Husserlian phenomenology is not directly concerned with what is or isn’t. The focus is purely on the experience. The experience is the experience. That is the starting point and it is not finitely reducible.

Meaning whether something ‘exists’ or is ‘imagined’ is of no concern from the phenomenological perspective as the experience (‘real’ or not) is still an experience. — I like sushi

Then Husserlian phenomenology is concerned with the existence of experience. That is the starting point and from there it must be asked why it exists the way that it does - as an experience of an external world - if an external world doesn't exist (the external world is imagined).

You are a Jew if your mother was a Jew. Judaism is not even based upon your belief system. — Hanover

If you're asking for the biblical account, no, Adam wasn't Jewish. The Hebrews were chosen to receive the Torah at Mt. Sinai after fleeing Egypt, so the story goes.

If you're looking fur a more historically accurate account of when rabbinical Jewish law developed dictating who is a Jew, I'd assume after the 1st century CE after the fall of the second temple.

I'm also not advocating here the Orthodox definition of who is a Jew over other viewpoints, but only indicating it is one. The Reforn have a very different view — Hanover

Then you are not necessarily a Jew if your mother was a Jew and Judaism IS based on a belief system because now you've shown that what makes one a Jew is based on one's belief system.

This is the same as saying, "religion" is just scribbles on this page.
— Harry Hindu

There can be 20 potential criteria that every religion has, with 2 particular examples not having any overlap, meaning 2 examples would not share an essential similar trait

My point here is that even if you wish to maintain your antiquated essentialist views, your above criticism does not logically follow. — Hanover

No need to get feisty. It's not my fault that you are incapable of being consistent.

Then a religion would be defined as possessing at least one of 20 (not an infinite) potential criteria. I'm just trying to focus on one criteria - that a religion is the practice of believing an idea is true, when there is no evidence to support it, over all other ideas that either do or do not have evidence. Since it seems difficult for you to be consistent in your reasoning then maybe we should just focus on one criteria at a time and see which ones we agree and disagree on.

You are a Jew if your mother was a Jew. Judaism is not even based upon your belief system. — Hanover

So the very first human was a Jew? Wouldn't that make every human a Jew and therefore meaningless? If not then how did the first Jew become a Jew?

"Religion" is not a term with an essence. — Hanover

This is the same as saying, "religion" is just scribbles on this page.

All we have is the way we use the term. — Banno

To use something we must have a goal in mind. What is the goal in using the term the way we do?

I'd prefer to quote Popper himself, but I don't have a digital copy. — jas0n

Doesn't this require a theory that others exist and write stuff down for you to then read later? How is that any different than trusting scientific theories? Seems to me that many here are using scribbles they see on some paper as the foundation of everything.

It's strange that we question our senses when doing science, but not philosophy, or at least in reading late philosophers' writings?

A certain kind of pragmatist might take technology as the essence of science/knowledge — jas0n

It seems to me that language itself is a technology.

He literally set out to create a ‘science of consciousness’. That is all. He was not dismissive of science merely critical of the physical sciences encroaching upon psychology and such - rightly so imo. — I like sushi

Right. Seems to me that a proper theory of consciousness would resolve this issue. But then how do we go about doing that if not by our own observations of our own consciousness and the reasoning that goes along with it? It would seem to me that if consciousness is real and in the world, then its functions are part of the world too, and possibly exist in other places in the world (as in other minds).

I describe myself as a non-ritualstic Jew. That doesn't mean my family won't gather for Passover Seder, but that has nothing to do with me thinking God will bless me for the event anymore than when your family might gather for your birthday. In truth, along with our matzoh, we color eggs on Passover, which isn't exact textbook haggadah. Is that ritual? — Hanover

What does it mean to be a "Jew" if not performing some ritual?

I was raised as a Christian and we celebrated Christmas. Now I'm an atheist. I still bring a tree into my home during the holiday season, but I don't do it to celebrate the birth of some man that claimed to be the son of a god. I do it because it is fun for me and my family. So it's not a religious ritual.

It's not religions that change over time. It is our motivations for performing the rituals that change over time. We can adopt religious rituals and make them into non-religious rituals by changing the motivations for performing them.

