A lot of good stuff to unpack there for sure. Just some quick comments.

Ironically enough, my best friend who is an engineer , we have yearly mantra's and one of them was Awareness. We learned so much from the concept of awareness that we extended it another year. We would get together and 'pontificate ' our experiences from both our personal and professional activities. It was very revelatory. We made a joke and asked each other from time to time, any 'awareness ' today ?

My other comment relates to the information age and the virtues of drawing from many sources of information. As a generalization, I believe post-modernism was partly a movement that looked to go beyond analytic philosophy, almost in a psychological way... . Part of it sought to uncover human motivation(s) and how important that was in seeking objective truth about a concept.

Case in point when we study all the domains of philosophy a common theme seems to rear its head. And that usually has something to do with the existence or non-existence of a Deity. It seems to have something to do with of our sense of wonder about the mystery over causation, the nature of things, and our intrinsic needs to ask why.

Anyway my point there is, it's important to have awareness and practice awareness. And my intuition tells me to draw from, in this case, classical philosophy, post modern Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, science, etc. etc. This is the twenty-first century, we need to allow ourselves to use the appropriate tools that are now and have been available.

I would propose that the modern-day philosopher should allow themselves to become ' a hybrid' much like the moderate independent in politics who draws good from both sides of the aisle.


As you were

In trying to revisit some theories relative to EM fields of consciousness :

"My hypothesis is that consciousness is the experience of information, from the inside. There is a postulate in physics that information is neither created or destroyed – the conservation of information ‘law’. It is however just a postulate, nobody has ever proved it. But, if true, it would suggest that awareness (associated with that information) – in some form – might survive death." JJ McFadden

There have been some new studies (2007) in physics that I'm looking at now, which I'll report back later on to see if there are some other clues... .

In the meantime, we all know William James. He had this feeling that the brain filters our access to a vast consciousness that extends beyond the limits of neural activity.

I guess in both instances, one could analogize to the computer 'cloud server' idea... .

...another ironic thing about the act of introspection is, once one decides to embark on the self-discovery process, something completely novel can be uncovered. And that sort of begs the question(s) of whether that new knowledge always existed; it just required you to uncover it. And then in turn that could lead to other questions about, say, the Will and its function in our consciousness.

Didn't Aristotle say the greatest gift we can give to ourselves is to 'know thyself' (?)

Sam I want to applaud you for the work you've done, as I feel like it was very well-thought-out. As we all know the conclusion from inductive reasoning relates to probability theories, which are used quite regularly in physical science.

I'm compelled to get back into it...but I remember in my earlier studies being persuaded by the consistent testimony, from the subjective experiences.

My question relates to corroberation. I'm sorry if you've already gone over this, but how were these experiences corroberated? For instance, was there any testimony from third persons who may have felt some sort of ' phenomenon ' happening during that other person's NDE?

Thank you kindly.

"Would an omnipotent god know this? Why would an omnipotent god require and/or rely on "belief" at all if this is what Satan requires in order that "believers" "believe" Satan is god?"


GA, I'm a Christian Existentialist (some people refer to it as being 'Spiritual' if you like). Ethically/morally, when someone uses the term 'evil', that's a euphemism for 'lack of perfection' to me. I don't 'believe' in a sentient Being called Satan.

I think of our temporal nature and finitude, as all part of the tree of life extended metaphor. Meaning, it removes the ethical/moral notion of an external belief system (Satan) and associated paradigm's. I don't try to make sense of that. So in your context of struggling with that 'belief system', when say a far-right Fundy talks about Satan and his attributes and/or his nature it begs the questions of : who/what/where/why/how does he know this... .

Our temporal nature and lack of perfection obscures our judgement ( in all domains personally/professionally/vocation-wise etc. etc.). And morally/ethically, we take on our own responsibility for our own actions and recognize that intrinsic value; we don't say 'the devil made me do it'.

You've heard the term 'existential angst' right?

