Philosophy Discussion Forums

God began by chiding Abraham, “If it wasn't for Me, you wouldn't exist.” After a moment of thoughtful reflection, Abraham respectfully replies, “Yes, Lord, and for that I am very appreciative and grateful. However, if it wasn't for me, You wouldn't be known.”

We exist in and as the vibratory balance between something and nothing, the totality of which is beyond numeration. From Holophany: The Loop of Creation:

Wholeness can only be a self-referential system, for if there was something extraneous to wholeness, then it would not be wholeness. On the other hand, if wholeness was the only existence, then it could relate solely to itself. Yet to be a self-referential system, wholeness needs to define [or relate to] itself as such, where the defined self reflects all of existence without the possibility of anything external to it. The moment All-That-Is, the totality of existence, would say “I” it would define a projection, which would be less than it is from its point of view. Trying to achieve identity (a true definition of itself wherein the defining and defined selves are identical), it would endlessly attempt to redefine itself, and by that it would create infinitely more and more reflections of itself. We could say then that whatever defines, creates. Wholeness defining itself is an infinite activity because it cannot define itself, so it “tries” to do so infinitely.

...When wholeness defines itself as such, the act of definition creates something beyond itself, which makes it no longer wholeness. But since it created something beyond itself, this beyond belongs to it, so now it can define itself as wholeness with nothing beyond it. But alas, as soon as it defines itself thus, the definition creates something beyond this new “self” and etc. The process of continuously redefining itself with each instance defines a different but similar entity — similar because it repeats its act of self-definition and different because each wholeness includes more parameters of the beyond than the previous definition of wholeness. With each new definition, wholeness creates more and more parameters by which it can define itself. Further, these parameters also have to be defined, and their definitions have to be defined — another infinite recursion. Each additional parameter of the beyond comes from a previous definition that defined wholeness, albeit stating “there is no beyond” (the meaning of wholeness being, ‘all-inclusive’), but the act of definition infers the necessity of the beyond (which the meaning of the definition denies). Due to these extra parameters, the wholeness that first defined itself as such and the wholeness that defined itself as such afterwards are similar but not identical.

...If self-reference is not a time-related concept, then in an a-temporal framework there could be an infinite chain of defining processes, which at the limit approaching infinity would really define infinite wholeness, and consequently, this infinite process of defining would be included in the definition of wholeness.

...Wholeness and not-wholeness certainly seem to be the two opposing sides of a paradox, but a deeper look reveals something utterly fascinating. We have established that when wholeness defines itself then it is not wholeness. Before it set out to define itself, it was indefinite, whereas when it defined itself, it could not succeed to define itself as wholeness, so in fact it stayed indefinite and nothing happened except the fact that it created a process of definition, which nevertheless, left the defining entity indefinite. From our point of view, the process of definition is something discrete. In fact, when we analyze this process, we discover a repetitive pattern characterized by discrete redefinitions constituting this one process wherein the indefinite attempts to define itself. However, from the point of view of wholeness, it continues to stay indefinite in a continuous fashion in spite of attempting to be defined. From that point of view, the act of definition is one continuous act creating infinitely while wholeness stays indefinite. And that’s the dynamic: the infinite repetitive process of definition, which is one continuous action

...All our attempts at defining Nature, seeing how things really are, investigating the truth about objective reality, are measurements. Whenever we attempt to establish any fact or behavior, we are doing a measurement. Any measurement is discrete, whereas what we measure is continuous. In other words, our tools to think with (be it mathematics or spoken language), define in discrete terms, whereas what we measure, whether subatomic particles (waves) or the complexity of a human’s behavior, is continuous, so it can never be precisely defined. Not because our tools are too primitive, but because the more precise the measurement will be, the closer it will approximate the indefinite continuous substratum of existence.

DM, I found some notions a tad jarring but I overall enjoyed the quote's general sense of twisting inside-out, which strikes me as a dynamic fundamental to reality, with fractal emergences arising from each iteration of inversion and eversion. I also like the infinite regress ideas, although I would question them. Eventually there always seems to be a boundary, even the universe, which would theoretically have end points with photons that are the furthest things from everything else.

