Philosophy Discussion Forums

Obvious Leo, I am puzzled by your assertion that the universe is becoming more complex instead of more disorganised. Natural selection causes living species to become more complex within the demands of their environments. But individuals use energy to sustain their complex organisations and eventually they revert to their simpler component chemicals, even inorganic individuals such as lumps of sandstone become disorganised by the workings of the superior energy of water. There seems therefore to be tension between forces of organisation and forces of disorganisation.

That's the same point I brought up, Belinda....

Obvious Leo said his philiosophy is based two basic premises, which are: (1) The universe is everything that exists, and (2) All effects are preceded by causes. Re: the second premise, don't we have the problem of an infinite regress of causes? This problem remains if you say the Universe is eternal and cyclical rather than transient, because the causal chain and inclination towards complexity would end at the Big Crunch/Big Bang.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Quotidian wrote: why is the Universe just such a way, that self-organizing systems - organisms - can arise within it?

Because it cannot be otherwise. The universe didn't have to organise itself in the way it did but it had to become more complex. This is a fundamental law of complexity because this is simple cause and effect. Simple systems become more complex and this process cannot stop until the whole process starts all over again. Life on earth didn't have to bring forth homo sapiens but if the right conditions obtain it must become more complex until a single species emerges at the top and becomes the uber-predator. This is absolutely mandated by the complexity paradigm and then the evolution must stop. It stops because the the uber-predator has seized control of the whole network and the future can no longer be self-organising. The future becomes designed.

Leo, I'm trying to get a handle on your theory. You seem to be saying that complexity naturally occurs. But the theory of entropy, which all physicists seem to accept, says that in any closed system, disorder always increases. Their explanation for the complexity we see around us is that this is a localized increase in organization, while the overall disorder in the universe is decreasing. Now I'll admit that the entropy theory has never been obvious to me, because it would require the universe at the time of the big bang to be more organized than the universe is at present, which seems weird. Perhaps the physicists' definition of disorder is such that the early universe was very organized, even though that's at odds with the common sense understanding of disorder.

I don't have an explanation for why there's anything here rather than nothing. I also don't have an explanation for why the universe and our world in particular are so complex. I suppose the explanation that seems most likely to me is that by chance some combination of atoms and energy came together in such a configuration that it became self-organizing and then led to more and more complex entities, which then by chance went on to more self-organizing entities, and so on. But I don't know that there would be anything inevitable about the self-organizing part, so it may be that our universe simply got lucky, rather than there being any underlying law that made the complexity we see inevitable.

Good there are many points of agreement, but also a bone of contention.

Leo wrote:there can be no question that Buddhism is teleological, and therefore reductionist by definition. Life can have no purpose any more than the universe can have a purpose. Purpose is a construction of the human mind and thus only minds can have purpose

We really need to get straight what the meaning of 'reductionism' is. Basically it is explaining something complex in terms of its simpler components. In the case of biology, biological reductionism nearly always appeals to genes, evolutionary theory, and lately neurological sciences to argue that even though humans appear to be willing, intelligent subjects, what they really are is 'nothing but' {a species of hominid/expression of the selfish gene/a 'moist robot'} - in short, something other than, and simpler than, an intelligent human subject (or, God forbid, a soul.) Something that basically those in lab coats can, in principle, understand and explain.

So reductionism really is 'nothing but'- ism. It is saying that we're really 'nothing but' one of the above types of things. That is the argument in many of Dawkins' books (before he became an anti-religious pamphleteer) like Unweaving the Rainbow, the Selfish Gene, the Blind Watchmaker, etc. A near-perfect statement of biological reductionism is Francis Crick's 'The Astonishing Hypothesis'.

(Buddhism is certainly not reductionist in that sense, although arguably the abhidhamma can be reductionist, but that is tangential here.)

Now as regard 'purpose'. I don't accept the the Universe is actually purposeless at all. (I suppose I would have to admit that in the context of Western philosophy, I am generally in agreement with intelligent, non-fundamentalist theistic philosophers, such as Keith Ward and Alistair McGrath.) In any case, I think the argument that purposes rely solely on human minds, is very much a statement of the type of secular materialist view which, on the one hand, you criticise, but on the other, you often seem to advocate. So I think your understanding of what does and doesn't constitute 'reductionism' needs a bit of work.

Biologists, having discarded 'teleology', have had to re-invent it under the term 'teleonomy', because biological forms are everywhere and always animated by purpose. Only 20th Century humans seem to think that they alone are capable of forming a conscious intention or discerning purpose. (On that note, have to go and keep painting the pool. Back much later.)