I'm having difficulties following you. The only thing I can gather from your statement is the concept of logical necessity relating to Cosmology and causation; I guess you could say it is 'neutral' in some sense.

But this business about satan/virtue, etc. etc. I'm losing you.

???

In the context of Religion, you could say belief would be 'less of a virtue' when making a priori statements about a Deity.

For example, the Ontological argument for the existence of God is based upon a priori deductive reasoning. In essence, it becomes a play on words.

Inductive reasoning on the other hand, in that context, is considered more persuasive because of its empirical nature (otherwise known as a posteriori), which is knowledge based upon observations and experiences, then resulting probabilities.

I hope that helps...

This is very very sad particularly when you hear or read reports about gay people committing suicide. To say the very least, the right-wing Fundies should be ashamed of themselves.

The level of ignorance is baffling. When did the Bible become a 21st century medical science book...

Great thread! I studied NDE's awhile back and this is a great refresher. (And I read through some of the responses but not all.) What was the consensus on EM field theories of consciousness?

There's a thing called The Bible
and some say it's Babel.
Bible, Babel or babble
which should you choose

If it makes you feel any better the Bible is in error on gays. Ambiguous genitalia babies were either not discovered, or not taken into consideration or church politics' took it out.

Again the Bible is not a science book.

And again, take a chill pill it might do you some good!

Ha, I know I love to talk about religion! As the late George Harrison once said: everything else can wait but the search for God cannot wait.

Sure! Maslow embraced Eastern thought in his Christianity. Meaning the yin and yang of fear and wisdom!!

Yo dude calm down man!

You're taking the Bible too literally. If you don't think it makes sense to you don't believe in it.

But again don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

Think about it this way; all the translations, all interpretations, all the metaphors and allegories, books left out of different religions IE Baptist v Catholicism as well as the Lost Gospels from Gnosticism, all ought to tell you something.

Give it a rest dude!

My meat is your meat
Your meat is mine
Hunting out of season makes
Taking them a crime

Where is poetic universe when you need him!!?!!

Sure I think the answer to that question is that people have all sorts of intrinsic fears.

From time to time I study my own fears and what motivates me to do certain things as a result of same. Self-awareness is critical there... it's a dynamic not static journey .

On the plus side I take negative behavior and turn it around and use it as a teaching moment of how not to be... So it's reverse inspiration!!!

I'll have to study some of your links... .

In the meantime one thing I will agree with you on is I always felt religion gives Christianity a bad name. If Christians would focus more on what Jesus stood for and not take some of the other parts of recorded history so literally it would go a long way in updating/ improving the false and/or inconsistent paradigm's. Yes picking and choosing is okay because we are smarter now... .

Being a Christian Existentialist as you know I don't take all of the Bible literally and don't believe it's an infallible text. And apostle Paul was just a preacher and not a perfect being. But I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater either. Overall the good outweighs the bad. The Bible is an awesome book... !

I apologize and understand however it's called tough love.

Post-modernism/existentialism in part for illustration purposes was a result of the realization that certain philosophy before it became too extraneous, superfluous and redundant. Ironically enough the birth of existentialism primarily came from The Book of Ecclesiastes.

Anyway, the missing piece here is the element of faith. Think of it in a secular way. Faith in one's belief to carry a scientific idea forward or faith in carrying the sense of wonder or will to know forward to me is all the same. I don't understand the need to parse it.

Sure the psychological concern of superiority I would share with you. But don't let that manipulate yourself. It's all about the Psychology of Being. And that's a title of a book by the way...lol.
. .

My intention is not to disparage you. I just caution about overthinking something. So if you take inductive reasoning out of that explaination I gave earlier, you're left with the human sentient element of motivations people have to puff themselves up. So don't take the fact that some knuckleheads out there consider themselves Superior personally, just because they have a different belief system or some pathology they're unaware of.

So yeah you're right, in that context, it would not be a virtuous thing. Ethically they would be using it incorrectly

Yep, it appears GCBishop has an axe to grind for some reason(?).

