A trap, ?

There's no objection to there being a perceiver, just that the perceived is the perception.
Or, put differently, that the experienced is always the experience.
Or, that everything (literally) is mind stuff, where mind is the likes of experiences, qualia, thinking, love/feelings, headaches, self-awareness, consciousness.

Seems that, in an ontological sense, an experience is part of the experiencer when occurring.
The experienced, on the other hand, may or may not be.

@Wayfarer, so the Moon and I exists independently of your perception thereof?

• the perception is not always the perceived (Searle and others)
• my experience of you is not you (non-solipsism)
• the experience is not always the experienced (non-idealism)

Natural selection is just a nice story, without a shred of evidence, that appeals to those seeking fitter and not fitter. — Rich

Really?

Would you like to pitch biological evolution (roughly as currently understood) against creationism over in the science (or religion) department?

I'll open a new post referring to your claim, if asked, and if you promise to show evolution the door (or justify your claim I mean). Might include a poll.

Per se, abiogenesis is a hypothesis, and evolution is established.

In fact, I did call the police one time when I got my place attacked in the UK and guess what - they came in 2 days, and ended up doing almost nothing, just saying how sorry they were... I think the state bureaucracy is actually really bad and crippling many of these services. For example, I remember healthcare used to be quite horrible in the UK (massive waiting times) - although it was free. — Agustino

You know, I've noticed something vaguely analogous in big business. Monetary resources go up and down, left and right, and can depend on who-knows-what. North Korea testing nukes and missiles is just one example, with an odd ripple effects. When monetary resources go down, some managers tend to leave (you know, the grass always seem greener on the other side), and people on the floor are let go with no backfills, etc. However, when that happens, the work load does not change (at least not proportionally), meaning that existing employees suddenly have more to do. Eventually some things may get dropped as a result, with lots of resistance, complaints, all that. :)

An analogy in society could be cutting down resources for police, or any supporting public/governmental areas, or something subsequently requiring more police resources. Tax cuts tend to mean something gets dropped, and it may not be readily clear what implications there are. Personally, I pay for civilization with taxes (to paraphrase someone I don't recall), and I certainly don't mind doing so. Do we need 3 cars? No, we have 1, and public transportation is fine. In the US it seems an election could be won by promising tax cuts, and meanwhile there are plenty kids on street living in poverty. That's kids for crying out loud. Kids that could end up taking up police resources for that matter. It's ridiculous.

I don't think it's a secret that cooperation, a civilized society, can accomplish a lot more than some scattered (para-anarchistic?) locals. No, government isn't some abstract "evil entity" "over there"; it's a serving body of it's society.

, well, when I was in the US, I wanted to shake Superman's hand for a job well done and all that, but came up empty handed.
The good folks at the comic con told me my best bet is getting written into a comic book, and that's it.
How disappointing. :)

, I'd say we auto-presuppose that anything that exists is self-identical.
We sort of have to; trying the contrary leads no where.

[...] is confusing for everyone. — Srap Tasmaner

Hm. Seems reasonably clear to me.

For something to be real, it have to exist.
For something to exist, it doesn't have to be real. Like Superman or other imaginary things.

Do you have a simpler understanding or use of the words?

Fictional things don't exist, but fictions do. — unenlightened

That's roughly along the lines of how I use the words.
Say, Superman exists, but just isn't real.

But, exists is not a primary predicate. — Owen

Right.

(Y) I'll go with that.

In brief, something like:

• existence is not a logical predicate (∃ is not just another φ)
• existence can be used as a linguistic predicate

Let's be clear that "My freedom ends at the tip of your nose" is an injunction, not an observation. — Banno

Also nicely expressed by The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789:

Article IV – Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the enjoyment of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law.

And I'm sorry to say, but I think JornDoe has you pretty well nailed. It's only that I do detect an element of actual philosophical insight, that causes me to bother persisting with you. — Wayfarer

My spider-sense gave me the impression of an "any means to my end" sentiment. Agustino would possibly go for some specific theocracy over democracy.

:D @Agustino, for some reason I picture you as some combination of opportunist, evolution-denier, anti-vaxxer, geocentrist, young Earth creationist, flat Earth'er, Moon-landing-denier, conspiracy theorist, proud supernaturalist, wannabe rebel, arrogant troll, misogynist, non-empathetic mental barbarian, with imaginary friends in higher places.

