence we can’t say, and there is no point of view outside existence by definition. There is already something so we don’t see anything coming from nothing, even if something seems to come from nothing we can say that it came from something that exists but that we don’t see. But without seeing the whole of existence we don’t know, so it can’t be said to be a fundamental truth, it’s rather a working assumption.

If there are quantum fluctuations in a vacuum, then very clearly that vacuum is not "nothing". — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with you here, quantum fluctuations or however we call them are clearly something.


And in reply to ovdtogt:

Nothing has zero energy. — ovdtogt

There is positive and negative energy, so a system that exists can have zero energy as a whole, while parts of the system have positive energy and other parts have negative energy.

The zero-point field only has zero energy on average, on tiny scales it fluctuates between positive and negative energy.

What people call empty space isn’t empty, isn’t nothing, it is bathing in radiation coming from all the rest of the universe, wherever you are there is radiation coming from distant galaxies.

Personally, I don't mind just reading people's own ideas on issues. Most times, I disagree with academic philosophers despite the fancy logic tables and formalized conceptualizations they provide. — schopenhauer1

I agree with this, I find there is both great and poor philosophy coming from both academic circles and random thinkers.

Dr. Prof. Pigliucci perhaps expected other types of questions, questions that probed and sought true enlightenment. He may have been taken aback by the verbosity and overstylization of some of the questions. A little less overt politeness and adoration also may have been in order... he did not come here, and he expected others also to not come here to hear praising of Caesar, but to have Caesar speak himself. — god must be atheist

I agree with this too, he runs a blog so he is already used to spreading his own ideas to a bunch of people who listen, maybe he was hoping here for his ideas to be really challenged. I’m still working on the thread on science vs pseudoscience where I disagree with his conclusions and will critically address a paper he wrote, maybe he will want to participate in that one.

I also have papers that have my own ideas, and I would really like to hear others' criticism of it and to defend it. But how do I get over the anonymity barrier? I want the ideas associated with my real person, but here we are anynomized. Any suggestions? — god must be atheist

I think anonymity can be a blessing, in the sense that you can spread your ideas and they can be criticized without your ego getting too much in the way. Ego gets in the way on this forum even though we only have nicknames, so when you use your real name it can be worse, because then your reputation is on the line and people want to defend their reputation at all costs even when they’re wrong, they take things too personally and that hinders clear thinking. And in the grand scheme of things personal recognition isn’t that important, the ideas themselves are more important.

That being said have you tried philpapers.org?

So very tiresome...all efforts seem to disappear down a deep, dark hole. — Amity

There is a reason you philosophize, there is something you attempt to move towards through philosophy. In times of hardship there is only faith in that thing that keeps you connected, and that’s what you hold onto. Appearances aren’t what they seem, what seems to be wasted efforts can turn out to be fruitful in unexpected ways.

Sorry about the snarky comment. As I said, it wasn't about you, personally.

I might be willing to take "something exists" or "at least two things exist" as a starting point. Moving on, we have come to understand that many things exist. So I am not willing to entertain that idea as an account of reality. — Bitter Crank

Okay thank you.

By the way to say that “at least two things exist” is not to say that “only two things exist”, and so is not to say that “many things exist” is false. A lot of existence can be understood as a duality, but it doesn’t imply that the duality is all there is. For instance there can be many beings on each side of the duality.

I suppose one could claim that the universe, and the fullness thereof, resides in the single consciousness of God. If so, God seems to have thought a very complex reality made up of many parts. The problem with this theory is that we do not have the means to parse the consciousness of God, if God exists in the first place. Still, the universe as the dream of God has a certain aesthetic appeal and weightiness. — Bitter Crank

Indeed that’s one possibility, and one I ascribed to for a little while, however one wonders why would this single consciousness dream or imagine so much suffering if it could imagine anything. In another thread I hypothesized that it would dream suffering because it is eternally alone and suffers from this loneliness which it tries to forget, however loneliness doesn’t necessarily imply suffering, loving oneself makes one feel not alone. So if all there was is this single consciousness, we are left wondering whence suffering?

And even if we say that only this single consciousness exists, as soon as it dreams something there are at least two things that exist, the consciousness and what it dreams. And even if we identify that consciousness with what it dreams, as long as we can distinguish things within this dream then at least two things exist. Whatever assumption we start from always leads to the conclusion that at least two things exist. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has reached this result but I never heard it before.

Descartes gave the Cogito ergo sum (“I think therefore I exist”), which was criticized because his reasoning only proves that “something exists” (or “thinking exists”), however we can go further than that and say that “at least two things exist”. That’s something we can use as a secure foundation for knowledge, rather than the mere “something exists”.

And when we consider that there is a fundamental duality at the heart of this existence we can come to explain a lot of things that otherwise don’t seem to make sense. But of course we don’t have to assume a fundamental duality (we could assume a trinity or a multiplicity), and even if we assume a duality this doesn’t imply that only two things exist (we can see many things existing on each side of the duality).

However it is interesting to notice the duality between attraction and repulsion, unity and division, connection and separation, understanding and indifference, love and hate, we can explain so much by seeing existence as a struggle between two forces, one which acts to unite/attract/connect and one which acts to divide/repel/separate. Especially when we notice that unity/attraction/connection is associated with positive feelings (love, beauty, happiness) whereas division/repulsion/separation is associated with negative feelings (hate, ugliness, suffering).

I believe that in this way we can come to a unified picture of existence, where emotions are not a mere byproduct of motion but are as fundamental, where emotion and motion are two facets of a more fundamental thing. I believe that only in this way we will come to a unified understanding of existence, and not by seeing emotion as a byproduct of motion, as stemming from laws of physics or motions of particles or brain states, as is customarily believed in the materialist picture which appears to lead into an impasse.

True. If 2 half-assed philosophers meet 2 other half-assed philosophers for lunch, their discussions might not add up to anything. 2 + 2 in that case may equal less than zero. — Bitter Crank

Why the snarky remarks? What is it exactly you don’t like about what I am saying? There is something that bothers you and instead of addressing it directly you’re beating around the bush.

