Platonic thought has nothing to do with the visions of Saint Teresa. — David Mo

Both of them would say that there is an order beyond the physical image. As the hydrogen atom is an image of energy, the physical world is an image of a non physical order. In this way science and religion are based on a similar idea: that there is an order beyond physical particulars. Scientists call this order 'the laws of nature' religion/Platonism may call it other things, but it is 'the world beyond the world.'

That's not counting though. Anyone can make up a new definition of "counting", and use that definition to make whatever conclusion one wants to make about infinity. But that conclusion would be irrelevant to what "counting" really means to the rest of us. So if Cantor turned "counting" into some sort of abstract concept which has nothing do with the act of counting, as we know it, I don't see how that's relevant. You are just arguing through equivocation. — Metaphysician Undercover

The difference is really semantic. Counting is about associating a number with an object; 1 orange, 2 apples etc. But Cantor counts numbers with numbers by associating numbers with other numbers. In this way Cantor associates/counts the rational numbers with integers and comes to the conclusion that there are enough integers to count the rationals.

Infinity just means 'without end'. — A Seagull

In mathematics infinity is a set, such as Aleph Null, not a process. Infinity is not 'the biggest number' it is all numbers, together.

Sure, but we were talking about counting, not pure maths. The contested statement was:

Counting infinity has nothing to do with time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Cantor uses Aleph Null to count infinities. One can count an infinity conceptually, without time. How much time is there between the digits of pi? Likewise with the empty question 'What came before the beginning of time?' The real question is "What gives rise to time?" or "On what necessary condition is the world/universe contingent?" It is really an ontological question.

Positive integers can be generated by a process of iteration and partition:

Start with "/"
Iterate: //
And again: ///
And again: ////
So you get ///////////////////...

Partition each step: /, //, ///, ////,...

These partitions are sets

{/}, {//}, {///}, {////},...

and they are represented in Arabic numerals as

1, 2, 3, 4,...

The initial / need not be anything other than a concept of something or nothing.

In mathematics it can be the null set.

Counting infinity has nothing to do with time. An infinity of numbers does not require time to exist. They exist conceptually as a set.

Let me throw in another question: how does philosophy differ from "thinking" generally? Or does it? — Xtrix

What do you mean by 'thinking'? Abstract 'rational' thinking? Isn't simply being conscious thinking? If thought is energy 'flowing' through the mind then being is thinking. Thought is being. Being is thought.

Philosophy is not based on authority but on the exercise of personal reason. — David Mo

I'm not sure about this one. Early philosophy was closely aligned to mysticism (eg Plato's cave). Only in recent centuries did philosophy become heavily abstract and intellectual, 'reasonable'.

Philosophy is not religion
Philosophy is not sophistry
Philosophy is not science
Philosophy is not just ethics
Philosophy is not math
Philosophy is not just a form of literature — Pfhorrest

Can't surrealism be philosophy?

A tangent drawn to the curve on the leading edge of foreign policy is never parallel to a crow's beak at noon. And.

'cause there's all them other sorts of tautologies. — Banno

Some argue that there are mathematical or logical tautologies.

It is a linguistic tautology (Wittgenstein).

In the 'beginning' philosophy was more aligned with mysticism but since Descartes it has become more and more abstract and intellectual.

If messages could be sent between the twins at infinite speed that would show simultaneity:
"What are you doing now?"
- "I'm reading Dante"
But for all practical purposes simultaneity cannot be determined.

Evil cannot exist without good because good is being and evil needs being/God in order to exist. Evil is ultimately self destructive.

Good is life an being. Evil is the loss of being. It tends towards nothingness. Evil is not absolute, it must have some being in it if it is to have any potency; therefore God allows evil. Absolute evil is nothingness. Evil depends on being and therefore on good. It is inferior.

Marijuana can cause great psychic damage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZEivOBQ6nc

"what is the ontological status of institutions?" — Matias

An institution is an abstract concept made concrete, visible, by the people and objects that make it manifest. Communism is a concept. Capitalism is. They can be made manifest by imbuing them with energy.

If one assesses the evidence for Canada with intelligence the conclusion is that it must exist because its existence makes sense of the evidence. Likewise with God. God's existence is the most convincing answer to the available evidence.

Our apparatus is definitely classical, but it's a fairly radical direction to claim our apparatus imposes anything on the quantum realm ... as this seems to imply the apparatus exists first. — boethius

What I'm saying is that the geometry is imposed on the trace effects that register on photographic plates etc. It is not the particle that is being observed but the trace effect (eg a spot on a photographic plate). The point is that these trace effects are necessarily classical objects and any geometry that relates them is going to be a classical geometry.

Suppose you have a light source at A and a photographic plate at B with a spot made by a photon. Here are two trace effects with a straight line joining them. It is natural to assume the photon travelled in a straight line between A and B. But since photons exists in some exotic quantum geometry we cannot really say it travelled in a straight line, not least because it does not even live in our classical world.

