But what is “going through it” referring to? — Punshhh

I was alluding to your statement:

there are people living ordinary lives going through these processes entirely unaware of it — Punshhh

A process of subconsiously occuring deep learning.

I am coming to this from the perspective that people who are following this course are only partly aware and in charge of what is going on. That it is a more esoteric (putting the baggage of that phrase to one side) process and the pupil and teacher are developing on an underlying unconscious, or soul( baggage accepted) level and may be unaware of what is going on. Also that there are people living ordinary lives going through these processes entirely unaware of it and may have no interest at all in anything religious, or spiritual. — Punshhh

FWIW, what you describe here is quite consistent with deep learning occuring in the neural networks of our brains. So, based on neuroscience, there is good reason to think we are all unintentionally going through it. Of course, it might be beneficial to realize that deep learning is prone to "hallucinations".

But the point at issue is, whether time is real independently of any scale or perspective. So a 'mountains' measurement of time will be vastly different from the 'human' measurement of time.

Sensory information doesn't really come into it. Clearly we have different cognitive systems to other animals, but the question of the nature of time is not amenable to sensory perception.

Anyway - I can see we're going around in circles at this point, so I will leave it at that. Thanks for your comments. — Wayfarer

What do you mean by a mountain's measurement of time, if not sensory information?

You talk as if the mountain of your imagination has a flicker fusion threshold, but a flicker fusion threshold is a characteristic of sensory systems.

So touching to see the camaradie amongst the forum positivists. — Wayfarer

Do you feel better now that you've gotten some narcissistic supply?

:100:
(All your posts in this thread.)

Why? — Banno

Seems to me the following sentence answered your question.

If we start with that assumption - and call it the "ontolgoical ground" (OG), we can then entertain some possibilities. — Relativist

Basically, who cares what they think? — Fire Ologist

People who live in societies where such theists are trying to set the government agenda have good reason to be concerned with the thinking of such people.

That's what the anti-religious are required to do if they want to engage in philosophy. — Leontiskos

In what sense do you think this is a requirement?

What is the LNC about? What is it a law of? What domain does it govern? — J

I'd suggest it is a law about use of language which is truth preserving.

I'd also suggest that there are patterns to language which preserves truth; the neural networks in our brains recognize such patterns, resulting in our intuitive recognition of the LNC as truth preserving.

Simply consider the possibility of us being irrational. If there is a possibility of that, we were not purposefully directed. If there isn’t, we were purposefully directed towards rationality. — PartialFanatic

Of course humans are often irrational, and not as a matter of choice. Anyway...

The “Unintelligent Design” of the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve

But I would assume that it would be somewhat inconvenient for a physicalist to admit that, say, the 'laws of thoughts' are actually an essential aspect of that physical world which is assumed to be totally 'mindless'. — boundless

Non-eliminativist physicalists don't assume the physical world to be totally mindless of course (unless the minds under discussion are defined as being incompatible with physicalism).

Furthermore, from the perspective of many physicalists, 'laws of thought' of some sort are to be expected. And 'laws of thought' are expected to be consistent with the sort of information processing that occcurs due to the structure of our brains.

:up: :up:

:up: :wink:

Now I'm sure some good work has been done to stich together "the God that draws the crowds" and "the God that wins internet arguments" and I don't want to sell that short, but fundamentally that is what I take it to be: reconciling two very different ideas of God created for two very different purposes. — goremand

You are right to recognize the distinction

To me it seems like equivocation between the God described cataphatically during uncritical in group discussions amongst believers, and the vagueness of the God described apophatically when faced with skeptics.

I'm not seeing the "good work" though. Can you explain?