@Michael, deductively alone? No, it's:

• limited option: there is unwarranted suffering — evident (Y)
• comprehensive option: all suffering is warranted — justified? justifiable? (N)

But of course it can easily get more complicated. According to some there is indeed such a heaven, except it extends to humans only, well, and if that's Jesus' hangout, then he supposedly suffered, or so their story goes, ... And some always want to get into the semantics, sometimes warranted means deserved, sometimes unwarranted means useless or just preventable, ...

suffering ... is ... just a fact of life — Michael Ossipoff

(Y) Could perhaps even be accounted for in terms of biological evolution. Maybe the rest is overthinking it, or a kind of reification.

Anyway, tossing 1 out renders the remainder a different inquiry altogether. No given warrant of any kind, just what's found by (empathetic) humans.

How does 6 follow from 2, 3, and 5? — Michael

Observation tells us what's already considered unwarranted suffering. Don't think you'll find many doctors claiming that "the child missing out and suffering due to cancer" is warranted, or that all suffering is warranted. What's considered warranted suffering could, for example, be a kid having uncomfortable dental work done. Is it justifiable that all suffering is warranted?

What is "heaven"? Or do you mean that heaven is equivalent to freedom from suffering? — Cavacava

In this context, heaven could be anything free of suffering.
Of course there's an implicit assumption that such a heaven exists, which (to me) seems like the weakest part of the argument.

One variety of vicious infinite regress could be when trying to justify some proposition, p, and justifying p is done with (or requires) a different proposition, p₁, which, in turn, depends on p₂, ..., ad infinitum, where p_n diverges.
Divergence could, for example, mean never approaching anything in particular (which also has a specific technical meaning in mathematics).
If explaining a claim is deferred to explaining a larger claim, which, in turn, is deferred to explaining an even larger claim, ad infinitum, then you've likely hit a vicious infinite regress, i.e. a non-explanation to begin with.

On the other hand, if all propositions/claims can be shown to collapse into one (like p_n+1 = p_n), for example, then it's not a vicious infinite regress.

The body runs itself. — Michael Ossipoff

Sure. Consciousness occurring is a kind of "running", to use your terminology. If you're out, unconscious, have been put under by anesthetic or whatever, then that kind of "running" isn't occurring. You may come to, though, as long as the body has retained sufficient (structural) integrity.

The separate “consciousness” is Spiritualist fiction. — Michael Ossipoff

I don't think my take presumed or implied anything supernatural or spiritual in particular. At least I don't think there's any requirement to invoke such things, even though we don't self-comprehend exhaustively.

rational autonomy — Brian A

(Y)

We generally like freedom and dislike harm (including other animals), and that can, and do, inform judging actions in terms of morality.
Which hardly are matters of arbitrary, ad hoc opinion, not mere whims of the moment; who ever called liking freedom or disliking harm random or discretionary anyway?
If you require myths and commands to understand that, then there's a good chance you're a bit scary. :)
The objective versus subjective thing is misleading from the get-go.

@Mongrel, sorry, Michael Ossipoff and I may have gone off topic here. :)

No, that's Dualism. — Michael Ossipoff

Not substance dualism, though. Unless you think of space/objects and time/processes as substances? I just think of them as different aspects of the same world, perhaps like memories, inertia, gravity, what-have-you, are aspects of the world that we can differentiate, but not in an incommensurate fashion. The rock in the driveway isn't conscious. My neighbor is (for the most part, at least when I run into them).

, you found us! Welcome to. And what the heck took you so long? :)

As I was saying before, you're using Dualism with a different meaning. You're using it to mean the absence of one-ness with our surroundings.

...whereas the academic Western Dualists use "Dualism" to mean a dissection of the person (the animal) into body and Mind, two distinct substances or entities. ...a belief in Mind as something separate from the body. — Michael Ossipoff

Sorry, my bad for being unclear, I didn't mean to describe old-school substance dualism à la Descartes — supposedly independent, real "substances" — res cogitans (thinking substance, mental) versus res extensa (extended substance, material).

Rather, I meant to account for the apparent dualism monistically, e.g. self versus other, as simply being due to (self)identity, while still taking Levine's explanatory gap serious.

All the self stuff together already is what our cognition is — our self-awareness, 1^st person experiences, thinking, etc (when occurring) — and is ontologically bound by (self)identity, which sets out mentioned partitioning. We're still integral parts of the world like whatever else, interacting, changing, albeit also individuated.

So, cutting more or less everything up into fluffy mental stuff and other material stuff is misleading from the get-go; monism of some sort is just fine, and perhaps a better categorization is that mind is something body can do, and body is moved by mind, alike, which (in synthesis) is what we are as individuals. Whatever it all is.

@noAxioms, you're right, I was thinking more generally in terms of those uhm "larger-world" hypotheses. Something like ...

• modal realism (possible worlds)
• many worlds (quantum mechanics)
• multiverse (e.g. ensemble, M-theory, brane collisions)

... or whatever they all are.