I gave you an example where 2+2=4 doesn’t always hold (adding liquids). In mathematics you can create a group in which 2+2=4 doesn’t hold, see https://www.quora.com/Is-2-plus-2-always-4

2+2=4 isn’t always true depending on what you assume, however “something exists” and “at least two things exist” are true regardless of what we assume, that’s important. That’s not half-assed philosophy.

A forum such as this one brings out the urge to distinguish differences, even if they are minute. In the decade that I've participated in this and the previous incarnation of Philosophy Forum, people have agreed on a good many things. But we are all here to express ourselves, and "I agree with you." just isn't as much of an opening as "Let me explain the facts of life to you." — Bitter Crank

Great, yes some people agree on some things, yet through philosophy we see that we can almost always find a way to doubt some statement, to prove that it may not be true.

Now what I’m saying, and which you don’t seem to want to admit, is that “something exists” and “at least two things exist” are facts of life that are true now regardless of what we assume, we can’t doubt these statements without arriving at a contradiction. These statements have universal validity now, they may not hold in the future but now they do.

I believe in the existence of many things. — Bitter Crank

Yes, and many people do, however someone can come and tell you “maybe the whole of reality happens in the imagination of a single consciousness, or maybe only you exists, or maybe eventually a theory of everything will prove that only one thing exists”, however as I explained it is possible to prove that at least two things exist, even if we assume solipsism or that there is only one consciousness or whatever.

The many are made up of a few particles combined in particular ways. Without the plethora of things made from a dearth of different particles, we would not exist. — Bitter Crank

If we assume that the material world is part of consciousness rather than the other way around then we don’t have to see ourselves as being made of particles. If we assume that materialism is correct, then there are many things, but we don’t know that materialism is true (personally I do not believe in it), however regardless of our philosophical assumptions, materialism idealism solipsism or whatever, “at least two things exist” is true now.

2 + 2 = 4 isn’t always true, if you mix 2 ml of liquid A with 2 ml of liquid B, the volume of the resulting liquid is not always 4 ml. You can build mathematical frameworks in which 2 + 2 is not equal to 4. So the truth of that statement is limited, whereas “something exists” is true regardless.

“I see the color red” may be true or not. Even if it is true to me, you cannot know for sure whether I’m lying or not, you cannot know for sure what I am experiencing, you can only guess. However if you are a being who has experiences, “something exists” is necessarily true for you as well, and even if you are only in my mind “something exists” is still true.

There are plenty of personal truths that contradict one another, I would call personal truth a belief. Absolute truth goes beyond that, it is true regardless of what we assume. Whatever you assume about the world, about existence, you can be certain that something exists, and further than that you can be certain that at least two things exist. Whereas if you assume that other people only exist when you see them, then it isn’t true to you that other people exist even when you don’t see them. However regardless of what you assume, you can be certain that at least two things exist. That’s important.

Regarding your other remarks, my thinking isn’t removed from experiences, sure I see plenty of stuff, however as we have seen from physics what we interpret as different things can be explained as being fundamentally made of the same thing, for instance all objects we see can be described as being made of a few fundamental particles, there are many less fundamental particles than there are objects or even colors that can be distinguished. There is the idea that we could go even further than that and see all these different particles as being deep down the same thing (a vibrating string). Some people have the idea that deep down there is only one single thing, say a single God, or a single consciousness, or a single particle, or a single force. However what I am explaining here is that necessarily, there has to be at least two things at the root of our existence.

People keep disagreeing about pretty much everything and yet somehow you guys don’t find it important to find things we can agree on. Earlier someone disagreed that it is true that “something exists”, now he agrees. Now maybe some people will disagree that “at least two things exist”, but I’m saying that we can all come to agree on that because whatever we assume leads to this conclusion. Even if you assume that “only one thing exists” you are led to a contradiction and so you conclude that “at least two things must exist”. This is more important than you guys seem to realize.

The point of this thread is to show that we can prove something more than “something exists”, namely that “at least two things exist”. It might seem insignificant but this is a very important observation. There is currently a fundamental duality at the heart of existence, it cannot all be reduced to one single thing.

You were believing that there is no absolute truth, now you agree there is one, and I’m saying we can prove a second one. It is a step towards understanding existence, it is a useful stepping stone. Eventually we will find more.

Absolute truth does not exist. — ovdtogt

So “something exists” is not an absolute truth? What is it then? Show me your reasoning where you conclude that it’s possible that nothing exists. What are you doing on this forum if it doesn’t exist or if you don’t even exist, or if you’re not even a brain in a vat? Even if you’re a solipsist don’t you see something?

When I say absolute truth I don’t mean it will always remain an absolute truth (it’s possible that at some point in the future nothing exists anymore), but for now it is and it can’t be any other way.

Also when you say “absolute truth does not exist”, is that an absolute truth? If not what is it? Your personal truth? And that personal truth exists or not? Is it an illusion? If it’s an illusion what is creating the illusion? Something, right? :brow:

After all this method is maxed out in the scientific method. — TheMadFool

If you define the scientific method as thinking, observation, experiment, are you saying that the people we usually call scientists have the particularity of thinking more, observing more and experimenting more than other people? But all people are constantly observing and reacting based on what they observe, learning from their past experiences, so the degree of observing and experimenting does not distinguish so-called scientists from other people. We might say that the people we usually call scientists think more than other people on average, but philosophers think a lot too and even more so than so-called scientists.

As you can see mainstream science does not have the justified authority that it purports to have. All people constantly observe and experiment, and philosophers usually think more than mainstream scientists. The separation of mainstream science from philosophy and from what all people do is not justified. Mainstream science would benefit from the thoughts of so-called philosophers (who are people who think a lot) and from the observations/experiments of all people, while philosophy would benefit from the observations/experiments of mainstream science and of all people, and more generally all people would benefit from the observations/experiments/thoughts of all other people.