:up:

I was simply asking that we consider evidence in regard to the difference between faith and belief. — Tom Storm

I took a glance at the SEP entry on the epistemology of religion. I haven't read far, but it certainly opens with a discussion of the relevance of evidence to religious faith:

Evidentialism implies that full religious belief is justified only if there is conclusive evidence for it. It follows that if the arguments for there being a God, including any arguments from religious experience, are at best probable ones, no one would be justified in having a full belief that there is a God. And the same holds for other religious beliefs, such as the belief that God is not just good in a utilitarian fashion but loving, or the belief that there is an afterlife. Likewise it would be unjustified to believe even with less than full confidence that, say, Krishna is divine or that Mohammed is the last and most authoritative of the prophets, unless a good case can be made for these claims from the evidence.

Evidentialism, then, sets rather high standards for justification, standards that the majority do not, it would seem, meet when it comes to religious beliefs, where many rely on “faith”, which is more like the forecaster’s hunch about the weather than the argument from past climate records. Many others take some body of scripture, such as the Bible or the Koran as of special authority, contrary to the evidentialist treatment of these as just like any other books making various claims. Are these standards too high?

I agree that Plato was mistaken in his hypothesis. I don't see that as contradictory to what I said. Still I have to give him credit for recognizing something important in our thinking, and taking a stab at making sense of it.

Of course fly bottles are an issue.

I say the problem is in trying to come to grips with the sense in which such concepts exist. — Wayfarer

I'd say the best way to work on such a coming to grips, is by developing an understanding of the sort of information processing that goes on in our brains.

There's a lot more information available to enable the development of such underanding than there was in Plato day (or Russell's). It seems a shame to not be take advantage of such educational information.

The abstract notion of a triangle is a recognition of a simple pattern. Our brains are to a substantial degree, pattern recognition engines that develop models of the world.

Forms sure sound to me like Plato's offering of a cognitive science hypothesis. Without a, doubt it's a very insightful hypothesis. There is something there to be explained, which Plato is pointing at with the notion of forms. I'd suggest the reification of forms mentioned by @Banno amounts to looking at the finger that is pointing, and missing out on learning about what Plato was pointing towards.

Welcome to the forum.

This is a topic I am very interested in. Thanks for the links.

I think the need to provide public justification for private beliefs is still very strong, at least in the U.S. (though it may be fading fast), and that's a good thing. — J

Seems to me a characteristic one would want an engineer to have (the engineer who designed the plane you are going to be flying in, for example) is an appreciation for the value often found in the consideration of justifications for private beliefs.

Doing so plays an important role in social primates, such as we are, having the ability to think synergistically and learn from each other.

What is a good thing?

:up: :wink:

So it seems you prefer to use the word "signs" where many other people are inclined to use the word "information". E.g. instead of someone saying that she is going to "gather information", you would prefer that she say she is going to "gather signs"?

I'm curious to hear, where you want to go with this?

The link to Lewis' paper that you originally posted is dead. In case you want to update the OP, this link works:

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://joelvelasco.net/teaching/hum9/lewis%2520-%2520divine%2520evil.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjGj5S8ot-MAxVgHNAFHdqgJAEQFnoECAEQAg&usg=AOvVaw1CBUmYf6iWzju7jHvBjD70

Life is the necessary condition for value. — James Dean Conroy

Ignoring possible ambiguities to "life"...

It seems to me that replacing "value" with "valuing" results in less likelihood of reification.

I suggest you consider the possibility that your perspective is self contradictory. How do you know anything about chemicals?
— wonderer1

Does it matter? — Darkneos

Does it matter to you, whether your thinking is incoherent or not? Your thinking about the answer to my question might help you see that at present your thinking isn't coherent.

Doesn't change [...] how they are the reason we feel what we feel. — Darkneos

Again, you are looking at things in an overly simplistic way. The reasons we feel what we feel are quite complicated. You certainly aren't going to find any scientific backing for 'it's just chemicals'.

That’s the illusion, it’s really just the chemicals. It is that simple and our stories making it to be more than what it really is.

Without those chemicals it doesn’t matter what the information is. — Darkneos

I suggest you consider the possibility that your perspective is self contradictory. How do you know anything about chemicals?