But I’m not mixing separate things. I’m just not unnecessarily separating, dissecting, the animal (including us humans) into artificially separate body and Consciousness. — Michael Ossipoff

That was the point (sort of). :)
What choice do we have but the usual local 1^st person perspective? There's no self-escape, no becoming whatever else. We're already, always bound by identity, which sets the stage for "dualistic" (or "partitioned") thinking, like this one:

• self: mind, consciousness, self-awareness, feelings, map-making, ...
• other: the perceived, the modeled, the encountered, the territories, ...

Hence Levine's explanatory gap. The troubles begin when taking this to mean substance dualism:

Watch. I decide consciously to raise my arm, and the damn thing goes up. (Laughter) Furthermore, notice this: We do not say, "Well, it's a bit like the weather in Geneva. Some days it goes up and some days it doesn't go up." No. It goes up whenever I damn well want it to. — Searle

• Source: Our shared condition — consciousness, John Searle, TEDxCERN

How is this hypothesis backed up? Because if the other universes are undetectable, then I am guessing that it was not brought up from empirical data. Then was it deduced somehow? — Samuel Lacrampe

It apparently fell out of some interpretations of quantum mechanics, and later some string theories.
Quantum mechanics is well-established, string theories aren't.

Our thinking is already "dualistic", as expressed ontologically by all things being just themselves, and not anything else, including our (individuated) selves versus whatever else.

As mentioned by , there's nothing contradictory in that, except when messing up anything with anything else, self with other, ...

Maybe "'partitioning' thinking" is better wording, e.g. self-awareness versus not-self/other.

We're still part of the same world, along with whatever else, though.

Bare-bones definitions could be something like:

• atheism is absence of theism, or disbelief therein, hence the leading 'a'
• an atheist is a human that can be characterized by atheism

Of course most or all humans harbor beliefs of whatever kind.
In the case of atheists, I guess that could then be anything but theism.

I just tend to get a bit suspicious when discussions like this come up, because often enough they're attempts to shift the burden of proof.

Quote seemed relevant to the thread, e.g.

[...] unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true — Sagan

The Demon-Haunted World

Sagan got it. :)

Heya creativesoul, hope all is well on your end.

Conclusion: Therefore, it is not possible for God to categorically not exist (existence is an essential property of God). — Brian A

It seems there are two separate issues here. The first is whether God exists. But the second is that supposing he does exist, is it possible for him to categorically not exist. And to this I say no, since existence is an essential property of God, in the same sense, perhaps, that "having a horn" is the essential property of a unicorn. — Brian A

Some of those snippets could be construed as misuse of language.

Existence is not a predicate
∃ and quiddity

Can't define stuff into existence.

Carl Sagan, 1995.

Need some counter-examples of causal closure.

every physical effect (i.e. caused event) has physical sufficient causes — http://philpapers.org/archive/VICOTC.pdf

Fishfry and, I expect most of the others that have responded to your thread, is/are perfectly familiar with Hilbert's Hotel, and why it is not an argument for any statement other than 'aren't infinities interesting?' Ditto for Aristotle's notions of potential and actual infinities. — andrewk

(Y)

Hilbert’s Hotel and Shandy’s Diary, for example, are what we call veridical paradoxes, and do not imply a contradiction, but they do show some counter-intuitive implications of infinites.

Some select objections from the trenches …

• even if sound, the argument does not suggest anything “divine”, sentient, conscious, thinking, caring, loving, warranting worship or prayer, so the argument requires more to be of particular relevance
• if gods/God can be atemporal (changeless, “outside of time”, or something), assuming that makes sense, then we might suppose any such “origin” of the universe
• if there was a definite earliest time (or “time zero”), then anything that existed at that time, began to exist at that time, and that includes any first causes, gods/God, or whatever else
• phrases like “before time” and “a cause of causation” are incoherent, violates identity (the 1^st law)
• by contemporary cosmology (e.g. Big Bang) spacetime is an aspect of the universe …
  
  • spatiality and temporality are aspects of the universe
  • causation is temporal
  • therefore causation is an aspect of the universe, not somehow “outside”
• dichotomistically …
  
