Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Felix]

Thank you Leo, your cosmo-philosophy is clear to me now.

'The energy content of the universe is finite and thus this cosmic evolution must end. It ends with a big bang and then does it all over again. It has done this eternally and will continue to do this eternally.'

Seems like such an awful waste, to expend all that energy building lovely castles only to have them wash into the cosmic sea. Not surprisingly, humans have a problem with that idea - with the finality of death, whether it be a human life or a Universe. But truly, they are both marvels of different scales.

The mystics tell us there is a permanent consciousness behind the impermanent flux of material existence, but this is a purely subjective knowledge (unless/until everyone has it?). So perhaps the cycle of singular universes is part of a bigger evolutionary cycle of consciousness? I prefer to think so....

"God grows up while the wise men talk and sleep" - Sri Aurobindo, from his epic poem, "Savitri."

[Quotidian]

The mystics tell us there is a permanent consciousness behind the impermanent flux of material existence, but this is a purely subjective knowledge (unless/until everyone has it?).

Not subjective, not objective - it is non-dual (advaita). This is an idea that is barely understood in Western philosophy.

I made it clear that I can only discuss my philosophy within my own defined axioms and if you can't do this we have nothing further to say to each other on this matter.

I bear you no ill-will and hope that we can remain friends, but naturally I haven't forgotten that you declined to answer a similar question on several occasions elsewhere.

'You have failed the task I set you and refused to recognise my definition of the subject. Hence you are relegated to Outside the Circle'.

I can only venture that your 'philosophy of the bloody obvious' is obvious to you for reasons that probably are not. In other words, what seems obvious to you, might be so for reasons which themselves are far from self-evident to others.

Belief is a system that leads impeccable philosopher to investigating, once the belief is investigated and answers discovered the belief is then upgraded to knowing.

I agree with a lot of your points, including this, but such questions are very difficult to examine clearly. Many people would like to believe that they function without belief altogether, but actually that is impossible. There was a an influential philosophy called Logical Positivism which tried to formally expel beliefs of all kinds from its outlook, but it failed because it actually became self-contradicting. Philosophy itself relies on beliefs, but those beliefs either ought to be defensible by reason, or they ought to acknowledge the matters about which reason itself has limits.

[Obvious Leo]

Is this not what we are still debating? That such statement can also be classified as reductionism. By quoting that the universe is all there is; you are implying that the universe has an outside to it and has boundaries and therefore something else houses the universe l o l, you shot yourself in the foot Leo.

No I didn't. You merely misread me, unsurprisingly because of a reductionist flaw. I've made it clear often enough that if the universe is all that exists then it can have no outside. "Outside" is a spatial construct and in a temporal world its only analogues are "before" and "after". My universe is not a place but an event which is continuously coming into existence.. '"Before" cannot be physically real. An event A may unleash a cascade of causal consequences which we could label events B>Z. Each of these events could unleash a further cascade of consequences which we could label as we choose. Let's say P causes events lower case a>z. In causal logic we can say that A has caused P but we cannot say that A has caused p because P has caused p. A causes p is reductionism. To say that an act of love by my parents caused me to come into existence is logical, but to say that the same act of love caused my grandchildren to come into existence is not. Reality is continuously coming into existence. and thus can only exist in the present, a point I've made often enough. Event A no longer exists the moment it effects physical change and its effects only exist for long enough to cause the next effects, which in turn vanish into non-existence. Our everyday speech is riddled with cliches and folklore wisdom which illustrate that our instincts are non-reductionist. **** happens. What's done is done. You can't undo the past. Let's move on! If your auntie had balls she'd be your uncle.Stop agonising over what might have been. I could fill a book just with slogans which illustrate that our instincts of time are true. How could they be otherwise when our very own lives are a journey through time? By the same chain of logic we can also see that the future does not exist either, until its events have been caused to come into existence by the ever-moving present.

