Maybe better: the particle moves in the wave. So a particle remains a particle, tough not an ordinary one. Surrounded by a mysterious wave. So particle and wave together! — EugeneW

If it makes you feel better to tell yourself that, knock yourself out.

So not both at the same time. Which seems the most logical. When you describe the wave, you don't see the particle and vice versa. — EugeneW

If it makes you feel better to tell yourself that, knock yourself out.

lol. Be sure to observe the quotes I left from those journals just below your comment. In short, my position is reinforced by data, yours by opinion. — Garrett Travers

To repeat - none of the articles you linked to say anything about reason as the source of human values, no matter how ol you l.

So, the pfc's function, how the brain differentiates between data signals, and the recuurent neural networks that integrate data have no relevance... Gotcha. — Garrett Travers

The subject on the table is whether the source of human values is based on reason. You say yes. I say no. The articles you linked to have nothing to say about that.

Are you deliberately choosing not to read? Here, let me help. And remember, I said the conditions were that we do this right, no bullshit. So, let's not beat around the bush.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927039/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2017.00007/full
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/prefrontal-cortex#:~:text=The%20prefrontal%20cortex%20(PFC)%20plays,prospective%20memory%2C%20and%20cognitive%20flexibility.

Start with these, it's a process of understanding what is happening with the brain. Much more where these come from. — Garrett Travers

I took a quick look. I didn't see anything applicable to the questions we are discussing.

We're not getting anywhere. I think we've carried this discussion as far as we can.

In your experience (accrual of data), values are not conceptual understandings (a conceptual understanding derived from data). You just contradicted yourself. — Garrett Travers

Now you're just being silly.

The proposition has remained entirely unaddress by anything other than simple opinion that isn't consistent with any modern scientific understanding of nature. — Garrett Travers

I have gone back through all of your posts in this thread and I didn't find any reference to specific sources or references which would provide evidence about a "modern scientific understanding of nature" and how it relates to your position. You are just performing "seems to me" philosophy. I acknowledge I am doing the same, but I haven't made the type of definitive claims you have.

values are abstractions from data. Anything you use as a conceptual understanding of anything at all, is an abstraction from sensory data you developed, or was passed on to you. All conceptual abstractions are used to inform behavior. I'd start with recurrent neural networks if I were you. — Garrett Travers

In my experience, values are not conceptual understandings at all. As @Tom Storm points out, we can talk about them rationally, but that doesn't mean they developed that way.

If you have references that support your point of view, I'd be interested in seeing them.

Why do you not agree with the Wikipedia definition of the Enlightenment? — Athena

Where did I say I don't agree with it? I'm confused by your whole post. All I said is that Enlightenment values are not Romantic values.

You apparently believe that our primary motivations are based on reason. That seems like a completely unsupported and unsupportable contention. I think the ball is in your court to justify your claim.
— T Clark

No, I think that our only means of actually surviving in the world relies on it. That was the premise.

I guess I'll turn this around - do you really claim you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice?
— T Clark

Exclusively. — Garrett Travers

In your first response you say that our primary motivations are not based on reason. In the next one, you say you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice. I was using motivation as a near synonym for values. Maybe that's not how you see it.

Most people don't.
— T Clark

That's the problem. — Garrett Travers

You probably won't be surprised to hear that I disagree.

Children love their mothers before they have any significant capacity for reason. Love of family is not a rational choice, although you can justify it rationally in hindsight.
— T Clark

This is different. Humans are an altricial species with a rearing period of about 20 years or so. It takes them a long time to develop their rational faculties. Love of family needs to be a rational choice if it can be determined through development that such people are antithetical to one's own happiness. That comes in time. — Garrett Travers

Mothers love babies before they're born. Parents don't decide to love their children for rational or any other reason, they just do. It's built into us. I tell you this as a father. There is no rationality behind my feelings for my children.

Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you, speaking for Rand, were saying that our values were developed through reason.
— T Clark

That's exactly what I said. Reason is where values come from, even if they've been passed on to you. — Garrett Travers

I think that's true of very few people. It certainly isn't true of me.

And cognitively there is no evidence to suggest that our values are not abstractions we develop from recurrent neural networks of sensory data constantly being processed and vetted for interests and pursuits, and thereby the data that is accrued from those interests and pursuits. — Garrett Travers

I'll say it again, this is not how I experience things. For me, and I think most people, values aren't abstractions at all. They are motivations for action we may or may not be aware of.