Meaningful experiences don't tend to be about something else, it only seems that way due to the chemicals in us. — Darkneos

Nah, you are looking at things far too simplistically. There is a whole lot of structure to how those chemical are arranged. That structuring results in information processing occurring. That information processing is about things.

:up:

Let's think of a USB memory stick. If we open it we do not find any information, we only find an electronic and physical layout. To obtain information we must have a suitable device, a USB reader. I wonder if the expression "to obtain information" is the correct way to refer to the case. Since the information, this is my theory, does not exist inside the USB stick. — JuanZu

The information does exist in the USB stick, in the form of variations in electrical charge in different regions of a flash memory chip. This is why the device works as a memory.

It doesn't appear to me that you are formulating a very useful theory.

:100: :up:

You're not intelligent because of the properties alone of the chemicals in your body. You can't skip the middle step. You're intelligent because of the processes that that specific arrangement of chemicals allows to happen. And those processes AREN'T in all the particles. Those processes aren't in any individual particle at all. — flannel jesus

:up:

Our ability to communicate in this way also requires an understanding of EM fields, which are universal and not "composed of electrons" (rather electrons are the activity of the field, at least on many understandings). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, our understanding that those understandings are required for deeper understanding of our environment, has been greatly informed by people looking at things from a smallist perspective. Perhaps, as a pragmatic matter, it is wise to recognize the value of such an epistemological perspective?

Sounds like "smallism" to me. The problem is, there is no prima facie reason for smallism to be true — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is the fact that our communicating as we are is rather dependent on our ability to build computers based on understanding the way small things (e.g. transistors) can be interconnected to result in the behavior of bigger things (e.g. computers). We can see similar things in all sorts of fields, e.g medicine.

Macro things cannot be explained by properties the building blocks do not possess. — Patterner

Macro things are regularly explained by properties that the building blocks do not possess. For example bits of iron don't float on water, yet iron (as steel) is regularly formed into ships that float on water.

Perhaps the fallacy of division is more apropos to panpsychist thinking than the fallacy of composition?

No. I'm suggesting that they might be about the same things, under two different descriptions.
— Banno
I like the idea, but don't see how it can be. Can you explain? I suspect you have been doing that, but, if so, I haven't caught on. I am but an egg. — Patterner

Suppose the psychological language we use in talking about intentionality consists of metaphors which map roughly to different sorts of physical activity occurring in our brains.

I see it as rather analogous to seeing the elements of C++ as metaphors for what goes on phyiscally in the hardware of a machine running C++ code. (In case that helps.)

Sure. I'll take the option of not engaging in what I expect would be a tedious discussion. (I.e. there is a reason I choose this option.)

You can still have choices, it's just that your choices follow from... well, follow from YOU, follow from the state of you. — flannel jesus

:up:

Until then it’s just a blizzard of lies and conspiracy theories, and it’s activating violent psychos to take it upon themselves to take matters into their own hands outside the democratic process. — NOS4A2

Haven't you insisted that such influence on people is impossible?

The reductio conclusion for one who disbelieves in free is that they don't believe in free will because they are determined not to. They'd be similarly forced to accept a believer believes because he must. — Hanover

The believer believes as he does at present, because he must due to the history that shaped the way he believes at present. However we can contribute to what will be the history that shaped the way the believer believes in the future, by interacting with the believer now.

If that's the case, we argue not to persuade or effectuate our opponents to choose our way of thinking, but because we simply must argue and bend as programmed. — Hanover

That we can change each others thinking isn't particularly problematic on a determinist view.

Does anyone else here feel that determinism, in its full intricacy, actually leaves room for more mystery rather than less? Or do you see it differently? — Matripsa

I largely agree with you, although I wouldn't use "predetermined" and instead I would use something like "interactively determined". I don't have any clear picture of how one might quantify mystery though.

As you point out the complexity of causal interactions results in plenty of mystery, particularly with respect to the functioning of our minds/brains.