.

That was a big whine made while running on absolute full frazzle.

Anyhow, I've got a new perspective on matters. and I can improve further I hope.

It was indeed complicated to fathom , but I accept this new perspective. Good will come of it.

I do sometimes wonder if certain people I unwisely confided in -- whom have implanted in my susceptible greenhouse of a mind the seed of threatening to perpetuate what they personally interpreted from what I shared with them -- are intent on sabotaging the chances of me leading some semblance of a tranquil life in the future. I wonder how realistic it is that they'd be able to achieve this and why they seem so motivated to. — THX1138

This is something that affects me too. It is quite possible in the age of mobile phones to be harrassed and observed, and for your reputation to be trashed.

I know what you mean.
So I really am out of here now, It's been a hell-uva ride. A rollercoaster of downs and downs. But I feel on the level now. Peace to all.

I seem to remember a poster who looked like that "Bertrand Russell" bird would say Anne of Green Gables!

BTW I like your sequence of favourite philosophers Theologian. They resonate well.

OMG I'm in the matrix!

I understand now how schizophrenia or something similar could flood a person. It;s like conspiracy theory - to find a denial is merely proof of a deeper conspiracy. There are no limits to the levels!

I'm back & I'm fine. I feel just like THX now.

I also have to accept that I musrt give up posting on the internet altogether. So adios.

Recognising that one has mental health issues of any sorts sounds like an important first step, but maybe very hard to take. I am coming to recognise that I have a few.

As long as everything is safe, informed consensual and people feel menatlly secure about what they do, then any activity is ok I would say, as a first pass approximation answer sort of thing.

when the "rules" of the relationship that are central to either partner's sense of self are...violated. — Learning to die

I know from my experience that communication is everything in this situation. It can take time to reestablish, but it is worth doing. Eventually a channel opens.

You are right in a sort of reduction ad absurdium sense I guess.

But also, a fault in his maxim that I see is that people often do different things. For example some people want lots of children, others none. According to the maxim either choice is disastrous for humanity!

The interesting thing about the AI "singularity" is that conceptually an AI could rewrite it's base code in a way a human never could. — Echarmion

Yes but there are complications in that concept because what is the it in "its"?? Humans have a body, but computers can connect, So I can see why some might interpret the singularity as one gigantic entity. It's life Jim, but not as we know it?

A computer cannot look at it's own program and improve it in a way not written in the program. Now a human being can understand just how he or she has behaved, what has been his or her program and change it. That's what consciousness is. — ssu

I sense something fishy with that statement... I think the last line is the most fishy. We do not know that being programmed deterministically rules out consciousness because we cannot rule out that human beings also behave deterministically. The computers physical bits might be different to us humans, but we still have those bits and in theory we could see our brain's individual molecules, atoms, electrons and so forth in action.

Also, computer programs exist that improve their "own" code and chip design. One of the great fears of some computer scientists is the AI Singularuity - the point where computer self improvement becomes a runaway unstoppable process leading to some sort of hyper intelligence.

I basically believe that nothing has any meaning. — yupamiralda

You could use this observation to promote feeling. Feeling is undeniable.

frankly, I don't like the idea of free will not existing — MattS

Is this because you are equating free will with a soul? If it is a soul you really want then you can have one without free will. Free will is not necessary for a soul.

I'm guessing wildly here on entry - but I bet this thread would be more coherent if it was titled "Is it immoral to take recreational drugs?".

Exceptions render the rule meaningless, and "true to an extent", really indicates that the rule is false. — Metaphysician Undercover

The real world doesn't work in words, and definitions. For example, consciousness can be present in different species to a greater or lesser extent; also in individuals of the same species exhibiting varying degrees of trauma to the brain. Biological determism is the domain of science. It has nothing to do with free will, which is logically compatible with biological knowledge - (even if possibly not a proven or scientifically meaningful entity). Just because you believe in free will you don't have to jettison the findings of science - for example that babies (and adults) are hardwired to respond to faces and smiles; snake shapes etc etc.

I don’t see how strict determinism can be defended in light of uncertainty. — Wayfarer

I'm no expert but just because we cannot find out position and momentum of a particle simultaneously it does not mean that these things are undefined simultaneously. Try ducking (www.duckduckgo :smile: ) "Heisenberg and uncertainty" . But QM is sure weird, and I wouldn't be suprised if causality as we know it vanishes at some point. But I am not "afraid" of strict determinsm - it doesn't "scare" me, probably because I have happily accepted materialism. But then again I wouldn't mind if some sort of "spirit" existed - it would be very exciting!