1) We have many means of survival. Our mental processes are only one. 2) I don't think it's correct to characterize human mental processes as primarily associated with reason.
— T Clark

What would it be then? What allows you to do anything? You'll need to expand this beyond internal confusion. — Garrett Travers

This is an appropriate subject for a thread of its own. There have been many on the forum.

You apparently believe that our primary motivations are based on reason. That seems like a completely unsupported and unsupportable contention. I think the ball is in your court to justify your claim.

I think the claim that we develop our values through our conceptual faculty of reason is incorrect.
— T Clark

Cool, explain. Where do we get our values if not from ourselves? Saying other people will simply just mean that reason constructed values that have been passed on to us. It will be the same process. So, where? — Garrett Travers

I guess I'll turn this around - do you really claim you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice? Most people don't. Children love their mothers before they have any significant capacity for reason. Love of family is not a rational choice, although you can justify it rationally in hindsight. I'll say it again, your position is unsupported and unsupportable.

I think one of humanity's primary values results from our social nature. We value other people. We have empathy.
— T Clark

And only in the society described above can such values be freely expressed. These are not incompatible, but complimentary. — Garrett Travers

Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you, speaking for Rand, were saying that our values were developed through reason. As I said, I disagree with this. If, instead, you were saying that we use our reason to express our values, I'll at least agree that it is one of the facilities we use to do so, not the only one and not the primary one.

I am heading out now and won't be back for a few hours.

Yo, Clark, no well-poisoning. The deal was, we were going to actually do this, and not act like a bunch of PhD's who have never taken a logic course. — Garrett Travers

Perhaps that was your deal, but you are not the original poster. I think my post was in the spirit of the original post. I also think it's reasonable for me to make my disdain for Rand clear.

That being said, I don't plan to interfere with your plan to have a reasonable discussion of Rand's ideas. See my previous post.

What does Rand mean by selfish:

P1. if humans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival.
P2. and if it is only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty
C. then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals — Garrett Travers

Let's take a look at these:

• Humans are generated by natural processes with reason (logic, rationality, conceptual faculty) being their means of survival. - Two points 1) We have many means of survival. Our mental processes are only one. 2) I don't think it's correct to characterize human mental processes as primarily associated with reason.
• It is only through this conceptual faculty of reason that humans are capable of living a life according to the values he/she develops with said faculty. - I think the claim that we develop our values through our conceptual faculty of reason is incorrect.
• The only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals. - I think one of humanity's primary values results from our social nature. We value other people. We have empathy.

Yes, but it's confusing. — EugeneW

Agreed. That's why quantum mechanics gives people fits, even 117 years after it started out. It is anti-intuitive. As for "Sometimes particle, sometimes wave"... it's always both. It's just the way we observe it that changes. Don't ask me to explain further.

I don't understand. How can a particle be a wave at the same time? — EugeneW

As I said, the fact that you can't understand it doesn't mean it isn't true. To be fair, it's a hard idea to get ahold of. Did you read the Wikipedia article I linked.

I just checked in Google and there is a Spanish editorial which translated all her works. I would give a try in one of her works :cool: — javi2541997

She is an.... acquired taste.

Wow an anti-communist philosopher writing books about science fiction. I can't get over it — javi2541997

Hey, L. Ron Hubbard, who was a pretty good old-style science fiction writer in the 1950s, started Scientology.

The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state. — wikipedia

Are those Romantic values? I don't think so.

There, did I make that as clear as the water in a mud hole? — Athena

You were very clear, but I don't think the only two choices are Romanticism and technocracy.

I don't even know who is Ayn Rand. I feel pretty ignorant right now... — javi2541997

Look her up. You'll be interested. She was a.... unique person. Besides being an anti-communist philosopher, she wrote the worst science fiction book in history - "Atlas Shrugged." So very, very, very bad, it's goo...No, sorry. It's just bad.

How can that be? How can it be both at the same time? — EugeneW

Yes. A particle is a particle. A wave is a wave. You can have waves of particles. All being one. But that's still a wave in which particles move. Or one particle. — EugeneW

As @Janus noted, reality does not always follow what we think of as common sense. You can't overthrow more than100 years of physics just because it doesn't make sense to you. This is not some new highfalutin idea.

