While it solves some problems, it still uses renormalization. Indicating the string view is wrong and has to be replaced by a more fundamental unit. — Haglund

I always had a feeling that string theory was crazy balls. :)

Btw, is your background in Mathematics? What do you think about mathematical paradoxes? Do you think that gives us a clue into the nature of reality?

Well, if you consider the 10exp500 pissible solutions to string theory no clue... I don't, but there are ideas. Problem seems to be how is chosen between them. And even then, 10jexp500 is nothing in the face of infinity.

The basic free parameters to be settled are the coupling strengths of three charges and the value of the gravity strength. Vary one of them and the universe collapses. Is there maybe a hidden relation between them, I don't know, if this has been looked at. I'm not even sure now what I said about varying them couplings. Would it all be very different? Not sure. It seems pretty obvious though that space gotta have 3 dimensions.

What about the speed of light and Planck's constant? The speed of light gotta be finite in order for mass to exist and events to be spatiotemporally separated. Are that speed and the coupling strengths connected? They all have to do with space, time, and mass. They gotta have a connection somehow.

So, are the parameters contemplated? Yes. Probably. — Haglund

Ahh, very interesting. :)

Just imagine yourself in the situation that you walk by a person in distress and in urgent need of help. You would feel obligated to help, wouldn't you? Why would that be? In my opinion, Prauss gives a plausible explanation. — spirit-salamander

I've already addressed this. Let's broaden the scope since you seem to not be understanding my point...

Let's say that we give you infinite energy and time for the following example and you cannot come up with alternatives (as you tried to conveniently imply when you stated this...

...difficulties in grasping what needs to be done.) — spirit-salamander

So again, to reiterate, you will have infinite energy and time, but you have no option for alternatives (just as your very premise provides no alternative ;) ). You can't have your cake and eat it too, anywho, let's continue just to finish up this simple thought experiment.

You see a woman and you feel the need to help her. Now, in the previous example I stopped at 20 times.

Let's say that you help this woman 1 billion times (big enough number I hope). Now you have infinite energy but the problem is that we have not given you any other superpower other than the infinite energy and infinite time. So now you have lived for 1 billion days, helping 1 billion women, eventually you're gonna get bored. You have infinite energy but you do not have infinite relief from boredom. Eventually you are totally not going to care about waking up and helping another woman.

I'm sorry but you can't defeat boredom. You can't defeat "not caring". Therefore on that day you will say, "I have helped 1 billion women, and I just don't care anymore, let someone else help her". You no longer have a moral obligation to help her.

But the issue (as I have already stated to you) is that the reason you are not morally obligated to help her is not because you helped 1 billion other women for 1 billion days in a row. You do not have a moral obligation on day 1 billion just as you did not have a moral obligation on day 1.

If you respond again with argument of empathy...

Just imagine yourself in the situation that you walk by a person in distress and in urgent need of help. You would feel obligated to help, wouldn't you? Why would that be? In my opinion, Prauss gives a plausible explanation. — spirit-salamander

Then I know you just want to believe in something and it's not about figuring out the truth. In which case I will say, whatever you want to believe is right! :)

The idea that there is some limitless number of universes and we just happen to have struck lucky, is adding a completely new and totally unverified dimension to reality - beyond what we already know. What we already know is that the situation looks very much like design. That is the simplest and most parsimonious solution. That this goes against the prevailing naturalism/physicalism of our times is neither here nor there. — Antony Latham

:up: :) True, but it's even more simple than this, they just have no clue.

Moral dilemmas are proof that a categorical imperative does not exist ...
— chiknsld
:chin: — 180 Proof

Insert emote here ___. :)

The person present is thus de facto morally obligated to help. — spirit-salamander

Ah, that's natural law. How can you prove that there is a categorical imperative other than through rationalization?

Moral dilemmas are proof that a categorical imperative does not exist:

You are an eyewitness to a crime: A man has robbed a bank, but instead of keeping the money for himself, he donates it to a poor orphanage that can now afford to feed, clothe, and care for its children. You know who committed the crime. If you go to the authorities with the information, there's a good chance the money will be returned to the bank, leaving a lot of kids in need. What do you do?

https://www.buzzfeed.com/tracyclayton/moral-dilemmas-that-will-break-your-brain

This is a pretty rotten situation because you would have to take the bread from the mouths of little children due to your "categorical imperative" that you say exists.

You are walking by a woman who needs help so you are obligated to help her? Hmm, what if you help her but the next day there is another woman laying on the side of the road needing help? And you help her as well? And the next day there is another woman, and everyday for the rest of your life there will be a woman on the side of the road that needs your help?

Eventually you are going stay inside the house for a day, because you simply do not feel like helping whatever woman will be on the side of the road that day. Are you morally obligated to go outside that day? I mean, you've already helped 20 women for the past 20 days in a row, you have the energy to do it for a 21st day, but you are not morally obligated to do it. But the reason you are not morally obligated does not come from the fact that you previously helped women 20 days in a row. You do not have a moral obligation on the 21st day just as you do not have a moral obligation on the first day.

