I doubt you really believe they imagined a Multiverse to fill-in a scary blank in our knowledge by warning people away from the unexplored territory. My theory is that they created the Multiverse myth because it was necessary to indicate that there's nothing special about our world (Copernican Principle). Before the Big Bang discovery, atheists could feel confident (faith?) that the physical world was simply a brute fact, with no need for a First Cause or Creator. Then, the physical evidence upset that smugma (smug-dogma) by indicating mathematically that space-time had a beginning-point that begged for an explanation : either nothing-special randomness, or (heaven forbid!) special-creation.Why then, did cosmologists feel the need to invoke a "supernatural agency" to explain the logically "prior" cause of the Big Bang? — Gnomon
I suppose for the same reason that ancient cartographers used to write "here be dragons" at the edges of their maps. — Siti
Just as the Multiverse hypothesis gives Cosmologists a possible explanation for everything physical in this world, my G*D hypothesis gives me a plausible explanation for everything metaphysical in this present world. But the materialistic dogma of modern Science leaves the most important features of this world, to humans, inaccessible.There's no harm, but how does it help? — Siti
All of those essential elements are emergent properties of the more fundamental principle of my theory : EnFormAction. EFA can be imagined as a Program of Information, that creates (computes, reckons, realizes) Change (Energy), Duration (Time), and Experience (Mind). Information is meaningful relationships (A:B), mathematical ratios (X/Y), and values (A=B).So I've got time, change and experience as fundamentals. — Siti
But wasn't elan vital abandoned by biologists when it became clear that evolution (aka change) was the driving force of biological variation? The potential for novelty is within the current reality - not withoutEFA is equivalent to Elan Vital — Gnomon
Only one: is 'experientiality' a real word?Any questions? — Gnomon
Yes. Because they were looking for a measurable physical force like gravity. But in 1907, Bergson only meant it metaphorically as a natural organizing principle, not "some mysterious and supernatural 'organizing principle'".But wasn't elan vital abandoned by biologists — Siti
In terms of physical evolution, yes. In terms of First Cause Creation, it's a miracle. :smile:The potential for novelty is within the current reality - not without — Siti
Not in my vocabulary. :cool:Only one: is 'experientiality' a real word? — Siti
Do you think Negentropy existed prior to the Big Boom? — Gnomon
Those people are materialists, and imagine that all the stuff in the present universe was stuffed into the"the singularity" that some people imagine was the origin of the universe must have been perfectly ordered - which is just another way of saying there was only one possible state — Siti
Unlike the monistic Singularity, the space-time world is dualistic. Like a cell dividing, the first step in running the program is to make a difference (division), in which one thing becomes two. So evolution is a continuation of universal division and discrimination. And each phase transition is thermodynamic, in the sense that it divides Hot from Cold : Energy from Entropy. So, we now call that process of creative order positive Evolution, and the process of disorder is Entropy. In a space-time world of incessant change, disorder is inevitable. It's a by-product of all construction. You win some, you lose some. :wink:But then whence the increasing disorder. — Siti
Well, maybe not forever. Cosmologists now predict that the war between Chaos and Order (Entropy & Energy) will eventually self-destruct, by neutralizing each other in a "Big Sigh" of Entropy. The temperature at that point will be absolute Zero. No more Change.My guess is that the universe will be somewhere between chaos and order - always and forever. — Siti
That "something" is what I call the Program of Creation (the Singularity). In order to produce Change, it had to be polarized : to create both Energy & Entropy, Hot & Cold, Order & Disorder. When the program said "let there be light", the first vibration began as a distinction between On & Off, Up & Down. And that Difference (change) makes a Difference (meaning), which we now call "Enformation".My guess is that 'something' rather than 'nothing' banged. My guess is that that 'something' was neither perfectly ordered nor absolutely chaotic, but somewhere in between — Siti
Well, maybe not forever. Cosmologists now predict that the war between Chaos and Order (Entropy & Energy) will eventually self-destruct, by neutralizing each other in a "Big Sigh" of Entropy. The temperature at that point will be absolute Zero. No more Change. — Gnomon