We all have something to learn from one another, observations, experiments, thoughts, each of us only sees reality from one small point of view, and we need to put all that together in order to advance towards truth, we need to stop believing that the people we usually call scientists have fundamentally different abilities from other people or that they can reach truth that applies to everyone while they ignore or dismiss the observations/experiments/thoughts of countless other people. We are all scientists and philosophers, we all observe, experiment and think from our own vantage point, we all have something to bring to the table and we need to start realizing that.

We need to stop blindly believing what some people say simply because they have the label ‘scientist’, and we need to stop blindly dismissing what some other people say simply because they don’t have the label ‘scientist’. We all have that label, we all are beings who observe, experiment, and think. Some people think more than others, but they don’t see or experiment everything, they need inputs from other people, especially since the more we focus on thought the less we observe and experiment. We all need one another.

See my last reply to Qmeri regarding beliefs in mainstream science.

Regarding scientific method, I’m not saying that mainstream scientists do not think, that they do not make observations and that they do not make experiments, but all people do that. We all think, we all make observations, we all make experiments. Practicing any activity is an experiment, through practice we see what works and what doesn’t work and that’s how we get better at whatever we focus on. Thinking, observation, experiment is carried out by all people, not just by mainstream scientists. If you say that this is the scientific method then we are all scientists. If you try to formulate a scientific method more precisely, you will realize that plenty of mainstream scientists do not follow that method, as Percy Bridgman said, there are as many scientific methods as there are individual scientists.

The truth is we are all scientists, mainstream science is simply a community of people who mostly erroneously believe that only them can advance towards truth, and who erroneously believe that their conclusions are free of beliefs.

You're basically invoking confirmation holism, and I'm totally on board with that, but "invoking new phenomena" is still changing your model of the world. If you think planets orbit the Earth in circles, observation will prove you wrong, and you can either abandon that for heliocentric ellipses, or save geocentrism by invoking epicycles, but you've still made a change to your model either way. — Pfhorrest

Observations can’t even rule out that planets orbit the Earth in circles, because you can invoke ‘illusion’ to explain that they really orbit the Earth in circles even though they don’t appear to. The argument of illusion is routinely invoked by mainstream scientists to dismiss personal reports that don’t fit their picture of the universe. So in this example we could say that light travels in some convoluted way and this is why the orbits don’t look like circles, or we could say that the optical illusion takes place somewhere in our eyes or brain. We can save the theory “planets orbit the Earth in circles” in many ways, that’s why I said almost any theory can be saved from falsification.

I do agree that even if we save “planets orbit the Earth in circles” we’ve still made a change to the whole theory of everything (for instance we’ve changed the part of the theory regarding how light travels or how the eye works or how the brain works), but any specific part of the whole theory can be saved in countless ways. So when you said that Newton has been proven wrong in an absolute sense, that’s wrong, his theory of gravitation can be made compatible with the empirical evidence in many ways, by invoking invisible matter for instance. If you think that invoking invisible matter is far-fetched, consider that invisible matter is precisely what is invoked to save general relativity because without it the empirical evidence is inconsistent with the theory.

So in order to save general relativity they have to assume that the universe is mostly made of dark matter and dark energy, which have never been detected despite decades of experiments, there is zero evidence for them, they only say that dark matter and dark energy exist because they really want the theory to be correct or very nearly correct, because they want to save that particular theory. We could have done the same with Newton’s gravitation if we really wanted to.

But from the practical point of view where the important question is: "What is the most reliable source of information available for a non-expert?" - the mainstream science wins hands down. — Qmeri

I disagree, yes there is plenty of reliable information that comes from mainstream science, but also plenty of unreliable information. Plenty of published peer reviewed papers with logical/methodological mistakes, experimental results accepted as true while no one attempts to reproduce the experiment, and then a long time later someone decides to do the experiment again and gets contradictory results which don’t get published for various reasons (“I must have made a mistake”, or peer review considers that the original result is established science and so that there must have been a mistake, ...).

People look to mainstream science to get answers about the nature of existence, about what we are, where we come from, where we are going, yet mainstream science only focuses on a small part of existence. As I said in another thread, there is no evidence that a living being is made solely of elementary particles, yet mainstream fundamental physics arbitrarily assumes that this is the case and then famous physicists tell as many people as possible that this is what we are, a bunch of particles, that love is nothing more than a chemical reaction, that there is nothing after death, and this message gets spread in books, news articles and so on to the whole of society, people are told that this is settled science, and those who want to believe differently or who have personal evidence that contradicts these conclusions are ridiculed, dismissed as cranks.

Any conclusion stems from assumptions, and there are plenty of conclusions in mainstream science that stem from assumptions that haven’t been tested at all, I just gave one example, the assumption “a living being is made solely of elementary particles” hasn’t been tested experimentally, it’s a belief, and so the conclusions derived from it are not reliable information, they are beliefs, which are spread under the pretense that they are reliable and well-tested information and that anyone who disagrees doesn’t understand science or is a crackpot. See the problem? And that’s barely scratching the surface of the problem.

When scientists themselves are not aware of which untested assumptions their conclusions are based on, they believe their results are more universal or certain than they are, and that’s when they feel justified to force society to believe like them. Sure not all scientists are like that, but many are, and especially the more vocal ones who spread their beliefs through all media under the guise of Science as if that conferred more validity to their beliefs than other beliefs. Anyone can pick different assumptions and reach completely different beliefs that are compatible with the exact same empirical evidence.

There are plenty of beliefs in mainstream science, which aren’t reliable information, and when most scientists themselves can’t tell what is belief and what isn’t we have a problem, a big problem. In order to find out you have to critically analyze research papers to uncover their implicit assumptions, because they’re not doing it themselves. If you don’t do that, well you can’t tell if you’re dealing with reliable information or with beliefs based on untested assumptions. That’s why it’s dangerous to blindly trust the ‘experts’.

