But how do you know whether eating an apple from a tree doesn't cause immense suffering to the tree? If you don't know how other beings suffer, how do you know how you can cause less suffering?

As Carl Sagan would say, why not just say that the universe always existed, instead of saying that some God that always existed created the universe?

That's all fine and dandy in theory, but then in practice how do you know when an hypothesis is untrue? You may say, if an observation doesn't match the hypothesis then the hypothesis is untrue or falsified, but how do you know if the observation doesn't match the hypothesis? You may say it's obvious whether it does or not, but how do you know whether the instruments of measurement you use work the way you believe them to work? How do you know there isn't some effect you haven't taken into account that is acting on what you are observing or on your instruments of measurement? In fact, you're never really sure whether your hypothesis in itself is untrue or not, that depends on a whole bunch of other hypotheses you make unconsciously when making an observation.

Scientists use the theory of general relativity. Some observations about galaxies do not match the theory. Is it because the theory is untrue, or because of something they haven't taken into account? They went with the second option, they believe there is something they don't see, which they call dark matter, that is acting on the galaxies they see. They tried to detect it in other ways, they devised some huge experiments, and they still haven't found it. Is it because this dark matter doesn't exist, or because it has properties that makes it undetectable to the experiments carried out up to now? In fact if we never detect it, we can never really be sure whether it's because it doesn't exist or because we haven't yet conducted an experiment that can detect it. The range of possibilities is infinite, we can never rule them all out. So we end up realizing that science doesn't deal with truth or even probabilities, if we're being honest we're never really sure about anything, we can't prove a theory is true and we can't prove it is false. The prize at the end of the scientific inquiry is not truth, it's just the ability to predict the future to some extent.

What's truth even? It's absolute certainty, something you can hold onto no matter what, but what fits that description? Scientific laws have a limited applicability, they're only laws as long as we blind ourselves to a whole bunch of observations and experiences that don't fit them. Maybe there is no such thing as absolute certainty. Maybe you're not just a passive being subjected to absolute laws, but a being that has the power to bring about change in the way you desire. The quest for truth seems like the quest of the individual who feels powerless and desperately needs to hang onto something to feel a bit safe.

Yes, either it's possible to live without eating any other being in a way we haven't found yet, or we have to cause suffering to other beings to live. Or we may find solace in believing that death is a liberation rather than suffering. But then the question becomes why not liberate oneself?

Or we can have the usual cop-out that since we can't know might as well believe what we want and keep living without pondering, blinding ourselves in a way. Live worry-free blinding ourselves to the suffering we cause.

It's all a strange show.

I wonder how it would feel to get eaten alive. Is it the worst experience one can possibly have, or does the mind becomes somehow disconnected from the body at that point? In the first case one could argue that the suffering caused from eating is much greater than the pleasure felt, while in the latter case one could argue that not much suffering is caused when eating other beings. The first case gives me a very bleak view of existence, while the second one gives a much more joyful one.

Life is a struggle. We can't just live, we have needs to fulfill or else we die. It's sad in a sense, but then again maybe it is the struggle and the ephemerality of it all that makes joy possible. When one's needs are all fulfilled effortlessly life becomes colorless, and constancy is death.

What is meaning? It is some sort of a feeling that drives us. When we feel it there is nothing to explain, the feeling is the whole meaning, the 'why' we are doing what we do. And when we don't feel it it's like there is no meaning and no amount of rationality can make us find one.

Various people are driven by different things. The desire to make one's children happy, that can be the meaning of one's life. Or the desire to achieve such or such thing. Then we might ask in the end what's the point? But we need to feel it to see the point.

The beliefs we hold have an impact on what gives us meaning also. Meaning is subjective to a great extent and I don't think you would find one that applies to everyone. You have to find yours.

In the example:
All winged horses are horses,
All winged horses have wings,
Therefore some horses have wings.

If it is assumed that there are winged horses, then the conclusion is a tautology (which is disconnected from whether you have seen or imagined a winged horse or not).

If it is assumed that there is no winged horse, then the conclusion is false.

Without either assumption, one might say that the conclusion doesn't follow since an additional assumption is required to decide the truthness of the conclusion. Or one might use a logic where the conclusion is true from the two premises. Fundamentally logic is just a tool, what matters is whether the system of logic used is helpful to make sense of everything else.

