I think the major problem with your thesis is that your putting your own beliefs and morals above Gods. God is a wrathful and judgmental God, he desired us to be loving because he will ultimately judge evil not us. God wages a Holy war, unto which we cannot do, so that we can receive rest from Evil. Some of the times we need to trust in God and know he's all-knowing. — Isaiasb

Many, most, of the people here on the forum believe that the Christian God, or any god for that matter, does not exist. Quoting scripture won't get you anywhere with them. Actually, no argument will get you anywhere other than providing them with solid, concrete proof of his existence. This is a battle that has been fought here and everywhere else where theists meet atheists.

Unfortunately, people will procreate regardless of their inability to parent their children in a psychologically functional/healthy manner. Many people seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they [people] will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture our children’s naturally developing minds and needs. — FrankGSterleJr

I'm with @BC here. Children deserve to be protected. I also agree that some sort of parenting teaching in school might be a good idea. On the other hand, looking at the problems there are with sex education, I think there would be serious difficulties in implementation. Child rearing methods come with psychological, moral, and political assumptions and values built in. These days people can't even agree that reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" or learning about Rosa Parks are proper.

I am of the Good Enough Parenting persuasion. Children don't need great parents, they need pretty good parents - people who will provide at least basic levels of protection, security, and attention. I come to this understanding at least partly on the basis of my own experience as a parent. My children are in their 30s and 40s now. I was not a wonderful parent, but they are wonderful. Humans have gotten by without formal training for at least 200,000 years.

I am also of the persuasion that in the great majority of cases, parents are better equipped to raise their children than government is. There is a bond between mothers and fathers and daughters and sons that shocked me when I first felt it myself and shocked me again when I saw it in my own kids.

Agreed. I wasn't suggesting it can't be done. — FrancisRay

But leaving that aside, how can an untestable theory be scientific? Physicalism is an ideological position or guess, not a scientific theory. Even if we discount the fact that it fails in metaphysics and explains nothing there is no scientific reason for endorsing it. For physics it makes no difference whether it is true or false. — FrancisRay

I agree with this, although I think there is a scientific reason of sorts - without an assumption of physicalism, science can't be done. Scientific = measurable (or at least observable) = physical.

That doesn't mean I don't think consciousness experience can be studied scientifically.

Try Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. — wonderer1

Yes. I found some of what he wrote really convincing.

This is a really great post. I agree with a lot of it and don't understand quite a bit, but your general approach is really interesting. Can you point to some sources for your understanding.

As you can see, you've stepped in it a bit. You've picked a subject which is right in middle of one of the forum's five or so favorite unresolvable disagreements - the nature of consciousness. I hope you won't let the discussion be sideswiped off the direction you are headed.

Maybe this is an odd question, but it's one I've thought about a lot for metaphysics in general - where do you make the break between biology and metabiology? I sometimes have a hard time making that distinction with science in general, but it seems to me it is important to do so. For example, as I see it, self-organization and self-catalysis are biological principles, not metabiological ones.

You have a really interesting perspective. I hope you'll hang around here on the forum for a while.

So you're unconscious at the moment? — Patterner

I edited my previous post for clarity.

Thanks! — wonderer1

how flimsy scientific theories of consciousness are — RogueAI

As I noted in my post, I don't have an opinion on the particular positions described in the article, but I don't think scientific theories of consciousness are "flimsy" or "pseudoscience." I won't go any further now - I've had enough of "consciousness" for a while.

Note - I am reopening a thread that has been off the front page for a while. I just saw the article I've linked below and I thought people might be interested. I haven't come to any opinion about it's contents.

Consciousness theory slammed as ‘pseudoscience’ — sparking uproar

A letter, signed by 124 scholars and posted online last week, has caused an uproar in the consciousness research community. It claims that a prominent theory describing what makes someone or something conscious — called the integrated information theory (IIT) — should be labelled “pseudoscience”. Since its publication on 15 September in the preprint repository PsyArXiv, the letter has some researchers arguing over the label and others worried it will increase polarization in a field that has grappled with issues of credibility in the past. — Nature

Opinion | Why I don't believe in God — jorndoe

I think this statement is disingenuous. The reason Cristina doesn't believe in God is that she doesn't believe. I went through a similar process when I was about 15. Before that I volunteered at our local church and acted as an acolyte. I folded programs, lit the candles at the beginning of the service and snuffed them at the end, and helped collect money. At that point we moved to another town and I just dropped my participation and never really thought about it again. There was never any outright rejection, I just stopped. I think most young people who leave the church are probably like that. As long as there isn't any pressure, they never really need to reject belief.

I can think of two reasons why someone would provide the kinds of rationalizations that are included in the OP. 1) Looking back, people look for some reason need to justify their actions or 2) They want to proselytize their disbelief to others because of resentment or anger. Perhaps there is a third 3) Self-aggrandizement - they can feel superior to people who still believe.

Just stop lying about what I wrote and leave me out of this.