Not that this has been studied, but all scientists and potential scientists I know are fully aware of the flaws in the system and they consider it a high priority to solve them. Removing corruption completely is just a very hard thing to do. Scientists are working hard on it all the time and that's why mainstream science gets better all the time and that's why it is the best we have and will continue to be the best we have for the foreseeable future. — Qmeri

Wishful thinking. That problem would already be solved if that system was as amazing as people claim it to be. It doesn’t get fixed because many ‘scientists’ don’t see the problem, and those who do don’t have the power to change things. Mainstream science is political, it involves prejudices, personal preferences, authorities, it isn’t the purely rational and objective endeavor that people make it out to be. Most scientists believe there is a fundamental distinction between the activities/theories labeled ‘science’ and those labeled ‘pseudoscience’ or ‘non-science’, I’m sure you believe in such a distinction too, and as long as they will believe in that the problem won’t get fixed. So sometime this month I’ll make a long thread about that and make it as clear as possible what the problem is and why it is a problem and why it isn’t fixed and how it can be fixed, how we can do much better than what we have now, and then the only thing that might prevent it from being fixed in the “foreseeable future” will be the people (scientists included) who want to keep forcing their own beliefs onto others.

There is no such thing as “the scientific method”.

http://rkc.org/bridgman.html
”In short, science is what scientists do, and there are as many scientific methods as there are individual scientists.”

There are plenty of opinions in ‘science’. Considering that countless theories can be made compatible with a given set of observations (see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-underdetermination/), picking any of these theories as the “more correct” one and as the one to develop is a matter of opinion based on subjective criteria, such as ‘simplicity’, ‘beauty’, ‘appeal to authority’, ...

There are plenty of problems with peer review, it lets through many papers with logical and methodological flaws when their results agree with the consensus, and it blocks many papers without such flaws simply because they go against the consensus. The problem isn’t the process itself but the reviewers and more generally the lack of critical thinking about the whole scientific enterprise.

Meanwhile activities or ideas that are labeled ‘pseudoscience’ or ‘non-science’ can have more rationality in them than other ones labeled ‘science’.

Then I know the kind of reply I’ll get, “it’s the best thing we have” or “the best we can do”, no it’s not, these flaws could be fixed if only people cared to listen more and idolize Science less. So I’ll make a thread about that, until then I should probably stop replying to these kinds of posts venerating Science.

Regarding mainstream science, it works like plenty of things work (say practicing a sport or a game until you get better). There are plenty historical examples of theories that were rejected by mainstream science, dismissed as ‘pseudoscience’ or nonsense, rejected by the peer review process, yet later turned out to be correct. We know about the examples where mainstream science changed its mind, what about all the other examples? There are potentially many profound ideas/theories that have been rejected/dismissed and which may turn out to be correct later on, but we won’t ever find that out without exploring them further. Mainstream science is far from perfect, it’s not the only thing that works, and it dismisses a lot of ideas that work or that could work, in many ways it hinders progress.

I’ll eventually post a long thread about science and pseudoscience, I’ve been working on it for a while and I want it to be as clear and thorough as possible, so that people can see why they should idolize mainstream science less and respect so-called pseudosciences more (I will show that there is no fundamental difference between science and pseudoscience).

you cannot prove anything, only disprove — Pfhorrest

If A is false then non-A is true, so to disprove is to prove something...

Falsifying a theory doesn’t mean proving it is false, almost any theory can be saved from falsification by invoking new phenomena when observations do not match the theory (dark matter, dark energy, ...).

Even Newton’s gravitation is not disproven by observations, it can also be saved by invoking unseen matter.

People decide when they stop working on a theory, and when they decide that they call the theory falsified, that doesn’t mean they have proven it is false, they could make it compatible with observations but they more or less arbitrarily decided to stop and to continue developing another theory.

Another important thing to consider regarding the relationship between information, feelings, and existence: psilocybin has been shown to greatly help people facing treatment-resistant depression and existential suffering due to life-threatening diseases. Why? Because beforehand they felt alone, disconnected, with the prospect of their existence ending that way, yet during and after they felt connected to the universe, they could see that physical death isn’t the end of the road, they could see connections that their senses usually don’t show. Many people who have never tried psilocybin dismiss these experiences as mere hallucinations, yet one wonders how mere hallucinations could give such profound lasting effects and be more beneficial than other treatments specifically designed to treat depression. So-called hallucinations aren’t experiences that don’t exist, they are experiences that were really had, we simply call them hallucinations when we don’t know how to fit them within the mainstream understanding of what the world is, yet we know that this understanding is incomplete.

And another relationship with information is that while under the effect, parts of the brain that usually don’t communicate do communicate, not in a random way but in an ordered way. Here is the study that has shown that: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsif.2014.0873
or for a good layman explanation: https://news.yahoo.com/tripping-mushrooms-changes-brain-204500998.html

So what do we get from this? That increased connectedness is correlated with positive feelings and with having more profound experiences, seeing more, understanding more. If increased connectedness within a single individual can do that, imagine what it could do if we were all connected. Well we can’t imagine, it’s beyond our current imagination, it cannot be put into words. But it’s clear that as we move towards more connectedness and unity we have more positive feelings (happiness, love) and more profound experiences, whereas as we move towards more disorder and separation we have more negative feelings (suffering, hate) and less profound experiences (depression).

It really seems that this way we can come to relate positive/negative feelings with connectedness/separation, order/disorder, information/randomness, existence/non-existence, where we’re not only referring to what goes on within a brain or within a single individual but within the whole universe and the whole of existence. Feelings tell us about connections that the other senses don’t see.

I really like your take on things, it’s nice to see original thinkers. I don’t necessarily agree with all of it for now, but a lot of it fits with observations and thoughts I’ve arrived at too.

