Is there anything outside the material universe?

[Trailblazer]

And much like naughty teenagers, we are continually crashing the car.

Ain't that the truth, and then some people blame God for the crash, when He was nowhere near the scene.

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: The conflict is not because of what the Prophets revealed. It is because of what the followers DID to what the Prophets revealed.

The “original religions” that God revealed to the Prophets aka Messengers are the true religions, but and all the stuff that was done to them AFTER THAT (e.g., Christian doctrines) is man-made.... stuff is what we have with ALL the older religions, man-made stuff that was added after the fact....

So there was nothing known about how humans might react to such? Seems like an error of judgement somewhere to me.

God knew because God is All-Knowing, but God gave humans the car keys and they crashed the car, over and over...

Such is the liability of having free will, but the only other option is being God's robots. God does not want any robots. If He did, He would not have created us as sentient beings who have free will.

 

[blü 2]

My apologies ─ I completely overlooked your post (Mar 31), and only just noticed it.

If we have two chairs in a room, it constitutes an instantiation of 'two'. This quality of being 'two' exists independently of an observer (a living brain).

No it doesn't. For instance, for there to be two chairs, a brain must first have the concept 'chair' and define (a) chairs as the topic, and (b) the room / space / place, or some part of it, as the field, and identify this as a chair and this as a chair, in that field. Only then are there two chairs. In the absence of such a brain, there is no chairness, and no twoness.

It doesn't stop being two chairs if living brains aren't around to think about them.

Except for individual memory, yes it does. Twoness and chairness are concepts and like all abstractions exist only as such, which is to say, exist only in brains. No brains, no concepts, and no concepts, no twoness or chairness.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Ain't that the truth, and then some people blame God for the crash, when He was nowhere near the scene.

Oh officer, twas not me in the collision, I most sincerely say, twas my religion!

 

[Mock Turtle]

God knew because God is All-Knowing, but God gave humans the car keys and they crashed the car, over and over...

Such is the liability of having free will, but the only other option is being God's robots. God does not want any robots. If He did, He would not have created us as sentient beings who have free will.

Except free-will alone (which I believe in) would just explain all this too - without any need for any God or gods. Hence, if we all take responsibility for our behaviour - as we all should - then perhaps we can all manage sans religion and hopefully free of the strife that it often causes.

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: God knew because God is All-Knowing, but God gave humans the car keys and they crashed the car, over and over...

Such is the liability of having free will, but the only other option is being God's robots. God does not want any robots. If He did, He would not have created us as sentient beings who have free will.
Except free-will alone (which I believe in) would just explain all this too - without any need for any God or gods. Hence, if we all take responsibility for our behaviour - as we all should - then perhaps we can all manage sans religion and hopefully free of the strife that it often causes.

There is only a need for God if God exists and says there is a need. So in that case, even if we do not believe in that God, we are still in need of that God. If we live a good life using our free will, we are like a plant growing in the shade. God is right above the clouds, we just do not see Him.

Perhaps we can live without religion, or find one that causes no strife.

 

[Mock Turtle]

There is only a need for God if God exists and says there is a need. So in that case, even if we do not believe in that God, we are still in need of that God. If we live a good life using our free will, we are like a plant growing in the shade. God is right above the clouds, we just do not see Him.

Perhaps we can live without religion, or find one that causes no strife.

Few of the latter I fear.

 

[ArtieE]

No it doesn't. For instance, for there to be two chairs, a brain must first have the concept 'chair' and define (a) chairs as the topic, and (b) the room / space / place, or some part of it, as the field, and identify this as a chair and this as a chair, in that field. Only then are there two chairs. In the absence of such a brain, there is no chairness, and no twoness.
Except for individual memory, yes it does. Twoness and chairness are concepts and like all abstractions exist only as such, which is to say, exist only in brains. No brains, no concepts, and no concepts, no twoness or chairness.

There are two collections of atoms in a certain configuration there. What we call those is irrelevant for their existence. Some can call them chairs, some can call them gonkers. They don't become chairs or gonkers just because we call them that. We have just agreed to give certain configurations of atoms a name for our convenience so that we know we are talking about atoms in certain configurations. We have also agreed to use the word "two" for a certain number of such collections. Other languages have other words describing the same number of collections.

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: Perhaps we can live without religion, or find one that causes no strife.

Few of the latter I fear.

Fear not.... There is one.... It is called the Baha'i Faith.
And we do not really need more than one religion so it's all good.

“The utterance of God is a lamp, whose light is these words: Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch. Deal ye one with another with the utmost love and harmony, with friendliness and fellowship. He Who is the Day Star of Truth beareth Me witness! So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth. The one true God, He Who knoweth all things, Himself testifieth to the truth of these words.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 288

 

[Ponder This]

My apologies ─ I completely overlooked your post (Mar 31), and only just noticed it.

I did wonder why you didn't respond that post. All is well now.