Although this is exquisitely bloody obvious it contradicts the models of physics. Einstein said so straight away and said so all his life, and he was a man of deep instincts who knew in his heart that this was why these models made no sense. However he was never able to discover in exactly which way these models must be false, and for this he is not blameworthy because at the time when he published he knew no philosophy. Physics is not a science but a branch of mathematics which allows the physicist to make predictions about the behaviour of matter and energy in the physical universe. That's all it is. It cannot offer an explanation for this behaviour because the system of mathematics it uses is reductionist and held together with the stick-tape and string of mathematical constants, which are derived from observation. This is not science and neither is it logically coherent but it works. This is the problem of physics and it is both metaphysical and meta-mathematical. In Einstein's day the reductionist mathematics of Newton was the only mathematical system they had, but modern physics no longer has this excuse. Fractal geometry is an entirely new way of thinking the world and the only way to grasp this is by studying its principles and then thinking very very hard about the implications. This latter part is a personal journey of the individual mind and it takes a **** of broad reading across a wide range of fields. I can lead you to the water but I can't make you drink it.

do not strike out belief from a philosopher process

I strike it out and I strike it out utterly. Although why a belief is held can be accessed with the tools of human reason the nature of the belief being held cannot. Philosophy is not a game to me as it was to Wittgenstein and pals. If a proposition cannot be accessed with the tools of reason it is unarguable and thus to argue it is irrational.

I do not recognise your authority to explain philosophy to me, Chaosnature, because of your above statement and also because you've clearly read bugger-all of it. I've read all the great philosophers of the east and west many times over and I know whereof I speak. I'm not asking you to take my word for it because if you do then this act alone is reductionism. This is what I learned from the Persians.... Philosophy is a personal journey and it is a journey of the mind. I suggest you embark on this journey in your own good time and I hope that it won't take you forty years, as it did me.

Felix. I can see that you're getting where I'm coming from and I hope that you can also see that a philosophy such as this is a very meaningful one of birth and renewal for the self. You can make your mark on the future solely by the effects you cause as a consequence of your own existence. Nobody else can do this for you because if you had never existed these events could never have been caused. You can make the evolving universe a better place for those who come after you, which means your life has had a positive meaning, or you can choose the other option. But that the universe as a whole will continue to evolve in a continuous process of growth is unstoppable. That we cannot define the nature of this growth is irrelevant because the universe is a mere pup with many billions of good years left in it. Cliches only become cliches because they're true so I'll end this post with a simple one. You can only do what you can do.

Regards Leo

-- Updated August 7th, 2014, 11:36 am to add the following --

Hypafix. My apologies. I somehow managed to miss your post and there are a couple of points in it that I can respond to. I like the refreshingly logical way you think, by the way.

Leo has said on many occasions that he doesn't agree with modern physics because they are using out of date mathematical models. Why would you assume when he says "universe" he means the same as modern physics implies. At one point in time we prescribed the word universe to the cosmological entity we thought was all that existed, being one cosmologically scaled step up from galaxies. That cosmological entity is no longer percieved as "all that is", there exists another grand step up in scale from solar systems, galaxies, universes, what modern physics calls the multiverse. But I suspect Leo is meaning to use the word "Universe" piggybacking from its more traditional sense, as conceptually all that ever has, does, or will exist. This type of Universe would house all the scales from atoms and electrons and whatever is smaller to the multiverse and whatever is scale up from that, and whatever is scaled up from that, yet to be discovered by humanity.

Although my model is a metaphysical and meta-mathematical one it does lead to some physical conclusions. It means the multiverse is unnecessary , a very important construct in metaphysics, and it also means that mysterious undetectable dimensions are unnecessary. None of the modern physics fraternity seriously suggest that these things are physically real but find them useful in their outmoded mathematical framework ,which has become staggeringly artificial and contrived, a flaw they are well aware of. The "virtual" particles are mathematical entities, not physical ones. The number "i" is used a lot in physics and is accepted as being a useful imaginary number. The standard Model alone has over a hundred constants and some of these these constants are changing regularly. Even physicists can see a problem with a changing constant and there has never been a physicist yet who will deny that their unification model will need to get rid of every single one of them, including c.