Anyway, the OP seems to have lost interest. — Wayfarer

well all sorts of sub themes inevitably popped up. I wish we could have branches to threads - perhaps limited to one or two ply. ATM it seems that many threads effectively have them anyway, in a messy sort of way.

We are at risk of confusion on this thread between "biological determinsm" which is how influential biological material components are in determining an organism's behaviour, and "strict " determinism which is whether all events in the universe are precisely predetermined.

The truth or falsity of the latter, though it is extreme in scope and rigidity, has no scientific bearing on any issue. - including biological determinism. Biological determism is certainly true to an extent - there is no controversy there - only disagreement as to how much culture and randomness affect behaviour.

If you believe in "strict" determinsim then the randomness is pseudo-randomness - in other words there appears to be true randomness to all intnents and purposes.

If you believe in dualism , then this can be represented as randomness without prejudicing the study of biological determinism. Not so with "strict" determism of course...

If you read the OP I think you will find that @jamesfive is really wanting to talk about free will, which is really the provence of a discussion of "strict" determinism, rather than a discsussion of biological functioning. Unfortunately he referred to "our biology" when I think he meant "our universe".

But think about this. The same idea can be represented in a huge variety of different ways - different languages, different media, and so on - yet still convey exactly the same information. So I say that information can be represented physically, but that essentially it's something other than physical. — Wayfarer

Do ideas in different languages convey exactly the same information? Do speakers of the same language, even, extract exactly the same information from the same sentence? Definitely not! i think the reference point for analysing whether "ideas" have a life of their own has to be the language of mathematics, which consists of the most precise ideas expressed presicely.

SO....can mathematical ideas exist independently of physical reality? Yes. Can they exist independently of a physical imagining? Not so sure ... it is possible to imagine a physical perfect sphere for example. And 1+1=2 is tied to the notion of object....and so forth....

Furthermore I cannot imagine a person born with a brain but without any sensory perception - without efffective contact with the real world (including their own body) in other words - being able to have any thoughts or ideas whatsoever.

Think of self replication as a special event because it causes an infinite chain reaction going forwards in time. Once self replication is established, there is no going back,

Back to the actual topic, here is the culprit talking among other things about this incident and conservatism in general to another wretched right-winger — ssu

Why aren't they sitting on those nice looking mahogany chairs instead of those plastic things? Is it a fake backdrop or something?

Reason comprises the relationship of ideas, and ideas are not physical, — Wayfarer

But as you have indicated, every idea has a physical counterpart. So there is no idea that exists independently of physical reality.

In which case, what difference does {full blown determinsm] make, and how could you find out? Either way, it is, as I said, a pretty meaningless argument. — Wayfarer

There is a difference -full blown determinism rules out, or at the very least profoundly downgrades, the concept of "spirituality" as being something non physical. It takes "true magic" out of the experience of free will, and all we are left with is apparent magic. Which is still pretty good though!

Reality is in some fundamental sense indeterminate. — Wayfarer

I don't think that's proven scientifically, not even by HUC, which, I believe, limits only our grasp of reality and not reality itself.

In any case, one needn't have any emotional difficulty with accepting the possibilty of full blown determinism because our experience of free will in a determined universe is indistinguishable from our experience of "true" free will.

We absolutely agree that biology is a bigger determinant of behaviour than physics in as much as biological structures have direct relevance at the level of OUR knowledge, whereas at the level of physics it is pretty much impossible for US to determine what the effects of a single particle's behaviour are.

But I thought this topic was about full on, absolute determinsm right down to all the details of all the particles in the universe at any time in the future. Because you can't have full on human behavioural determinsm without full on universal physical determinism.

Biology is the wrong level to consider determinsm - surely it is a physics question. Biological structures definitely contribute to our opinions in known ways, but aren't we talking about full-on 100% everything being fully determined .. i.e. "determinism" ... this is a physics issue... cosmology meets particle physics etc etc.

According to the physicists on that forum everything will appear unchanged and the only people that would notice that the Lorentz transformations are in effect is people who are stationary relative to the motion of the rapidly moving space ship. — MrCypress

Well I am inclined to agree with them, but I agree the huge mass thing that is implied by the equations of motion is difficult to grasp. Do they say that mass is relative somehow?