The way I see it, the whole of existence can be seen as change, or as a sum of experiences. Contradictions (or paradoxes as you call them) are not possible because otherwise we couldn’t distinguish any experience from any other, any experience would also be any other one and so they would be the same, and if all experiences are the same then nothing changes and there is no existence. So in order for there to be existence (change), there cannot be contradictions, two experiences that are different cannot be the same experience.

We also relate experiences with one another, if we didn’t do that there would be no past and no future, we wouldn’t see motion as we wouldn’t remember the experience right before, we wouldn’t see change, and again that would be non-existence.

By relating experiences with one another we get an idea of past and future, we describe an experience in terms of other experiences, we notice regularities, if there weren’t regularities everything would be random, and if everything was random then there would be no being experiencing the randomness (as a being isn’t pure randomness) and again there would be no existence (at least no existence that could be experienced).

So indeed in order for there to be an existence that is experienced it is a necessity that there be no contradiction, no pure randomness, and that there be at least a being who can experience change, relating experiences with one another. From noticing regularities within change we gain the ability to predict. But we don’t just notice, we aren’t mere spectators, we are also involved, we participate in the change, we make effort to move to a different state. We attempt to move towards happiness and away from suffering. Why do we do that?

There I particularly like your idea of associating feelings with stability and instability, I don’t agree with associating positive feelings with stability and negative feelings with instability but I think you’re on the right path. I have noticed that positive feelings are correlated with unity, with connectedness, with symmetry, whereas negative feelings are correlated with division, separation, disorder. We attempt to move towards positive feelings, but they aren’t stability, we attempt to make them stable but if they were inherently stable we would simply stay with positive feelings in a stable equilibrium. On the other side negative feelings aren’t inherently instability, it could be that the state of maximum division/separation/disorder is stable and that once there it becomes impossible to go back towards more unity, connectedness and order. It’s rather that we attempt to move away from that state, and what is that state? Non-existence. We attempt to move away from non-existence, we don’t want it to become permanent.

And that way it all makes sense, we attempt to move towards happiness and away from suffering because we attempt to move towards existence and away from non-existence. And indeed if we increase the positive feelings within ourselves by exploiting others and increasing the negative feelings within them, we create local order within us and disorder all around us and eventually we pay the price as the disorder all around makes our local order harder to maintain. It’s by spreading positive feelings all around us that we can maintain order over disorder, existence over non-existence. I used to think that existence is the fight of good against evil, while in fact it is simply existence fighting against non-existence, order against disorder, unity against division, connectedness against separation, love against hate. We’re all connected in that we are all part of existence, when one part of existence suffers it eventually impacts all of us, the more we spread suffering to others the more we move as a whole towards non-existence.

Thanks to your post I now see the connection between randomness/disorder and non-existence, I hadn’t made that connection yet, it’s what we’re struggling against fundamentally, what we attempt to move away from, suffering is a perception that tells us when we’re moving towards it, positive feelings tell us when we’re moving away from it, and it’s important to listen to what everyone feels, as how each being feels is what they perceive from their own point of view, from where they are, if we don’t listen to the disorder they experience, to their suffering, eventually it spreads to us too. Whereas somehow through love we spread order and maintain existence against non-existence. There is more to the world than meets the eye, feelings tell us about things that other senses do not see.


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Your “Part 4” might be too optimistic when you equate perfect randomness with the biggest multiverse, and you say that when it is observed from a point of view in it new information is created. The problem is that in perfect randomness there is no mind to observe it, so I’m afraid that if we reach perfect randomness existence will be gone forever, unless somehow some tiny order can arise within maximum disorder and grow again. Maybe once we reach maximum randomness there is no going back.

Regarding quantum mechanics I don’t believe we are forced to see the randomness within it as fundamental, the collapse of the wave function as what’s really happening, I believe it’s still possible to see that apparent randomness as incomplete information rather than as that information not existing, the mainstream interpretation is that this randomness is fundamental but they haven’t explored all options even if that’s what they believe now, so we shouldn’t assume it is proven (and thus that it is evidence for your relative information model) but it’s definitely something to explore further anyway.

As to what happens to a dying mind I’m not sure I follow you, especially the part where what’s left of the mind interacts with the enormous randomness surrounding it considering that there is not so much randomness here on Earth, and the part where the mind becomes a random new being in a random new world, maybe you can explain that in more details when you have the time, but it’s not a priority since it seems more speculative than the rest.


Beyond the important realization that disorder/randomness, suffering and non-existence are related, and as such that it is extremely important to spread positive feelings such as love and happiness in order to maintain Existence over non-existence, I see two things that are important to reflect on: the apparent laws of this universe, and the widespread idea that the universe as a whole moves progressively towards disorder (leading to the so-called heat death of the universe).

It seems hard to believe that the laws of this universe would have somehow emerged randomly, or out of pure randomness. It seems to me equally hard to believe that everything we do and think would be dictated by these laws and that we have no control over anything. To me these laws must be maintained by some being, otherwise I don’t see how they could have arisen like that and I don’t see why they would be so regular, why so many objects would keep following these laws. And to me we must have freedom to act within these laws, they can’t dictate everything we do, otherwise our most basic intuitions would be illusions and so much would stop making sense, I believe empirically we should be able to show that there are things that go on within living beings that don’t reduce to these laws, that eventually we will demonstrate that. All of that is important to consider if we want to eventually explain everything.

Regarding the supposed heat death of the universe, it’s far from a certainty (there are various objections to it) but it’s something to reflect on as well, what will happen in the future will depend in part on what we do and in part on what these laws are and whether they can be modified (it is usually assumed that they can’t be modified, maybe we just haven’t found how yet).

A lot of food for thought, I feel like we can make progress together, you and me, all of us, everyone, we all see existence from our own point of view and each one sees things that others don’t, we have to put all these points of view together in order to move forward, towards unity, connectedness, happiness, existence, and away from disorder, separation, suffering and non-existence. Something important is starting.