And since there are non-religious rituals, and religions that don't have specific rituals, ritual is not the essence of religion.

It shouldn't be surprising that after 5000 years of drastic change in world views, the word "religion" is hard to define. — frank

:roll: I never said rituals are necessarily religious. I said the motivations behind the ritual is what makes it religious or not. If there is no evidence that the ritual achieves what you intend, then the ritual is religious, ie. Washing your hands to prevent food poisoning vs. washing your hands to please a god.

If you are insisting on "achieving good" as the motivation, then there is evidence that certain rituals can make us feel good without being religious. The problem is that there is no evidence that it makes a god feel good, which makes the ritual religious. If there is no other reason for performing a ritual other than to make you feel good because the ritual has made you feel good in the past, then the ritual is not religious. It would be religious to perform the ritual to feel good without evidence that it does.

Yes. Plus it lessens your chances of food poisoning. — frank

Right. So, there is evidence that washing your hands lessens your chances of food poisoning, hence washing your hands is not religious. But there is no evidence that washing your hands is a display of piety. It seems to me that when your goal is to lessen you chance of food poisoning and not to display piety, then the "ritual" is non-religious.

Also, there is no evidence that Jews were the first to wash their hands. That would be a religion to believe that.

Then all Jews should be following the rituals as laid out originally in the Bible, yet many of them don't, yet still call themselves "Jews".

By the 1st Century, it was apparently used as a show of piety. — frank

So practicing a religious ritual shows that you are religious?

This problem with the term "religion" is no different from the term "cup," yet we use the term cup in a meaningful way. That is, I can give thousands of examples of cups (just like I can with religions), but there will always be some cup example that falls outside the definition that we keep trying to refine. There is no essential element of a cup for it to be a cup, but that hardly means we can't speak of cups. — Hanover

I should also add that if the term "religion" is as vague as you claim, then I could just as easily claim that any behavior or belief is not a religion. This is the problem is asserting that the definition of "religion" is subjective, or that people can use the term however they want, because someone can always use it in a way that is contradictory to another use.

How about the Jewish ritual of washing your hands before you eat? Effective or not? — frank

Washing your hands before you eat isn't necessarily a Jewish ritual. Are you Jewish every time you wash your hands?

There is evidence that washing your hands before you eat promotes a healthy lifestyle.

Any other examples you want to throw at me? This is fun.

The goal in hand-shaking is to great someone, to begin a conversation and to show that you come in peace and aren't holding a weapon. There is evidence this ritual achieves that goal, unlike some ritual that gets you to heaven or nirvana, or pleases some god.

So far as the topic goes, do we at least agree that ritual practice of some sort seems central to the concept of religion?
— Banno

Human life is pervasively ritualistic. Much of it is non-religious, so no. — frank

Right. I think it is the motive behind the ritual that makes it religious or not. If the motive is to achieve some goal where there is no evidence that such rituals achieve such goals, then that is a religion.

This problem with the term "religion" is no different from the term "cup," yet we use the term cup in a meaningful way. That is, I can give thousands of examples of cups (just like I can with religions), but there will always be some cup example that falls outside the definition that we keep trying to refine. There is no essential element of a cup for it to be a cup, but that hardly means we can't speak of cups. — Hanover

Sure, our use of language attempts to divide the world into neat boxes and we often find that the world is not neatly divided into boxes, but it seems to me that for you to even imply that there are common and uncommon properties that make some thing a cup is itself admitting that there are properties that make one thing more of a cup than another. The fact that you would scoff at my attempt to show you a bowl and call it a cup proves my point. The same goes for religion.

I should point out that religion is a human invention. Natural things like oceans vs. seas, asteroids vs. comets are not. So in trying to define, or divide nature, into boxes we will find that there are objects that will challenge our definitions. This is not the case for human inventions, like religions and presidents. Humans invented these things and have a much easier time defining them than things that we didn't invent.

I just see this comment as positing a false dichotomy between (1) the scientific method and (2) religion. Most people use neither, but accept as proof just their instinct or general observations. We don't engage in rigorous experimentation for most of our beliefs. Someone who insists upon herbal remedies, for example, isn't practicing religion or science.