Obvious Leo wrote:With any luck an autopoietic philosophy will put the free will arguments to bed forever. You could be a pig-headed bugger and not respond to the cells' request. You could literally die of thirst solely by an act of will. Organisms without brains don't have this option. If water is available the cells will get it.

I'm coming into this conversation a little late, and a little too soon since I havent finished reading the rest of the thread, but I wanted to bring something up in regard to your comment above.

Elaborating off your scenario:

A series of cause and effects lead you to decide not to have the drink of water. Causes and effects that precede you, beyond your comprehension and awareness, led you to your specific situation, where you decide to die of thirst. And causes within your lifetime but still outside your awareness have led you to have the character or frame of mind that would lead you to choose to die or thirst, for some reason, over drinking the water to survive. A series so vast and interconnected that if you could follow it you may discover the seeds of your choice to die of thirst were planted quite a while ago. In the moment you are certain its your choice not to drink the water, so it feels like free will, and no one around you in your immediate surroundings would argue its not an act of free will. But the groundwork of cause and effect has brought you here without you knowing it has done so.

In this way, isn't is reasonable to suggest free will both exists and doesn't exist? It exists in an immediate timeframe of the here and now, and even in the percievable past in memory and percievable future in projection. But it doesn't exist on a larger timeframe of cause and effect, the kind that spans lifetimes. We are all on a grand ride of cause and effect, essentially endless shifting change, where we can act of "free will" in our immediate and perceivable temporal surroundings, but our little "temporal bubbles of free will" are being swept along a much larger river of change we have no control over.

Like how a tree will turn its leaves toward the sun for more energy, but it has no control over whether it's seed will first land in the sun.

Edit: I guess in this sense free will is an illusion that is based on perception, but we live so far within the illusion that its percieved as a real, genuine experience of life. Does the idea of free will as perception, or in concept only, make the experience feel any less "free"?

Belinda Wrote: Natural selection causes living species to become more complex within the demands of their environments.

We must realize that there is a possibility that there was never a beginning; again complexity is caused by ignorance as a result of a lower vibration state of mind. What is complex to you now is simple to you when you live in your highest vibration state. The secret is to view or remember that all dispersed mind is one mind. The confusion is caused by the nature and existence of duality which is present for the sole purpose of studying nature, studying the one mind.

This concept is known as unconditional Love. (Look what the topic of the brain has brought us to)

Wilson Wrote: Says that in any closed system, disorder always increases

I would like to correct something which is often repeated, what we see as disorder is actually not disorder but natural potentials. We see them as disorder because based on our ignorance. Chaos is actually organised when viewed with a higher mind, when viewed with a 3rd density awareness it is seen as disorder.

Also note that it is our human 3rd density mind that organises and therefore design out of chaos into what we refer to as order.

@ Hypafix.

In your dying of thirst analogy what is the cause and what is the effect?

Belinda wrote:Obvious Leo, I am puzzled by your assertion that the universe is becoming more complex instead of more disorganised. Natural selection causes living species to become more complex within the demands of their environments. But individuals use energy to sustain their complex organisations and eventually they revert to their simpler component chemicals, even inorganic individuals such as lumps of sandstone become disorganised by the workings of the superior energy of water. There seems therefore to be tension between forces of organisation and forces of disorganisation.

That the universe as a whole is becoming more complex is unquestionable. At the big bang it was nothing more than a dense ball of ionised plasma. It contained no matter whatsoever, only energy. Matter emerged very quickly but this was very simple matter. Almost all of the matter in the early universe was in the form of hydrogen atoms only, the simplest form of matter. There was some helium and also a very small trace of lithium, which are the 2nd and 3rd most simple atoms. Some of this matter formed into stars and the stars formed into galaxies. Within galaxies stars go through a cyclical process called stellar evolution where diffuse clouds of gas coalesce into stars which can explode when they exhaust their fuel and the contents of these stars are blasted out to form new clouds. These clouds contain the more complex atoms which form within stars during this process. It takes at least 3 cycles of stellar evolution before a galaxy can contain the entire suite of atoms in the periodic table, and stars with planetary systems cannot form until this time. Depending on the masses of the stars so formed this can take 5-10 billion years. This is a very brief summary because stellar physics is a very detailed science of its own. As you can see the universe has evolved more and more complex structure. There are no exceptions to this. Every galaxy in the universe has done this, as far as can be determined. Planetary systems can host life which can evolve into minds and minds are the most informationally complex entities in the known universe. Our universe has been steadily evolving for 13.8 billion years.