I hope I'm wrong but I think he takes the Christian Bible too literally and considers it infallible.

It's sad because he gives Gnosticism a bad name. Gnosticism provides a nice balance to Spirituality that was unfortunately left out of the Bible due to' church politics'... .

It begs the question, is he a politician of some sort?

I don't mean to take the wind out of your sails and respect your trying to rigorously think this through. However you may be overthinking it.

Using the reasoning you provided for a lack of belief you said, is a desire to know. The desire to know is a sense of wonder.

You are smart enough to know that indeed this is a rant, but I would suggest another question, what is behind your rant?

Hello fellow philosopher!

Your concern, to me, has a real simple answer. Most sciences require inductive reasoning to discover things. Intrinsic to that mental process, is a component of belief. Or in its absence a sense of wonder.

Otherwise ask yourself, what carries one to move the hypothesis (or any human idea) forward? A Belief of some sort?

To argue against that, the only thing you're left with is a sense of wonder. What is wonder? Why do we have it?

Here's an Existential question: what if we didn't have belief and wonder? What would that look like?

Well thank you kindly for your response!

I like your notion of faith and reason. Through logical inference or inductive reasoning we can uncover and discover certain human phenomena that sounds reasonable to most people.

Accordingly, at some point it becomes a choice or leap of faith. Kind of like Pascal's Wager...

I've had three sequential miracles occur in my life through unplanned happenstance (these three indviduals all came to me to make unplanned proposals, and neither one of them knew each other yet required all three in unison to make one thing work ). I can't get into the specifics but it all came down to this: either it was by sheer chance or luck, or divine intervention. Based on my (leap of) faith, I chose to infer the latter.

One common thread seems to rear its ugly head with sports stars. Since society tends to enable sports talent, there is no learned coping skills.

When my nephew, a wrestling and football star, told me that in high school his study hall consisted of a big screen TV and a couch. And that was only provided for the sports stars. That's when I realized that , combined with the parents enabling is an unfortunate recipe for dysfunction....

Nature v. Nurture:

Are all brain functions computational, i.e. can they all be boiled down to the ‘input-processing-output’ equation which in theory can be replicated in the physical world, however complex the ‘processing’ aspect of it. Or are there parts of a human brain’s roles (like consciousness, free will, memory classification etc.) that are just not ‘programmable’?

In an overly simplistic way I always felt that the small archaic limbic system at the base of the brain was where human sentience is located, and that everything else is programmable/ blank slate....

Are you referring to Gnosticism?

I've experienced a similar phenomenon at times performing music. I'm not conscious of it all the time when it happens, but when 'I snap out of it' I come to realize it.

To describe it would be more or less an out-of-body experience. I'm not even aware that I'm playing guitar. It's almost as if I feel the audience's electromagnetic waves from their consciousness...

"Knowing ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is different from ‘learning ethics’. A&E may have gained an initial awareness, but they were a long way from understanding what ‘good’ or ‘evil’ pertain to in any objective sense of the universe. That would take a wealth of experience gained over time "

That's nice! It makes me think of the differences between lower life-forms and higher degrees of consciousness. Meaning lower life-forms work mostly from instinct. Where higher life-forms (self-aware Beings) are born with more of a blank slate. Like the brain of a computer where data is entered/received to make the software work.

Not to detour the subject matter too much, but that reminds me of electromagnetic waves transporting sounds and images in the atmosphere, then appearing in our smartphones, TV's , etc..

Could similar electromagnetic waves produced from our consciousness, be a spiritual medium that travels too...

That's a great question! I'm thinking that if it was part of Darwinism, perhaps it would evolve into something different... like a whole different set of frequencies. But that would assume we could aquire the ability to hear those frequencies.

Fellow Philosophers,

One interesting human dynamic has reared its ugly head already. But it's not necessarily 'ugly' though.

