What about the theory that the Moon landing was staged by Stanley Kubrick? I even had my own just now. I thought a program on TV was staged. What about the theory claiming that elementary particles are truly elementary, while seeing them as composite can solve many unsolved mysteries. Is the standard model a conspiracy theory?

According to my argument, no. To disprove this, you either need to show a flaw in my logic, or show why it is logically necessary that the emergence of time must be preceded by time. — Philosophim

Time, irreversible motion, needs a starter kick to kickstart. As such, there had to exist time before, though this doesn't have to be an entropic time. Time is eternal by its nature. Now how can that come into existence? God knows.

An example of a "true conspiracy theory" please. :mask: — 180 Proof

The pizza one? Claiming leading democrats are part of a pedophile "team"? I'm not American, but read about it. America is the greatest country in the world, as it's constitution testifies to and the statue of liberty tells you: " give me your poor...". A true democracy indeed! But reality screws up this image, beautiful it is in principle.

The emergence of time must be preceded by time. How can time come into being without a time before?

Yes, you are absolutely right. But the water hadn't changed, the food stayed the same, etc. The farmer could easily check by putting a few apart, away from the electric surrounding the stable. It could throw away the magnetic hypothesis. Or confirm it. Cows maybe can get upset by a changed magnetic field. The article linked to showed that they can sense it, as was already denied a priori.

Great picture, by the way. Though I don't think astrologists are conspiracists. Never understood, by the way, why astronomers aren't called astrologists, like biologists, or physiologists.

If you were not married to your hypothesis, then it is not a conspiracy theory. Genuine intellectual curiosity is what distinguishes the two. Once you "know" then you are FOS. That applies to so-called mainstream physics, logic, or anything else. Whether Sewcraits ever said it or not, we are still attracted to the idea of "knowing nothing" for a reason. — James Riley

:100:

Especially what Sewcraits supposed to have said! (dunno him, but he seems to be damn right!)

Just to be clear on specifics, you mentioned there was an article that suggested cows were affected by magnetic fields. Was it a scientific article? Did it conclude that it would affect how they drank water? Did you link that article to the person so they could read it themself? — Philosophim

The article was a synopsis of a long-term satellite experiment on the direction in which cows lay together. No, there were no connections with drink water. This was also asked when I sent it. But why should there be? To dismiss it a priori shows narrow,-mindedness and certainly no scientific attitude. There could be a true link between magnetism and drinking behavior.

I don't see anything wrong with conspiracy theories per se, as long they're aren't aimed at innocent people. Politicians are fair game. Heck, some might even be true. — Wheatley

Haha! Yes, indeed. I think flat-Earthers are inspiring even, instead of conspiring. In the Eartly domain they are pretty close to the truth. The universe is said to be flat too. But that too is only locally. Who looked from afar? No one, yet. So maybe cosmologists are conspiring too. What I can't understand about flat-Earthers is why flat Earthers care so much about a global Earth being immersed "in the system", so to speak. I mean, WTF? Do they feel oppressed? By global power?

>>>This is a perspective also. It's corresponding to the methodological rule that we never actually make touch-down with reality. <<< — MAYAEL

Indeed! But it doesn't correspond to the rule that we actually never make contact with reality. Because we do make contact. I just say there is not one and only reality to make contact with. Claiming such a reality sounds like a fundamentalist claiming a one and only truth.

Although by many considered as a clown, he seemed to have some real insight in the workings of science, although he didn't consider himself a philosopher of science.

I always love to listen to sung poetry.

Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girl child in the dark
Comes in bells, your servant, don't forsake him
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart
Downy sins of streetlight fancies
Chase the costumes she shall wear
Ermine furs adorn the imperious
Severin, Severin awaits you there
I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears
Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather
Shiny leather in the dark
Tongue of thongs, the belt that does await you
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart
Severin, Severin, speak so slightly
Severin, down on your bended knee
Taste the whip, in love not given lightly
Taste the whip, now bleed for me
I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears
Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girl child in the dark
Severin, your servant comes in bells
please don't forsake him
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

It feels as if the whole of life is comprised in this rather erotic imagination. Thanks T.Clark, for giving me this opportunity to spread the word. It's the velvet underground, by the way. With that incredibly long aching end.

A conspiracy does not seek to disprove its own theory, but only looks at things that give evidence to or prove its theory. They take a compass, see that the magnetic field is different from "normal", and conclude that must be why the cows are drinking less. They don't check any other evidence that might disprove the theory, such as water quality, food quality, etc. They have a conclusion they WANT to reach, and only seek evidence that confirms that conclusion while throwing away, or not looking for any evidence that might disprove what they want to believe. — Philosophim

Very true! That's indeed how many conspiracy theories are tried to be upheld, it seems to me. They ignore conflicting evidence or explain it away in sometimes quite contorted ways. One thing though. In the case of magnetism and cows drinking, it is also a conspiracy to just state that cows are not affected in their drinking behavior by magnetic fields. I offered an article which showed that cows are affected by such a field, which was denied from the start, and everything suggesting it could be the case was thrown of the table. How scientific! A conspiracy even...

