Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

عاصم عبد اللطيف wrote:
> Excuse me!!
> Would you stop for a moment?!
> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
> Who has made it?
> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!

Good question, عاصم عبد اللطيف!
Who made your designer?
......
Well??

A child of five years can think of that answer/counterquestion, but for
some reason religious people cannot.

But since you don't give a damn for our responses anyway, let alone read
them, I guess I am wasting my words.

Have a nice Holy Spamming day in name of whatever god you think to serve.
Erwin Moller

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

"Erwin Moller"
wrote in
message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>> Excuse me!!
>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>> Who has made it?
>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>
> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
> Who made your designer?
> .....
> Well??

well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has begun
as something more simple, the most reasonable answer would be...something
more complex than the designer. begging the same question ad-nauseum of each
increasingly more complex creator.

lest we forget, gawd is a 'special' case and being omni* does not require
something more complex to create him/her/it/them.

erwin, on the notion of irreducibly complex...has the proponent of that
argument *ever* been able to show something that was? and that's forgiving
the man-made, relative notions of complexity, order, randomness, etc..

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

"Steve" wrote in message
news:Hxdaj.193$dh1.173@newsfe05.lga...
>
> "Erwin Moller"
> wrote in
> message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>> Excuse me!!
>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>> Who has made it?
>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>>
>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>> Who made your designer?
>> .....
>> Well??
>
> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has
> begun as something more simple, the most reasonable answer would
> be...something more complex than the designer. begging the same question
> ad-nauseum of each increasingly more complex creator.
>
> lest we forget, gawd is a 'special' case and being omni* does not require
> something more complex to create him/her/it/them.
>
> erwin, on the notion of irreducibly complex...has the proponent of that
> argument *ever* been able to show something that was? and that's forgiving
> the man-made, relative notions of complexity, order, randomness, etc..

I prefer the belief that as higher powers are reached, entropy takes over,
where things become more and more random and less structured, rather than
moreso.

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

"asdf" wrote in message
news:4769963c$0$20608$5a62ac22@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.n et.au...
>
> "Steve" wrote in message
> news:Hxdaj.193$dh1.173@newsfe05.lga...
>>
>> "Erwin Moller"
>> wrote in
>> message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>>> Excuse me!!
>>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>>> Who has made it?
>>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>>>
>>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>>> Who made your designer?
>>> .....
>>> Well??
>>
>> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has
>> begun as something more simple, the most reasonable answer would
>> be...something more complex than the designer. begging the same question
>> ad-nauseum of each increasingly more complex creator.
>>
>> lest we forget, gawd is a 'special' case and being omni* does not require
>> something more complex to create him/her/it/them.
>>
>> erwin, on the notion of irreducibly complex...has the proponent of that
>> argument *ever* been able to show something that was? and that's
>> forgiving the man-made, relative notions of complexity, order,
>> randomness, etc..
>
> I prefer the belief that as higher powers are reached, entropy takes over,
> where things become more and more random and less structured, rather than
> moreso.

at least that would be logical...and what we typical earthlings observe and
experience. however, entropy effects all. i'm pretty sure entropy would, as
you say, have more of an impact on more complex things...more working parts
to go defunt as opposed to a simple form. hmmm.

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

Steve wrote:
> "Erwin Moller"
> wrote in
> message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>> Excuse me!!
>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>> Who has made it?
>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>> Who made your designer?
>> .....
>> Well??
>
> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has begun
> as something more simple,

Well, I must disagree here. :-)
I have seen a lot of things that became more complex out of simpler stuff.
Have a look at a drop of water, then freeze it and see icecristals form.
Beautiful and more complex.
(But I think we think the same about this.)

the most reasonable answer would be...something
> more complex than the designer. begging the same question ad-nauseum of each
> increasingly more complex creator.

Yes, that is the problem if you want to defens the statement that
complexity can only be created by something more complex.
It is an endless loop.

>
> lest we forget, gawd is a 'special' case and being omni* does not require
> something more complex to create him/her/it/them.

Yes, the famous lazyman's argument. ;-)
It boils down to "I do not understand how this works, so God did it."


>
> erwin, on the notion of irreducibly complex...has the proponent of that
> argument *ever* been able to show something that was? and that's forgiving
> the man-made, relative notions of complexity, order, randomness, etc..