No it doesn't. For instance, for there to be two chairs, a brain must first have the concept 'chair' and define (a) chairs as the topic, and (b) the room / space / place, or some part of it, as the field, and identify this as a chair and this as a chair, in that field. Only then are there two chairs. In the absence of such a brain, there is no chairness, and no twoness.

In this case, I don't understand why I should believe that the physical properties of things should change in the absence of an observer. Why should chairs cease to be chairs?

Except for individual memory, yes it does. Twoness and chairness are concepts and like all abstractions exist only as such, which is to say, exist only in brains. No brains, no concepts, and no concepts, no twoness or chairness.

I understand that chairness and twoness are concepts, but if we say that the instantiation of a chair is equivalent to the concept of a char, then how can we say that anything physical is anything other than a concept? Wouldn't this imply that all material things exist 'only in mentation'?

What is an example of something with objective existence? Or do no such things exist?
And why can't a chair satisfy:
The chair has objective existence if the chair exists independently of the concept of the chair in an observer's mind (a.k.a. living brain).

 

[blü 2]

In this case, I don't understand why I should believe that the physical properties of things should change in the absence of an observer. Why should chairs cease to be chairs?

The physical object has objective existence. The real world is there. But that the real world is divided into objects, that this is a thing and it's a tree and this is a thing and its a rock and this is a thing and it's grass and this is a thing and it's a hill, that this is my field of relevance and in it are two things and they're both chairs, are all interpretations made by the brain.

And those ways of selecting and interpreting are given to us by evolution ie for us they enhance survival and breeding.

Contrast the worldview of a frog's eye or a spider's many eyes, and the physical responses to such stimuli that frogs and spiders make, which have in common that they work well in the circumstances.

Contrast again Kingdom Plantae, whose members also detect and interact with their environment and survive and breed.

Which is to say, there are many ways of being alive, and our set of senses and thought processes is not the only kit.

 

[WalterTrull]

The physical object has objective existence. The real world is there

Well... there are physicists who disagree.

 

[blü 2]

Well... there are physicists who disagree.

You think?

My view is that the world external to the self, the sum of things with objective existence, constitutes reality, the realm of the physical sciences.

As far as I know, physicists think they study something ─ the stuff they themselves are made of, for example, and the earth they stand on, and the sun that gives them sunburn, and the air that oxygenates their body, not least the brain ─ and so on. They're about building a quantum computer, so called because it will, they trust, utilize quantum phenomena like superpositions to give us useful results.

 

[WalterTrull]

You think?

Well, this guy does.

"The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things...
There is another benefit of seeing the world as quantum mechanical: someone who has learned to accept that nothing exists but observations is far ahead of peers who stumble through physics hoping to find out ‘what things are’. If we can ‘pull a Galileo,’ and get people believing the truth, they will find physics a breeze. The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy. ■ Richard Conn Henry is a Professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA."

 

[Ponder This]

The physical object has objective existence. The real world is there. But that the real world is divided into objects, that this is a thing and it's a tree and this is a thing and its a rock and this is a thing and it's grass and this is a thing and it's a hill, that this is my field of relevance and in it are two things and they're both chairs, are all interpretations made by the brain.

I get that we can assign names to the things that we perceive. But I don't see how our ability to assign names to them invalidates their objective existence. Why does having a name for something invalidate its objective existence?

Let me return to the 'straight line'. Straight lines (unlike 'two') have no instantiations in the physical world. Straight lines simply do not exist anywhere other than mentation, but 'two' has many instantiations in the physical world. 'two' manifests when anything has distinct existence from something else. I don't even have to talk about two chairs. I can talk about two things (real things with objective existence). They don't cease to be distinct when I cease to observe them. Yet any thing that we suppose to be a straight line turns out not to be straight once we examine it closely. Just like there are no perfect circles (no orbits with zero eccentricity, for example). They exist in theory, but are never found.

And those ways of selecting and interpreting are given to us by evolution ie for us they enhance survival and breeding.

Contrast the worldview of a frog's eye or a spider's many eyes, and the physical responses to such stimuli that frogs and spiders make, which have in common that they work well in the circumstances.

Contrast again Kingdom Plantae, whose members also detect and interact with their environment and survive and breed.

Which is to say, there are many ways of being alive, and our set of senses and thought processes is not the only kit.

I don't understand what relevant point you are trying to make about evolution and thought processes.

 

[blü 2]

Well, this guy does.

"The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things...
There is another benefit of seeing the world as quantum mechanical: someone who has learned to accept that nothing exists but observations is far ahead of peers who stumble through physics hoping to find out ‘what things are’.​

Thanks for this.

I wonder what he thinks an observation observes, then? The subjective impression of what, exactly? When he writes this, does he think his audience is the solipsistic product of his imagination? What else could they be?

Or is this just a way of asking, what's the definition of a thing? In this sense I'd say a thing was whatever physics agreed has objective existence, is there to be studied. My definition of materialism is that only such entities and processes exist as are recognized by the physical sciences from time to time.