It's an error to also deny an overlap between the two also, as most religious people accept science (to greater and lesser degrees) and plenty of scientists allow for the unknown variable, which they to greater and lesser extent attribute to God.

In any event, nothing I've said is inconsistent with atheism or suggests, hints, or intimates there may be a god. My point is simply that your argument of the incoherency of the term "religion" effectively proves its non-existence is incorrect. — Hanover

Sure it does. Your explanation shows that atheism qualifies as a religion, not to mention believing in evolution by natural selection, that Augustus was the first Roman Emperor, or that I need to wear a mask to stop the spread of Covid - all religions by your standard. :confused:

Most people use science without even knowing it. Using your senses, solving problems by the process of elimination, testing your ideas, etc. are all aspects of doing science. Favoring one untested idea over other untested and tested ideas is the primary characteristic of a religion.

Humans are creatures of habit. Memory is applied to to the mundane making it sacred. Be this a football stadium, church, house or a simple rock.

The story we apply to lived experiences creates a narrative that can be passed on and repeated. Needless to say such a ‘habit’ is kind of useful in terms of evolution as it helps us adapt to the environment and approach it from different angles rather than as a mere set of lifeless variables.

Without value there is nothing there for us to pay attention to. Without a means of applying or removing value we are not anything as stagnation of value is just as dead as having no value at all. — I like sushi

What do "habits" and "values" have to do with religion - as if religion has a monopoly on the use of such terms?

We are not creatures of habit. If we were then there wouldn't be humans that go against the grain, like Galileo, and question our habits and values. The world changes so any habits eventually don't work anymore and new ways of adapting are valued (selected by natural selection).

It seems to me that walking that thin line between habit and novelty is the human condition, at least for those that are non-religious. The religious are the ones that stick with habit even in the face of drastic change to their own detriment.

I like this gap that you insert between the believer and the belief. Belief is only interesting if it determines action in the world. If I claim to believe I can fly and nevertheless carefully avoid high ledges, then maybe I'm wrong about myself or have an uninteresting conception of belief. — jas0n

Reality doesn't care about aligning its truth to what you may or may not find interesting. I find it interesting that you believe that though.

A brutal dictator that is only interested in hearing what they want to hear from their subjects and not what their subjects actually believe and cannot act on because its not what the dictator wants to hear or see, then you can understand the difference between the thought (belief) police and the action police. If there can be a distinction between the way people act and what they believe, then I find that distinction very interesting.

I think you're wondering if some ontology is being smuggled in with the concept of a proposition. There isn't.

I will say, I've been surprised since I've been here how many posters have the same misconception about what analytical philosophers mean by "proposition." — frank

Unless the analytical philosophers define a proposition as a string of scribbles in it's fundamental state, then I don't know what else they could be getting at, as any proposition in a language that you don't know is a string of scribbles.

What is it like for you to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow? How do you know that you believe it? Is your belief simply the sound of you talking to yourself in your mind saying, "I believe the sun will rise tomorrow".? That is what I'm trying to ask. Beliefs have some kind of ontology for you to be able to talk about them and for others to agree that you have them.

Not only that but Wayfarer seems to not realize that believing something is a way of being just as acting on those beliefs are. It still begs the question of why one person would choose to engage in the behaviors and rituals of one religion and not another if not because of some belief.

I'm trying to understand and ask how you know that propositions are the content of beliefs in that you and Banno seem to suggest that beliefs are like boxes with contents that are propositions. In using visual terms to describe beliefs and their contents it seems to me that beliefs and their contents have a visual form, as opposed to an audible, tactile or olfactory form.

The same thing goes in describing that beliefs and propositions are bearers of truth, as if one is carrying another. But we all know beliefs can be false, so it seems to me that we can believe in false things and beliefs are not necessarily bearers of truth.

Years later, we've all gone around the circle and ended up right were we started! What form does a proposition take as the content of a belief?

You are claiming that people cannot care about the environment or social inequality and that they can only care about being perceived as a good person? — praxis

I think you may be confusing the ends with the means. One can care about the ends of a clean environment and social inequality but not agree with the means by which some groups try to achieve those ends.