Thing is, does wholeness have any idea that it is anything at all outside of the observations of its evolved constituents, like us? After all, we ourselves started out without consciousness and developed it, so perhaps this is something that occurs on other scales as well, only over longer time spans? It seem to me that the wholeness's act of defining itself has only recently begun, at least in our part of the galaxy anyway.

However, if universes are multiple and serial, and de Chardin's Omega Point occurred in previous universes, then the above would not apply.

Greta wrote: ↑December 27th, 2017, 6:47 pm DM, I found some notions a tad jarring but I overall enjoyed the quote's general sense of twisting inside-out, which strikes me as a dynamic fundamental to reality, with fractal emergences arising from each iteration of inversion and eversion. I also like the infinite regress ideas, although I would question them. Eventually there always seems to be a boundary, even the universe, which would theoretically have end points with photons that are the furthest things from everything else.

Why? The boundaries that make definition possible are indefinite. That being said, I'm glad you found it a tad jarring. History is full of disconcerting ideas that were eventually proved to be true.

Thing is, does wholeness have any idea that it is anything at all outside of the observations of its evolved constituents, like us? After all, we ourselves started out without consciousness and developed it, so perhaps this is something that occurs on other scales as well, only over longer time spans? It seem to me that the wholeness's act of defining itself has only recently begun, at least in our part of the galaxy anyway.

Pay close attention to the last paragraph:

All our attempts at defining Nature, seeing how things really are, investigating the truth about objective reality, are measurements. Whenever we attempt to establish any fact or behavior, we are doing a measurement. Any measurement is discrete, whereas what we measure is continuous. In other words, our tools to think with (be it mathematics or spoken language), define in discrete terms, whereas what we measure, whether subatomic particles (waves) or the complexity of a human’s behavior, is continuous, so it can never be precisely defined. Not because our tools are too primitive, but because the more precise the measurement will be, the closer it will approximate the indefinite continuous substratum of existence.

What if it is true, as some have suggested, that consciousness is the product of a self-referring process? And what if it is true that nothing is definite without consciousness making it so?

Answer: we would have found an explanation of God.

Dark Matter wrote: ↑December 28th, 2017, 12:56 am

Greta wrote: ↑December 27th, 2017, 6:47 pmDM, I found some notions a tad jarring but I overall enjoyed the quote's general sense of twisting inside-out, which strikes me as a dynamic fundamental to reality, with fractal emergences arising from each iteration of inversion and eversion. I also like the infinite regress ideas, although I would question them. Eventually there always seems to be a boundary, even the universe, which would theoretically have end points with photons that are the furthest things from everything else.

Why? The boundaries that make definition possible are indefinite. That being said, I'm glad you found it a tad jarring. History is full of disconcerting ideas that were eventually proved to be true.

I would not consider how jarring an idea is to be of any guide as to its value. I do no see things being so indefinite in nature - as different thresholds are reached changes stop being linear but become transformative. So you cannot keep heating water indefinitiely; it becomes steam. You cannot cool it indefinitely as it becomes ice. Increase pressure and you gain another type of ice and, if pressure is increased enough, oxygen will be released and the hydrogen will form a kind of metal, and so forth. Such boundaries consistently appear and theoretical singularities are the ultimate upshot of increased pressure as a result of passing the Schwarzschild radius.

Dark Matter wrote:

All our attempts at defining Nature, seeing how things really are, investigating the truth about objective reality, are measurements. Whenever we attempt to establish any fact or behavior, we are doing a measurement. Any measurement is discrete, whereas what we measure is continuous.

In other words, our tools to think with (be it mathematics or spoken language), define in discrete terms, whereas what we measure, whether subatomic particles (waves) or the complexity of a human’s behavior, is continuous, so it can never be precisely defined. Not because our tools are too primitive, but because the more precise the measurement will be, the closer it will approximate the indefinite continuous substratum of existence.