But there is a difference between the title of this discussion and the example about winged horses.
The title is: All A is B, all A is C, therefore some B is C
The example is: All A is B, all A have C, therefore some B have C

Following the title, an example would be:

All winged horses are horses,
All winged horses are animals,
Therefore some horses are animals.

Or

All winged horses are horses,
All winged horses are imaginary creatures,
Therefore some horses are imaginary creatures.

There, regardless of whether there are winged horses or not, the conclusion is easier to accept as true. Then one might use a system of logic where "Some B is C" is a logical consequence of "All A is B" and "All A is C".

You don't understand that the trajectory of light is pure assumption, it cannot be observed directly. There are theories where light travels in straight lines, there are theories where it doesn't, both can be made to fit with observations. As Popper and Lakatos explained you can always save whatever non-trivial theory by adding auxiliary assumptions to it. You can always assume there is some additional effect not taken into account acting on what is measured or on the instruments of measurement themselves. At any time there are an arbitrarily large number of theories consistent with a finite number of observations. Besides, by some mathematical transformation you can reformulate a theory in a different geometrical space such that things have a different shape while the theory remains empirically equivalent. I wouldn't know how to make you see that in a few lines if you don't see it, but start by trying to see why you can't observe the trajectory that light follows, you only see light reaching your eyes. Then you can assume different trajectories and reformulate the 'laws' of physics such that they fit these trajectories, and then things such as the Earth would have a different shape than how they appear.

You seem to have a lingering hate for idealism though. I don't even consider myself as an idealist or as anything, I just follow observations and thoughts where they lead me. If you don't experience these particles then you imagine them right? You conceptualize them somehow in your mind right? Then sure, maybe these particles exist independently of you, whatever that may mean, but you can't abstract out the fact that you are involved in the act of conceptualization of these particles. You are the one making an unnecessary assumption by assuming that they exist that way independently of you, while I am making no such assumption, it is a direct observation for you that you imagine these particles rather than seeing them as you see a rock. You are the one trying to push a world view that is supported by belief rather than observation. And I think that what you call frustration stems from a fear of shaking the foundations of that world view.

On the surface the Earth looks approximately flat. From a distance the Earth looks approximately spherical. That the Earth looks spherical is an observation. Yet we have examples of observations where things appear not quite as they really are, which we call optical illusions. There are optical illusions where straight lines appear curved (the straightness of the lines being judged in some other way).

So it could be that the Earth being spherical is an optical illusion. The statement that the Earth is spherical is based on the assumption that light travels in straight lines between the Earth and your eyes, or between the Earth and the camera taking pictures of the Earth from a distance. But the statement that light travels in straight lines is an untestable hypothesis, it is not falsifiable, because you never see light as it travels, you only see light when it reaches your eyes. It could be that light travels in such a way that Earth appears spherical while it is not. At first glance that seems to contradict other theories and observations, such as that gravity is spherically symmetric, but in fact you could formulate a theoretical framework in which Earth isn't spherical, in which gravity isn't spherically symmetric, in which light doesn't travel in straight lines, and which would fit observations just as well.

The equations in that theory would be probably more cumbersome, but then choosing between the two would just be a matter of convenience, fundamentally nothing makes the simpler theory more "true".

In fact you could formulate an arbitrarily large number of different theories that fit observations just as well. Most would be more complicated than what we have now. But potentially in the bunch lie some theories that are simpler than what we have now, and maybe we'll come to falsify theories which we treat as certainty now. But as Lakatos said, the act of falsification is nothing more than a social consensus, scientists decide that a theory is falsified when it encounters too many issues for their own taste and when other alternatives appear more fruitful.

A theory is basically a process that allows you to compute predictions from observations. But what lies beyond these observations is a matter of belief. We can tell how things appear to us, but we can't tell how they are independently of us, if that even has a meaning.

Jesus I'm getting sick of that nonsense here. Why is this place infested with idealists? — Terrapin Station

Why the hate? Do you see elementary particles with your eyes? Or do you imagine them to be here, making up what you do see? Do you see the elementary particles that supposedly make up a rock or do you see a rock?

You imagine the elementary particles, you imagine them to behave in specific ways, and through that process of imagination you can explain conveniently a lot of what you see with your eyes. Sure the mainstream scientific view is to see these particles as existing independently from us. But there is an explanatory gap between imagining these particles and saying that they exist independently from us the way we imagine them. I don't see what you don't understand about that.