Sadly the media sluts like Hawking and Krauss love nothing more than to make our universe mysterious to the general public but they are not popular in the brotherhood where everybody knows bloody well that they need to make the damn thing SIMPLER. If I see Brian Cox's simpering grin on my TV one more time telling lay folk what a marvellously strange universe we live in I'm going to chuck the set out the window. The man is a jackass and a buffoon and he is doing harm to his own profession. Our universe is immensely complex and exquisitely simple at the same time. Einstein knew this when he said that it will be possible to explain it to his barmaid and Wheeler said this when he said that the unification model would be one of "sublime austerity". Spinoza said it hundreds of years ago. A generation of delusional fruitloops known as the string theorists caused all this but they are now extinct. In the new generation of physicists there are no string theorists but sadly still few complexity theorists. The Newtonians still occupy the biggest chairs but watch for some changes over the next decade or so. The rat has always stunk, but the stench is becoming over-whelming and more and people can now smell it.

It's hard to deny the idea that we are deep within a mess of cause and effect

IMPOSSIBLE is the word I prefer.

We do live in 3 dimensions.

This is false and this is what makes my model a legitimate scientific hypothesis. This is the same assumption that physics makes and this assumption can be disproven with an experiment of laughable simplicity. So bloody obvious is it that it took me a decade to find it. Elephants can be resolutely invisible, especially in small rooms like my own head, but this experiment will yield data so simple as to be completely unambiguous. The three Cartesian spatial dimensions of spacetime are mathematical entities, not physical ones. No philosopher in history has ever said otherwise but instead describe them as constructs of the human mind. I can prove this to be true. Minkowski's mathematical chicanery was philosophically bogus from the outset because to represent time as a spatial dimension is metaphysical nonsense. If you can name a philosopher who would accept that what Minkowski did was valid I need his name, because I've never come across the bloke.

When we look out into the universe we don't look "out into space". We look "back into the past". It's only the slightest change of perspective but it makes the world of difference to physics. It means it makes sense.

Regards Leo

[Hypafix]

When we look out into the universe we don't look "out into space". We look "back into the past". It's only the slightest change of perspective but it makes the world of difference to physics. It means it makes sense.

So just to clarify for myself you assert that what is typically understood as space is actually time, and by extension a measure of time.

I have to say, I really like reading what you have to say Leo. I find it very interesting that you speak from a strictly scientific point of view, because I agree with you on a great deal of what you're saying but I've arrived at these ideas and concepts through esoteric spiritual development. I have nothing against the scientific approach, this was just my path. And while I read your posts I understand them from this spiritual perspective, yet to you my understanding is from the perspective of hokey mysticism.

And what I find most surprising about your posts from the scientific perspective, is that I have yet to find anyone who writes more cogently about the brain, the universe and our place in it from a spiritual perspective than yourself.

[Atreyu]

Minkowski's mathematical chicanery was philosophically bogus from the outset because to represent time as a spatial dimension is metaphysical nonsense.

I find it very sad that I cannot win you over to the idea of higher dimensions of space and how they relate to our subjective perception/cognition of time-motion. You seem very intelligent and I can't understand why you'd oppose this idea. Allow me one more attempt....

In any 'world' of a given number of dimensions of space, you must add one greater dimension of space than exists within it in order to have a conception of time-motion as pertains to the entire 'world'. As an example, let us take the geometric point. It has zero dimensions of space. In order for the point to move (which implies "moving in time") the point must exist within a space of one dimension greater than itself. If there are zero dimensions of space, then a point is all that exists, and it cannot move, nor can there be any "time" for it. There simply isn't anywhere else for it to "go", therefore there is no movement and no time. But if we place that point within a "world" of one dimension greater than itself, like a line, which has one dimension of space, then we can move the point back and forth within our line. This gives us both motion (of the world itself not just internal to itself) and time.