Stage 1.
A person seems to be owned by one or more concepts. He is unable to critically evaluate the concepts animating him or appraise them in a broader context. He believes those concepts to be the ultimate truth and is very combative against anybody questioning their validity.
Usually such concepts fulfill one's need to be perceived by the society as a “good person”.
For example, “a good person has to fight climate change” or “a good person has to support BLM”. — stoicHoneyBadger

I agree that most people are at this level and never climb out of it. Thinking for yourself is difficult, especially when you don't want to take the time to educate yourself on certain topics or issues. You simply adopt the position of the group you find yourself in and you compartmentalize those concepts from other concepts that you hold that you end up holding contradictory concepts because being part of a group is more important than being consistent for these types of individuals. They naturally gravitate towards the collective mindset.

Stage 2.
A person is no longer owned by random concepts, but chooses a concept to serve more or less deliberately out of what is offered by his culture.

Stage 3.
A person already starts understanding the relativity of concepts and is actively exploring different world views. He mentally dissects existing concepts, tries to rearrange some parts, etc.
For example, “what if we take a Stoic world view and spice it with Yogic exercises?” — stoicHoneyBadger

I find 2 and 3 part of the same stage - at least for me in my development. I went through this stage in my late teens-early twenties when, as a young Christian, I began to question my beliefs primarily as a result of my observations of other "Christians" in how they didn't behave as if an all-knowing, all-seeing god existed and was going to ultimately judge them for their actions. I lost faith in my religion so I began exploring other religions and turned to explore those fields of science that my religion had told me was the "devil's work" like evolution by natural selection.

Stage 4. A person is able to generate his own concepts and build a coherent world view out of them. Cultural norms are no longer relevant to him. He himself has the authority to determine what is good or bad, regardless of other people.
Stage 5.
A person not only has his own unique world view, but is able to communicate it to others, creating his own schools of thought. — stoicHoneyBadger

I didn't reach this stage until much later in life - like nearly 20 years later - after I had time to digest all of this new information and integrate it into a more general worldview. It seems to me that 5 comes with 4 as you need to be able to articulate it to yourself and understand it to be able to communicate it to others. Communicating vs proving it to others are two different things as well. It's essentially three stages for me. 1) Living in the bubble you find yourself born into. 2) realizing that you are in a bubble and attempt to break out of that bubble. 3) emerging from the bubble.

If we're using the term "religion" within a community, it has meaning, even if the meaning amounts to delusional, confused, and inconsistent beliefs about the origins of the universe. To declare that the term is meaningless is to claim it's gibberish, just sounds conveying no thought whatsoever. "God" means something different from "cat" and different from "jldjlk." To say otherwise is just to impose an opinion on the validity of the concept that underlies the word "God." — Hanover

As I said, for some word to have meaning it needs to refer to something. So if the user of the word, "religion" isn't referring to anything then it would just be a string of meaningless scribbles or sounds from their mouths.

What one person means by "religion" someone else could mean something different, then how do we know that they are even talking about the same thing? To say that the word has meaning in that any person can use it however they want renders the word meaningless in that it is now to vague for anyone to understand how it is being used and that it would be more efficient to just say what you are referring to rather than use the word, "religion" at all. It becomes useless.

My belief in bigfoot is different from my belief in gorillas, but my belief in bigfoot doesn't dissolve into meaninglessness because there is no such thing as bigfoot. — Hanover

I understand that beliefs in bigfoot are not the same thing as bigfoot itself. We can talk about both but some people can confuse their belief with the real thing.

Your definition of religion is wanting and does not universally describe all religions. It's entirely possible to have a religion with gods that interact only on the "natural" level, which isn't entirely inconsistent with primitive religions, especially considering in primitive societies they don't have a real distinction between the miraculous and ordinary earthly events.

For your definition to be workable, you would be admitting to essentialism. — Hanover

It seems to me that if you want to posit gods on the natural level then you would be practicing science, not religion - which leads me to think of another definition for religion: The act of favoring one unprovable concept over all other unprovable concepts. There is no reason to value one concept that has no evidence over other concepts that don't have any evidence or even others that do have evidence. In this way, religion is a type of delusion. And in this way, atheists are not necessarily denying a theists claims, they simply find no good reason to believe what one theist says over another, or what one philosopher says over another - when none of them are able to provide any evidence for their claims. Essentially a non-religious person would be one that has an open-mind; one that understands that they and others are probably wrong when there is no evidence and questioning yours and others beliefs is a good thing.