Then going back to the original point, even if these particles do exist independently from us, they can't possibly explain the fact that you do see, that you do experience things, unless you ascribe to them that seemingly mystical ability to elicit qualia, which is ignored by the mainstream scientific view.

What’s more, who’s to say experience is even limited to the complex neurological systems of organisms and brains. Frankly it is a vast assumption to make any definition for what experience is. From experiencing, I infer that ... — Xav

Indeed, all of our concepts stem from what we experience, the concept of a brain and of neurons stems from what we experience, so how could we ever know that experience itself stems from brains alone? How could we ever say that what we experience suffices to infer where experience itself comes from? I just feel there is much more out there than what we are able to experience, and I like your take on things.

Who else is being confused by it? Physicists and those studying the subject know very well that energy isn't this other thing, tangibly out in the world. No one is actually reifying it in any substantive way. What are the supposed confusions resulting from this? The actual ones, ones that really do - in the real world - cause confusions and errors in thinking. — MindForged

Probably anyone attempting to understand the universe will be confused by it at some point, unless one doesn't mind about inconsistencies. We talk about kinetic, potential, chemical, thermal, mechanical, dark, gravitational, electromagnetic, electrical, magnetic energy, we talk of energy being converted, energy being stored, of something moving because it has energy, of something being hot because it has energy, of matter being made of energy, of energy converting into matter and matter converting into energy, of energy being conserved, of energy density curving spacetime, of pure energy, then one asks, ok so what the hell is energy?

One may look up on Google, what is energy? There you're told that energy comes in different forms, energy is a conserved quantity, energy is in everything, ok then what the hell is it? Then you find some definition, energy is the ability to do work, or the capacity to do work, then you look up 'work' and you find that it is moving something against a force, ok so then what is force? You look it up and you find that it is a push or pull on an object, then you look up the definition of push and of pull and you find that it is to exert force on something. So energy is defined as the ability to move something against a force, and force is defined circularly, so you still don't know what it is, you just have this vague intuitive notion of force, but something seems amiss.

Then even if you're content with the definition that energy is the ability to move something, what the hell does it mean for matter to be made of the ability to move something, what does it mean for the density of the ability to move something to curve spacetime, what does it mean for the ability to move something to convert into matter, what does it mean for the ability to move something to be pure? I honestly believe that those who aren't confused by it aren't because they don't think much about it. And that many students give up about physics because they end up believing they are confused because they are too dumb to understand rather than because the concept is used in confusing and inconsistent ways. A bunch of people end up believing they are too dumb to understand things, and end up relying on the words of authorities who in appearance know better, but really they don't.

...Because space is expanding? Or more specifically, the metric governing the geometry and size of the universe is increasing (the metric tensors change over time), so calling that expansion is perfectly sensible. — MindForged

Sure you can call it expanding space, the problem is then when professional physicists are asked, if two galaxies far away are somehow tethered so as to remain at a constant distance and then the tether is removed, what would happen? As it turns out many believe expanding space would push them away, because they reify it as some tangible thing actually stretching or being constantly created everywhere, while expanding space does no such thing, it is merely galaxies moving away from each other because of their velocity (not taking into account the possible accelerated expansion which here would involve an acceleration).

Expanding space is merely galaxies moving away from each other because of their receding velocities, no acceleration involved, no tangible space being stretched or created, how many people who hear of expanding space understand that? Very, very few.

Just pointing out things are constituted from smaller things doesn't mean understanding those smaller things will allow one to understand everything about what they make up. — MindForged

Do you think that your experience of the color red is made of elementary particles? If it isn't made of particles then what is it made of?

At times I am able to see a complex world in my mind, with my eyes closed but while being awake. At times while sleeping I dream of things that seem as real as waking life, and that I only differentiate by the fact that I wake up. There are what we call optical illusions that make us see the same thing in very different ways. There are beliefs that change how we experience the world, feelings that change how we experience the world. There are some substances that can make us see things that no word exists to describe, and thus that we can't communicate with words nor even with paintings. There are sometimes experiences that seem definitely "out there", totally different from everything else. The blind doesn't see color, that doesn't mean others can't see it, if the majority was blind the minority with sight would be considered as hallucinating, in the same way potentially some people can sense what others can't. I have come to see the mind as an incredibly powerful tool that can shape everything. So to me there is definitely more to us than our body that we see through the eyes alone, through whatever instrument that is seen through the eyes alone, I see sight as one of many senses. Then we do the whole of physics through our sight and thought, but there is more than that.