Good point. Thus, all measurements are to some extent sketchy rather than exact. This reflects the fractal geometry of nature, famously described in the "coastline problem"; that is, the more finely one measures a coastline, the larger measure is found as ever smaller crevices in the coastline are measured and counted. However, we can approximately measure coastlines for practical purposes, and that is the best we can do.

Still, I do not think that the fractal layers are endless, just that they are numerous enough to seem so.

Dark Matter wrote:What if it is true, as some have suggested, that consciousness is the product of a self-referring process? And what if it is true that nothing is definite without consciousness making it so?

Answer: we would have found an explanation of God.

Does this mean that nothing definite happened on Earth before the first conscious organism emerged? That the Earth's reality as indeterminate before the first nervous system, brain or abstract intelligence emerged? IMO philosophers tend to have scant regard for the "slow life" complexity of geology, whose own change and development preceded abiogenesis and evolution.

We live in and as the vibratory tension between existence and non-existence: the present is where past and future intersect, creating an interference pattern we call the "universe."

'Nuff has been said. Anything more should be brought up in another thread.

Dark Matter wrote: ↑December 28th, 2017, 2:37 am We live in and as the vibratory tension between existence and non-existence: the present is where past and future intersect, creating an interference pattern we call the "universe."

I like that - where is it from? I think that, after many pages, a little digression on a thread is a good thing.

Dark Matter;

We live in and as the vibratory tension between existence and non-existence: the present is where past and future intersect, creating an interference pattern we call the "universe."

A Planck moment in time is so minute that moment in Time as we experience Time encompasses the past, the present and the future.
The past and the future do not intersect they merge, a moment in time being transcendental, the present being in part the past the present and the future.

Greta wrote: ↑December 28th, 2017, 2:51 am

Dark Matter wrote: ↑December 28th, 2017, 2:37 am We live in and as the vibratory tension between existence and non-existence: the present is where past and future intersect, creating an interference pattern we call the "universe."

I like that - where is it from? I think that, after many pages, a little digression on a thread is a good thing.

Me. As far as I know, it’s an original insight.

Wayne92587 wrote: ↑December 28th, 2017, 2:58 am Dark Matter;

We live in and as the vibratory tension between existence and non-existence: the present is where past and future intersect, creating an interference pattern we call the "universe."

A Planck moment in time is so minute that moment in Time as we experience Time encompasses the past, the present and the future.
The past and the future do not intersect they merge, a moment in time being transcendental, the present being in part the past the present and the future.

I do not disagree. (Recall what I said about convergence.) Mind can never hope to grasp the concept of an Absolute without attempting first to break the unity of such a reality. Mind is unifying of divergencies, but in the absence of divergencies, mind finds no basis upon which to attempt to formulate understanding concepts.

Total, infinite reality is existential in several phases. The vibratory tension is but one of them.

Spectrum wrote: ↑November 16th, 2017, 10:31 pm

Chester wrote:Occam's razor demands
... ...

God is the encompassment of all thought, everything else that thinks is a subset of Him, dependent on HIm, though not necessarily controlled by Him.

You cannot simply rely solely on Occam's razor without subsequently proving your thesis. E = MC2 is merely a simple equation but it is proven empirically.
Note I have proven 'God is an Impossibility' thus no matter how you argue, it is impossible for God to exist as real.
http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/ ... =4&t=15155

In your 'God is the encompassment of all thought' you assumed God exists without verifiable and sound proofs.

It is generally accepted a belief in God is based on faith, i.e. without proofs nor sound reasons, and the basis is psychological. So it is a waste of time trying to proof or justify God exists as real.

In reality, 'God' is NOT the encompassment of all thoughts, rather the idea of God is thought-of as driven by some inherent psychological existential crisis.
God is an individual thought and shared-thought by the majority of theists infected by some 'zombie parasite' and causing theists to suffer an active psychological existential crisis.

Assuming if you can prove all of reality is reduced to thoughts, the more likely empirical-based speculation is such thoughts could be controlled by human-liked aliens doing the 'Matrix'. It is also possible what is reality to us is merely Reality-TV to some human-liked aliens existing billions of light-years away. In this case, it is nevertheless empirically possible, but you have to consider the probability of such a speculation being real is likely to be 0.0000...1%. To conclude such speculations are 99% [no 100%] real, all one need is to bring the evidence.