Where then does the straight line come from? It is an artefact of the experiment itself. The experimental apparatus is a classical object in classical spacetime and likewise with the trace effects that are collected. Given this, the only geometry these trace effects can have is a classical geometry. But this tells us nothing about how the photon travelles from A to B since it is travelling in its own spacetime.

The crux of my idea is that there are two distinct spacetimes (quantum and classical) made manifest by ontological space. These spacetimes exist 'here' in our ontological space but because they are different geometries they are, from a geometric perspective, two different spacetimes.

The trace effects exist at the 'edge' between these two spacetimes, but on the classical side of it. The photon exists on the other side of it. So how can we measure quantum spacetime with classical rulers?

For example, understanding the complexities of Second Temple Judaism and the historical Jesus vs. the Jesus of what becomes the mythologized version of orthodox Christianity is quite lacking in most conversations. Same goes for the development of any religion really. None of them came out as perfectly christaline specimens — schopenhauer1

This is the point I am making re. mythology. People need to frame things in mythological terms and bare bones Christianity took on the mythological elements of the day. But that is all very well if it helped Christianity to take hold in the Roman Empire. Without the mythological packaging it might never have caught on. It is really the practical value of mythology that matters.

Uri Geller has been debunked on several occasions. — whollyrolling

Yes, that's true apparently. But the experiments were done under strict conditions and Geller is not the only one who could do these things. It comes to mind that Geller may have been able to do this but he lost his ability and started faking out of vanity. Otherwise we must call the author of the book a liar and I don't think he is.

There have been hundreds of experiments involving alleged psychics and alleged paranormal phenomena that have all come up completely empty. — whollyrolling

Uri Geller was tested in strict lab conditions and he bent strips of metal that were sealed inside glass tubes. It was also done by a number of British kids.

"The paranormal is a term that covers those weird phenomena that are seemingly beyond scientific explanation. For the past hundred years telepathy, extrasensory perception and psychokinesis have baffled researchers brave enough to fly in the face of the scientific establishment. Then came Uri Geller and in his wake others, some of them young children, to challenge orthodox science with their bewildering powers.... John Taylor, a distinguished and respected professor of mathematics, has shocked sceptics and scientists alike with his conclusions from this level-headed experimental investigation into the science of the paranormal; the open-minded will draw their own."

https://www.amazon.com/Superminds-Investigation-Paranormal-Picador-Books/dp/0330247050

Religion is hierarchical and only the top dog can be the master dog. — praxis

That would only apply to an evil religion. Hierarchies on the secular world also create great possibilities for evil.

Yes, but that would be true in a material sense that it is actually creating functions by harnessing natural processes and materials that are useful for survival, comfort, or entertainment and can be measured as to its development and effectiveness in solving the need or want. — schopenhauer1

True but that does not tell us anything about the veracity of belief. Personally I am very cautious about psychoanalytic views on religion. They are too vague and too easy to make up. It seems to me that humans are deeply attached to the language of myth. Myth may be older even than written language. You only have to look at tribes in far away places to see how mythological they are. Humans need to mythologize consciousness and that is why religion is so heavily mythologized. It is pointless to talk in terms of whether myth is 'true' or 'false'. Myth is only the 'packaging' for our spiritual reality (whatever you take that to mean). We build myth around these things because we are deeply mythological.

You can see myth evolving today in Hollywood movies. We have superheroes, fiends, angels and all manner of beings coming through our screens. These myths are 'archetypes' of realities deep in our psyche...

I'm not sure what you mean by everything happening simultaneous. If such were the case there would be no cause and effect? — boethius

Well, that was a throwaway comment. What I mean is anything could be the case for all we know.

Here is where my thoughts have led.

Space is two things. It is an ontological reality and a geometric reality. Ontologically space is there. It is not nothingness, it is a substance. But space as geometry seems to be more accessible to science.

Can it be that ontological space can simultaneously manifest more than one geometry or spacetime? It seems to me that quantum spacetime and classical spacetime (ie the macroscopic 4D world) exist simultaneously in the same ontological space. The spacetime that particles live in seems to be some kind of exotic N-dimensional geometry that is not classical.

I think it was Bohr that said it is meaningless to talk about where a particles is, outside measurement by a device in classical spacetime. In this respect 'where' means a position is classical spacetime. Apparently it is nowhere in classical spacetime at all, it is in quantum spacetime (geometrically speaking).

We don't see particles, we only see trace effects. A spot on a photographic plate is a trace effect, not a particle! What is important here is to see the both the detection apparatus and the trace effect are macroscopic, classical objects; they both exist in classical spacetime. This means that the trace effect is necessarily a classical object, obviously located in classical spacetime. But where is the particle before/after detection? Nowhere. Nowhere in classical spacetime that is. This is why Bohr says it is meaningless to say where it is. It is 'elsewhere'.