In fact, these elementary particles that make up everything according to the standard view, they exist in our imagination, in our mind. We invoke them as a neat tool to explain a lot of what we see, but we don't see them, we imagine how they behave and use that to describe what we see.

So to say that particles that we imagine in our mind, and use to explain what we see through our mind, exist independently from our mind is already quite a stretch. The properties we ascribe to these particles reside in our imagination, in our thought, in our mind. The properties we ascribe to what we experience reside in our mind.

If you imagine that all these particles can do is move, accelerate each other, then how could they give rise to conscious experience at all? Sure in your imagination they can give rise to a ship and its shape and so on but how can they give rise to your experience of a ship, to you feeling what it's like to see it and touch it?

Assuming there is a world existing independently of the mind, I see everything we experience as the result of an interaction between the mind and that world, because depending on how we feel and what we believe we see the world totally differently.

That's fine.. But what I'm asking you is if you think the standard view there is that those properties obtain via interaction of mind and the object.

Whatever physics thinks those properties amount to, exactly, it posits that there are such properties. Either it thinks that those properties are the result of minds and objects interacting or it does not. — Terrapin Station

That follows directly from my last message, the standard view in physics assumes that the rock's properties you described are completely described by how the particles that compose it and its environment move, and as such that these properties exist independently of the mind.

According to the standard view, the particles of the rock are arranged in such a way that they reflect light of a given frequency which appears to us as the color of the rock and which enables us to distinct the rock from its background, which gives its shape. The tendency to crumble is seen as the result of the motion of the particles within the rock which are more or less disturbed by the motion of the particles of its environment. The density of the rock is seen as the result of the motion of its particles which move downwards while the particles in water move them upwards. The patterns of the rock have again to do with the motion of its particles, which reflect photons of different frequencies and appear to us as different colors which enables us to distinct as patterns.

The standard view doesn't talk about the mind, yet the mind is involved in the act of observation. The color and shape and behavior of the rock are seen as properties of the rock, yet it is the act of observing the rock that leads us to these properties, someone who is blind would have no notion of the color of the rock, someone who has no sense of sight or hearing or sound would have no notion of the shape or patterns of the rock.

If we were all blind, we wouldn't come up with a notion of color. If you assume that color is a property of the rock, then why wouldn't we ascribe it this property if we were blind? Because we are not able to see it? But then that depends on us and our mind, not on the rock.

That's one example of observation that leads me to see that we are the ones who ascribe properties to things, based on what we are able to experience, what our mind is able to experience. That the properties we ascribe to things depends on our minds.

In the standard view these properties belong to the things, so in the standard view it is thought that if the properties of shape and density and pattern can emerge from the properties of mass and charge and spin, then potentially the property of consciousness can emerge from all that, but it is a flawed argument in that it omits the very fact that we ascribe these properties through our mind, and that without presupposing the existence of the mind we cannot possibly derive consciousness from a world devoid of consciousness, unless we ascribe to the particles the ability to elicit consciousness on top of that of causing motion. All properties are given through consciousness, and in the standard view all properties boil down to motions, but the conscious experience of red itself cannot be boiled down to motions.

The way I see it is, we have experiences, within these experiences we find regularities, we describe these regularities, but in doing so at no point do we explain how our experiences arose in the first place. If we want to claim to describe everything, then we have to account for these experiences themselves. And if we're saying that everything is particles in motion accelerating each other, then at no point can we explain how particles in motion can give rise to experience itself.

We're so used to using physics to explain what we see, that we forget that we also need to explain why we see in the first place, if we want to claim to explain everything. And to explain that we see, there needs to be something more than what we see. If there wasn't something more then we could see what others see, but we don't. If you look at me I'm not just a body that you see, because I feel and I experience, and that you don't see. And you too are more than the body others see, because you experience and you feel. And looking at your brain as closely as possible won't make us experience what you experience. We are more than just a bunch of particles with no ability other than moving each other.