Egg zackly! And vice versa. What is the use of en-ergy if there is no time or space in which to erg en? That's the problem I came up against as I attempted to formulate my own worldview. Space and time are surely not, it seemed to me, just sitting around waiting to be filled with matter and energy...but just as surely, matter and energy cannot exist without time and space. So the physical world (at least) must have always had both matter/energy and space/time and it will always have to have both - forever and ever, world without end - amen! That is the essence (isn't it?) of the physicalist worldview.Space & Time are meaningless without Matter & Energy. — Gnomon
Einstein described the universe enigmatically as "finite-but-unbounded". That literally means "finite-but-infinite". How can we make sense of such a contradiction? I think it's both. The finite aspect is physics, and the infinite aspect is metaphysics. They are not two different universes, but two sides of the same coin. Yet, it takes Einsteinian imagination to see beyond what's actual to what's possible.But that would be the end of time - no time, no change, no anything...that can be the end, but it could not possibly be the beginning — Siti
Time and Space are indeed necessary for Kinetic Energy to work. But my EnFormAction is a combination of Potential Energy and the Laws that limit its application in reality. Potential Energy is not actual, so it does not occupy space or time. It's essentially the idea of Change, not the effect. The Laws of Nature are not written on slabs of stone, but inscribed in the code of the Big Bang.What is the use of en-ergy if there is no time or space in which to erg en? — Siti
we can laugh at those in Bible times who believed that diseases were caused by demons. Yet modern doctors expect us to believe that we are besieged by invisible bacteria and viruses. The difference is that medical doctors are slightly better than witch-doctors at curing the sick. And placebos work better than most drugs, even though the active ingredient is faith. The power of the mind (metaphysics), is far above the power of the body (physics). — Gnomon
Not one bit I'm afraid...Chaos before Cosmos*2. Does that make sense? — Gnomon
They are written on slabs of stone - or rather IN slabs of stone...and in living cells and molecules and stars and clouds and trees and...well you get the picture...just as the 'en' of 'en-ergy' signifies a capacity for work that resides within a physical system, so the laws of nature reside within nature. If not, then what possible (difference-making) meaning could those laws have in the absence of nature? In your proposed primordial ideality of unlimited potentiality, what possible meaning could those "laws" have had? What possible difference could they have made to anything? And, as I have argued before, if it makes no difference at all to anything at all, it quite probably doesn't exist at all.The Laws of Nature are not written on slabs of stone, but inscribed in the code of the Big Bang. — Gnomon
Drat! My nefarious scheme to pull the wool over your eyes was foiled again, by your astute reasoning. :wink:Oh c'mon Gnomon! You almost had me believing that you had a solid argument — Siti
No. That's not what I said. Your astute reasoning missed the point.Those infectious agents are invisible to the naked eye. So ancient people attributed diseases to demons. They are still invisible to the naked eye, but today we are assured by scientists that they are the cause of many diseases. So, from the perspective of the average person, they are just as real as the demons of the pre-scientific era. I've never seen a virus, except in photographs (ancients also had pictures of demons), but I take it on faith in scientists that they are both agents of disease, and tools for curing disease.Are you suggesting that bacteria and viruses are not material realities? — Siti
Doctors don't like to admit it, but the placebo effect is a major weapon in their arsenal against disease --- just as it always has been for tribal shamen. I just read today, in Skeptical Inquirer magazine, about a doctor who kept Pink Pills in his office, to assuage the ambiguous ailments of those for whom he had nothing better to offer. Often, they would return, asking for more of those effective Pink Pills. He also gave some to his daughter as candy.And "placebos work better than most drugs"? — Siti
Again, you have missed the point. Potential Energy is indeed a feature of the Real World. It's only the ultimate source of all energy, pre-Big Bang, that I refer to as "Ideal". Scientists cannot measure energy stored in material form, until it does something. They know the voltage of a chemical battery, because they have measured similar setups. But they can't actually measure the voltage until electric current is flowing. They know what energy does, but they only know what it is mathematically by imagining an invisible point in space relative to another point : it's a ratio or relationship (information), not a piece of matter....and you seem to be deliberately misapplying terms like "Potential Energy" - which is, of course, actual — Siti