The metaphysical realm of Plato is situated in a world that stands in contact with world we live in. The shadows of that extramundane world are cast in ours. And the shadows will be all that we can see or will ever be able to see. We can see the shadows but we will never know the world and the objects in it and from which the light came to cast the shadows of the objects into our world.

That's standard stuff. Plato however, assumed that the metaphysical world from which the light shines into ours, is occupied by mathematical structures only. The objects are eternal and invariant. They interact and move through the metaphysical realm, like immutable elementary particles move through spacetime (Plato's view is a common one with to elementary particles, insofar the math is supposed to be the "real", unknowable "stuff"). All shadows in our world are reducable to mathematical entities, so Plato conjectures0 and hypothesizes, after which both the conjecture and hypothesis are turned in axioms.

The problem will be obvious: who says mathematical structures (like the cube, tetrahedron, dodecahedron,etc.) are the basic ones? No true knowledge of these forms can ever be attained, only approximated. The equation for a circle is not the form an Sich. Plato places more forms in his heaven, like the form of the Good, and knowledge about these forms can be approximated only, by rational thinking. But who says what the Good truly looks like, or any other forms. He claims math comes closest to the true nature of the kingdom, but this only shows his love for math, placing it in an objective, non-disputable domain.

Aristotle didn't agree. The cube as we see in salt crystals is the cube. A mother caring for a small boy, is "the" good.

At 9 figures I'd imagine things get pretty insane. — BitconnectCarlos

I imagined exactly that after reading that Musk, mister Tesla himself, got richer a couple of billion dollars in the blink of an eye. Try explain that to a loan slave working 12 hours a day for a small handful (the hand usually not even ful). The work is boring and kills the mind slowly, in general. Working floor circumstances are bad. About a hundred people own half money in the whole world, and 1% even more. Isn't it time for a change? Revolution? Get into arms?

What's the mentality asked for in the OP? The mentality of people like Elon Musk?

Newton's gravity theory was imprecise when it came to predicting the planet Mercury's behavior. — TheMadFool

Newton's gravity was even more precise than GR. It made a very precise prediction about Mercury. But Mercury replied not precisely.

Another illusion might be that temporary 'things' are things, and separate even, not events of the One as the One. All that goes one is the One as the One's transmutations. — PoeticUniverse

You got some pretty strong stuff written all over! I sense a strong feeling of unity radiating from your words. Great!

The least can lead to the great, albeit temporary, as seen in our universe. — PoeticUniverse

Great one! Still the question remains where the least, comes from. Maybe it came from, or lies on another great, even in an eternal succession, but even then. Where TF did that came from? In my hunger for knowledge, I just can't understand.

Just make this comment to put 3 related threads happily together, on top and below each other.

You wrote it yourself:

"I think separating the study of the nature of things from the study of how we know the nature of things is wrong-headed. They are really the same thing."

About epistemology, the knowledge about knowledge. Knowledge about knowledge is best obtained by wallowing in it. Not by an abstract epistemology.

Anyway, what I'm suggesting is that there's a long-term trend from static to dynamic, but with smaller-term back-and-forth fluctuations superimposed on it, and that those are what you picked up on. — onomatomanic

I don't agree with this suggestion. There is a developing in to an ever increasing static in science (I assume that's where you are talking about) though viewing the world of science seems to contradict this. Though there is a inflationary growth of scientific knowledge, stepping in sync with material product development to be seen in the world on a global scale, and knowledge seems to be in an increasingly dynamic and dense flux, with temporary fluctuations, still there is a convergence towards a fairly static image of the world, and things diverging from science itself are decreasing with the same inflationary speed. Ending up in a monolith existing alone in a black space of emptiness and virtual fluctuations.

Those statements were presented as examples of metaphysical statements, — T Clark

Then this metaphysics needs reconsideration. Why can't that be discussed?

For a minute, let’s discuss what I want metaphysics to be, but which it probably isn’t. At least not entirely – I want it to be the set of rules, assumptions we agree on to allow discussion, reason, to proceed, e.g. there is a knowable external, objective reality; truth represents a correspondence between external reality and some representation of it; it’s turtles all the way down; the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. Ha — T Clark

Again, you make a distinction here, and rightly so, but you consider them separate without a connection. You posit the existence of an unknowable truth, be it physical or religious, or the gods of the Hopi. You say that we have a representation of world. The external world is objective. And it's knowable, be it God, physical reality, the gods of the Hopi, etc. Truth is the correspondence between reality and its representation.