What sorts of constraints are you talking about? Could you give some examples? — Terrapin Station

Being forced to do a mind-numbing repetitive task for 8 hours a day every day, being treated more or less badly by some superior who tells you what to do, feeling constrained to submit for fear of losing that job, having to do that for 20 or 30 or 40 years before you can have a house that you can call your own, being unable to go settle anywhere without some landowner telling you that you can't settle there and forcing you to leave unless you have enough numbers on an account to give him in exchange, thus being forced to take part in society which often involves doing a mind-numbing repetitive task for 8 hours a day every day...

Okay, so let's take a rock. A rock is going to have a particular shape, size/extension, tendency to crumble or not (cohesion, brittleness, etc.), density, patterns where it might have lines/striations or "dots" of different minerals--all sort of properties, those are just a few as an example.

You don't believe that those properties are "of" the rock itself. You believe that those properties are only in our minds.

So, I'm asking you:

(1) how you came to believe that those properties are not of the rock itself, and
(2) whether you believe that the idea that those properties are not of the rock itself is the standard view of physics (and geology, etc.) — Terrapin Station

Yes okay. Actually I believe that these properties result from the interaction between the mind and the rock, I don't believe they reside solely in the mind nor in the rock. It would be quite long to explain how I have arrived at that view, I don't have much time now but will think about it later.

Regarding (2), as I described in the 3rd and 4th paragraph in my last message, I believe that fundamental physics holds the view that the behavior of a rock is completely described by the motions of the elementary particles that compose it and its environment, and as such that in principle all the properties of the rock could be derived from taking into account the motions of all these particles.

But even though the shape, tendency to crumble, density, patterns of the rock might be derived from taking into account the motions of all the particles that compose it and its environment, I hold the view that what it feels like to hold the rock in your hand couldn't be derived, and that for instance what it feels like to look at light of frequency 700 nm couldn't be derived from fundamental physics.

If only, in my opinion, that answered either question I asked you. — Terrapin Station

That answers both with some effort. The standard view in physics is based on the two premises I stated earlier. These premises cannot possibly account for conscious experience. Yet somehow physicists believe that in principle they could explain consciousness as arising from these particles, but based on these two premises that is impossible.

So "The emergent properties are to be found within our experience rather than in the particles themselves" is my view, based on the fact that particles as described by the two premises are incompatible with conscious experience.

If you ask a physicist, they will tell you that the behavior of an atom relative to the atoms surrounding it is completely described by the behavior of the particles that compose it and the atoms around it. And then that the behavior of a ship is completely described by the behavior of the particles that compose it and that compose its environment. And that the behavior of the brain is completely described by the behavior of the particles that compose it and its environment.

Yet the behavior of these particles is merely relative motion. And the emergent properties of macroscopic things are not mere motion but something experienced, such as the wetness of water or the heat of the sun. So the experienced emergent properties are not described by the standard view in physics. The equations in the fundamental models cannot explain that water would feel wet or that the sun would feel hot, the equations only say how particles move. And they cannot explain how conscious experience would arise at all.

Why would you believe that? What led to that belief for you, in other words?

Also, do you believe that that's the standard view in physics, for example, since you were appealing to that earlier? — Terrapin Station

The standard view in physics is that for instance quarks move each other in a way that with rough instruments make us detect them as single particles such as protons and neutrons, that protons, neutrons and electrons move each other in such a way that with even rougher instruments we detect them as atoms, then with even rougher instruments as molecules, and so on. The standard view in physics surely doesn't say that an atom is anything more than the elementary particles it is made of, that a ship is anything more than the elementary particles it is made of, that a brain is anything more than the elementary particles it is made of.

Properties aren't the same thing as abilities. So listing abilities doesn't exhaust property-talk. — Terrapin Station

That they are called properties doesn't change the fact that all they dictate is how the particles move relative to each other, you could make the whole of physics in a more cumbersome way without talking about properties, just describing how each pair of particle move each other. If instead of saying that an object accelerates at 9.8m/s² I say that the object has the property to accelerate at 9.8m/s², surely saying that it has this property doesn't say anything more than what was already described.

When particles are in relations with other particles, so that they form atoms, molecules, etc. all the way up to things like shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages, etc. they have a lot of other properties than just mass, charge, etc., don't they? — Terrapin Station

No, the particles keep moving as described, what changes is what we perceive and what we interact with. The emergent properties are to be found within our experience rather than in the particles themselves. The very experience which mere particles moving each other cannot account for.