The Greeks had a primitive notion of what we now call Thermodynamics. Since they saw evidence that the order of the world was constantly declining (entropy), they wondered where the original organization came from. So, they imagined a default state of disorder or void or nothingness, and then reasoned that it took an input of creative energy to organize nothing into something. Modern cosmologists also assume that there was nothing prior to the Big Bang, except the potential for organization (chaos, scalar energy field). Both of those essences (inert energy + physical laws) are literally no-thing until actualized. But combine creative power with laws to regulate the application of power, and voila! you have Matter & Physics. When scientists imagine something essential prior to the beginning of space-time, who is obfuscating whom?And then you put the icing on your obfuscatory cake by redefining chaos as some kind of infinite "state" of unlimited potentiality — Siti
Just as they applied the ancient notion of "Atom", to a modern discovery that is not literally un-cuttable, scientists loosely applied the ancient notion of "primal disorder" to the modern discovery that there is potential order within a physically disordered system. In the real world, there is no absolute Chaos; there is only "apparent" chaos, with mysterious potential for order, once triggered by initial conditions. That's similar to the Big Bang Singularity containing the potential for a whole universe in a dimensionless mathematical point. Something triggered that potential into a Phase Change with both initial conditions, and the power to create matter.In the modern scientific context chaos describes the inherent unpredictability of complex physical systems. — Siti
Again, you missed the point of EnFormAction : it's the concept plus the execution, law plus action. If you have the idea of something new in your mind, what difference could it make in the real world --- until the Idea is implemented by action? Nature is the implementation, the actualization, of the idea of a world. Besides, what possible meaning could abstract (immaterial) mathematics (ratios) have in nature, apart from implementations by humans, who saw invisible relations between things?If not, then what possible (difference-making) meaning could those laws have in the absence of nature? In your proposed primordial ideality of unlimited potentiality, what possible meaning could those "laws" have had? — Siti
They know what energy does, but they only know what it is mathematically by imagining an invisible point in space relative to another point : it's a ratio or relationship (information), not a piece of matter. — Gnomon
I would agree except for your insistence on the primacy of the material world. To me, and many others, Matter is secondary to Mind. This flips the worldview of Materialism, to one where Qualia, Consciousness, and Mind are primary. But, despite similarities, it's not the same as Spiritualism. That's why I coined a new term : Enformationism.Now who's missing the point? Just because it itself is not a piece of matter doesn't mean it is does not belong to the material world. — Siti
I would agree except for your insistence on the primacy of the material world. — Gnomon
I was surprised that many posters on a philosophy forum are still confused about the "hard problem" : the Subjective aspect of an Objective world. — Gnomon
Non-local is fine, but what you just suggested...If "non-local" is meaningful to you, we can use that word. — Gnomon
...is not helping at all I'm afraid. Non-local does not either imply or entail non-temporal and that is not what we "find" in Quantum Theory - non-temporality might be predicted (although I would suggest it is more accurate to suggest that temporality is not predicted) - but non-temporality has never been observed. They might think they have transcended the limits of physical possibility by faster than light "transmission" (not the right word I know but my brain is turning to jelly) of information, but they have never demonstrated any effect that preceded its cause. The arrow of time has never been reversed even if the clock can be shown to tick faster or slower according to the relative inertial reference frames of object and observer. And the works of Shakespeare did not exist before he began to write them. Ideas are not non-temporal even of they are not spatio-temporal. They're not necessarily entirely non-local either, although we may not be able to pinpoint the exact locus of a process of neural events giving rise to a particular 'thought' or 'feeling', I think we can be pretty sure that it was something that happened in our head and not very much to do with anything happening in the Andromeda Galaxy.we are assuming, like Plato that there is a non-local, non-temporal realm, such as we find in Quantum Theory. — Gnomon
Ha! The target is full of holes in all the wrong places. But, if we continue this machine-gun dialogue, the pattern of holes might just get closer to the bullseye. :smile:I think you are missing the point again — Siti