Now let us take the line which has one dimension. For it to be able to move once again it must exist within a space which has at least one more dimension of space than itself. In this case adding another dimension of space (two) gives us a plane. Now the line can move across the plane and we can cognize "time". Without that extra dimension of space we cannot have any motion-time. We can continue our example by placing a plane within a three dimensional space, such as a cube or sphere. Once again, by placing our world of a given number of dimensions of space (in this case two) within a space of more dimensions (in this case three), we can now observe and cognize motion. The plane can move within the cube or sphere, because in the latter we have an extra dimension of space which allows the former to move as a whole.

Now let us apply all of the above to the world as we know it --- our world of apparently three dimensions of space. In this world we have a cognition of time, and it applies to the whole. We say that time applies to the whole Universe of three dimensions of space. Time-motion are not merely going on in one part of the Universe and not in another part, the whole Universe is "moving through time". Our cognition of time applies to the entire Universe as a whole.

Now following the above examples, we can clearly see that another dimension of space is necessary for us to have this cognition of motion-time-phenomenon in the first place. Without it, our three dimensional world would be just like the plane, line, or point existing without being within a higher dimension of space --- it would be the only thing in existence and therefore there could not be any cognition of time-motion as applies to it as a whole. Without a fourth dimension of space there could be no time, no motion, and no phenomenon in our three dimensional world at all. It would be a static three dimensional world in which nothing ever happened, nothing ever moved, and nothing ever changed. The reason why we perceive time-motion is because our entire three dimensional world is moving within a space of greater dimensions than itself possesses, just like the point is moving within a line, the line is moving within the plane, and the plane is moving within the solid. Our Universe is moving within four dimensions (or more) of space, which accounts for our perception of a "before, now, and after", a "yesterday, today, and tomorrow". Without higher dimensions of space this would be as impossible, just like a point, line, or plane trying to move within themselves.

For a point to move and therefore have the property of "time" pertaining to its whole, rather than "time" only applying to parts of itself by measuring movements within it, we must have a line. For a line to move we must have a plane. And for a plane to move we must have a solid. For a solid to move we must have a fourth dimension of space (time). The solid can only "move in time", i.e. it can only move if a dimension higher than those within itself are present.

Surely an intelligent man like yourself can grasp this basic geometric (albeit meta) truth. Time is merely how we perceive/cognize our Universe as it moves through a space which has more dimensions than it has within itself (three).

[Obvious Leo]

These are gracious words, Hypafix, and I thank you for them. No doubt for inscrutable psychological reasons of my own I have never been able to accept that knowledge was something to be believed. In my world-view knowledge is something which must be understood in order to be definable as knowledge. For that reason, although I'm aware that I can appear to sometimes have a preachy style I need to emphatically deny that this is my intent. I've always been both scholar and educator and such habits become ingrained. However I learned my philosophy of knowledge from the Persians and the Persian teachers were merely thinkers who shared their thoughts. The burden of understanding always lay with the student because the meaning of words lies in the mind of the reader, just as beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

For this reason I chose the long-forgotten path of the natural philosopher, the bloke that uses the tools of reason which his species has evolved for its own survival.

So just to clarify for myself you assert that what is typically understood as space is actually time, and by extension a measure of time.

Precisely. To put it simply. When we make an observation we spatialise time, which explains why no cyclops emerged in evolutionary history. Nature does not endow her creations with frivolous luxuries and thus we have two eyes for a reason, but to to say that the reason produced the cause is nonsensical reductionism and a bizarre appeal to reverse causation. Non-linear dynamic system theory can account for this without resort to such crap logic. We spatialise time so that we can comprehend our environment and thus the universe has mandated its own comprehensibility without resort to teleology. In complexity theory this is mandated by mathematical law because simple systems MUST become more complex. This is as mandated as 1+1=2 and it is impossible for me to overstate this. This is also everywhere to be observed in the universe and there are no exceptions when you understand the model. This is why I describe it as a paradigm shift in conceptualised thinking because it is an entirely new way of thinking the world, except that this is what we've always done before we started to confound ourselves after Newton. When we succeed in switching off our over-thinking, as Vonnegut advised, then we can feel the truth of time which has shaped the past in its orderly manner to produce our present which will make our future. Reality is that which is continuously being made.