These properties have no ability other than dictating how these particles move relative to each other. Instead of saying that particles have properties, you could take each pair of elementary particles and describe how they move relative to each other, and you wouldn't even need to talk about properties, you would just have particles and how they move relative to each other.

These properties only dictate how the particles move relative to each other, be it mass, charge, spin, what have you.

The argument would have to not be incredibly poor, as that premise is. — Terrapin Station

Yet that premise is at the root of our current fundamental theories of physics, general relativity, the standard model of particle physics, and so on.

it can't be just environment. In other words, it's almost as if you're trying to remove the affected individual from the equation.

We still have an affected individual that we need to deal with, and that means addressing how they've been affected.

But you can't pretend that there's not an affected individual, as if the issue is ONLY the environment.

When we're talking about an environmental cause we still have an affected individual --the guy's arm is still broken because his neighbor hit him with a baseball bat. It's not as if the neighbor is the extent of the problem. We have a broken arm to deal with, too — Terrapin Station

Of course the problem is not the environment alone, it is the combination of the individual plus their environment. When I was saying the problem is within the environment, I was taking the point of view of the individual, who is told there is something wrong in in his brain that is the cause of his suffering, while it is often the constraints imposed upon him that make him suffer, constraints that go against his desires.

Faced with such constraints, the individual may come up with intricate strategies to cope with the associated suffering. If he doesn't find a way to cope then that manifests as depression. Maybe he will constantly be on his guards and that will manifest as generalized anxiety. Maybe he will assume others' intentions and that will manifest as paranoia. Maybe he will internally imitate such or such person depending on the situation and that will manifest as schizophrenia.

I'm saying that a lot of mental suffering stems from the constraints imposed by society. And that a lot of psychiatry has to do with trying to adapt the individual to these constraints, rather than finding out why these constraints are there in the first place and how we could remove them.

Some constraints are seemingly unavoidable, we want to survive and we need water and food to survive, so needing water or food and not finding it would be suffering. But many constraints in society are imposed by people onto others, in some direct or indirect way, and those are responsible for immense suffering, but psychiatry doesn't attempt to address them and assumes them to be healthy, and instead attempts to cure the constrained individual who in fact suffers because of how he is constrained.

Of course it is easier for the one who constrains to say that the individual who is constrained suffers because there is something wrong in his brain, rather than because he is constrained, even though if the roles were switched the newly constrained would be the one suffering.

In looking for issues within the brain, psychiatry is legitimizing the way society function, with its rulers and its ruled, and blinding itself to the fact that many are constrained by others in ways that would make pretty much any human being suffer if put into the same situation. Attempting to cure an imagined illness in their brains seems like a hopeless venture.

I see a broken arm as a poor analogy for a "mental illness", I would say a more accurate analogy would be that of breathing poisonous air. Some people are more susceptible to it than others, it is more poisonous in some places than some others, some are more able to find helpful techniques to cope with it than others, some become affected durably by it and we give them sleeping pills so they forget about their suffering, but we never focus on the root cause which is the poisonous air and the root issue which is how to clean it.

What I was getting at is that you'd need an argument that doesn't exist as far as I know to support "it is impossible for these particles to give rise to any conscious experience," — Terrapin Station

But precisely the argument is what some refer to as the "hard problem of consciousness".

This is how I would formulate the argument:

Premises
P1. Everything is made of elementary particles
P2. Elementary particles only have the ability to move each other

Observations
O1. The experiences of red, of a musical note, of love, of anything, are not made of particles.
O2. You can argue that the experience of red is correlated with photons of a given frequency entering the eyes, that the experience of a musical note is correlated with air molecules vibrating in your ears at a given frequency, that the experience of love is correlated with certain molecules being synthetized in your brain, but the experiences themselves are not particles.

Conclusion
C. Such particles cannot account for any conscious experience.

If particles are all there is, and if they only have the ability to move each other, there can't be conscious experience. But we have such experiences. So such particles are not all there is.

To account for the existence of such experiences we have to introduce something more, either these particles have the ability to elicit such experiences (which gives them a mystical character and not just a physical one anymore), or there is something more than these particles, or some combination of the two.

Everything we experience is the evidence that we are more than our physical body and brain seen as an ensemble of physical particles.