A moral obligation has to be rationalized.

time is the measurement of motion and space is a real immaterial... — val p miranda

Sure, time is used as a measurement of movement, but it is also an intrinsic characteristic of space, because space defines that movement is possible in the first place, therefore there is a location x, which is different from location y (It takes time to traverse between location x and location y).

You can also look at time as the creation of space the same way you look at space as the creation of time (where location x is a time and location y is a different time, created by the space in-between them).

The thing that is important to understand is that you cannot have one without the other. You cannot have time without space and you cannot have space without time. When you have one reality (space) then you automatically have the other reality (time). One will be constant and the other will be the intrinsic characteristic.

Your argument seems to be that characteristics do not exist and that argument might apply more to physical phenomena, but when you are saying that one immaterial thing exists over another immaterial thing, the argument becomes trivial.

I think that there can be only one immaterial and that is space. — val p miranda

But how can you have space without time?

Maybe he forgot, while trying to see time as merely a concept of the mind, that time is like space: it's not a thing or an object. It's the measure which the universe must impose on itself in order to be measurable — Gregory

Indeed. :smile:

Well said.

Time, again, is a concept, too, that the meaning of which has no existence. — val p miranda

Time does not exist? So then how do you explain a baby growing into a teenager? It takes time to develop. How do you explain memories of the past? Watching an old movie like, 'Pulp Fiction' on tv? It's a movie that existed in the past, there could be actors that are no longer alive. What about listening to Mozart? Surely that music existed in the past right? How can you explain any of these experiences without time?

Wait, that's your answer? I thought you just wanted an explanation. :cool:

You wanted an explanation that is subsumed in the question so that you could address the explanation? (And yet, you speak about people skipping your questions) :) Therefore you leave me no choice...

Your answer to my question:

Why do you treat God as anything else? — chiknsld

...

A God can't be entirely beyond conception, otherwise you couldn't conceive of a God right? — Philosophim

Yea sure.

If we're referring to the idea that something can exist without prior cause, but is able to interact with the universe, then why does this have to be God? — Philosophim

Who said it did? Is that why you treat God as anything else?

If something has no prior cause for its existence, then there is no cause that necessitates it exist. — Philosophim

Okay?

I created another thread here https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12847/if-a-first-cause-is-logically-necessary-what-does-that-entail-for-the-universes-origins that may explain it better. — Philosophim

Philosophim, so far it looks like your answer to my very simple question that you had trouble with, "why do you treat God as anything else?", is that since God can exist without prior cause then we can imagine something else that can exist without prior cause.

But I suppose after all that effort, you'd still be treating God as anything else. :)

I suppose I shall never get my answer. Btw I'm jk, I understand that your conception of God is crude.

I'm still confused chiknsld. Can you expand on your point a bit more? — Philosophim

Well most people understand God to be by very definition an omniscient entity beyond all conception, etc., etc., but here you are trying to apply the same logic to God as to other things. So are you trying to redefine God as having equals?

What do you mean? — Philosophim

You've easily accepted that a God existed without prior explanation. Is it not a simple step to apply that to something that is not a God? — Philosophim

Why do you treat God as anything else?

The inability or difficulty to comprehend reality does not mean reality does not exist. You've easily accepted that a God existed without prior explanation. Is it not a simple step to apply that to something that is not a God? — Philosophim

Why do you treat God as anything else?

Why is matter dumb?
— Jackson

ahahah :rofl: — SpaceDweller

:rofl: all innocent too.

Please refrain from ad hominems. — Jackson

That's an accusation.

Can someone explain to Jackson what I said?

What is the emotional part? — Jackson

You don't understand?

They are basically saying that if we cannot answer who created God then God does not exist. But that's an argument from emotion not logic.

If anything made God then God is not God (it's inferior), but rather whatever made God is the actual God. (superior God)
Therefore, it's impossible to know prior reason for God's existence because that would make God inferior and us superior.

This means your point doesn't make sense for God. — SpaceDweller

He wants God to be like anything else.

Ok, but that doesn't negate my point. That would mean something made God. — Philosophim

What can make God?

To you, not me. — Jackson

Sounds emotional.

Saying "God" is first cause is myth. Like I said, that is okay, there just nothing to discuss. — Jackson

I think you're missing the point. If people are not capable of figuring out the first cause then you can always fall back on God. At least we can't really fall back on, "it's not interesting or compelling to me".

At least God is an answer.

Yes. The idea that God created the world for love just does not mean anything to me. — Jackson

Yea but other things mean something to you. :)

I never found that interesting or compelling. — Jackson

I'm assuming you are alluding to the fact that other things are interesting and compelling to you?