Yes but everything else accompanying the clocks aged less too. During the "fast" motion all was appearing normal on board. I think maybe the "anomaly" you are thinking of is "why should the plane/rocket be the one to have the clock with less ticks if all motion is relative.. after all one could say the Earth was moving "fast" realtive to the rocket/clock so wht don't all earth clocks show some missed ticks relative to the rocket/plane clock when the rocket/plane lands back on Earth"? I believe I read a while back the answer is something to do with the fact that the rocket/plane was the one to accelerate and not the Earth ... v confusing though!

What

The space traveller and his space ship would also be flattened like a pancake and the ship would have acquired nearly infinite mass. — MrCypress

Is this an anomaly though? Surely it would be a conformation that the laws of physics are holding up. I'm not sure anyone is saying that moving at near light speeds won't be calamitous to life are they?

I think that Scruton comes across as completely uncaring about some of the
dangerous developments in western politics. It's not so much what he says - though there are examples that are indefensible - but what he doesn't say.

"Is the modern day interpretation of Special Relativity correct?" — MrCypress

Given that experiments hold up the theory, maybe it would be more interesting to discuss how to visualise it all and get a handle on it?

when a space craft is traveling at 99.999 % the speed of light physicists say anyone in the space craft will not be able to tell that they are traveling near the speed of light. — MrCypress

That is not what physicists say. You would be able to know how fast you are travelling by measuring how long it takes to reach a star or planet of known distance. Your clock would be ticking away normally as far as you are concerned. What physicists say is that all the laws of physics look the same to you regardless of how fast you are travelling. So you would not know how fast you are travelling by looking for anomalies - there would be none.

Shall we work on this a bit? — tim wood

OK! here goes

I wonder if by happiness you mean a feeling as opposed to a judgment, and at that a feeling about some things, but not - and probably not - about all things. — tim wood

Sure - there are bound to be many things in a state-of-affairs that you don't care about.

As judgment I read happiness as a kind of satisfaction and contentment, and to be sure the enjoyment of the feeling of those. At the same time, I can easily conceive of happiness while not feeling especially good at all. — tim wood

I'm not quite sure what you mean by happiness as a "judgement", but surely satisfaction and contentment come from achieving a desired state-of-affairs. Perhaps contentment is when the state-of-affairs aimed for is deliberately not one's ideal, but a trimmed back one.

It is interesting to note that happiness and contentment stagnate and reduce if the state-of-affiars does not change. I think psychological studies show this. So this fact needs to be squared with the notion of happiness being maximised when an "ideal state" is achieved. My solution that preserves the integrity of happiness (eustaciousness) is that the ideal state should be declared in terms which allow a never ending maintenance of the environment. Thus a person who enjoys gardening would never want a garden that needs no work, but would want one that always requires the amount of work and time she wants to put in.

What about the notion that time has a start point but it can never be reached ... sort of asymptotic singularity style?

What you got?

You don't have to know the exact value of (Si - Sc). Actually it is very unlikely in most contexts - i.e. beyond the smple goal driven states of primitive forms of life - that the value is one dimensional. For example, one might be very eustatious -(i.e. "happy" as I defined it in my previous post) about a certain aspect of one's life that is coming good, but uneustatious about another that is failig to live up to one's hopes.

There may not be any point in somehow summing or integrating over all substates - the important aspect of understanding eustatiousness is knowing that happiness depends on making progress in all aspects. However, I suspect the unconscious brain provides some sort of summation which then feels as emotion.

Does happiness cover a determinate time frame? If I'm happy this morning does that count towards this afternoon? — tim wood

If you model happiness as eustaciousness then time problems are handled quite naturally because you can have ideal substates that explictly mention time. For example, "I want to tidy the garden by dinner time". The value of this achieving this substate diminshes over time, because it was time oriented.

Obviously I am making this up on the fly, but hey I think it's a goer!

But the First Cause can have no explanation; there is no cause of the first cause; no reason for it. The first cause has to be timeless and thus beyond causation (else we end up in an infinite regress). — Devans99

What if we abandon our common sense notions of time?

Very well.....

Let us define happiness as inversely proportional to some amount of change you would like to make to yourself and everything external to yourself. Let the state of yourself and everything else be called the "state". One's happiness by this definition, I will call "eustatia". Let the current state percevied be Sc. Let one's current ideal state be Si. Si is never less than Sc. Then the amount of eustatia experienced currently increases or decreases according to whether (Si - Sc) is decreasing or increasing.

Feel free to attack!

Does the question "why is there something rather than nothing" accurately refelect the emotions and feelings of people who ask it?

Are they not really asking "why is this something the way it is"? Are they not really ranting about arbitrariness?