That's the main difference between the Materialism worldview and the Enformationism worldview. In materialism, some important events "just happen" randomly, so any meaningful pattern of activity is astronomically unlikely (a miracle). In a world where Information is fundamental, nothing noticeable happens randomly. Any happening has a prior cause. And the unbroken chain of cause & effect (en-formation) in the space-time world has an origin : the First Cause. But, if so, we can always ask "what caused that cause". Some dubious answers are "a quantum fluctuation in eternal space-time", or a "collision between miniverses in eternal space-time". However, if we assume, as the Big Bang theorists did, that space-time itself emerged from the Singularity, that would entail a pre-existing infinite Hyper-Space with antecedents back into eternity, and "dimensions" invisible to the human mind. Yet, as the early Cosmologists realized, that assumption still sounded too much like the old Creation theories : where the deity "just happened" to exist forever for no apparent reason.The universe does not have to imagine an electron BEFORE it produces one...it just happens - the idea and the reality just pop into existence together at the same time. — Siti
I don't remember seeing that term before. And a quick Google search wasn't much help. But the idea seems to be related to Whitehead's "panexperiential" proposal, and to other attempts to explain Consciousness as a physical process. But I long-ago gave up on mechanistic processes as a dead-end, and turned to humanistic processes for an explanation of Consciousness. This flip was not motivated by religious impulses, but by the emerging notion among scientists that a "turning point" was near, and that a "paradigm shift" was necessary. The shift is from Reductionism to Holism, and from Mechanism to Organism. A holistic worldview can re-unite the Physics and Meta-Physics of Aristotle into a new paradigm. The atomistic & materialistic "physics" of ancient Greece is mostly obsolete, while the mental "metaphysics" is still debated by philosophers, yet has become the foundation of Psychology, Sociology, and History.The "hard problem" vanishes with the bipolar panexperiential physicalism that I have suggested — Siti
But it's a reasonable assumption, in light of Einstein's merging of space & time into a single concept. Both extension-in-space, and extension-in-time are human mental constructs. Time is imagined as a "space" for Change, but what is it really? Donald Hoffman, in The Case Against Reality, said regarding Model Dependent Reality : " there is an objective reality. But that reality is utterly unlike our perceptions of objects in space and time.”Non-local does not either imply or entail non-temporal and that is not what we "find" in Quantum Theory — Siti
The shift is from Reductionism to Holism, and from Mechanism to Organism. — Gnomon
There is no absolute dichotomy and magical transformation of matter into mind via some unknown causal line, as is the common concept today. Rather, the elements of the world are already sentient, so that such subject-object fusion is not merely the alteration of the organism, but the fusion of panexperiential reality with oneself.
That synopsis sounds like a summation of the Enformationism worldview. Even what I call Ideality is not an "unconnected reality". It's merely a phase of reality that consists only of ideas (principles & potential, as in mathematical ratios & probability). Plato called it the "realm of Forms". And no need to “abandon physicalism” as the foundation for physical Science. It's only metaphysical philosophical Science that needs a different vocabulary. Mind/Body dualism is merely different expressions of the same fundamental substance : information. We're very close, but you still seem to see something “unconnected to reality” in my worldview.That's what I'm driving at - it is (all) an organic, ecological, holistic process - there are no unconnected realities - there is no mind/body dualism - mind and body are simply - or rather very organically, holistically and complicatedly but nevertheless quite naturally - two aspects of the one reality. — Siti
I do and it is reasonably well captured in this excerpt from your quotation of Wilberg:you still seem to see something “unconnected to reality” in my worldview. — Gnomon
"God does indeed not exist as any actual being or entity that we can be aware of, but is no less real for that --- being the primordial field of potentiality that is the power behind all actualities. Potentialities, by their very nature, have reality only in awareness. What we call God is 'gnosis' --- a knowing awareness of potentiality that is the source of knowable actualities.” — Gnomon
Do you have any "un-real-ized potentialities" in your mind? If so, they exist only as ideas until you actualize them. Is there a place in your reality for such ideas about future possibilities? Are ideas in a human mind in a physical world real in any sense? Just because Qualia and Ideas are not reducible to Atoms & Void, are they "unconnected to reality"? (rhetorical question)But your thesis and Wilberg's argument both require that such qualia, such colours, necessarily exist - just waiting for the opportunity to be actualized...they are (presumably) un-real-ized potentialities...