I suggest a little reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality

Good post.

In other words, keep yourself busy. — baker

You and @schopenhauer1 are really pitiful. You resent anyone who isn't as miserable as you are. You can't even imagine there are people satisfied with their lives.

You two are broken and you want, demand, that we all be as broken as you are.

Isn't mass quantitative? — emancipate

As Einstein told us; mass and energy, e.g. electromagnetic radiation, i.e. light; are equivalent. Light doesn't have mass, but it has momentum.

A basic metaphysical principle would be that “No two contradictory statements in the same sentence can both be true”.

Light is a wave phenomenon and light is a particle phenomenon.

I think that all God-related experiences are fingers pointing at the moon. — emancipate

I don't think experiencing God is any different from any other experience, keeping in mind, of course, that I never have had that experience.

you would probably judge me to be respectful for most of the time. — Joe Mello

Left some out:

proofread so your nonsense so it isn’t even more painful to read. — Joe Mello

You’re not posting to me out of intellectual curiosity but out of emotional needs. — Joe Mello

My God, man … see the nonsense you write. As a human being, you are the spokesperson for reality. Get the intellectual marbles out of your mouth. — Joe Mello

And if you were truly intelligent, you would have determined by now that I'm a lot smarter than some fool asking me a loaded question. — Joe Mello

wannabe know-it-alls. — Joe Mello

you would probably judge me to be respectful for most of the time. — Joe Mello

Let's check:

your trust in your thinking is scary. — Joe Mello

Your confidence in yourself must be very popular with everyone but the ladies. — Joe Mello

go be a fool someplace else. — Joe Mello

You simply do not have the philosophical clarity to think profoundly and without personal prejudices in the third degree of abstraction. — Joe Mello

if you're so sure of your thinking you wouldn't get rattled and emotional when it gets upended. — Joe Mello

I asked you to ponder the principle, not hold my hand and skip away with me. — Joe Mello

Don't accuse me of not being clear because you fell into a fog. — Joe Mello

You're free again to walk away from any argument you don't understand in the same pair of shoes you have probably been wearing since you were a teenager.

Bye bye, then. — Joe Mello

Learn to read … and to proofread. — Joe Mello

that's just stupid. — Joe Mello

You are lazy thinkers and lazy human beings. — Joe Mello

a person who is so filled with pride and self-love — Joe Mello

Your posts are riddled with emotion and nonsense.

I feel nothing when I read them, for they are not inspiring or profound, just the thoughts bouncing off the top of your head. — Joe Mello

why don’t you go to the lounge. — Joe Mello

just a superficial jerk. — Joe Mello

instead you become indignant at the words I am using to describe what amounts to the same thing — schopenhauer1

I went back and checked all my posts in this thread. In not a single one did I express any indignation. You on the other hand...

Let's leave it there.

Watching television, fantasizing, and such are still under "keeping oneself busy". — baker

I rarely watch television or movies, or listen to music. Fantasize? Worry maybe sometimes. I do read, fiction and non-fiction. I participate on the forum. I swim. I do my physical therapy exercises.

I don't think you understand how this works, at least works for me. The motivation to do things comes from inside me. I picture a spring bubbling up from under the ground. Just because I do stuff doesn't mean I'm keeping myself busy. Sometimes nothing bubbles up, so I just pay attention and wait. It doesn't usually take long.

I guess you and @schopenhauer1 lack imagination and empathy. You can't imagine other people experiencing things different from what you do. You don't seem to understand that others may feel differently.

javi, proofread so your nonsense isn’t even more painful to read. — Joe Mello

Javi speaks English as a second language. Spanish is his primary tongue. We don't have any trouble understanding what he writes and he has valuable things to say. His English has improved since he's been on the forum. He's one of us. You are... well...not.

No-one experiences God because God is necessarily beyond finite representation. — emancipate

I don't think this is true. I think lots of people experience God. That doesn't mean I agree with Joe Mello on the things he's written.

Even Neil Degrasse Tyson said that Dark Energy is pretty good evidence that a God could possibly exist, and I explained to you why it's so. But you ignored it to talk to yourselves, just as you ignored every example I gave of where the evidence of God can be found. — Joe Mello

You provided no examples, no evidence. no reason, no logic, no philosophy. Just insults and unsupported claims.