↪T Clark seemed to be certain that the researchers took a picture of a YinYang symbol and passed it off as a picture of entangled photons. Perhaps he saw "reference state" and inferred that it was the Taoist symbol. — Gnomon

I did not say that. Ignore my evidence if you want, make up your own fantasies about little fairies dancing on the taiji, but don't misrepresent what I wrote. I always thought you were a little goofy, but I didn't think you were dishonest too.

Interesting. Thanks for the summary. That historical period in Europe is really interesting - everything is going on at once - the 30 year's war, the English civil war, Shakespeare, Newton, the effects of the Protestant Reformation and Guttenberg's printing press, colonization of the world.

The threat is beginning to mushroom. Corrective measures would have to be taken before irreparable harm is done. — Existential Hope

This seems like it describe the whole world right now. I feel like we're in Europe in 1914 just waiting for the pistol shot.

Maybe, maybe not. The 4mm may be measuring the object under scrutiny, or the photographic image produced by the equipment. Some labels would help. — Gnomon

No sense going on any further. You should be ashamed of yourself.

I understand that this might not appear to be relevant to many people, but as the world's largest nation, the path India takes will have an impact on a noteworthy percentage of humanity. Hopefully, it will not lead to unnecessary fragmentation. — Existential Hope

Yes, the US is incredibly parochial and doesn't take much interest in what's up in other countries.

I shall be highly grateful for the views of the honourable members of The Philosophy Forum on this matter. — Existential Hope

I, like @BC, have no personal or political stake in this matter.

There are a few Indian people in my town, most young - in their 30s. When I asked them their thoughts about the renaming of Mumbai, they laughed and told me the people they know still call it "Bombay." Is there a generational or ethnic split between those who want to change the name and those who don't. Do some regions or ethnic groups feel more at home in India than others?

The image isn't the entangled photons. It's an image of a mathematical entity: the wave function. — jgill

No.

I certainly don't understand why an attempt to create an image of a "physical" object would require the inclusion of a completely unrelated image. Which part of the published picture are we supposed to identify with the entangled wavefunctions? Even if the swirling dots are supposed to be entwined photons, what scientific meaning are we supposed to learn from the image? An artist could have done the same with much less technological tomfoolery. Were the scientists themselves "gullible new-agers" trying to send a message to blind black-&-whiters? — Gnomon

Here's a figure from the article from which you've clipped your yin/yang symbol. It shows the black and white input image and the colored output. Note the size, measured as 4mm, or about 1/4 inch. This does not show entangled photons, it shows the recreation of an image.

Hah - I'm showing my age. — EricH

Hah - I took Fortran during my freshman year in college in 1970. Timesharing and paper tape on a state-of-the-art mainframe.

you who seeks neutral sources and do indeed find such sources, can you pls share? — Ansiktsburk

I agree with @Mikie - AP and Reuters are good choices. They are not as obsessed with Trump and generally seem to try to be even handed.

Quantum physics seems ripe for certain kinds of thinkers to abuse. It takes a lot of effort to undo that abuse . — flannel jesus

Agreed.

" **2 " means raised to the second power (i.e. squared). So " **3 " means raised to the third power, etc. This is standard scientific notation. — EricH

I've never seen "**" used as a symbol for the powers functions. I think the standard is "^", e.g. 5^2 = 25. In my experience, computer programs will accept that as input.

Is it your understanding that the scientists took a picture of a cultural symbol, and published it as-if it's a picture of two photons orbiting each other?*4 If so, was it a joke on gullible New Agers?*5 Or were they deliberately trying to deceive us ignorant Philosophers? — Gnomon

No, you've completely misunderstood. As @punos noted:

The image used in the experiment is arbitrary, they could have used Mickey Mouse or any other image. I think a Lambda symbol was used in a prior version of the experiment. — punos

They made a bad choice in using the taiji because gullible new-agers could so easily jump to the incorrect conclusion without understanding the substance of the experiment.

The articles I've seen don't mention that they started with a yin/yang symbol as input. — Gnomon

You're right, the people who wrote the articles either didn't understand just as you didn't or were unaware of possible misinterpretations. Take a look at the original article. The symbol does not play a big role in the results. It is only really discussed in a caption to one of the figures.

Counterpoint: Jesus with a halo praying carved into the universe with a nebula. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I noted, it's not a case of reading meaning into a pattern. The yin/yang pattern was intentionally used by the experimenters as part of the experiment.

The recent publication of a cutting-edge physics experiment revealed that entangled photons returned a holographic image that looks identical to the Yin/Yang symbol of Taoism and Holism. The article was quickly reproduced in other publications, but I was surprised that no one expressed surprise at the irony that a state-of-the-art Western scientific photographic technique produced an image traditionally used to symbolically portray the holistic philosophical worldview of an ancient Eastern philosophy. — Gnomon

After slogging through the original paper (link - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-023-01272-3#Fig2) I think I've sort of figured it out. Not certain. If I'm right, you've misunderstood what's really going on. The input to the experiment was the image of the yin/yang symbol. It was disrupted and then recreated using the new holographic/entangled photon technique. Somebody else take a look and see if they think I'm right.