No never.
The guy that coined the idea of irreducable complexity, Behe, received a
warm welcome from the (USA) religious fanatics that saw in his book a
confirmation of their creationist ideas.
Behe was a biologist after all, and see now: Even a biologist agrees
with creationism!
But Behe didn't stand a chance when the critiques came in.
A famous agrument is the human eye: When you study it, it is indeed very
complex, and it is not easy to see how such a thing could evolve. It
*seems* that it should arise in that form at once, and that no simpler
eyes can exist, because it doesn't work as an eye then.
But that argument was bollocks as was shown by many others.
The religious fanatics tend to ignore that, and keep shouting
'irreducable complexity proves a creator exists'.

Here is a good read if you want more opinions:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

And if you are in the mood, go to youtube and find 'the four horsemen'.
It is a discussion between Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens.

I didn't see it yet (little time at the moment), but 3 of my heroes are
in it (Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens).

Ah, back to PHP now and finish my project. ;-)

Regards,
Erwin Moller

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

Steve wrote:
> "Erwin Moller"
> wrote in
> message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>> Excuse me!!
>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>> Who has made it?
>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>> Who made your designer?
>> .....
>> Well??
>
> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has begun
> as something more simple,

Actually, science assumes the reverse is the case.

That the total complexity of life is in fact based on simple rules.

The way that a simple 5 lines of code can produce the mandelbrot set.

God is probably just an amoeba.


> the most reasonable answer would be...something
> more complex than the designer. begging the same question ad-nauseum of each
> increasingly more complex creator.
>
> lest we forget, gawd is a 'special' case and being omni* does not require
> something more complex to create him/her/it/them.
>

Well that's just a copout logically speaking.


I MUCH perfer the Buddhist lexcicon.

The 'Tao is that which exists through itself'

No personalization, no worship, no god bothering: A nice simple
philosophic statement of naming the unnameable..


The confusion arises from the Western mindset,where causality is imbued
in our language, and the way we interpret reality.

Naturally that leads to a Prime Cause,. and the need to invent one.

The answer is to reject Causalitu as a univverals principle, and simpley
state in plain English.

"Some things just ARE".

At a stroke, the logical underpinnings such as they are of god bothering
collapse and are seen for the house of carsds that they really are.

"Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity"

There is no need to introduce any more supernatural entities than that
one statement

"Some things just ARE"



> erwin, on the notion of irreducibly complex...has the proponent of that
> argument *ever* been able to show something that was? and that's forgiving
> the man-made, relative notions of complexity, order, randomness, etc..
>
>
The information contained in the universe has been shown to require a
computer..as large as the universe..to hold it..

;-)

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

Erwin Moller wrote:
> Steve wrote:

>>
>> erwin, on the notion of irreducibly complex...has the proponent of
>> that argument *ever* been able to show something that was? and that's
>> forgiving the man-made, relative notions of complexity, order,
>> randomness, etc..
>
> No never.
> The guy that coined the idea of irreducable complexity, Behe, received a
> warm welcome from the (USA) religious fanatics that saw in his book a
> confirmation of their creationist ideas.
> Behe was a biologist after all, and see now: Even a biologist agrees
> with creationism!
> But Behe didn't stand a chance when the critiques came in.
> A famous agrument is the human eye: When you study it, it is indeed very
> complex, and it is not easy to see how such a thing could evolve. It
> *seems* that it should arise in that form at once, and that no simpler
> eyes can exist, because it doesn't work as an eye then.
> But that argument was bollocks as was shown by many others.
> The religious fanatics tend to ignore that, and keep shouting
> 'irreducable complexity proves a creator exists'.
>
> Here is a good read if you want more opinions:
> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
>
> And if you are in the mood, go to youtube and find 'the four horsemen'.
> It is a discussion between Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens.
>
> I didn't see it yet (little time at the moment), but 3 of my heroes are
> in it (Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens).
>
> Ah, back to PHP now and finish my project. ;-)
>
> Regards,
> Erwin Moller


One of the most fascinating things I saw was a design process known as
stepwise optimisation..

It depends on the thing yopu are trying to optimise being a more or less
continuous low order function.

Essentially you take your 'thing' - in the case in point it was a wing,
such as a bird might have - and select your target optimal - say 'good
for gliding' - and then plop a shape in your mathematical 'wind tunnel'
and start perturbing its shape, Every time a perturbation results in a
slightly better shape, you use that as your new starting point. Over a
period of time, what emerged was pretty much a seagull.