You are lazy thinkers and lazy human beings. I sacrificed years to come to a knowledge and love of God. And you expect to intellectually receive God on a plate.

Why would God put himself in the only place where you want to look?

He is a divine being who could care less what a bunch of pride-filled delusional skeptics think or demand.

Enjoy your conversations with each other. No one else is listening. — Joe Mello

All you've provided is bragging, pontificating, browbeating. Polishing your pride and showing it off. It's infuriating. You should be ashamed.

To be honest, I get the striking feeling these have been long held beliefs of his that he has never explored the strength of his arguments against, in genuine interaction with other's. I am a philosophy student myself, I know what kind of training your recieve to cut through the fallacies that characterize everyone of these arguments. There's no way a philosophy degree holder is failing to see this. We're talking basic stuff, if you yourself don't already know. — Garrett Travers

Although his way of seeing the world is different from mine, I have no trouble with him making these assertions. My problem is that he has not justified, or even tried to justify, any of them.

I went through the thread and pulled out many of the statements Joe Mello has made with no attempt to provide justification or even explanation. Here they are:

No combination of lesser things can create a greater thing without something greater than the greater thing added to the lesser things. — Joe Mello

No scientific discovery has shown to us that, for example, a combination of the elements created the first ancient bacteria. Or that living tissue created thought. — Joe Mello

the simple fact that, for example, a living being is "greater" than a rock. — Joe Mello

The thinking of evolution as a top down order is supported by every failure of scientists to move past theory to proof where evolution is evolved. — Joe Mello

an infinite line of finite things is illogical. — Joe Mello

human beings are the spokespersons for reality. There are no others. — Joe Mello

a multi-universe is illogical. — Joe Mello

Only an omnipotent infinite being can be the logical beginning of a finite universe. — Joe Mello

placing a human being at the pinnacle of creation. — Joe Mello

the physical universe is made up of only finite things. Nothing else. — Joe Mello

nothing could exist without God. — Joe Mello

only the science of Logic creates a metaphysical principle. — Joe Mello

God is the greatest being we can imagine, but our imaginations are not a perfect understanding of God's abilities, or even of what words mean.

It is God's will that dictates what he does or does not do, not his omnipotence. — Joe Mello

I've just started Lin Yutang's translation of the Tao Te Ching. I downloaded a pdf version from the web. After each verse, he includes relevant verses from the Chuang Tzu, also known as the Zhuangzi. So far, it's been really interesting and helpful. The version of this translation included on the Terrebess website (ttps://terebess.hu/english/tao/yutang.html) does not include the Chuang Tzu verses.

Im not sure cause you haven’t directly answered my last post. I do not believe you go through life without existential awareness at this point and think either you simply don’t really know what I’m asking or you don’t have a prefrontal cortex which by our discussion itself couldn’t be the case. — schopenhauer1

Again, if you won't accept my own statement about my own experience of my own self, there's nothing more for us to talk about.

On what? An underline? Perry mason would indeed lose all his cases with no evidence. — schopenhauer1

We're not getting anywhere. I say something about myself and you don't believe it. Do you think I'm lying? Deluded? If so, there's nowhere to go from here.

I'm ridiculous because I disagree with you? Because I experience things differently than you do? I don't get it.
— T Clark

Because you think you don't experience boredom, and that we have radically different ways of being in the world. — schopenhauer1

QED, or as Perry Mason used to say, "I rest my case, no further questions."

You're ridiculous. — schopenhauer1

I'm ridiculous because I disagree with you? Because I experience things differently than you do? I don't get it.

Why do you keep yourself busy? Same as baker's question. — schopenhauer1

I don't keep myself busy. Beyond the required things I do - eating, sleeping, going to the doctor, etc., I do the things I do because I want to. Because I enjoy them, e.g. participating on the forum. It is not unusual for me to do nothing.

It's quite obvious that there is objective truth. — Cidat

Why do you say it's obvious? — alan1000

I'm with alan1000. I don't think the existence of objective truth is obvious.

I get the feeling that reality must have existed infinitely long before I came into existence. — Cidat

Perhaps. Or perhaps reality is timeless, i.e. time is a local phenomenon dependent on where we happen to be standing. No, I don't know what that means.

reality must have non-caused events. — Cidat

I think this is a reasonable way of seeing things.