Just a very slight detour, yet important point nonetheless is, how far can one take deductive logic in discovery of knowledge about (the OP Life and Existence) life?

The little journey Artemis and I had, uncovered and possibly suggests a few things:

1. The human element is real; its sentience can create intrinsic dichotomies.
2. The so-called art of life or living can be argued as a balancing act between which types of logic to use as we navigate the sojourn. These are tools at our disposal as it were.

Take the example from Star Trek. The character Spock, was born half Vulcan and half man. The dichotomy reared its ugly head on many occasions, particularly when there were happenstance that required inductive and not deductive reasoning.

Spock not only struggled with sentience, but in theory he could not compute half-truth's either. To him, they did not exist.

Very awesome fellow Philosophers!!!

At least one point to made viz. Evolution; it's hard to see how diatonic music theory confers survival advantages in the Jungle!!!

I meant it in a loving way

Come on Artemis, you're better than that, you can do better, don't bail on me. This is a debate stage put on your big girl pants.

"Part of disproving God relies on formal logic, and another part relies on inductive reasoning."

That's a start, I'm waiting...how about trying from the particular to the general... and relate it to empirical data you've tested or experienced.

What? You have been trying to use deductive reasoning not inductive my dear...

Perhaps just answering my last round of questions i.e.: proving God doesn't exist , will make my point.

I will ask you again please: prove to me God does not exist, using any statement you would like. You're an atheist right, I'm trying to learn your belief system.

...sure Wayfarer. I agree it doesn't ' go all the way down' that's one reason why I'm recommending inductive reasoning not deductive reasoning. Like all our so-called logical tools (from our consciousness) deductive reasoning has its limitations and purpose. That's part of the art of living knowing which tool to use... .

Induction is necessary in physics to discover new things. And in our context here debating existence, and life, inductive reasoning tips the scales too.

For example just like you said deductive reasoning is top down; inductive reasoning is bottom up.

Top down-->general to particular--->deductive reasoning.

Bottom up --->particular to general---> inductive reasoning.

Then combine that with the complexities of sentient human beings and of course the phenomenon of love. Formal logic can't handle that.

In part this is what I was going to share with Artemis

Don't give up on the discussion now we were getting close.

Please note, you were not able to answer any of those questions or concerns. So until I hear back from you I will take that as acquiescence by silence.

I will be gracious to you and give away some of my cards. I'm trying to get you to see that inductive reasoning, not deductive reasoning, will take you much farther... .

That's one of my arguments anyway. Be well.

Oh nice... .

In a similar matter (no pun intended), there have been a few recent threads on this topic and wanted to get your thoughts on it too.
Can something exist by itself without observation? (Idealists would deny the possibility of course.)

I'm thinking you might be inclined to say no, but would love to get your take since it relates to the overall OP. For example I'm sure you know there have been some metaphysical theories that posit math having always existed... .

Hey TS!

Sorry I just saw your reply / contribution and I thank you for that!

Are you referring to more of an epistemic or ontological aspect of observing things?

Wow. Ok teaching moment. Formal Logic is basically mathematics (it is universally true no matter what anyone says).

A proposition is considered to have objective truth when its truth conditions are met without bias caused by a sentient subject.

So in your syllogism, you could say that the reasoning is not sound because the definition of love has not been properly qualified. You have not qualified the nature of what love is yet. It's more or less a contingent truth or a half truth at this point. Hint: I can certainly infer based on experience though.

In formal Logic, love cannot be objectively and subjectively true: that's considered illogical in formal logic (once again I'll restate-defies law of non-contradiction).

Otherwise we are back to the apple being 50% mottled red=half truth, in the example I gave above.

On Atheism, I'm confused. What evidence do you have that God doesn't exist?
And when you say contradictory, I just demonstrated that you yourself (don't take it personally) are illogical when trying to explain certain parts of life's phenomenon called Love, in a purely Objective way.
Now if you can prove otherwise, I'm all ears.