Now the mathematics of flight are quite complex, but not as complex as
the description of a seagulls wing.

Its fairly clear that all you need to evolve a seagull is a mechanism that

- allows perturbation - genetic variation and mutation
- eliminates 'less successful' seagulls before they can breed..

I have spent many happy hours with crude computer simulations that
produce extraordinarily complex results..the mandelbrot set of course.
We did another one called 'planets'..random objects of variable mass
were set in motion, and the inverse square law applied.. The ONLY stable
sets end up looking REMARKABLY like our solar system. You need a single
large mass with smaller masses in orbit, or its very unstable.

All others fly apart..and even ones like our solar system had nasty
things with highly elliptical orbits like comets,which if they had
reasonable mass were capable of destroying the stability of the planets.


All from a simple mathematical equation...

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
news:1198154467.74006.0@iris.uk.clara.net...
> Steve wrote:
>> "Erwin Moller"
>> wrote in
>> message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>>> Excuse me!!
>>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>>> Who has made it?
>>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>>> Who made your designer?
>>> .....
>>> Well??
>>
>> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has
>> begun as something more simple,
>
> Actually, science assumes the reverse is the case.

i know, you're the second person that missed the sarcasm. i thought begging
the logical delimma after that statement would have made it clear that i was
being intentional. :)

> That the total complexity of life is in fact based on simple rules.
>
> The way that a simple 5 lines of code can produce the mandelbrot set.
>
> God is probably just an amoeba.

less...he is the pennacle of man's imagination and the apex of his laziness.

>> the most reasonable answer would be...something more complex than the
>> designer. begging the same question ad-nauseum of each increasingly more
>> complex creator.

there's the indicator that i was being sarcastic.

>> lest we forget, gawd is a 'special' case and being omni* does not require
>> something more complex to create him/her/it/them.
>>
>
> Well that's just a copout logically speaking.

exactly. sad that people actually think that's a good answer.

> I MUCH perfer the Buddhist lexcicon.
>
> The 'Tao is that which exists through itself'

which is quite illogical speaking in descartian terms. tao can only know
that it exists (though NOT via 'thinking == am'), else it wouldn't care to
ask whether or not it did. 'through' is an activity that requires 3rd party
verification. it is objective. and, since one cannot be certain that
anything is real, beyond the 'first case' - i exist - then one has no
reliable means to verify *how* one exists, i.e. 'through itself'.

btw, afaikr, that's 'taoism' and has very little to do with buddhism. in
most cases, taoism and buddhism have very differing opinions on things.

> No personalization, no worship, no god bothering: A nice simple
> philosophic statement of naming the unnameable..

but equally subjective as any other religion.

> The confusion arises from the Western mindset,where causality is imbued in
> our language, and the way we interpret reality.

same thing applies to eastern religions...perhaps moreso. asian peoples are
more comfortable mixing statements of reality and the metaphysical, and
speaking of them both at the same time as if all are objective experiences.
the confusion sets in because all religion is *subjective*. not surprising
since no religion can provide objective proof for it's truthfulness.

> Naturally that leads to a Prime Cause,. and the need to invent one.

i don't think that's where it starts. i think man, being a toolmaker and
being highly inventive, saw from his beginning that each tool had a purpose.
he most logically extended that range of thought to all things he observed.
god is simply the ulitimate, eventual answer/notion for people who didn't
have the knowledge or means to learn how the natural world works. plus, who
wants to toil to survive and not get some kind of reach-around after dying?

> The answer is to reject Causalitu as a univverals principle, and simpley
> state in plain English.
>
> "Some things just ARE".

good point. i love to hear people argue stats when it comes to probability
of things being the way they are. and, that if one single tiny thing were
different, the universe wouldn't exist as it is. it's funny because the stem
from the same assumption...that what we see has all been an eventuality. the
simple answer is, yes, if the universe were different, the universe would be
different. a moot point. :)

> At a stroke, the logical underpinnings such as they are of god bothering
> collapse and are seen for the house of carsds that they really are.
>
> "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity"
>
> There is no need to introduce any more supernatural entities than that one
> statement
>
> "Some things just ARE"
>
>
>
>> erwin, on the notion of irreducibly complex...has the proponent of that
>> argument *ever* been able to show something that was? and that's
>> forgiving the man-made, relative notions of complexity, order,
>> randomness, etc..
> The information contained in the universe has been shown to require a
> computer..as large as the universe..to hold it..