Sorry, I wasn't being arrogant, I have been rejected enough in my life that when some important idea I cherish and that would make the world a better place is rejected as stupid, that truly hurts me. I felt you were trying to make me look as stupid for saying what I said, but I misinterpreted, sorry about that.

Fundamentally I'm just saying that we are more than our physical body, more than our brain, we don't see the "more" with our eyes but it's there. And then even if we find correlations between the brain we see and what we feel, that doesn't imply that the brain is the cause of what we feel, nor that what we feel cannot exist without the brain.

You are confusing convenient speech patterns with the literal belief in the things spoken about. This is an obvious misunderstanding. You already know what energy is defined by in physics so I don't know why you're going on about this. — MindForged

I see what you call "convenient speech patterns" as sources of endless confusion. In all these speech patterns energy is reified as some sort of thing that makes up tangible things. Energy is just a tool, and yet it is said to be a cause, to convert, to be the fundamental constituent that makes up tangible things, to you that may be convenient, to me that apparent convenience in using improper language leads to much more inconvenience in the misunderstandings and misconceptions it creates.

You're saying people don't confuse these speech patterns with literal beliefs, then why is it that even some professional physicists confuse space as an actual entity that stretches or expands between galaxies, because we keep talking about expanding space? This is not inconsequential, since it was shown that in some situations they would make incorrect predictions in treating space as a tangible thing that expands. And if professional researchers are confused in that way, think about how confused are students and curious minds attempting to understand the universe because of all that improper speech.

Name one published physicist who has claimed a "theory of everything" like string theory could be used - even in principle - to analyze and speak about literally everything. These are theories of fundamental physics, no one thinks they're going to be used to understand highly emergent phenomena, mathematics, politics or what have you. — MindForged

I think you're not seeing the issue. In principle you might use string theory to say, strings make up particles which make up atoms which make up molecules which make up our brain and body, then the brain and body behave in such a way so as to protect themselves and survive, and communicate with other brains and bodies to survive better, which you could describe as politics, but where there remains a fundamental gap, is that if these particles make up all there is, and if all these particles can do is move one another, then whatever complex motion of particles won't ever give rise to a conscious experience of anything. For there to be a conscious experience, if these particles are said to be all there is, then they must have the ability to elicit conscious experiences, on top of the ability of causing motion. Then not including that ability in equations misses something fundamental about existence.

Physics aim to describe the fundamental constituents of the universe we are a part of, physics does not just aim at describing what we see with our eyes. But we are not just our body seen with the eyes, we are also what we feel, what we experience. I think most physicists don't spend much time thinking about consciousness, I think most believe that neuroscience will give the answers. But according to them neurons are made of particles that cannot possibly elicit experiences. So they are missing something fundamental.

I mean, it's fine if some people want to focus on describing what they see with their eyes and omit what they feel. The problem is then when the public is told that we are made solely of particles as described in the physicists' models, that a heap of moving particles is all we are, and because of that what we feel is just a certain motion of particles, that choice is an illusion and we have no free will, that when our body dies we cease to experience anything and our existence stops suddenly, and I think that's just irresponsible.

Yes sorry I misinterpreted your comment. I agree that 3D is more intuitive than visualizing in 2D, but maybe it could be possible to train our minds to see in more dimensions. After all, 3D is just how we interpret what we see with the eyes. But what we experience is not just what we see with the eyes, there is also feelings, emotions. And maybe we could train our minds to see it all as a united whole, in more dimensions, and that this could give us answers we haven't found yet.

For instance where does what we think and feel and believe fit into that 3D world? We take it as a byproduct of that 3D world, but maybe we could come to new insights by training ourselves to see it all as a whole in more dimensions, and see that way more clearly how what we think/feel/believe changes the 3D world and how it is changed by it. I believe that the mind is a more powerful tool than we're used to think.

People have believed in it for a long time, and what has all that belief and effort culminated in? — Michael Ossipoff

It's easy to get discouraged when most people believe we can't change the world, and because of all the resistance you are faced with when you attempt to change it. But I believe that people are waking up more and more, and that thanks to the internet we can spread that belief to others and make it become a reality. It won't be easy, but I truly believe in a profound way that we can change it.

But the society is made up of individuals. So if it is how we behave with each other and how we interact with each other and what we force each other to do that makes us miserable, then why wouldn't psychiatry address that? If it directed its efforts towards that that would be much more effective.