When we spatialise time by observing the world we do exactly the same thing as physics does and this is why physics works. Spacetime models the world of the observer. This is not the real world and every philosopher since the pre-Socratics took pains to point this out, once we learn how to read them in the context of the non-linear paradigms. This cannot be taught but it can be learned, and more importantly, it is felt. As a philosopher friend of mine said "It is impossible for a human mind to both believe in god and understand the Mandelbrot set". This is a very wise remark.

And what I find most surprising about your posts from the scientific perspective, is that I have yet to find anyone who writes more cogently about the brain, the universe and our place in it from a spiritual perspective than yourself.

I've been accused by reductionists of having a Dr Spock view of the world but I reject this utterly. I have no need of the supernatural and I have no need of the caused universe with a plan because I have something far deeper and far more spiritually fulfilling. My psychological needs are no different from those of any other but they are my own and my own alone and I see a majesty in this world-view which transcends the supernatural by many orders of magnitude. I do not mock those who seek their needs as they must but my universe that is itself becoming makes theirs look like the plaything of another to me, because I can define my own existence in precisely the same language. I am myself and I have always been myself and yet I have never been the same man from one moment to the next. Every time a photon moves within me I become a physically different Leo and this Leo is a fractionally more complex Leo than before. I, too, am myself becoming and that's meaning enough for me. It was enough for many of your famous "mystics" too.

Regards Leo

-- Updated August 7th, 2014, 5:55 pm to add the following --

Atreyu. She who must be obeyed will be walking in the door any tick of the clock and if I value my life I better get things happening on the domestic front. I'll try and have a look at your post later and see what I can make of it.

Regards Leo

[Belinda]

Obvious Leo, thank you for your answer #67 to my question to you. I accept your answer and will have to revise it from time to time because I have puzzled over my question for quite some time.

Felix, I am not puzzled by the assertion that every event is a caused event with its corollary that the entire stock of causes is therefore constantly depleted. The answer that makes this puzzle disappear is that causes or effects is a perspective that depends upon sequence in time. However if you look at nomic phenomena you can see that causes and effects disappear. They are timeless. Such are well known nomic phenomena. As for all the other phenomena that at this time don't appear to be nomic I am happy to believe that , actually, they are you and me included. The cash value of this belief is religious but I don't mind.

http://www.blackwellreference.com/publi ... 515_ss1-93

[Chaosnature]

Thanks for your attempt to clarify these point Hypafix.

The universe is not all there is.

The universe is a representation and manifestation of another factor causing it to manifest.

The universe is not all there is, there is nothing-verse if I am allowed to create my own terminology

Some way, shape or form. Something cannot exist outside of this massive chain of cause and effect. It’s impossible.

The cause is implemented from outside of the universe; the cause is directed and planned from outside of the universe. The universe is not all there is. Expand your mind. Meditate to a state of nothingness, then your might understand what I am trying to present here today.

The physical is not all there is (the universe is not all there is).

[Ruskin]

Consciousness is an emergent consequence of all this electro-chemical activity

It is? You have evidence or proof for this? There is a difference between what you personally believe to be true and science, science is based on objective evidence not personal opinion.

[Obvious Leo]

Consciousness is an emergent consequence of all this electro-chemical activity

It is? You have evidence or proof for this? There is a difference between what you personally believe to be true and science, science is based on objective evidence not personal opinion.

What sort of proof would you regard as satisfactory?

[Chaosnature]

Leo: Our everyday speech is riddled with cliches and folklore wisdom which illustrate that our instincts are non-reductionist. **** happens. What's done is done

Again words are vibrations, what you say will come into existence by way of manifestation one way or the other. So we need to understand these glitches and know our intentions when we do choose to use them (the can help Lessen the overall confusion).