As for the idea of God, God is an impossibility to be real to start with. Therefore there is no need find any proofs for God at all.

-- Updated Thu Nov 16, 2017 9:40 pm to add the following --

[b]Dark Matter[/b] wrote:

Even in mice, the brain works like a radio receiver

It is a fact all information [senses] received by the human mind is based on waves from an external source, e.g. seeing an apple is based on waves, of color, patterns from an 'apple' and processed by the cognition processes to enable an apple to our consciousness.

Note my point above, "Assuming if you can prove all of reality is reduced to thoughts ..." it is more likely we are in a TV-Reality-Show done by some human-liked aliens in a Matrix method.

The idea of God is driven by the internal psychology of the theists who need such an 'idea' [like little children imagining their little friends] to soothe the rising and pulsating existential angst.

-- Updated Thu Nov 16, 2017 10:00 pm to add the following --

Dark Matter wrote:(And please don't use the tired old example of something like wetness "emerging" from H2O.)"

I claimed reality is a Spontaneous Emergent Reality.
One small clue of emergent is this;

In the above experiment, the question is how did an actual concaved mask 'emerged' into your [and all normal humans] consciousness as a 'convex' mask??
The reality we are in also emerged in a similar way but it is very complex to explain.
The philosophical argument is there is no independent reality out there waiting for humans to perceive it and realize its truth via correspondence of 'perception' with 'reality'. Note Philosophical Realism which is not tenable as a really real.

Besides, if Einstein was wrong about "spooky action at a distance," why can't he be wrong about the moon not being there when no one is looking? Countless experiments verify both (but people refuse to consider the implications of those experiments).

I am not sure Einstein claimed "the moon not being there when no one is looking."

But it is ULTIMATELY* true, there is no moon out there when no one is looking nor cognitively interacting with it [whatever that is].
* ultimately among many other valid perspectives.
It is the same with the above Einstein Mask illusion [actually it is reality], the 3D-convex Mask only emerged when you are looking at it because in this case we know it is a concave Mask from another perspective. This is akin to the Wave-Function-Collapse phenomena in Physics.

So, God is somehow impossible, and there are no need for proofs. Well, many brilliant men have came up with philosophical proofs for such a God. What do you think accounts for brilliant men (perhaps even women) creating proofs for God?

-Wes

Greta wrote: ↑December 28th, 2017, 2:01 am
Does this mean that nothing definite happened on Earth before the first conscious organism emerged? That the Earth's reality as indeterminate before the first nervous system, brain or abstract intelligence emerged? IMO philosophers tend to have scant regard for the "slow life" complexity of geology, whose own change and development preceded abiogenesis and evolution.

Do you know what “imaginary time” is?

Dark Matter wrote: ↑December 31st, 2017, 12:18 am

Greta wrote: ↑December 28th, 2017, 2:01 am
Does this mean that nothing definite happened on Earth before the first conscious organism emerged? That the Earth's reality as indeterminate before the first nervous system, brain or abstract intelligence emerged? IMO philosophers tend to have scant regard for the "slow life" complexity of geology, whose own change and development preceded abiogenesis and evolution.

Do you know what “imaginary time” is?

I just Googled without feeling much clearer about it, so a "for dummies" explanation would be helpful.

I'm still unclear about it myself, and seeing apparently contradictory explanations doesn't help. I've seen it described as a mathematical trick to get around the idea that the universe had a beginning to being more real than normal time. As I understand it, imaginary time is another dimension crossing the "now" at a right angle. Unlike normal time that has a beginning and an end, imaginary time does not: going back to its beginning is like going north of the North Pole. You'd keep going straight but along a new trajectory.

What I'm trying to say is that we cannot view past and future as anything definite. What we think of as normal time is a useful tool, a way of getting our bearings and organizing our world, but otherwise it does not exist.

Time is poorly understood. “Emergence” and the “slow life complexity of geology” are tools for our understanding, but time is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.