That is the "unconnected to reality" bit that I am finding difficulty swallowing. — Siti
I can agree that G*D is "gnosis" in that sense, but Wilberg and I part ways when he claims that ordinary humans are capable of god-like Gnosis. We may be more gnostic than animals, but IMHO, even Einstein was not supernaturally imaginative and creative..What we call God is 'gnosis' --- a knowing awareness of potentiality that is the source of knowable actualities.” — Gnomon
Are ideas in a human mind in a physical world real in any sense? — Gnomon
Just because Qualia and Ideas are not reducible to Atoms & Void, are they "unconnected to reality"? — Gnomon
Does your worldview have a role for Metaphysics? — Gnomon
My Ideality merely acknowledges that Ideas and Qualia are non-physical, or not-yet-physical (i.e. metaphysical). — Gnomon
All those ARE aspects of cosmic reality...what I can't swallow is ideas, ideals and universals as primordial, creative, pre-cosmic supernaturalistic 'reality'.Can you swallow Imaginary possibilities (ideas, ideals, universals) as an aspect of Cosmic Reality? — Gnomon
And I would say that even "God" was not supernaturally imaginative and creative...that, in a nutshell, is where we differ. "God" is only as "gnostic" (and imaginative and creative) as "being" the (intricately interconnected) universe permits "him" to be and I am only as "gnostic" (and imaginative and creative) as "being" (the minuscule but also intricately interconnected) part of the universe (that I am) permits me to be.I can agree that G*D is "gnosis" in that sense, but Wilberg and I part ways when he claims that ordinary humans are capable of god-like Gnosis. We may be more gnostic than animals, but IMHO, even Einstein was not supernaturally imaginative and creative.. — Gnomon
The reality of virtual particles is subject to debate among scientists, but my position is that "virtue" is a Quality, not a Quantity. A virtual particle has no physical dimensions and no mass, only potential. Hence, in my vocabulary, it's Ideal, not Real. A photon, which is supposed to be real, is massless, hence no stuff, only potential (energy).OK - virtual particles are NOT particles that are virtually real, — Siti
That statement sounds to me like a reference to Plato's Forms. For every Thing, in this case an atom, there is a Form : "the universe's idea of [fill in the blank]". The notion of "disembodied ideas" floating around unconnected to anything, is foreign to me. You seem to interpret my notion of Ideality as a separate place in space. But Ideality and Reality are merely different aspects of the same singular Ultimate Reality, which I call G*D. G*D is not "out there", but everywhere.My point is not that ideas must be made of atoms, but that an atom cannot be separated from the "idea" of an atom - not my "idea" of an atom, not even a scientific consensus "idea" of an atom but the universe's "idea" of an atom. — Siti
I have no way of knowing empirically whether Physics or Metaphysics is more fundamental. But based on my understanding of how Information works in the world, Physics must be an emergent property (qualia) of G*D, who is assumed to be omnipotential. The Big Bang began from nothing physical, only potential : a dimensionless Singularity couldn't possibly contain a whole universe of 3D physical stuff. So, I assume all that stuff was stuffed into the Singularity in the form of dimensionless Information, like a computer code : the idea of the ultimate product. Since generic Information, EnFormAction, is equivalent to Energy, it can cause Matter to emerge even though the Energy per se is immaterial [ref massless photons]. As a rule, scientists tend to regard Energy as a property of matter, but a massless photon lacks the essential property of matter. So, which came first, which is fundamental : the power or the product?Is the metaphysical aspect fundamental or is it co-emergent with the unfolding reality? That's the question. — Siti
Can you swallow a primordial, creative, pre-Big Bang, super-local-natural Multiverse as a real thing? If our local temporary universe is what we call Nature, then a non-local eternal Multiverse must be by definition Super-Natural. If you can imagine G*D dreaming multiple universes, that would be a crude notion of my Ultimate Reality.what I can't swallow is ideas, ideals and universals as primordial, creative, pre-cosmic supernaturalistic 'reality'. — Siti
Ontology : If G*D is the known universe, then it must be Natural and Temporal, limited by the laws and conditions of physical Reality. If G*D is the postulated (imaginary) Multiverse, then it must be Super-Natural and Eternal, existing beyond the boundaries of the reality we experience. If the potential for imagination was always inherent in the physical processes of universe creation, then it must be superior in some sense to the collective imagination of a minor world in its ocean of bubble worlds.And I would say that even "God" was not supernaturally imaginative and creative...that, in a nutshell, is where we differ. — Siti