But... You never seem to actually make contact with objective reality. It will always stay out of reach, turtles all the way down. This gives me a creepy feeling. Why not say each turtle is objective reality. That's what I meant (in the former very nice conversation we had in another thread) by saying that the combination of both divisions contains qualities not present in the both separate. Each metaphysics can influence the physics in the context of the whole. An observer and reality together give rise to a new reality and new observers, in mutual correspondence.

So reality is not observer independent. The reality perceived and thought is reality and not an approached representation of it. This being out of reach gives the feeling of endlessly trying in vain.

The Tao perceived is the Tao how it truly is. I don't claim that everything you think is true, not at all (might you think this).

I think the ultimate form of metaphysics is mathematics.

Great! I like all the views you presented! Must have been quite some work to collect them! I think examples can illuminate the distinction.

The litteral meaning is outside of physics, with slight variations on outside, like near, or adjacent. But still connected to it.


You can't do much with this though. I have noticed you like to make divisions. A break-up can be made into physical stuff and metaphysical stuff. But together they form a whole bigger than their parts.

Cosmic inflation is a faster-than-light expansion of the universe — Gnomon

To make this easier to imagine: in 10exp-36 seconds, about one third of the present extension of the universe came into being. The bang indeed. But in the context of the Planck-time, 10exp-43 seconds, this took a quite considerable time.

So about 1/27 of the total volume of space in the present universe came to exist. Can space itself expand with a faster than light velocity? Hmm... A length of space larger than the diameter of the present-day observable space came into being during that inflation period. But were things moving FTL?

Still... The new view on motion, as introduced by Newton, applies to objects existing in an abstract realm in which there is an empty space. Objects in such a space move forever with the same speed or conserved momentum, although in the later concept of an even more abstract concept, the empty spacetime, of Einstein, all objects have a velocity through spacetime that is always the same and as such rather static, although moving. Even the everyday objects that come to rest because of friction (which the Aristotelian view on motion took into account unconsciously, saying that rest is a natural state), move with a constant velocity through the whole of spacetime. This state of motion is their natural state, and being invariable, it's comparable to an Aristotelian natural state of rest, the difference being that the objects always exist in their natural state and don't tend to it.

Considering the fact that God is governed by the same physical laws as he created we can only draw the irrevocable and irrefutable conclusion that his will is not free but in obedient slavery of these inescapable laws, living itsr life like a puppet on the strings of eternal, fundamental, invariant, physical laws, and as such his will is determined by strict causal chains, pulling the strings tight, leaving no space nor time to freely exercise his will. Any feeling on his part of a free will is a false illusion, and his act of creation was predetermined by the laws which govern him. So we are a direct consequence of the imperious and submissive iron laws to which even God must obey and bow.

If the "only good" would not exist, then heaven would not exist either. And that is supposed to be good par excellence. — SolarWind

If the only good exists, then hell would not exist. Nevertheless less, hell exists. If it was God's will that the devil came into being, he must have had some pretty evil mind. Hence God is not omibenevolent.

Yes. But as stated at the outset, my usage of the labels is primarily relative. "Continuance" is a somewhat less static natural state than "rest". — onomatomanic

In the context of relativity, all particles move with a static speed through spacetime. Even a particle at rest moves with the speed of light. Through time.

I think the Dawkinsian model is a static one and puts an umbrella over all organisms in their means of expression. The umbrella can't protect though from the Lamarckian view where the organism stands central and the genes and memes are the simply in favor of the organism. So genes or memes are not selfish in that view.

What is the scientific method? You mention it but does it even exist? Knowledge is what is sought for in science, but do you think this happens in a methodological way?

Thanks for this constructive reply! I am digesting it...

It does not.

But it seems to contradict the all-goodness. — SolarWind

Well, it actually does contradict his being good only. He just wants evil to exist for the good to be contrasted with. Good deeds will become meaningless if there are no bad deeds too. In his omnibenevolency the guy did a good job.

The devil, if he exists, is also the will of God. — SolarWind

So God is bad as well as good?

Everything is the will of God, therefore rape is also the will of God. And the rapist is logically the instrument for it. — SolarWind

Isn't the rape the will of the devil?

Only God himself can submit his free will to tyrants. His free will can be taken captive by servants of tyrants he created himself. So occasionally, his free will is impeded, and will he be subject by his own free will.

It might even come to a point that his free will is killed. In that case, how will his God-like qualities help him if there is no more will to apply his qualities? Will he just continue heavenly life without the will to go along? A lost will cannot be found back if there is no will to get it back.