Maybe it's just me but if change precedes time, are you implying that change comes first and then we get time. If that's not what you meant, can you clarify this point.We usually talk about change and time simultaneously and how can change which precedes time, be dependent on time which follows from it. — Wittgenstein

Because change happens regardless of what we think about it, whereas time is a concept we create. Within change (existence) we observe periodic change, such as day-night-day-night-day-..., or winter-spring-summer-autumn-winter-..., from these periodic changes we come up with the concept of clock and of time, but that concept is a creation, at no point have we observed some entity called ‘time’ that is passing or flowing.

I mentioned that if we couldn’t see change we wouldn’t come up with the concept of time, but going further than that if we only saw disordered change and couldn’t see any periodic change, I would say we wouldn’t come up with the concept of time either, the past would blend with the future there wouldn’t be a noticeable difference between them (for instance imagine if all we saw was white noise).

A system in which all bodies are at rest is identical to a body in which all bodies are moving at a constant velocity as in both systems, change is not detectable. — Wittgenstein

But velocity relative to what? If you detect that your system is moving at a constant velocity relative to something else, then you do detect change. Also in practice the two systems you mention are not identical, the principle of relativity is an idealized principle, in practice for instance with the proper instruments you do detect your motion relative to the cosmic microwave background which is everywhere (the two systems you mention wouldn’t see that background at the same frequency).

I haven't come across any such definition and could you define it here. That would either reduce velocity to something else or compromise all other physical units that depend on it. — Wittgenstein

Velocity could be seen as a fundamental quantity that is measured with a speedometer. Then you can pick distance as another fundamental quantity (measured with rulers) and then time becomes a derived quantity.

Of course the reading of the speedometer must not be calculated from distance and time otherwise it wouldn’t be fundamental. But basically when we observe motion we have a sense of how fast something is going, we don’t have to use rulers and clocks in order to determine whether something is going fast or slow in our visual field, we can describe motion and more generally change without seeing time as fundamental.

Again the simplest way to see it all is to say that change occurs, and that distance, time, velocity, ... are tools we created to describe that change, to relate some part of that change to some other part of it. Thinking of distance and time as existing prior to or independently of change leads to never-ending confusion, they are tools we created they aren’t things existing independently of everything we observe.

If we take this viewpoint into consideration, the interval between change and non-change would not even be zero as you noted that the transition also belongs to change. The state of non-change and change overlap and from non-change emerged change. Would this imply that the state of change is the same as the state of non change as they could be replaced by each other. Won't that be a contradiction. — Wittgenstein

Well there would be nothing before change, nothing to observe non-change turning into change, so strictly speaking the state of non-change doesn’t exist, there is nothing that turns into change, it’s simply that change occurs, we can’t say what happened before because nothing happened, nothing existed so there is no overlap.

If we try to imagine the state of non-change we’re doing it wrong, usually we imagine ourselves as observing an absence of change but that’s not what non-change is because we are beings who change, we have thoughts, we have a heartbeat, so non-change is not an observation of non-change, it is the absence of existence, we can’t picture it because by trying to picture it we’re including existence in the picture.

A movie has a beginning because it fits within something greater (our life), but the whole of existence does not fit into anything greater so it doesn’t have a beginning we can conceptualize.

This would mean that some objects were being changed forever. Let's apply this supposition to an example, suppose that an object is accelerating in this system and if we also assume it was accelerating whenever we look back into the past, it would have an infinite velocity at present, which wouldn't make sense in a physical world. That's just my little thought experiment. — Wittgenstein

Why would we assume that it could accelerate forever in a single direction? A thing can’t accelerate on its own there is always something else accelerating it, either a gravitational body such as a planet (but then the thing stops accelerating when it crashes into the planet), or an electromagnetic interaction such as when rocket fuel explodes and the electrons of one part of the fuel push onto the rocket while the other part is ejected out of the rocket (but then the rocket stops accelerating when all the fuel has exploded). Or you can have endless acceleration in circular motion where the orbiting body doesn’t gain speed (planet around a star, electron around an atom) and where the acceleration prevents the body from going into a straight line.

Even assuming you could somehow accelerate something indefinitely, the longer you accelerate the less you gain speed as you approach the speed of light, you approach the speed of light asymptotically, that’s why the speed of light is seen as a speed limit. And if somehow it turns out that we can travel faster than light and that there is no speed limit, in order to accelerate the object indefinitely you would need an infinite amount of fuel in the first place, you would run out of fuel way before the thing reaches infinite velocity.

It's easy to see the existence of time without a sense to detect change. Change in of itself is meaningless as it has to be detected by someone. — Wittgenstein

If you couldn’t detect change you wouldn’t come up with the concept of time. There might be change without a sense to detect change but there cannot be time without a sense to detect change.

Consider yourself in a system where every object is moving with the same velocity. In that case, you won't be able to see change but motion presupposes time according to you, hence you would still require time. — Wittgenstein

If I am in a system in which every object is at rest, why would I say they are moving at a constant velocity? They have no velocity. Also I never said that “motion presupposes time”, what I say is that time is a measure of change, and motion is a form of change. Change precedes the concept of time, not the other way around.

Also if I am in a system in which all objects besides me are at rest, I would still see change: if I move my eyes the scenery would change, I would sense my heartbeat, my thoughts and imagination could change, ...

Also, velocity doesn’t have to be defined as distance over time, it can be defined as a fundamental concept without reference to time, I recall that Max Jammer did that in one of his books, so any argument invoking velocity cannot prove that time precedes motion.

In that case, we run into a paradox. Let's suppose change emerged from non change hence time was invented after change existed,but since the transition itself requires time, we have to assume time existed before change existed in order for non change to turn into change.
If we suppose non change was always there we run into an infinite regress. You see the problem with both solutions. — Wittgenstein

As I said the ‘transition’ wouldn’t be a process, suddenly there would be change, but no one would be there to see it so it’s not even meaningful to speak of it that way. Change already exists as soon as the transition begins, so the ‘transition’ itself belongs to change, there is no change (and thus no time) before change. And again no one would be there to see it, if you assume someone is looking at non-change turning into change then that means there was already a being so there was already change.