If we can ‘pull a Galileo,’ and get people believing the truth, they will find physics a breeze. The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual.​

What then is the brain? With the right equipment you can watch your brain in action in real time. What does medicine study? What is salt made of?

If the world external to the self is truly immaterial, exists only in the individual's imagination, if our observations are all delusions produced in our brains, why do we die? Why aren't they as malleable to our will as our other imaginings are? Why can't we fly, move mountains, create harems, be hugely rich, at will?

I don't think Prof. Henry has really thought this through. Or else he expresses himself badly.

 

[blü 2]

I get that we can assign names to the things that we perceive. But I don't see how our ability to assign names to them invalidates their objective existence. Why does having a name for something invalidate its objective existence?

It doesn't invalidate its objective existence at all.

But consider the process of glancing at eg your kitchen bench. Instinctively (which is the relevance of evolution) you divide it up. Without you there's no dividing up. You divide it into elements, and you make that division usefully (both of which are based in evolution) and you have names for the elements so divided: spoon, plate, bowl, packet, stove, fridge, dishwasher, milk carton, on and on. In doing so, you select and interpret. You pay no attention to any of the thousands of combinations of space, object, elevation, color, that you don't need. While you can if you wish to, there are vastly more that you'll never use or even notice, than you don't use. Evolution again.

In other words, what you see is your interpretation. Those discriminations, relevances, senses of utility that influence the interpretation are personal to you, not objective. Without them your perceptions would remain undividing, unanalyzing, uninterpreting.

Let me return to the 'straight line'. Straight lines (unlike 'two') have no instantiations in the physical world.

They have in common that they're abstractions/ The 'straight lines' that are the edges of my computer, sheets of paper, cereal packet, instantiate the only-in-mentation Euclidean concept 'straight line', in a way not importantly different from two computers, sheets of paper, cereal packets, instantiating the only-in-mentation arithmetical concept 'two'.

And being concepts, these instantiations are interpretations by an onlooking brain. The straightlineness, the twoness, of what is observed, are only as the result of those interpretations.

 

[WalterTrull]

I wonder what he thinks an observation observes, then? The subjective impression of what, exactly? When he writes this, does he think his audience is the solipsistic product of his imagination? What else could they be?

Well, here's his denial of solipsism.

"Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism."

I don't think Prof. Henry has really thought this through. Or else he expresses himself badly

Henry has not been known to not think things through. Although, he disagrees with a lot of people. Check out a bit of his VC .

 

[Ponder This]

It doesn't invalidate its objective existence at all.

But consider the process of glancing at eg your kitchen bench. Instinctively (which is the relevance of evolution) you divide it up. Without you there's no dividing up. You divide it into elements, and you make that division usefully (both of which are based in evolution) and you have names for the elements so divided: spoon, plate, bowl, packet, stove, fridge, dishwasher, milk carton, on and on. In doing so, you select and interpret. You pay no attention to any of the thousands of combinations of space, object, elevation, color, that you don't need. While you can if you wish to, there are vastly more that you'll never use or even notice, than you don't use. Evolution again.

In other words, what you see is your interpretation. Those discriminations, relevances, senses of utility that influence the interpretation are personal to you, not objective. Without them your perceptions would remain undividing, unanalyzing, uninterpreting.

So... when I am looking at my kitchen table, whatever I perceive via my five 'physical senses' is not real (it is an interpretation). The reality is that my kitchen table isn't anything different from my kitchen floor or the tree outside or even myself. Since the table is simply my interpretation of existence, the table lacks objective existence. In my absence, the table is just part of everything else, in my presence, it becomes a table. Are you saying the interpretations have objective existence? Or that nothing we perceive has objective existence? What is real and how do I know that it is real?

They have in common that they're abstractions/ The 'straight lines' that are the edges of my computer, sheets of paper, cereal packet, instantiate the only-in-mentation Euclidean concept 'straight line', in a way not importantly different from two computers, sheets of paper, cereal packets, instantiating the only-in-mentation arithmetical concept 'two'.

And being concepts, these instantiations are interpretations by an onlooking brain. The straightlineness, the twoness, of what is observed, are only as the result of those interpretations.

When you look at the edge of your paper, the straight line that you think you see is only a close approximation to a straight line. It is not physically possible for the paper edge to match the mathematical definition for a straight line because the mathematical definition involves infinitely many points and science only allows a finite number of points to be verified. 'Two' on the other hand is a discrete finite number and can be easily verified. It's a continuum problem. 'Straight line' is not subject to interpretation: it has a precise mathematical definition. You cannot say it is a 'straight line' by not taking the time to verify that it is, in fact, straight. This is the point I've been trying to make about the difference between 'straight' lines and 'two'.

 

[blü 2]

Well, here's his denial of solipsism.

"Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism."

Weird. What does he think his brain is? What does he think death is? If there is only 'mind', then the observed phenomena are imaginary, don't have objective existence, hence should be as malleable, just by wishing, as imaginary things are, surely?

Anyway, thanks for drawing him to my attention.