Does the term "religion" refer to nothing? — Banno

Meaning is use. We use the term, to be sure. It must therefore have meaning. — Hanover

Meaning is using terms to refer to things that are not words. If the word does not refer to anything that exists outside of one's own mind yet it is used to refer to things outside of one's mind (confusing the map with the territory) then it is a meaningless word - just like the term, "god".

Now, if it is correctly being used to refer to a concept (those things that only exist in minds) then it has meaning. The difference is do those concepts then refer to things in the world.

Religion is the belief in things outside of, or beyond, the natural.

Seems to me that one merely needs to look at processes of one's own mind for evidence of causation. Thinking is a causal process. Logic is the process of identifying and eliminating premises that do not causally support one's conclusion, such as pleading to authority and popularity as not being the cause of one's conclusion being true. What makes one's conclusion true is if it is the case.

Thinking itself is an IF-THEN-ELSE statement, ie. (IF) I think, therefore I am (ELSE I am not).

It also seems that causation is an integral part of any realist world-view in that your experience is a product of the interaction of your body and the world (ELSE solipsism is the case).

Reading a sentence is another causal process as it takes time to read a sentence. It has a beginning and an ending and the beginning causes the context to emerge for the rest of the sentence and the rest of the paragraph.

Symbols symbolizing would be another causal process.

This makes sense in that Being grounds Becoming in the Aristotelean scheme. So that which stably exists becomes the stuff which also can stand under the change. — apokrisis

Stability of form and structure is an illusion. It is a product of our minds' frequency relative to the frequency of what is being observed. Change is relative and minds change relative to every other process. The rate at which they change, or process external information, is relative to the speed or frequency at which the external world changes. Some changes happen very fast and some very slow. Those that happen fast appear as "non-physical" processes, while those that happen very slow appear as stable "physical" objects.

If reductionism is faulty then how is it that we understand the things we have invented as products of smaller parts? How can I repair your computer by replacing a part, not the whole computer, or by the process of elimination by eliminating the causes that are not at fault to get at the cause that is the fault? You only arrive at the right answer after making all possible mistakes.

If not reductionism, does that mean we live in a world that is only made up of Earth, Wind, Air and Fire? In a non-reductionist world, there would be uncountable substances and forms - none of which would be reducible to anything else. Energy and matter would be different substances and forms. Plastic, metal, wood, electricity, light, sound, etc., would all be different substances and forms without being reduced to smaller processes. It seems to me that a non-reductionist view would be the view of the naive realist - that things exist as they are experienced without being reduced to things that we don't see, or can observe.

It seems to me that a lot of people are saying the same thing, but using different terms, mostly in an effort to make the simple sound complicated as a way of "chest-beating" for social status.

And yet you go on to give support for my point. She was not about to let the hearings turn into a dispute about transgender people. — Fooloso4

Actually, you're proving mine. She wasn't asked about transgender people. She was asked to define a woman.

According to USA Today we can't determine the difference between a man and a woman, so how do we know that Biden nominated a woman to the supreme court, hence the threat of mis- and under- representing women. All USA Today did is pull the rug out from under the left's own push to nominate a black woman. This is what I mean by creating more lies and contradictions to cover for the mass delusion that has been created.

We all could see how Jackson wanted to answer the question with her reference to biologists. But her free speech was being limited by less than 1% of the population.

It's not that simple. A bit of online research based on the scientific literature rather than religious or political claims will bear out that sex and gender are not binary. — Fooloso4

Actually it is people like you who have become religious in accepting the claims by certain people without questioning those claims. Politics is like a religion in that it makes people out to be victims so that you can turn to Big Brother save you from being a victim. It is like a religion in that everyone on one side believes that they are the righteous and the other side are not. Politics = religion because they are both forms of group think. The left has essentially swapped one Big Brother for another.