I don't know why they used that symbol. Seems like a confusing choice given the possibilities for misunderstanding.

My apologies, where I said "the article explains some of them," above I meant to share this: https://www.quantamagazine.org/physics-experiments-spell-doom-for-quantum-collapse-theory-20221020/ — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks. Interesting. As I mentioned previously, I find spontaneous collapse theories appealing. From what I can tell, those are not necessarily ruled out by the results described in the article, but I'm not sure of that.

Good, thorough post.

According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable — flannel jesus

I used your quote to track down the article - "Ether and the Theory of Relativity" by Albert Einstein. Here's a link:

https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Einstein_ether/

Really great paper taken from a lecture in 1920. I've been looking for something like this for a long time.

Your quote is taken quite a bit out of context. It is clear the "ether" Einstein is talking about is space or space-time, not a luminous ether which is the supposed medium for the propagation of light. He makes that distinction explicitly.

I apologize for offering you novel ideas that your background didn't prepare you to understand. But the scientific terminology I used, by analogy, did represent my unconventional meaning. So, it was not intended to mislead. — Gnomon

Bullshit. You've appropriated language that has specific meanings to give your ideas a thin coating of false legitimacy. It's dishonest, no matter what your intentions were. There have been times on the forum when this kind of garbage would not have been tolerated. We lost a lot of our scientific voices - @Streetlight, @TimeLine, and Apokrisis. Apokrisis is still around from time to time.

Go ahead and spout your crap, but don't gift wrap it with scientific wrapping paper.

I'm all done here.

Your defensive skepticism missed the point. — Gnomon

No need for defense. I thought I should take the offense against misinformation.

It's just an analogy. — Gnomon

You know I don't hold much truck with your theories. We've discussed it in the past and there's no need to take it up again. On the other hand, here you use terminology which has a very specific technical meaning which is universally understood by scientists - The Laws of Thermodynamics. But you use the term in a way which is not consistent with the scientific understanding. That's why I commented. You shouldn't appropriate scientific terminology in a way that misrepresents it's meaning.

The classical notion, yes, but perhaps not quite that simple. — jgill

You're being a bit disingenuous. The Laughlin quote you provided refers to the quantum vacuum, not the luminiferous aether. Yes, the quantum vacuum is an established fact, but it is not the medium through which light was once thought to propagate.

As I indicated, I'm all done.

*1. The Laws of Thermodynamics (er, Enformy) :
#1 -- Enformy : Potential (P) for Causation/Change is finite but unbounded. EnFormAction is never lost, but merely transformed into Actual (A) material forms . (P = A)
#2 -- Entropy : Inputs are proportional to Outputs (ΔE = q + w)
#3 -- Origin : Initial state & Final state balance out (qualitatively — Gnomon

These are not the Laws of Thermodynamics, they're the Laws of Gnomodynamics.

This is not at all true. The physics of waves is very definite. Waves require a medium. All physicists know this, it is taught in basic high school level physics. This is why light is understood by physicists to exist as particles, photons, not as waves, and the movement of photons is understood by "wave functions", not waves — Metaphysician Undercover

Clearly there's no reason for you and me to continue this discussion.

I do have this to say to anyone else reading this post - The fact that light can propagate as a wave through a vacuum with no medium is an established scientific fact. It's part of the foundation of modern physics. In order to reject that, you will have to reject the findings of physics for the past 150 years.

but "role of observation"*1 and "observer effect"*2 are different in what sense? — Gnomon

From Wikipedia:

In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation.[1][2] This is often the result of utilizing instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner. A common example is checking the pressure in an automobile tire, which causes some of the air to escape, thereby changing the pressure to observe it. — Wikipedia - The Observer Effect

As the definition indicates, the observer effect is not a property of quantum systems. It is often used to explain the results of psychological studies when the experimenter interferes with the experimental subjects. In his original paper on the uncertainty principle, Heisenberg identified the observer effect as the cause of uncertainty. Later, it was determined that the phenomenon is caused by properties unique to quantum systems.

The most convenient term is the people of the Anglo-Celtic North Atlantic Archipelago. — Jamal

Why didn't I think of that. [joke] I think I'll just call you all "Limeys." Is that ok?[/joke]

It's a statement about what it means to be a "wave", how the concept indicated by that word is understood through normal human conventions, especially as it is used in the more specific physics of waves.

So, if light exists as a wave, which much evidence indicates, then it exists according to the principles understood by the concept signified by "wave", which i was talking about in the statement. It is a simple conclusion of deductive logic. P1, Waves have x essential properties. P2 Light exists as waves. C Therefore light has X properties. — Metaphysician Undercover

Phenomena in the world are not constrained to behave in accordance with our definitions. Before Michelson-Morley, people did believe that a medium was required for a wave to propagate. It took them a while to be convinced otherwise. Your definition is 150 years out of date.

Well, there's just one Irish I know of--me, so I'm fully dense, I suppose. Jamal, having @fdrake as company, is mercifully only half dense. — Baden

Is there a proper single term for people from Great Britain and Ireland as a group?