And what if God made himself non-existent? How in heaven's name can he reappear again? You are not able to explain how he can do this, and there is a chance that he might do it one day, as he has eternal life.

Saying the mind is a phenomenon has the advantage that no explanations for it are required. No need for a materialistic approach (calling it an illusion), no need for quantum mechanics, no need for invoking a holistic approach explaining it as a consequence of interaction, no need of any system of knowledge to embed it in to explain it. It takes the mind at face-value. To understand the mind, the phenomenological approach doesn't need such explanations. Thoughts and feelings are not framed within explanatory schemes about it.

For giving usefull aid to people with mental problems, an understanding is obviously required. And it's here that the PA is most usefull as one is not hindered by explanatory schemes to explain it.

What use is an approach which views the mind as an illusion emerging from complicated neural activity in the brain (an approach which might be an illusion itself), what use is this approach to a depressed person (and I can tell by experience that it's an be an all-consuming feeling, almost paralyzing even)? Is the person involved in need of an explanation of the mind?

Explanation isn't tantamount to understanding. Trying to solve the depression by giving medicines based on the materialistic approach, explaining depression as a disturbance of a balance of neurotransmitters between neurons and re-uptake of them, might have a value, like any materialistic approach to the feeling might have (cutting neuronal connections, administering drugs to get in a Prosacious state of mind, or even lobotomy), though there is no understanding involved. Just the observation that there is a depression, and that this can go away by intervening with it in the ways mentioned.

Now, this might be helpful to some. But the approach takes away the broader space in which the depression finds itself, and there are many complaints of patients that the depression even gets worse. I know for a fact that it did in my case. Luckily, in my case, the depression has evaporated by itself. Lobotomy might have done the trick, but I have the feeling my whole brain would had to be lobotomized from itself.

Phenomenology tries to understand from within. It's an attempt to understand from where the depression comes (and I use the depression here generically), an attempt to find the origins, and to free people from these origins or make them aware of them.

On this base, understanding a depression like in phenomenology, understanding the phenomenon from within and looking at its origins, people can be made aware of it and act accordingly.

Now this might overlook the true nature of a depression, as materialists or whoever tries to explain the mind in an explanatory scheme. For the people experiencing the depression this approach will not be very useful. Maybe temporary measures can help and give relief. It didn't in my case but it could.

An explanatory approach might be useful thus. There is no understanding though about the feeling of the depression, like it is impossible to know how it is to be a rat. But people (and animals, for that matter) have mental phenomena in common, and as such an understanding can be achieved. Trying to find out where a mental phenomenon originates is a powerful approach in dealing with mental disorders, and the materialistic approach usually is an attempt to look at a mental phenomenon as an independent state which can be analyzed and explained from the outside and can be altered or "dissolved" on the base of the analysis and the explanatory scheme. There is no attempt to an internal understanding and usually there is no attempt made to place the phenomenon in a broader context like the world in which the mental phenomena are embedded, which in the particular case of a depression might be indispensable.

I'm not sure what you mean by the bias in the scientific method. Do you mean a bias in the scientific approach to nature? Don't you think that this approach is biased by definition? Namely, being scientific? No scientific approach can be applied in all circumstances. In the realm below the Moon moving objects come to rest, unless powered by an energy source. In fact, all moving objects come to rest ultimately. Unless placed in an Imaginary space like the one you have in mind. The empty Newtonian space, which is a pure fiction.

You can call creationism pseudo-science, but then the never stopping object is pseudo too.

I'm still not sure what point you try to make. The Darwinian or Dawkinskian approach (the last relocating the struggle for survival to an Imaginary, abstract domain of Imaginary selfish genes and memes) is as pseudo-scientific as the creation approach. So?

Not sure I follow in turn. The pseudo-scientific ideas mentioned in the OP (like creationism) and the pre-scientific idea about rest being a more natural state than motion were meant to be just that. What, specifically, is it about them that doesn't work for you? — onomatomanic

Creationism is a pseudo-science from your point of view. For those clinging to it it is solid science. And there is no way you can prove them wrong.

Rest is the most natural kind of state. Just look around you.

There are counterparts of these statements in science. So?

Does this seem like a battle to you? I thought it was a discussion. I've been friendly and civil. — T Clark

I just don't feel the need to back myself up. I don't mean you are not friendly or not civil. I just think epistemology has no place in philosophy. Like I said, I think knowledge about knowledge keeps one away from immersing oneself in knowledge. I like philosophizing about knowledge, but I don't need to know anything about it.

What can you offer to back that up against my testimony — T Clark

It's no battle we are fighting. It's just how I view it. Epistemology, the knowledge about knowledge, inhibits knowledge.