She is well aware of the trap that was laid. It has to do with the Republicans obsession with transgender people. — Fooloso4

Wrong. It has to do with the extreme left's fetish with sex/gender and using it to make victims out of people to get votes. It also has to do with Republicans, Independents and moderate Democrats concern over how a warped sense of sex/gender is an infringement on the equal representation for women.

The extremists on the left are the ones over-representing trans-people which ends up misrepresenting both men and women. They are the ones that want to promise trans people special rights, not equal rights. And they are the ones that treat people who claim to be the opposite sex/gender differently than someone else claiming to be something that they are not that has nothing to do with sex/gender. When you take trans-people's claims without the same skepticism that you show others that make outlandish claims then you are the one's with an obsession with sex/gender.

The biology of gender is not a simple matter of male vs female. — Fooloso4

It's actually very simple, but in order to maintain the mass delusion, you have to create more lies which makes it seem more complicated than it actually is.

Which is better?

1. Hey, here's a judge, she's a black woman?

2. Hey, here's a black woman, she's a judge? — Agent Smith

I don't know but I do find it strange that Mrs. Jackson doesn't seem to have a problem defining "black" but does have a problem defining 'woman". Is Biden sure he picked a black woman for the Supreme Court?

In Jackson's befuddlement when asked the question she seemed at least understand that it has to do with biology as she she said, "I'm not a biologist."

If making consciousness primary is solipsistic, how is a naturalism that claims the existence of entities independent of awareness of them not also a solipsism? — Joshs

But that is what I'm trying to ask you. If consciousness/experience is all there is then are you only referring to your consciousness/experience? Where is your consciousness/experience relative to mine? If you're saying that consciousness exists everywhere are the boundaries of everywhere your own consciousness, or is there consciousness outside of your own? Do other minds only exist within the boundaries of your own consicousness/experience or are they separate from yours? If the latter, then what is the medium that divides one mind from another?

After all , this alleged ‘independence’ of things is always only perceived through conscious construal. There’s a certain radical connectness between the subjective and objective poles of experiencing which can never be transcended. It wouldn’t be a ‘substance’ we’re talking about, since that brings us back to the assumption of entities ‘outside of’ warner’s of them. — Joshs

Was my mind independent of yours before we started our discussion?

It would instead be be a relational point of view that is primary. — Joshs

Then relationships would be primary and not consciousness.

The why questions go to formal and final cause. — apokrisis

It seems to me that "why" questions could be just as easily asking about causality. Formal and final causes are illusory in that the goal in the mind in the present is what is causing something to happen. Goals don't exist in the future, but are visions of the future in the present moment and it is always the state-of-affairs in the present that determine the future, not the other way around. — Harry Hindu

How does a particle know which path between two points is the shortest, even before it sets out on its journey? How can nature be ruled by the finality of least action before anything has begun to happen? — apokrisis

Again you're simply making the case that knowledge causally precedes any use of that knowledge - that knowledge of the shortest path causes the particle to move a certain way and in a particular direction so I don't see how this could be an example of a final cause. It could be an example of a formal cause in that the knowledge some particle has is part of what it is to be that particle and that causes it to behave in certain ways, but we're still talking about basic causation of causes preceding their effects. Aristotle's four causes are merely multiple facets of the same thing.

But I talk of constraints and habits rather than laws and rules when I am speaking for my own particular pansemiotic position on the Cosmos. I emphasise the immanence and self-organisation of Nature and point to how talk of laws and rules indeed falls into the usual dualistic bind of transcendent accounts. — apokrisis

Constraints and habits = laws and rules.

He has elaborated a metaphysics for a radical neurophenomenology that is not a neutral monism placing consciousness and naturalism on an equal footing , but a grounding of naturalism in consciousness. Consciousness must be primary, since all our objective science are activities within and of consciousness. “…experience is not one node in an intellectual graph among other nodes; it is not one box in a functionalist diagram among
other boxes. Experience is the lived origin and byproduct of any process, including the
intellectual process. Experience is all that there is at this very moment when I am writing and you are reading. Indeed, experience is the lived background of the very
intellectual inference that there is something beyond experience.” — Joshs

I think we need to be careful as to not become a hammer that sees everything as a nail. I don't understand what it would mean to say that consciousness is primary. Consciousness seems to complex to be primary. What exactly do you mean by, "consciousness"? How is saying "consciousness is primary" or "experience is all there is" not simply implying that solipsism is the case?