Having said all that what you say is true. The individual components of the universe are subject to inevitable decay according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Stars burn out. However new stars form, so we see a continuous process of death and rebirth and at each iteration of this process the new is more complex than the old. Exactly the same is seen in biology where organisms live and then die but the entire system becomes more complex. To grasp this you need to think holistically. The whole biosphere becomes more complex while its component structures become extinct. This is the yin and yang of the eastern philosophies but I just call it the Humpty-Dumpty paradigm. Everything falls to pieces and then reforms into a more complex entity. This is a physical law, make no mistake, and easily proven, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and to consider this in a reductionist way is flawed thinking.

Belinda wrote:There seems therefore to be tension between forces of organisation and forces of disorganisation.

I think you answered your own question, but clearly order wins out since no exception to this law has ever been observed. This tension you refer to is often called "the edge of chaos". Complexity from chaos is a mathematical fact.

Regards Leo

-- Updated August 6th, 2014, 9:17 pm to add the following --

Felix wrote:That's the same point I brought up, Belinda....

Obvious Leo said his philiosophy is based two basic premises, which are: (1) The universe is everything that exists, and (2) All effects are preceded by causes. Re: the second premise, don't we have the problem of an infinite regress of causes? This problem remains if you say the Universe is eternal and cyclical rather than transient, because the causal chain and inclination towards complexity would end at the Big Crunch/Big Bang.

The infinite regress is metaphysical ********, as is the notion of a first cause. It also contradicts physical law in the form of the first law of thermodynamics. However you are dead right. 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.

Regards Leo

I have noticed that whenever anything from classical philosophy is brought up you tend to lapse into profanities.

You might consider looking at that.

Wilson. I hope I've answered your question but remind you of this. The 2nd law is true of the part but not true of the whole. I'll also remind you that physics makes no sense and no physicist on earth will say otherwise. They know perfectly well that they've buggered something up. They assume that the big bang was a state of maximum disorder and they got this bit right. So the 2nd law can't apply to the universe as a whole. This remains a big mystery to them because that the universe is evolving is self-evident. The reason for this is actually quite simple. They're using the wrong mathematical tools so my model is both metaphysical and meta-mathematical.

Quotidian. You explain your existence as part of a plan and I explain mine as a part of a process. Which of us is reductionist?

Hypafix. I suggest you read the rest of the thread. This model mandates the will and I don't use the superfluous adjective "free". We can only will what we are free to will.

Chaosnature wrote:In your dying of thirst analogy what is the cause and what is the effect?

The effect is death and the cause is dehydration by an act of will. If somebody wants to suggest that a human being cannot will this then the burden of proof lies with them. That causation operates top-down and bottom-up is unarguable but I'd love to see somebody try.

Regards Leo

-- Updated August 6th, 2014, 9:50 pm to add the following --

Quotidian wrote:I have noticed that whenever anything from classical philosophy is brought up you tend to lapse into profanities.

You might consider looking at that.

I write in my own language and make no apology for it. Furthermore I hold to the a priori assumption of my entire culture. If it looks like ******** it probably is.

Regards Leo

-- Updated August 6th, 2014, 9:52 pm to add the following --

Q. Which point in classical philosophy do you believe I am contradicting?

-- Updated August 6th, 2014, 10:10 pm to add the following --

Q. If you answer this question, please, we can then discuss who understands reductionism and who doesn't.

Obvious Leo wrote:Quotidian. You explain your existence as part of a plan and I explain mine as a part of a process. Which of us is reductionist?

Regards Leo

Leo wrote:You explain your existence as part of a plan and I explain mine as a part of a process. Which of us is reductionist?

Earlier, you said 'there can be no question that Buddhism is teleological, and therefore reductionist by definition.'

Find me *any* definition of 'reductionism' which says that reductionism assumes or means or is equivalent to 'teleology'.

Why is it that something that presumes a purpose to existence, is 'reductionist'? I am trying to understand what you mean by 'reductionism'.

By failing to answer my question you disqualify yourself from the debate, Q, and I have no interest in arguing your peripheries. I stated my two self-defining statements as axioms, as any philosophy must do, and thus my paradigms can only be argued within their confines. I'll state them again.

1. The universe is everything that exists.

2. All effects are preceded by causes.

If you wish to dispute these axioms you are perfectly entitled to do so but then we are not discussing my philosophy. I have no interest in arguing these points because in the absence of evidence they are unarguable. Somebody else might be interested but you can count me out and play amongst yourselves elsewhere. I've engaged in philosophy debates all my life and I know obfuscation when I see it. For the third and final time I will ask this question and if once again you decline to answer it then I know for certain that you will never understand what I'm saying. It means we think in different magisteria.