If there is a light source at A and a photographic plate at B and a photon is detected it is natural to assume that the photon travelled in a straight line from A to B. But, strictly speaking, all we can say is that the photon left a trace effect at A and a trace effect at B.
But these trace effects are classical objects and a straight line joining them is also a line drawn in classical spacetime.

If the photon is not really travelling in a straight line (because it is not even in classical spacetime) the straight line must be seen as an artefact of the experimental apparatus itself. This is because the whole experiment is taking place on 'this side' of the interface between these two spacetimes. Consequently any relationship between trace effects must be in terms of a classical 4-D geometry. That is, the positions of particles (in reality trace effects) is imposed on the situation because the experimental apparatus, being a classical object in classical spacetime, can do nothing else but force things into a classical geometry.

Anyone can think they are a master of knowledge in the realm of mysticism. — schopenhauer1

One could as easily level the accusation that mastery - real or imagined - of science, tech, construction, math etc give people a sense of control and mastery.

In Richard Dawkins' God is Too Complex to Exist, Dick is not talking about a god or any god. Is Thor too complex to exist? Of course not. — Daniel Cox

Dawkins' argument is a non starter. It is based on the erroneous idea that evolution needs some kind of physical mechanism. If God knows mathematics He can be complex because mathematics is intrinsically, or naturally, complex. With math you get complexity for free.

Numbers are the most primitive processes of iteration and partition.

Start with /
Iterate //
Reiterate ///
and so on //////////////////...
Partition each step of the process /, //, ///, ////,...

Suddenly you've go numbers. If God has been contemplating mathematical truth for eternity why can't He be complex? Evolution in the mind does not need a physical mechanism because the mind can evolve purely through contemplation (of numbers, mathematics).

Correlation is not causation. — Daniel Cox

Exactly. All neuroscience shows is that the brain is correlated with thought. They can't show that the brain is the source of thought. The example of the television has been given; the tv components are intimately correlated with the sound and vision of the film but this does not mean the tv writes the script or the music score or anything in the film. The film itself is broadcast from a remote station. The brain = mind theory is often sold on ignorance of the difference between correlation and causation.

The concept of a circle for example; is independent of any particular mind so it must have existence outside of all minds. — Devans99

Pi is an essential unit of space and it can be represented, to an infinite degree of precision, with numbers (see this link http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~huberty/math5337/groupe/expresspi.html). Likewise with sin, cos, and tan. David Hilbert showed that the coherence of geometry is dependent on the coherence of math. From these considerations it can be argued that space is simply a physical expression of number. But if number precedes space mind precedes space.

EnPassant, mathematics predates the mind, the universe and God. — Devans99

I don't see how it can predate God because math does not exist without mind.

It must do, maths is logic and logic is not something you create, you are born with it. — Devans99

Brouwer, a Dutch mathematician, maintained that math creates logic.

kettle of bullshit. — S

a steaming cup of bullshit — S

And this manner of discourse, in your estimation, constitutes philosophy?

What on do you mean by "mathematics precedes space" and how did you reach that conclusion? — S

I have already told you. Many physicists and philosophers argue, coherently, that space is intrinsically mathematical; mathematics enables space to exist. But where did mathematics come from if not from a mind? This is the so called Platonic view of mathematics.

Cut to the chase. Give me the short version. Thus far, it just looks like a distraction or a delaying tactic. — S

That is the short version. The argument is that mind precedes space and that must be God's mind.

But extraordinary beliefs require extraordinary evidence. — S

But that does not mean you can place an extraordinary claim on the same level as delusion. There are plenty things that cannot be shared but you cannot reasonably assert they are delusion purely on the basis that they cannot be argued for. You can refuse to believe an assertion but saying it is delusion or on the same level as delusion - well, that's a bit too much like Dawkins petulance for me.

As for 'reasonable' arguments. Many people speak glibly about what is 'rational' or 'reasonable' as if it was clearly understood what these words mean. Except on the most primitive level (science etc) we cannot agree on what these words mean. Indeed, much of philosophy is about trying to determine what is reasonable. A philosopher can present a seemingly reasonable argument and another, equally astute, philosopher can present a convincing counter argument. So how can reason be against itself? If we could understand what is reasonable we would know a great deal. And that is the answer to the question of this thread: we cannot agree on what 'reasonable' means.

I only asked whether you were interested in epistemology in the strict context of the problem I raised. — S

Well, you should have taken me up on that x^2 point because I was leading up to evidence for God. I can present you with many arguments to show that space is intrinsically mathematical. This means mathematics precedes space. But mathematics exists in the mind, first and foremost. Space was there before our minds were there and mathematics precedes space therefore mind precedes space.
Pi is and essential unit of space and Pi can be expressed, with an infinite degree of precision mathematically: http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~huberty/math5337/groupe/expresspi.html

Likewise with the other trigonometric functions, sin, cos, tan,...