And as for the topic of "Time"; Time is not fully understood even by the creators of time.

What is your understanding and definition of time Leo?

When you attempt to define time make sure the word movement is portrayed. (To me all time is; is a scale for movement)

Although why a belief is held can be accessed with the tools of human reason the nature of the belief being held cannot.

To this point I simply say by way of questioning you Leo, how do you investigate an interest without there being an existing belief in this same interest. Is it not belief that catalyzed our quest to updating; that the planet was not flat? Is it not belief that pushes scientist to investigate and make mathematical deductions leading to today’s technological era?

Strike out belief from the equation, sit back and think; what would you have left of what we currently have today.

Leo: I've read all the great philosophers of the east and west many times over and I know whereof I speak.

The philosophers get their information from mostly inspiration after studying nature and its particles.

Sorry I don’t have to read a hundred books to become an impeccable philosopher, I reduced the amount of books I read when I found most of the information I was downloading into my system was jamming the natural frequencies of my inspirational source due to inaccuracy of the external source. (You will be amazed what wealth of information you can get from just meditating instead of reading thousands of logical left brain style writings).

If only the scientist would listen and investigate our findings, by now we would have been well evolved.

[Ruskin]

What sort of proof would you regard as satisfactory?

I suppose if you could build a sentient machine and explain the physical process into which consciousness was formed internally within the circuitry I think that would be good scientific proof. I don't think we can build anything that has even a spark of consciousness within it though and if this proposition isn't true we never will be able to.

[Obvious Leo]

What sort of proof would you regard as satisfactory?

I suppose if you could build a sentient machine and explain the physical process into which consciousness was formed internally within the circuitry I think that would be good scientific proof. I don't think we can build anything that has even a spark of consciousness within it though and if this proposition isn't true we never will be able to.

A very good point. It is unlikely that to build a sentient machine will ever be possible. This is the orthodox position of complexity theorists and one with which I concur. Sentience cannot be programmed but must be learned. It is hypothetically possible that such a machine could be built, although the technology is beyond even the wildest speculation, and the sentience would be of a very rudimentary kind. Most theorists are of the view that no future civilisation would ever build such a thing even if they developed the computational technology to do so. It would be utterly useless and potentially dangerous. To build one with the computational capacity of a human mind will absolutely and definitively NEVER be possible. There are more logic gates in a human mind than there are ATOMS in the universe. That's a lot of atoms and an awful lot of logic gates.

Regards Leo

[Felix]

Belinda said: "However if you look at nomic phenomena you can see that causes and effects disappear. They are timeless."

Well, no phenomena is "timeless." I suppose you mean that the sequence of causes and effects is indefinite or contingent?

I wonder if the physical laws that govern each universal cycle (universe) might change... is there any reason to suppose they must remain the same from one universe to the next? Maybe the Universe itself is evolving? If we're lucky we have an Émile Coué sort of Universe, "Every cycle in every way, I (Miss Universe) am getting better and better!"

[Belinda]

Belinda said: "However if you look at nomic phenomena you can see that causes and effects disappear. They are timeless."

Well, no phenomena is "timeless." I suppose you mean that the sequence of causes and effects is indefinite or contingent?

I wonder if the physical laws that govern each universal cycle (universe) might change... is there any reason to suppose they must remain the same from one universe to the next? Maybe the Universe itself is evolving? If we're lucky we have an Émile Coué sort of Universe, "Every cycle in every way, I (Miss Universe) am getting better and better!"

Some phenomena are timeless meaning invariable by virtue of their definitions by absolutely inseparable properties. The classic and picturesque example is the planet Venus in her guises, or properties, as morning star and evening star.I regret that ever since I first heard the word 'contingent' I have been unable to understand it. This might be because I cannot picture what an uncaused event might be.

Except for existence itself which Spinoza described as sui generis I cannot imagine any other event which is outwith causality.