If instead we suppose that change was always there, there is no beginning, so fundamentally there is no infinite regress, you would never find a beginning because there simply isn’t one. If you can’t find something that doesn’t exist then just stop looking for it.

And as I explained, “when change began” is undefined so it’s not useful to talk about it in those terms anyway. What we can say is that there is change now, even our memories of the past are experienced now, in the present. There is change and time is a relative measure of change, that’s all there is to it.

If everything in the universe stopped moving in an absolute sense. Will time still exist or is it independent of any such circumstances ? — Wittgenstein

How could there be time without change? Time is a measure of change, or more precisely a measure of relative change (a comparison of some change relative to some other change, or said differently a comparison of some process relative to some other process).

Can a philosophical approach really tackle this question as the physicist have more concrete ways of dealing with it. Is it up to them to resolve this debate ? — Wittgenstein

It would be a fallacy to think that physicists can tackle this question more profoundly, they cannot escape the above philosophical observation. Physics describes change, relates some change to some other change, even if physics could describe perfectly how things move (how change evolves) it still wouldn’t explain why things move in the first place (why there is change at all).

Either change always existed, or change arose from the absence of change, but the transition from non-change to change cannot be described in term of a process, it cannot be explained, so physics will never explain that.

Either change always existed or change arose from non-change at some point in the past, but is it even meaningful to make a distinction between the two options? For instance if we say that “change arose from non-change X years ago”, we say that if the Earth and the Sun had existed since the very beginning then the Earth would have revolved X times around the Sun since then, but presumably the Earth and the Sun didn’t exist back then and we don’t know what processes were taking places at the very beginning. If at the very beginning there was change that we cannot compare to any change that we have now (even if we use atomic processes as a clock instead of the Earth and the Sun), then we cannot meaningfully say how long ago was the beginning, how far back in the past change began is indeterminate, so in this sense it is not meaningful to ask whether there was always change or whether change arose from non-change.

From our vantage point what we can say is that change exists, and the absence of change that we see is always described relative to some change, for instance if we look at a blank wall while staying perfectly still and not moving the eyes, there is still change going on such as our thoughts, our heartbeat, our breathing or our imagination.

To sum up change exists, time is a relative measure of change, when change began is indeterminate, and there is no existence without change (existence can be defined as change itself).

Here is an interesting insight: we could see feelings as perceptions, just like with see sight or smell as perceptions.

For instance the feeling of hunger or thirst tells us something about ourselves, about our body, that other senses do not see. The feeling of fear tells us something about what might happen. We can do that with all feelings. And where I want to go with this is that the feeling of love would tell us about the connections between ourselves and other beings or other things, whereas the feeling of suffering would tell us about these connections being destroyed. That fits quite well with the observation that when we are attached to something or someone, suffering occurs when we lose that attachment.

Love and suffering would be senses that tell us about real connections that exist and that the other senses do not see.

Going down that path can give quite an amazing picture of the world and existence.

Belief is a feeling too, it would be a window into the future that we create through our actions.

Desire is a feeling as well, it would tell us what we are going to do, and gives us the opportunity to change course.

Seriously, think about it. What if we've been misinterpreting feelings all along?

Sure it's important to keep in mind that there are unconscious desires (which may be uncovered), thanks for pointing that out, but a Buddhist attempts to be detached from all desires, not just the conscious ones, so let's assume that I refer to all desires including the unconscious ones when I talk of "being detached from our desires".

I don't see a fundamental distinction between between need and desire. I would say needs are a subset of desires. Needs are those desires that we believe we have to fulfill or else we will lose something important, whereas other desires could be seen as "nice to have" if they are fulfilled.

Regarding your third point, if I understand you correctly, yes clearly there are desires that lead us down paths of suffering. As I mentioned in the first post some desires are incompatible, for instance if person A desires to hurt person B and person B doesn't desire to be hurt then both desires cannot be fulfilled. But it would be extremely premature to give up based on this sort of observation, because as I mentioned our desires aren't set in stone, many of them change throughout our life, through understanding the world and ourselves we can come to see which ones are worth pursuing and which should be abandoned, our beliefs can change too, so in principle it could be possible to reach a state where all people come to have mutually compatible desires that can be fulfilled.




Yes Buddhism doesn't tell us to kill ourselves, it doesn't explicitly tell us to give up on life, but in the world we have now, being completely detached from our desires means being completely at the mercy of outside forces that threaten our life, so if some terrorist tries to kill a Buddhist, or if the Buddhist has a severe infection that threatens his life, what is the Buddhist going to do if he is detached from his desires? Wouldn't he let the terrorist or the infection kill him and simply watch it happen, not opposing it? He cannot suffer by being completely detached but he can also die pretty quickly depending on what threatens his life, and if we all behaved like that what hope would there be to ever change the way things are now? That's why I don't see "being detached from our desires" as a global solution to suffering, it can help some people in some situations, but if we all did that the human species wouldn't last long.

Suffering has a strong linear relationship with unfulfilled desire. However this is merely mental suffering and is relatively harmless compared to other forms of suffering: Hunger, pain and fear. — ovdtogt

Mental suffering makes people kill themselves, so I wouldn’t say it is relatively harmless.

There can be a strong feeling of hunger or pain without suffering. Masochists enjoy pain for instance (to some extent). There is suffering associated with these feelings when there is attachment to one’s own body and when these feelings are perceived as a sign that the body is threatened.

The feeling of fear is not necessarily associated with suffering either, it is when again it is perceived as a threat to something we are attached to, such as our body. When that feeling is not perceived as a threat to something we are attached to it is not associated with suffering, for instance many people enjoy scary movies or rides for the thrill, because fundamentally they know they are not risking something they are attached to.

And unfulfilled desire is not necessarily associated with suffering either, as long as we are working to fulfill it and believe that we will fulfill it we do not suffer, it is when we stop believing we will fulfill it that we lose our connection to it and we suffer.

