When you assume a material first principle, as you do, then some form of active cause is necessary to bring about change. But you assume that the constraints just magically emerge out of the infinite freedom of material potential, as a symmetry-breaking. And this is completely irrational. — Metaphysician Undercover
To posit an oceanic state of disembodied love, a cosmic awareness, is unsupported romanticism. — apokrisis
Yes, a popular idea in culture. But not one that reasoned inquiry supports. — apokrisis
It seems to me, from the reading I have done of Peirce, — Wayfarer
But I do think the state of 'sama-sambuddhasa' (perfectly realised enlightenment) is real, not reducible to various forms of psychologism or evolutionary-grounded illusions, at which point the individual realises him/herself as being in some essential manner, beyond death. — Wayfarer
Do you think he is actually idealist, dualist, panpsychic, or what? Is reality immaterial for him? How is mind defined for him? Is it disembodied reason? Is it a substance, an awareness field, something else? — apokrisis
But if you find the same states of oceanic feeling or religious ecstasy can be the result of temporal lobe epilepsy, or drugs, or magnetically induced stimulation, what then? — apokrisis
To talk about unbounded awareness is incoherent. There is only awareness-of. Or the lack of that particularity, and so a lack of a definiteness of concepts and impressions at some moment. — apokrisis
Do you think [Peirce] is actually idealist, dualist, panpsychic, or what? — apokrisis
the universe is in some sense possessed of awareness. — Wayfarer
Not as 'substance' as he rejected Cartesian dualism. — Wayfarer
The Wiki entry on 'objective idealism', — Wayfarer
You can have momentary realisations that are utterly real, — Wayfarer
and yet my question to you is show that you've really understood what Peirce was saying, — apokrisis
the fact that these states of "heightened disembodied blissful sense of complete insight" can be mechanically stimulated must produce something more than this casual shrug of the shoulders if you are being honest — apokrisis
Grubby religious beliefs are to Peircean metaphysics as porn is to real sex. — apokrisis
But Peirce was arguing for a "total emergence" naturalism. So in the beginning, there is neither matter nor mind in any useful concrete sense. Everything that comes to exist arises because of sign relations. — apokrisis
To some, it may seem too simplistic to describe current scientific theories about the origins of the Universe and Life as "It just happened", but if one takes the time too peel away all of the manufactured words and ideas, and the fog of verbosity, "It just happened", is all that is left. To masquerade the emptiness of the explanations, words such as tychism, and other poetic and pseudo-scientific phrases as invented out of thin air. All to avoid the easily understood phrase"We don't have the foggiest idea". — Rich
What if, instead of a die, you take Buffon's needle? You can throw a needle on a paper and after a while you can deduce Pi from doing so. As with a die there are a lot of constraints already in place to make this happen but I don't feel it's to dissimilar. So is there some new constraint suddenly? Did it "just happen"? — Gooseone
Still, I feel the route to find out what's going on lies in evolving further and not in claiming some higher order principle is already knowable ..just not in the way we are used to know things. — Gooseone
But apokrisis' position goes a lot further than "it just happened", with the assumption of apeiron and infinite potential. — Metaphysician Undercover
Always better to go to the source: — Rich
and to a Schelling-fashioned idealism which holds matter to be mere specialised and partially deadened mind." — Rich
The point of the die example is that constraints do not emerge, they change, so that a new constraint comes into existence from an already existing constraint. — Metaphysician Undercover
In a realm of infinite potential, apeiron, there is by definition, no constraints whatsoever. — Metaphysician Undercover
But you've got a problem, Rich, if you don't understand what you read. — apokrisis
At least Peirce was consistent, as apparently was Schelling. — Rich
It should also be noted that Whitehead also had to include his version of God in his process philosophy. — Rich
If constraints don't emerge for material being, then provide me with a die that is five or seven sided. Why is six-sidedness a limit on this kind of materiality? Are you not in fact free to change the number of sides composing a regular solid? — apokrisis
As soon as you have any dimensionality - on free action in some number of particular orrthogonal directions - you also have the complementary fact of constraints on the resulting geometric possibility.
From as soon as you have 3D flat space, five and seven sided dice are an impossibility. And six sided dice a matchingly definite possibility. — apokrisis
He explicitly refers to mind — Rich
As I said, constraints change, but to posit constraints coming into existence (emerging) from an absolute lack of constraint is nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover
emergent product — apokrisis
So you get what is being said now? The regularity that we call mind is also an emergent product of (semiotic) growth, like the regularity we call nature. — apokrisis
Dimensionality is itself a constraint. A "3D flat space" is a constraint. — Metaphysician Undercover
Why do you suppose that 3D space comes into existence from infinite possibility? — Metaphysician Undercover
This is what is at issue here, we can always ask, "why is there what there is instead of something else?". — Metaphysician Undercover
But when you posit infinite possibility you deny that there is any answer to that question, and this stymies philosophical investigation. — Metaphysician Undercover
Define emergent product without having a hidden dualism — schopenhauer1
What again? And were you meaning without the explicit dichotomy - the bleeding "apokrisis" that I even choose as a user-name? >:O — apokrisis
If constrain begets constraint, then what begat the first constraint?
Oh I forgot. Must be God. — apokrisis
Possibility itself will eliminate its own variety just by trying to express its every alternative at once. That is the essence of constraints-based causal self-organisation. — apokrisis
Nope. It pats you on the head and points you in the direction of the better alternative you've been ignoring. — apokrisis
You still don't get it do you? Possibility doesn't do anything. It is not actual, it cannot do anything, by definition. — Metaphysician Undercover
That is really the issue with MWI of QM. See how this premise leads to irrational ontological principles? — Metaphysician Undercover
Don't you think that if a higher order principle could be discovered by a more evolved living creature, that higher order principle must be already in essence knowable? We are all evolving living beings, and knowledge advances. No one knows when the higher order principle will be found, but we must keep striving to find it, and this takes effort. But if we posit as a first ontological principle, that the foundation of being, existence, is itself unknowable due to some sort of vagueness, then we will not be inclined to make the effort to find that higher order principle, assuming that such is impossible due to that inherent unintelligibility. — Metaphysician Undercover
In physics, we have got used to considering possibilities as "virtual particles". So the possibilities we can count - as in quantum mechanics - are also "actual" in a special way.
This isn't empty metaphysics. We can actually measure the physical contribution that a cloud of ghostly possibilities adds to any physical property. It is why the vacuum has an irreducible zero point energy, why the magnetic moment of the electron has an added quantum correction. — apokrisis
So I'm not making shit up. Our most accurate theory of nature forces us to take a constraints-based, sum over histories or path integral, view of material being. We can count the effect that unlimited possibility has on the actuality we then measure. — apokrisis
Your alternative account - a classically-inspired tale - is experimentally proven as wrong. — apokrisis
Well MWI is just an interpretation of these proven facts. It is one way of preserving the kind of classical metaphysics you also hold dear. Just as you say you have no choice left but to believe "God did it", so MWI-ers say they have no choice but to believe every virtual possibility must then be something really happening in some other actual world (or mumble, mumble, another branch of the infinite wavefunction). — apokrisis
Again, a logic of vagueness is the way out of this metaphysical impass. — apokrisis
I see no issue to call such a previous state unintelligible / vague, — Gooseone
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.