Obvious Leo wrote: Quotidian. You explain your existence as part of a plan and I explain mine as a part of a process. Which of us is reductionist?

Regards Leo

What 'plan' have I referred to? Where I have I said that I explain my existence as part of a plan?

As the thread begins with a criticism of 'reductionism', it is important to say exactly what that means. That is not peripheral, it is central, and you haven't answered that question.

-- Updated August 6th, 2014, 10:58 pm to add the following --

As to the statement 'the universe is all there is', it is quite meaningless. Many eminent scientists nowadays propose that 'this universe' is one of trillions. Generally speaking, the assertion that 'cosmos is all there is' (which is Carl Sagan's catch-phrase) is simply an assertion that all that is real, is what can be discovered through microscopes and telescopes.

-- Updated August 6th, 2014, 11:02 pm to add the following --

As to the statement that 'all effects are preceded by causes', that nowadays is generally taken to mean 'physical causes', i.e, the kinds of causes that are amenable to quantification and scientific analysis. When it comes to many of the factors that govern human affairs, whether they are historical, social, cultural, or other, the relationship between cause and effect is often difficult or impossible to discern and are thus not a matter for scientific analysis.

Q. I thank you for your contribution to this discussion and look forward to crossing swords with you again on a subject where we might share some common ground. 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. There is nothing to be believed in this philosophy and it is not founded on belief.

Regards Leo

Quotidian wrote:What 'plan' have I referred to? Where I have I said that I explain my existence as part of a plan?

As the thread begins with a criticism of 'reductionism', it is important to say exactly what that means. That is not peripheral, it is central, and you haven't answered that question.

-- Updated August 6th, 2014, 10:58 pm to add the following --

As to the statement 'the universe is all there is', it is quite meaningless. Many eminent scientists nowadays propose that 'this universe' is one of trillions. Generally speaking, the assertion that 'cosmos is all there is' (which is Carl Sagan's catch-phrase) is simply an assertion that all that is real, is what can be discovered through microscopes and telescopes.

-- Updated August 6th, 2014, 11:02 pm to add the following --

As to the statement that 'all effects are preceded by causes', that nowadays is generally taken to mean 'physical causes', i.e, the kinds of causes that are amenable to quantification and scientific analysis. When it comes to many of the factors that govern human affairs, whether they are historical, social, cultural, or other, the relationship between cause and effect is often difficult or impossible to discern and are thus not a matter for scientific analysis.

Quotidian.

I applaud you for your final response, I too very deeply metaphysical by nature , don’t read multiple books like you guys, get most of my inspirations and answer from within; struggled very hard to make sense of those two statements made "'the universe is all there is'" for one did not make sense to me too.

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.

Secondly,

Cause, what is the cause?

If you can answer that then we are still in the 3rd density reality which means there is something greater than cause so to speak.

Leo wrote: 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

You have a lot to learn if you can only debate a topic within a confined template that you have designed for yourself. Philosophy has no boundaries. 

Leo Wrote: There is nothing to be believed in this philosophy and it is not founded on belief. The effect is easier to analyse as you would know.

Leo, please do not try and define philosophy as if you where the founder of philosophy. 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. So do not strike out belief from a philosopher process

Chaosnature wrote: ...struggled very hard to make sense of those two statements made "'the universe is all there is'" for one did not make sense to me too.

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.

Secondly,

Cause, what is the cause?

If you can answer that then we are still in the 3rd density reality which means there is something greater than cause so to speak.

"The universe is all there is":

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.

In this way, its impossible for anything to exist outside of this type of Universe. Even "outside" exists inside it.

These are my thoughts. Leo let me know if they are off base from what you're trying to say.


"cause and effect":

It's hard to deny the idea that we are deep within a mess of cause and effect. Essentially all the exists, exists because of a causal chain where every thing in the Universe (as i expained above), is causally linked to every thing else in some way, shape or form. Something cannot exist outside of this massive chain of cause and effect. Its impossible.

We do live in 3 dimensions. Although we are limited by what we are able to percieve with our senses, this doesn't suggest a break in the chain of cause and effect between 3 dimentional entities and entities of other dimensions beyond our perception, whatever these may be. And i dont suggest other sentient beings, I mean entities like stars or galaxies. Similarly to how Leo talks about non-linear relationships within the universe related to spooky action at a distance, I don't see it unreasonable to suggest bottom-up and top-down causal relationships betwen dimensional planes.

Im not sure if this addresses what you were saying Chaosnature, its my two cents.