  • if some God of theism could create something out of “nothing”, as it were, then nihil fit ex nihilo is already violated, and we might as well dispose of the principle, in which case said God is an extraneous hypothesis
  • if some God of theism created the universe from something already existing, then whatever comprise the universe “always” existed, perhaps “eternally” (to the extent that’s meaningful), and we might as well dispose of the extras, including said God
  • therefore God is neither implied nor necessary, and may be shaved off and flushed by parsimony
• there are viable alternatives to a definite earliest time, including an infinite past duration (which does not imply a contradiction however counter-intuitive), or a no-boundary, “edge-free” universe (which is not infinite in past duration)
• the 1^st premise may be questionable or ambiguous in light of virtual particle pairs, quantum fluctuations, radioactive decay, spacetime foam/turbulence, the “pressure” of vacuum energy, the Casimir effect, Fomin’s quantum cosmogenesis (and successors), etc
• God = not spatiotemporal incorporeal mind ⇒ such an “entity” would “be” no-where and no-when; thinking, decision making, acting, etc, would be impossible; such an entity could not be characterized as “free”
• a supposed supernatural “beyond” is like an explanation that isn’t really much of an explanation to begin with (gaps, creative inventions)

I still cling old-fashionedly to the notion of 'universe', 'uni' meaning 'one'. — Wayfarer

Hey hey, I don't want to be one with Stalin. Gross. :D

What do you mean by logical consistency? The principle of non-contradiction? — Thorongil

It was round up in the old The Bare Necessities thread. Possible worlds maintain standard logic by definition:

• identity, x = x, p ⇔ p
• non-contradiction, ¬(p ∧ ¬p)
• the excluded middle, p ∨ ¬p
• double negation (introduction at least), p ⇒ ¬¬p
• modus ponens/tollens

And necessities hold for every possible world (even simple ones), so what do they all have in common? Consistency.

You think God is the principle of non-contradiction? That is incoherent. — Thorongil

I don't think anything in particular, except that defining God as necessary seems to resign God to some sort of triviality, like consistency. Maybe that is incoherent (it's not my definition). As mentioned, it seems "safer" to assert that God is necessary for our world (and call it a day).

, well, are whatever aspects of our universe anything like a (dense) continuum?
If yes, then there might be infinitudes of different "almost alike" changes among, say, different expansions and/or contractions ('inbreathing and out-breathing of Brahma', as you put it).
Even finite (definite) constraints might allow infinite possibilities; over an infinite duration, no two identical "states" may ever have been.
Anyway, I think these considerations can easily become rather complicated.
Peripherally related: No-cloning theorem

@Thorongil:

1. if God exists, then he exists necessarily (cannot not exist) — Thorongil
2. if any x is (modally) necessary, then x is something like (logical) consistency — The Bare Necessities
3. therefore, if God exists, then God is something like (logical) consistency — 1 and 2

[...] which seems rather different from the more elaborate gods in theism. — jorndoe

@Brian A, @Thorongil, it seems "safer" to assert that God is necessary for our world.
Though of course we don't know exactly what our world is (for that matter, I doubt omniscience is attainable).

I don't think that's what he's doing, though. I've struggled with this too, but I think the claim is that if God exists, then he exists necessarily (cannot not exist). The "if" entails composing proofs, and giving a proof is different from merely stipulating a definition. — Thorongil

As per The Bare Necessities, if any x is (modally) necessary, then x is something like (logical) consistency.

Necessities, N, is the conjunction of possibilities for every consistent world:
$N = \bigcap_{w \in W} P(w)$
where P(w) is true propositions for w.

You could chain these together

• if God exists, then he exists necessarily (cannot not exist)
• if any x is (modally) necessary, then x is something like (logical) consistency

But this is just logic.
Things become significantly more complex if we move to nomological (or physical or whatever).

, I don't think so, at least not logically/mathematically.
Infinites require careful treatment; they're not numbers.
The non-positive integers, {..., -2, -1, 0}, for example, is infinite yet does not contain the number 1.

1. in an infinitude of numbers, there are every kinds of numbers
2. there are infinite whole positive numbers {1, 2, 3, ...}
3. therefore there are negative numbers among them
4. contradiction, 1 is wrong

But it goes further than that.
As it turns out, ∞ is ambiguous if you will; in fact, there are infinite different kinds of ∞, of all things.
Additionally, the rationals and the reals are dense; between any such two different numbers, there's a third number different from both.

On the other hand, if we're talking nomological (or physical), then who knows; things are suddenly much more complex.
Regardless, both an infinite past, and a definite earliest time, have counter-intuitive implications.


EDIT: I read this snippet roughly as "if the universe has an infinite temporal past [...]", which may have been a misinterpretation.

if the universe were eternal [...] — Wayfarer

, I think I'd have to agree.
Non-existence can be linguistic only.

This is a contradiction in terms, according to Aquinas' definition of God: ipsum esse subistens, or the subsistent act of being itself. — Brian A

I don't think you can define something into existence, as it were.

If you define G to be (modally) necessary, then G becomes reduced to something like (logical) consistency, which seems rather different from the more elaborate gods in theism.

The Bare Necessities (old thread on the logical modalities)