If you were to stop there, we would be in almost complete agreement...and we would both be saying:Ideality and Reality are merely different aspects of the same singular Ultimate Reality, which I call G*D. G*D is not "out there", but everywhere. — Gnomon
Not "known" universe - not limited to human knowledge, but accessible to human knowledge to some degree although even on this understanding there would always be a significant extent to which "God" would existG*D is the ... universe, then it must be Natural and Temporal — Gnomon
because our ability to experience the reality we inhabit is limited.beyond the boundaries of the reality we experience — Gnomon
Yes, the Enformationism thesis does give primacy to the “mental” aspects of the world : consciousness, qualia, etc. To non-scientists, including philosophers, these are the most important “realities” in the world. So, even if it doesn't flip the Materialism paradigm on its head, like Wilberg's Qualia Revolution, it will necessitate a paradigm shift. But, unlike some proponents of Panpsychism, it doesn't attempt to over-ride Physics with Psychics. Any proposed psychic powers will have to show practical results, instead of requiring faith.The problem is that you then go a step further and place God's "primordial nature" beyond reality, you take the "mental" aspect of reality and insist that it must preempt (logically if not temporally) any and all "physical" aspects of reality. — Siti
What I enjoy about our dialogs is that we can disagree without being disagreeable. Of course, part of the reason for our mutual broad-mindedness is that neither of us is defending a dogma, or fighting for a faith. Our philosophical views tend to be more pragmatic than dogmatic. And our beliefs are open to reinterpretation.If you were to stop there, we would be in almost complete agreement...and we would both be saying: — Siti
Please give me a brief synopsis of how "the bipolar panexperiential physicalism" softens the hard problem of Metaphysical Consciousness in a Physical Body. That might help to adjust the aim of our dialog, where we keep missing points. :smile:The "hard problem" vanishes with the bipolar panexperiential physicalism that I have suggested — Siti
Please give me a brief synopsis of how "the bipolar panexperiential physicalism" softens the hard problem of Metaphysical Consciousness in a Physical Body. — Gnomon
Ouch! A hard-cover of Unsnarling the World Knot is listed for $894.90 on Amazon. It's as way-over my budget as Whitehead's "reality" is way-over my head. :smile:David Ray Griffin's book — Siti
Several years ago I tried to read Whitehead's Process and Reality, because it seemed to be aimed in the same direction as my own thesis. But his arcane, abstruse, and abstract terminology was way over my head. Hartshorne was a little better, but I still got lost in the labyrinth, with few landmarks to guide me. Their reference to such entities as "occasions of experience" didn't ring any bells for me. I couldn't fit them into any real-world system that was amenable with my intuitive understanding of the world.but the essential idea is that the actual entities composing reality are "occasions of experience" (a la Whitehead)...little "droplets" (perhaps) of experiential reality — Siti
In my Enformationism thesis, human ideas and feelings are essentially composites of lower forms of Enformation, such as Energy, but they are also holistic, so the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Are Whitehead's "experiences" like Democritus' atomic theory, unitary physical objects that simply aggregate like sand into sand hills? Or are they like water droplets that integrate into the ocean? Information is like memes that leap from the mind of one organism (person) into many other minds, thereby constituting a super-organism (tribe or nation).The upshot of all this is that the kind of experience we think of as human experience is really no more than a rather complex, (self-)organized composite of the kind of "experience" that simpler aggregates (such as atoms, molecules, cells...etc.) "enjoy". — Siti
Ouch! A hard-cover of Unsnarling the World Knot is listed for $894.90 on Amazon. It's as way-over my budget as Whitehead's "reality" is way-over my head. — Gnomon