It really seems like attachment and loss are what are fundamentally linked to suffering rather than desire. Attachment + loss = suffering (or more generally attachment + perceived/believed/imagined loss = suffering).

But attachment is important to life/existence, so in my view we should rather try to minimize simultaneous attachment+loss rather than try to become detached from everything. I’d prefer an existence where we’re all connected rather than an existence where we’re all detached from everything and everyone. Well people who want to be detached from everyone can go in that direction if that’s what they want, they’re not bothering anyone. But maybe they mistakenly believe that such a thing is possible, maybe there always remains something we can’t detach ourselves from.

That's rather jumping to conclusions, that desire equates with life itself. Why does this conclusion seem correct to you? — Wallows

I said that desiring nothing implies doing nothing, but maybe that’s mistaken. Maybe it’s possible to be in some sort of free state where we can experience change without actually desiring anything because we already have what we desire.

I’m fine with that, and I do enjoy these discussions with you. They are both respectful and challenging. — Possibility

:up:

But you can’t say that we haven’t lost something here - we’re just not suffering from that loss, because we recognise that there is more to our loved one than the physical or temporal aspects we’ve lost. And we have lost those aspects of them - you can call it change, which refers to either loss or pain, or both, but I see it as roughly the same awareness. Denying the loss is denying that they had a physical or temporal aspect at all, which I don’t believe is being honest with ourselves. But I don’t think we’re that far from understanding each other here. — Possibility

Sure, but any change can be interpreted as a loss. The night can be interpreted as a loss of the Sun, the day can be interpreted as a loss of the night sky, the absence of happiness can be interpreted as a loss of happiness, the presence of happiness can be interpreted as a loss of however it is we felt beforehand. Even the loss of suffering can be interpreted as a loss. Talking of loss this way is simply talking of change. Usually we refer to loss as something leading to suffering, but equating loss with change misses that negative aspect of loss.

Loss in itself doesn’t lead to suffering, it is only if there was attachment to what is lost that there is suffering, only if there was a desire to keep experiencing what is no more experienced, to stay connected to what we have become disconnected from. As the Buddhists say it is attachment to desire that leads to suffering, or more precisely when we are attached to something and we lose connection to that thing. It is attachment + loss that leads to suffering, not loss alone or attachment alone. However while Buddhists see loss as inevitable because of the way things are, and thus conclude that in order to not suffer one has to be attached to nothing, I believe it is possible to progressively change the way things are so as to eventually get to a state where we never experience attachment + loss at the same time, and so a state where we never suffer.

Because we are not always attached to the same things, and so loss (change) is not necessarily accompanied with suffering. For instance we can have a good time with someone and be attached to that experience while we live it (such as spending time with a friend), and then move on to other experiences and not suffer because we don’t remain attached to their physical presence, as we say goodbye and separate physically we remain connected through our memories, and so the change is not experienced as a suffering. Similarly if we come to know for sure that we will see our loved ones again, and we remain connected to them in some way, we will not suffer from the loss of their physical presence.

This is where we differ, because I consider an experience of loss/lack to be fundamental not just to life, but to existence - to all forms of interaction in the universe. I pair loss/lack because they refer to the same basic sense of incompletion (although loss has a temporal aspect). Without interaction, there can be no loss, but there is loss without desire and without life. There is no desire without an experience of lack, however. — Possibility

When loss is equated with change I agree that change is fundamental to existence, there is no existence without change.

But I’m not certain that there can be change without desire and without life. That’s the view of physicalism, which assumes that everything that exists behaves according to physical laws, that these laws were not created by a being and that nothing can break these laws, but I disagree with that view for various reasons. It is possible that there is no existence without at least a being, that existence and being necessarily go together. It makes more sense than saying that somehow for unexplainable reasons being and consciousness arose from dead particles that behave according to unchanging laws which are there for no reason at all.

I’m also not certain that there is no desire without an experience of lack. Desire seems to me to be the will to create change. Sometimes that will stems from a lack, but sometimes not, for instance one can love someone while not lacking anything, we can have the desire to share with others what we have rather than the desire to take what we need. But I can agree that desire is the will to create a change that is not already there, to make happen what is not happening yet, so you could say that “what is not happening yet” is lacked, but that lack is not necessarily personal, it can be a lack perceived in others, for instance while thirst stems from a lack of water in our body, one can love others without lacking love. I do agree that a lack perceived in others can still count as a lack, but it’s important to not see all desire stemming from a lack in our own body (maybe that’s not what you meant but just in case I felt it important to point out).

I agree with the idea that desire is linked to incompletion, through desire we create change to fulfill something. For instance through the desire to end suffering we progressively change our beliefs and the world. Maybe once we reach truth, once we reach completeness, complete fulfillment, there would be no more desire as we would already have the world/existence we strive for, no more suffering, and only universal love, harmony and unity.

I’m glad you replied, I wanted to mention your ideas at some point in the OP but my post was getting too long.

I wouldn’t say we ‘clashed’ on this in the past, more like we disagreed, in the end I want the truth to come out I never try to impose my ideas onto others, it’s simply when I’m convinced that I see something that the other side doesn’t see that I become more persistent, but even if the other side still disagrees after all my efforts I don’t keep ill feelings, maybe simply a little sadness that we couldn’t come to agree, sometimes there are things we simply aren’t ready yet to understand, this counts for others but this counts for me too, I don’t claim to have reached the whole truth but I believe I’m closer to it than I used to be.

I disagree that there can be no life without loss. Loss is an interpretation, you can be far from someone and still feel connected to them, feel that you haven’t lost them. You can see death as a passage rather than the end, and consider that you are still connected to your loved ones who passed away and that you will see them again. Seeing things that way you don’t have to see loss in life, only change.

Also I see desire and suffering as more fundamental than loss, since for instance if one doesn’t desire anything there is no life and thus no loss.