good analogy. :)

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

"Erwin Moller"
wrote in
message news:476a41e7$0$85783$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
> Steve wrote:
>> "Erwin Moller"
>> wrote in
>> message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>>> Excuse me!!
>>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>>> Who has made it?
>>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>>> Who made your designer?
>>> .....
>>> Well??
>>
>> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has
>> begun as something more simple,
>
> Well, I must disagree here. :-)

i hope the smily face means you know i was being sarcastic. :)

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

Steve wrote:
> "Erwin Moller"
> wrote in
> message news:476a41e7$0$85783$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>> Steve wrote:
>>> "Erwin Moller"
>>> wrote in
>>> message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>>>> Excuse me!!
>>>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>>>> Who has made it?
>>>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>>>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>>>> Who made your designer?
>>>> .....
>>>> Well??
>>> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has
>>> begun as something more simple,
>> Well, I must disagree here. :-)
>
> i hope the smily face means you know i was being sarcastic. :)

Yes, I do.
Hence my addition:
(But I think we think the same about this.)

;-)

Regards,
Erwin

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

"Erwin Moller"
wrote in
message news:476a7eb4$0$85778$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
> Steve wrote:
>> "Erwin Moller"
>> wrote in
>> message news:476a41e7$0$85783$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>> Steve wrote:
>>>> "Erwin Moller"
>>>> wrote
>>>> in message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>>>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>>>>> Excuse me!!
>>>>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>>>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>>>>> Who has made it?
>>>>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>>>>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>>>>> Who made your designer?
>>>>> .....
>>>>> Well??
>>>> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has
>>>> begun as something more simple,
>>> Well, I must disagree here. :-)
>>
>> i hope the smily face means you know i was being sarcastic. :)
>
> Yes, I do.
> Hence my addition:
> (But I think we think the same about this.)

completely the same.

cheers.

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

Steve wrote:
> "The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
> news:1198154467.74006.0@iris.uk.clara.net...
>> Steve wrote:
>>> "Erwin Moller"
>>> wrote in
>>> message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>>>> Excuse me!!
>>>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>>>> Who has made it?
>>>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>>>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>>>> Who made your designer?
>>>> .....
>>>> Well??
>>> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has
>>> begun as something more simple,
>> Actually, science assumes the reverse is the case.
>
> i know, you're the second person that missed the sarcasm. i thought begging
> the logical delimma after that statement would have made it clear that i was
> being intentional. :)
>

Ah, Too subtle for a dull Thursday morning with caffiene levels at
critical...

>> That the total complexity of life is in fact based on simple rules.
>>
>> The way that a simple 5 lines of code can produce the mandelbrot set.
>>
>> God is probably just an amoeba.
>
> less...he is the pennacle of man's imagination and the apex of his laziness.
>

Pennacle?

>>> the most reasonable answer would be...something more complex than the
>>> designer. begging the same question ad-nauseum of each increasingly more
>>> complex creator.
>
> there's the indicator that i was being sarcastic.
>
>>> lest we forget, gawd is a 'special' case and being omni* does not require
>>> something more complex to create him/her/it/them.
>>>
>> Well that's just a copout logically speaking.
>
> exactly. sad that people actually think that's a good answer.
>
>> I MUCH perfer the Buddhist lexcicon.
>>
>> The 'Tao is that which exists through itself'
>
> which is quite illogical speaking in descartian terms.

Descartes was a fool. Plenty of non thinking things evidently exist.
Most Xtians for a start.


>tao can only know
> that it exists (though NOT via 'thinking == am'), else it wouldn't care to
> ask whether or not it did.

Thats implying that the tao is a French philsopher. It isn't.

> 'through' is an activity that requires 3rd party
> verification. it is objective. and, since one cannot be certain that
> anything is real, beyond the 'first case' - i exist - then one has no
> reliable means to verify *how* one exists, i.e. 'through itself'.
>

Indeed. Its a nonsensical statement that is used to show how the logic
of human thought cannot apply to the fundamentals aspects of things.

Remember thats a translation from another language. The mneaiong miay be
aking top a 'train that lays its own tracks'.