You can use one's own experiences - that's why these counter-intuitive notions seem like "common-sense" intuition to me. For example, suppose I look up at the night sky and see a star...that experience begins with a physical interaction - a sensory stimulus - a physical "prehension" perhaps(?) - my eye intercepts a stream of photons and that initiates a sequence of physical/mental processes that combined becomes the experience of "seeing a star" - I can break that sequence down by abstraction and analysis, I can explain (at least I could if I knew enough about it) how the sensory apparatus functions physically and how the signal processing apparatus of the optical nerves and the brain turn the raw data into a mental image (actually I can't explain that but maybe someone could)...etc...but the experience itself cannot actually be divided - I cannot have a half, or a third, of the experience of seeing a star - its either all or nothing (although sometimes - often - I might not be acutely aware of seeing it) - it is in that sense that "occasions of experience" are "atomic" - they are not themselves divisible...but they might be nested or overlapping and at our level of experience they almost invariably (if not absolutely always) are. Each moment of a human life is an impossibly tangled web of overlapping, nested and intertwined events - and yet, because of the organismic unity of the human individual, each moment becomes an indivisible occasion in its own right. But if you dig right down - even quarks and electrons (whatever they really are) are doing the same thing - that is, existing as a sequence of indivisible 'experiential' occasions' - moments during which they prehend - i.e. interact with in a 'sensible' (but obviously not cognitive) manner (at this level it is nothing like "apprehension" or "comprehension" but it is nonetheless a kind of "grasping" - the world around them on a much more fundamental level."occasions of experience" didn't ring any bells for me...Can you give a real-world example of one of those "little droplets of experience"? — Gnomon
The term "occasions of experience" sounds to me like quanta of incoming information. But my personal experience of the world is continuous and constantly changing, while flocks of photons fly into my eyes, and phonons into my ears, and phonemes in my brain.its either all or nothing (although sometimes - often - I might not be acutely aware of seeing it) - it is in that sense that "occasions of experience" are "atomic" - they are not themselves divisible...but they might be nested or overlapping and at our level of experience they almost invariably (if not absolutely always) are. — Siti
I suppose that of my lack of "prehension" is due to my experience that the Whitehead process seems to be mostly quantitative, while my experience is qualitative. Since I take "Information" (EnFormAction) to be both quanta & qualia --- Energy > Matter > Mind --- there are no gaps in the process from photon to visual chemistry to mental experience. This may be what you mean by "a sequence of physical/mental processes that combined becomes the experience".I have no idea whether this is helping or hindering your prehension of the idea — Siti
Being, knowing and experiencing are necessarily temporal - that is a key idea of process philosophy. The idea of time as fundamental is not shared by either materialism - in which the most fundamental elements of reality are atemporal leading more than a few renowned scientists to the conclusion that time is either a natural emergence (albeit an inexplicably radical one) or an illusion (albeit an inexplicably convincing and persistent one) or idealism - in which the ideal 'realm' is necessarily timeless and changeless (but gives no plausible account of how on earth time and change might possibly have emerged from changelessness in no time at all)...But the Source and Origin of the power to be, to know, and to experience, presumably exists eternally in some never-never-land that we have no access to, since our ability to experience is limited by the boundaries of space & time. — Gnomon
Yes. Being is a process. But BEING (the power-to-be) is more like a timeless law or principle. Pragmatic folks take the brute-fact of existence for granted, while theoretical thinkers wonder about "why is there something instead of nothing?"Being, knowing and experiencing are necessarily temporal — Siti
Nobody knows how or why existence is what it is. But philosophers are free to speculate. The only plausible account of the transition from nothing-to-something requires a prior state of Potential, Possibility, or Probability, which is taken for granted by Statisticians (those who study the static state of what's possible-but-not-actual). I simply include that state under the heading of BEING. The creation of something-from-nothing is a necessary assumption, if nothingness is a viable concept. Is it? If not, why do humans keep dredging-up such nonsense?the ideal 'realm' is necessarily timeless and changeless (but gives no plausible account of how on earth time and change might possibly have emerged from changelessness in no time at all)... — Siti
Of course. Experience is a process of knowing what's going on. But the power-to-know is a Principle (a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning). And Principles are assumed to be changeless. So in what sense do Principles exist? Are they like universal Forms with local instances?There can be no experiential reality without time and change — Siti
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