I think that the substance of consciousness is primary and consciousness is a complex arrangement of that substance (neutral monism in that it is neither physical nor mental). Think of the substance as like an analog signal and consciousness as a digitization of the analog signal - like making particles/objects out of waves. A view (first-person) emerges from the way the information is organized and as a relationship between body and environment. As a relationship between the two we find it difficult, if not impossible, to separate the experience(r) from what is experienced.

For me, "naturalism" is simply the idea that things exist and they exist in particular ways. Whatever is the case is natural and how it changes is natural. All explanations that attempt to describe or symbolize the way things are are natural explanations. Even god would be natural if one were to exist and has a causal influence on everything else. If solipsism were the case, then solipsism would be the natural state of affairs.

That is what quantum indeterminism describes - the impossibility of classically exact knowledge of a system's initial conditions, coupled to the possibility of also getting arbitrarily close. — apokrisis

So is quantum indeterminism describing knowledge of a system, or the system apart from any knowledge of it? If the former, then is quantum indeterminism in the field of neurology, or if the latter a field in physics?

How does a particle know which path between two points is the shortest, even before it sets out on its journey? How can nature be ruled by the finality of least action before anything has begun to happen? — apokrisis

I don't know how a particle knows anything. So again, is QM a theory of knowledge or physics?

I don't understand how nature is ruled by anything. Humans create rules as general descriptions of the basis of some observation. Rules did not exist before nature began to happen. Nature happens and humans use general rules to help them make predictions for similar circumstances.

You seem to be engaged in anthropomorphizing nature and particles.

Physics just plugs this global finality in as a law. And it uses integration - inverse differentiation - to make the calculation. It is then silent on how all this fits into a view of reality as being merely the sum of its mechanical (ie: material + efficient) causes. — apokrisis

Physics is also effectively silent on the role of the observer, or more specifically - the conscious observation of such things - as if physicists have direct access to the processes they are attributing laws to.

This is why the nonlocality in quantum mechanics, and the principle of least action that grounds physics in general, are such a metaphysical problem for the reductionist point of view. — apokrisis

Seems to me that reducing everything down to QM, thermodynamics, trinities and semiotics would have similar issues. QM also has the problem of not integrating with macro-style physics.

If you could set up exactly the same circumstances twice, the outcome ought to be exact. But because you can't, you can only get arbitrarily close to making history repeat. — apokrisis

Arbitrarily meaning based on the particular goal in the mind at the moment. In using generalities to make predictions of future outcomes we often aren't concerned with circumstances that don't affect the outcome that we are looking to use to achieve some goal. Like I said before, information exists everywhere causes leave effects. In interpreting your use of language, I could be interested in knowing where you are from, what your level of education is with the language you are using, or simply in what you are trying to say, depending on my goal. In trying to interpret what you are trying to say, I'm ignoring the causes of where you are from and your level of education has on the way you are using some language. I'm only focused on your idea that you are intending to communicate to me.


I remember this discussion I had with Marchesk a while back:
in talking about Sara Walker's ideas about the relationship between biology, chemistry and physics: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/01/13/79-sara-imari-walker-on-information-and-the-origin-of-life/

Thus the Standard Model is based on the emergent biological information abstraction. Sara mentions it being a loop between our probing regularities at tiny scales and the biology that produced the abstraction used to understand it. But this loop is not included in the Standard Model. It's similar in some ways to the observer problem in QM. It's a recursive problem.

She says the desire is to reduce biology to physics, but physics (as a field of human knowledge) emerges from biology. — Marchesk

Seems like you could say the same thing about biology. The question is whether or not the scales and levels of the universe are epistemological or ontological. — Harry Hindu

Yes. And both the changing of the metric and real particles moving asymmetrically (thermodynamically, irreversibly) constitute time. — EugeneW

Right. So change constitutes time. Measuring time involves comparing one change with another, like the change of a virtual particle's state vs the change of a real particle's state. Which change you choose to measure by is arbitrary, just as measuring length and mass.