Several particles could have popped into existence. A big bang. Several universes. There is absolutely zero necessity for a God... — Philosophim

:rofl:

What do you call that Philosophim? Logical atheism?

what about, our mind is a biological phenomena and as such it is reality? (ie. there is no separation) — SpaceDweller

That is certainly possible! :smile:

Dear sir, if you are saying that babies are not innocent then I think you are redefining the word "innocent". :)

God would not allow anyone to piss in your milk or steal your honey if you were a nice innocent person. Yet here you are living in a world in which anyone can piss in your milk and steal your honey at any time.
Therefore you are not a nice innocent person. Nor is anyone else here. — Bartricks

What about babies?

I winked at you! In all fairness... :wink: — Haglund

:rofl:

Are we just characters in a heavenly TV show? — Haglund

If so it's not a tv show, it's a movie, and I'm in a romcom.

:wink: — Haglund

Weirdo!

Would an all knowing and all powerful being need to make upgrades? And couldn't they fix all issues in a space of time and in a way that it goes unnoticed or unremembered? — TiredThinker

Sure TiredThinker, but you are not seeing the forest for the trees. The point is that this world is not perfect, and if it were any different it would not be the same. ;)

How about this, tell us what you think a fair world would look like, and you'll probably just as soon realize why that cannot be. ;)

Btw, what the heck is going on with all the winking around here?

Again, whatever fairness there might be is put there by us. — Banno

awww :flower:

Ask anyone that believes in evolution, they already think life itself is self-created. Though they do not realize it, their entire idea is that life is just waiting around in some non-dimension...random formations of matter were the catalyst, voila...that's literally what scientists believe (can't make this stuff up).

I find it hard to identify what fair means in general. But assuming there was an all knowing and all powerful god that created us and wants the best for us. Are they fair? It is easy to imagine how we'd do things differently, but can we determine if such a god is fair? — TiredThinker

It's a reasonable question, maybe you could liken it to a programmer or a gaming dev: let's say you create a program and it has a few errors, does that mean you are unfair? Let's say you create a game like the sims, where there are people living their lives and they have certain abilities, like walking, talking, procreating, they have pets, and eat and sleep, etc. And in their little game their little deep thinkers create a system of money, and little fields like science and history, and some people end up living a really bad life, etc., would that make you an unfair developer? Or let's say there are some errors in the game and some people are born like missing an arm, or their coding makes them die for no apparent reason. Does that make you an unfair developer? Most devs try to create a good game that people will enjoy.

The intention is not to make a perfect game because unless it's tic-tac-toe any decently complex game will have errors. Usually what devs try to do is upgrade the game in real-time putting out patches to try and fix the really bad errors. Who knows how many upgrades there have been, we could be on version ten thousand or something and the devs finally said okay this game is as good as it's going to get. Does that make the devs unfair? Or what if we are just avatars like the sims and we are playing out a game for some kids in an advanced world? Is our life inherently unfair just because we can process things like self-awareness, love, fear, joy, and all the other emotions that people care about? Those emotions might not even matter to the advanced species.

Are you a vegetarian? Do you think its fair to kill animals so you can eat them? When you walk around are you constantly checking the bottom of your shoes to make sure you did not kill an ant? I'm quite sure you have killed plenty of insects by accident. There are tiny microorganisms on your face, you have probably killed a few when you wiped your nose, does that make you unfair?

Fairness is valued by us, and if it comes about, that is as a result of our efforts. — Banno

So cute! Did you try to hide this? :snicker: :flower:

Existence is energy and its modes of being. The more scientific question is not where did existence come from, but where did the constitutions of energy, that is atoms, come from? We can deduce back to a point in time known as a singularity, where all energy in the KNOWN universe started to expand. What was before this, is really the job of the particle physicists to compute.

If we ran a simulation of our universe it might be proven that it is a CYCLICAL event. That time is perpetual. That this energy and that energy comes from some other energy. There are principles in science that point to this 1. Conservation of energy principle. 2. Expanding and contracting energies of the universe. 3. Impossibility of absolute zero.

So we might be able to know where atoms (and their parts) originate through simulation, and we'd know whether time is perpetual or not through simulation.

We are probably even thinking about this wrong, "where do things come from if they come from themselves?" Huh? It seems language is causing this linguistic problem when talking about causality and ontology. — Josh Alfred

It does not seem that we are eternal. We seem to have a static starting point. There is no proof that we come from anything. In fact the only thing that supports such fanciful ideas is our inception within the womb of the mother.

The easy assumption is that the universe is eternal, but we can never escape the fact that nothingness should actually exist and thus there is a mystery that needs to be revealed to us. Our life is a striving to discover this mystery.

I would not say that it's counterintuitive. As I said, the reality of the immaterial aspect of the human being, free will, spirit, etc., is very intuitive. It's just that the modern trend toward physicalism and scientism has suppressed this intuition in an unnatural way, making it appear to be counterintuitive. But when you look at the reality of the situation, you ought to be able to see that this physicalist attitude is acquired through the current educational institutions. It is not an intuition at all, but an attitude acquired in our educational process, and this attitude suppresses the natural inclination toward spirituality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Very interesting, thank you.