It is a matter of reason. Can you reasonably distinguish your belief from a delusion? If not, then you fail at philosophy. — S

Simply saying it is a matter of reason is not saying much. What is reason? Is reason only something that can be shared through language? Who has a monopoly on what is reasonable? The very question about God can be answered simply if we can say for sure what is reasonable. Are you saying that something that cannot be shared is not reasonable? Like I said, if I had a thought about X this morning it is, for me reasonable to believe I was thinking about X. But I cannot share that reasonable conclusion because I cannot prove I had a thought about X. Does that mean my conclusion is no different from delusion?

Ummm...you seem to be talking about a particular God here.

I'd like to know more about it.

Could you put a bit of "flesh", so to speak, on it. — Frank Apisa

Ok, you asked, but as I say I don't want to get into a God debate. Consider this as food for thought.

I someone says 'I am', superficially, that is the personality or ego speaking: I am a great fellow, I am a celebrity, I am such a cool guy etc.

But if we can truly say 'I am' in the most meaningful sense of the word, that 'I am' is God because if we say this truly it is being itself that is speaking. And God is being. That is why God is the 'I am' of the bible.

Your belief is on the same footing as a delusion if there's no way to distinguish between your belief and a delusion. — S

Only from some people's point of view. Another theist would not put it on that footing.

Are you interested in epistemology at all? — S

I put an idea to the thread earlier. What do you think of the difference between reality and images of reality (or knowledge)? Suppose you have x^2 over a given range. That produces a range of values, even an infinite range. Now, you can draw a graph x^2 on a piece of paper. What is the difference between the graph and the idea of x^2? The difference is that the idea is abstract knowledge, the graph is a physical image of the idea. But they look like entirely different things; one is ink and paper, the other is in the mind.

Why is it that 2D space can receive and display an idea? If it is possible for 2D space to manifest, accurately, a mathematical concept there must be some natural 'common reality' between space and math. If there were no natural similarity space could not display the graph.

What then is this common reality between mind and space?

Yes, true. And he probably has reasonable ground for his belief, just no positive proof. Have you two settled the question of whether or not you can know something and not be able to prove it? — Merkwurdichliebe

If I had a thought this morning I know I had the thought but can I prove it?

In the atheist sense, knowing God exists, is as ridiculous as knowing your ethical ethical principles exist. — Merkwurdichliebe

That might be true if by 'knowing' you mean abstractly knowing. But God is not an abstraction. You don't seem to be talking about God here, you seem to be talking about abstract knowledge of God.

Oooo wweee, you just introduced the aesthetic mode of existence. — Merkwurdichliebe

One of the best kinds methinks...

You can go far if you drop the pretense. — Frank Apisa

Well, I'm not putting up a pretence, honestly. I will answer your questions but I really don't feel like getting into another 'prove God' discussion. They become interminable.

You either KNOW gods exist...or you do not. — Frank Apisa

Yes, I know God exists. But I am 'deluded' right? But if the Dawkinsian accusation is made against me it must be backed up; ole Richard has to prove I have some screws loose. But how can it be that otherwise perfectly normal people are deluded? I'm afraid 'deluded' is not an argument.

Having those feelings (vague or not so vague) is NOT a substitute for KNOWING. — Frank Apisa

It is a different kind of knowing. And not mere feelings. What if someone told you they can see and hear God? Doubly deluded no doubt, lol.

It is okay to acknowledge that you do not KNOW if any gods exist...on any plane or in any way. — Frank Apisa

I don't know in the way I know 2 + 2 = 4. I know in the way that I know 'I am'. I did not figure out that I am, I just seem to be. I think I'm right...

Some of us, however, are so averse to acknowledging it...that pretences are invented to pretend that one CAN KNOW a god exists...by means other than KNOWING it. — Frank Apisa

That depends on what you mean by 'KNOWING'. Do you mean arriving at knowledge of God through intellectual means or by direct means? As I said, we can know things by non intellectual means. We can know how if feels to be simply through awareness of our being. We don't have to mentalize endlessly to know that we are. We just know. First we know, then we can intellectually argue 'I am' and thereafter understand intellectually that we are.

Anyone pretending to KNOW a god exists (or that no gods exist) by KNOWLEDGE that is little more than vague "feelings that a god exists (does not exist)"...is playing a game with him/herself. — Frank Apisa

Why do you say 'vague'?

Attempting to pretend any of us knows by tortuously mangling the meaning of KNOW...is beneath anyone who wants to discuss things in a philosophy forum. — Frank Apisa

Mangling what meaning of 'know'? The abstract meaning? As in knowledge obtained by deduction? It need not be a question of mangling anything, it only needs to be a different kind of knowing.