They don't oscillate in time but constitute time themselves. If you hold a virtual clock beside it though, you would see the hand of that clock go back and forth. — EugeneW

Again, we're simply talking about comparing one change with another when measuring time. But you're not measuring time. You're measuring change. Just as length is a comparison of two objects in one dimension, time is the comparison of change in two objects (in another dimension).

Time cannot exist without change
— Harry Hindu

But only in space they can change. — EugeneW

Space changes too.

In other words things change relative to each other. The relationship between one change and another is time.
— Harry Hindu

In other words, things can oscillate in time, like virtual particles in the vacuum, or have a timelike direction, like virtual particles turned real. — EugeneW

I don't know what "in time" means. Oscillations are changes. How fast (how much time) does one thing oscillate? You have to compare it to another change to find out. Time is the comparison of change. The direction of some change only manifests itself when comparing the change to another change.

Yeah. The how questions are questions about material and efficient causality. The why questions go to formal and final cause. — apokrisis

It seems to me that "why" questions could be just as easily asking about causality. Formal and final causes are illusory in that the goal in the mind in the present is what is causing something to happen. Goals don't exist in the future, but are visions of the future in the present moment and it is always the state-of-affairs in the present that determine the future, not the other way around.

It's the search for a causal account. Every particular must be the product of something more general. — apokrisis

The general is the illusion that other events can be the same as another event and therefore lead to the same effects. Similar states-of-affairs lead to similar effects, not the same effects.

There’s a reason why we have two words.
— Possibility

What’s the reason? — Xtrix

For what reason does a language have synonyms?

Can you be conscious without being aware of anything? Can you be aware of anything without being conscious as well? Can you report anything that you are not either aware or conscious of?

Some will use examples of dreaming and hallucinating to distinguish between being aware and being conscious, but it seems that the distinction isn't between being aware or being conscious, rather the distinction lies in the interpretation of what it is that you are both conscious and aware of. Interpreting a hallucination to be an awareness/conscious of something outside of your head vs inside your head. In hallucinating you are aware/conscious of something but not sure if what you are aware/conscious of is located outside of your head or inside.

This argument fails if time is assume to go forward only. If it goes up and down, as before the unidirectional inflation, spawning the real from the virtual, time can have a beginning. As it must have a beginning. If this weren't the case, we would observe chaos only. — EugeneW

In other words things change relative to each other. The relationship between one change and another is time.

Time can't exist without space. — EugeneW

Time cannot exist without change.

Obviously, time had a beginning. If not, the universe would be in the chaotic, fleeting state of chaos, accelerating away towards infinity. — EugeneW

What if there is more to the universe than there appears to be? What if there is more than one universe?

Warren Weaver: The word information, in this theory, is used in a special sense that must not be confused with its ordinary usage. In particular, information must not be confused with meaning. https://www.panarchy.org/weaver/communication.html — Daemon

So maybe you can summarize or quote the part of the article that information and meaning are not the same thing because the way people use the terms indicates that they are the same thing. In saying that tree rings mean the age of the tree, we are saying that the tree rings carry information about the age of the tree. And when we ask what something means, we are asking about the causes of the effects that we observe. In asking what someone means by their use of words, we are asking what their idea is that they are trying to communicate (the cause of the words appearing on the screen).

Information isn't everywhere in the universe, it's in minds. It isn't in the tree stump. Your own example partly acknowledges that, in the way you have the observer come along and look at the tree rings. The information is in the mind of the observer. In the tree, there are only the rings.

If you think the information is doing something in the tree, tell us what it is. — Daemon

Right, so it's not that I didn't understand your argument. You didn't understand mine.

As I said, information is the relationship between causes and their effects. Do you agree that causes and effects are mind-independent? Do you agree that when we say that the tree rings mean the age of the tree, we are saying that the tree rings carry information about the age of the tree. And the tree rings carry information about the tree not as a result of what some human did, but what the tree did. The tree rings would mean the age of the tree even if no one looked at them, because tree rings exist as a result of how the tree grows, not because someone looked at them.

Information is not what comes about as a means of interpretation. It is what is interpreted, and what makes some bit of information valuable (values being a mental object and not something that exists apart from minds) is the present goal in the mind.