In the current state psychiatry protects the status quo and ensures that it will remain relevant in the future, as many people will never adapt to what they are forced to endure. But there are many people who don't force others to do anything. It is usually the ones who are forced and constrained who suffer, and those who force others who are seen as the healthy ones. So fundamentally psychiatry protects the few who benefit from the constraints imposed onto the majority.

The one under pressure slaving away every day suffers and is diagnosed as mentally sick, as if to say why do you suffer? A good slave doesn't suffer. So let's give you some chemicals so you can be a good slave again. While the one putting the pressure enjoys the rewards and the good life, and protects his position in part thanks to psychiatry which justifies the status quo. If you're a slave and you suffer, it's not because you're a slave, it's because there is something wrong with you.

Ah, that makes sense. — Terrapin Station

Did you react the same way the first time you heard the Earth isn't flat?

Yes it is.

The way that you tell that there's no elephant in the room you're in at the moment, for example, is by looking for an elephant. If you don't see one--absence of evidence of an elephant, then that's evidence that there's no elephant in your room. — Terrapin Station

No it's not, all it implies is you don't see an elephant.

What you're saying is, when we hadn't observed Neptune there was evidence it didn't exist. Well, no there wasn't, there just wasn't evidence it existed.

That's a sentence you could write. A completely arbitrary sentence. — Terrapin Station

And a sentence that makes sense. Look up the hard problem of consciousness if you want to see what I'm getting at, but if you did you wouldn't be so dismissive.

Yes that's arbitrary, but I find it harder to visualize a 2D universe where we are moving in the same instances that we interpret ourselves as moving in a 3D universe. So I was really just giving an heuristic argument as to why we are the ones who impose dimensions onto what we experience, rather than these dimensions existing independently of us.

But the universe is finite so we cannot have anything traveling at an infinite speed else it would not be in the universe. — Devans99

Arbitrarily fast is not infinite, and the universe can expand arbitrarily fast too.

Time is fundamental because we can't have stuff flying around at infinite speeds in a sane universe. There has to be a speed limit so the universe must be time-aware. And all experimental evidence points to that speed limit. — Devans99

In the Lorentz ether theory light does not travel at infinite speeds, but can travel arbitrarily fast depending on the direction. Again, absolutely zero experiment is able to measure the speed of light in a single direction. All we ever measure is its average speed on a round-trip. You can assume light goes at whatever speed in a given direction so long as its average is equal to c, and that contradicts zero experiment. In many aspects the Lorentz ether theory is more intuitive than Special relativity, there are no apparent paradoxes in it such as the twin paradox.

I could go into length explaining how it is that we cannot measure the speed of light in a single direction, how all we ever measure is its round-trip speed, how the Lorentz ether theory is more intuitive than special relativity, but if you accept the possibility that this is the case then what remains of time besides a tool we use to measure change?

Then look into the Lorentz ether theory, it is empirically equivalent to Special Relativity, no experiment distinguishes between the two, yet in the former one light can go arbitrarily fast. But we measure its velocity to remain constant because all we are able to measure empirically is its round-trip average speed. Look it up. You are basing your reasoning on assuming Special Relativity is true, but it's just one out of several possible theories that match experiments equally well. So you're saying if Special Relativity is true, then time is fundamental to the universe. But at least one other theory is equally accurate as Special Relativity and does not imply that time is fundamental to the universe. So why keep assuming that time is fundamental to the universe? If you stopped assuming that I think you would find some intellectual peace on that matter.

We talked about that on the 2nd page of this thread, I thought I had convinced you, I addressed all your points regarding that.

The physical world (=universe) must have a temporal beginning. How can something exist without a temporal beginning? If you take away the Big Bang, the universe no longer exists. So deductively its impossible for the universe to exist without a temporal start. — Devans99

Do you agree that without change there is no time?

If so, the temporal beginning of the universe would be the beginning of change.

That beginning of change could have been arbitrarily far in the past, but before it there was no change and thus no time.

We could say there was something that had the ability to bring change to itself. And when it used that ability is when the universe began to change, what you call its temporal start.

It's difficult to conceive, but then again it's not something we see every day.

What troubles you about that?

What if there isn't a way to change it? I suggest that there isn't a way to change it. — Michael Ossipoff

But what if there is a way to change it, and that to find it we first have to believe there is?