Its poetic statement also. Buddhism understands that not all thiungs can
be described directly and logically.

"To (peer) behind (consciuousness) with (consciousness), that cannot be
done"







> btw, afaikr, that's 'taoism' and has very little to do with buddhism. in
> most cases, taoism and buddhism have very differing opinions on things.
>

well Taoiskm is proto buddhsim IIRC. Or is it the other way round?


>> No personalization, no worship, no god bothering: A nice simple
>> philosophic statement of naming the unnameable..
>
> but equally subjective as any other religion.
>

Everything is ultimately subjective. I wouldn't call Buddhism or Taoism
a religion either..its more a philosophy. And a practical guide to doing
weird things to your head ;-)



>> The confusion arises from the Western mindset,where causality is imbued in
>> our language, and the way we interpret reality.
>
> same thing applies to eastern religions...perhaps moreso. asian peoples are
> more comfortable mixing statements of reality and the metaphysical, and
> speaking of them both at the same time as if all are objective experiences.
> the confusion sets in because all religion is *subjective*. not surprising
> since no religion can provide objective proof for it's truthfulness.
>

No one can provide objective 'proof' for anything, actually. All we can
do is construct as elegant and simple structures possible that seem to
model the world(s) we seem to find ourselves in.

My objection to God based ones, is that they sacrifice effectiveness for
simplicity. Ultimately you can do anything with religion at all. "Just
do what the Law says, and God will see you right, OK?"

Boring and useless.


>> Naturally that leads to a Prime Cause,. and the need to invent one.
>
> i don't think that's where it starts. i think man, being a toolmaker and
> being highly inventive, saw from his beginning that each tool had a purpose.
> he most logically extended that range of thought to all things he observed.
> god is simply the ulitimate, eventual answer/notion for people who didn't
> have the knowledge or means to learn how the natural world works. plus, who
> wants to toil to survive and not get some kind of reach-around after dying?
>

Who wanted to be born? I don't remember asking for it?

I think you underestimate the intelligence of the primitive peoples.

I think they actually were far more aware of the reality of life,
untrammeled by too much thinking about it.

My interpreation of Genesis,is that at some point Man started thinking
about it, and forming concepts, and that took him from a state of
blissful ignorance to a state of paranoid suspicion,where he was
surrounded by things that MIGHT be.



>> The answer is to reject Causalitu as a univverals principle, and simpley
>> state in plain English.
>>
>> "Some things just ARE".
>
> good point. i love to hear people argue stats when it comes to probability
> of things being the way they are. and, that if one single tiny thing were
> different, the universe wouldn't exist as it is. it's funny because the stem
> from the same assumption...that what we see has all been an eventuality. the
> simple answer is, yes, if the universe were different, the universe would be
> different. a moot point. :)

The anthropic principal.


>
>> At a stroke, the logical underpinnings such as they are of god bothering
>> collapse and are seen for the house of carsds that they really are.
>>
>> "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity"
>>
>> There is no need to introduce any more supernatural entities than that one
>> statement
>>
>> "Some things just ARE"
>>
>>
>>
>>> erwin, on the notion of irreducibly complex...has the proponent of that
>>> argument *ever* been able to show something that was? and that's
>>> forgiving the man-made, relative notions of complexity, order,
>>> randomness, etc..
>> The information contained in the universe has been shown to require a
>> computer..as large as the universe..to hold it..
>
> good analogy. :)
>

Apparently it is a fact, or as near a fact as anything else is.

Whilst te laws of nature may be incrediubly simple. teh initial state of
the data, so to speak, ciontains mosrt of te complexity.l

I guess you could replace 'Big Bang, broken symmetry;' by 'Gods fart,.
bad pizza'

But somehow it isn't quite the same is it?>


>

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
news:1198162599.86045.0@demeter.uk.clara.net...
> Steve wrote:
>> "The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
>> news:1198154467.74006.0@iris.uk.clara.net...
>>> Steve wrote:
>>>> "Erwin Moller"
>>>> wrote
>>>> in message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>>>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>>>>> Excuse me!!
>>>>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>>>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>>>>> Who has made it?
>>>>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>>>>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>>>>> Who made your designer?
>>>>> .....
>>>>> Well??
>>>> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has
>>>> begun as something more simple,
>>> Actually, science assumes the reverse is the case.
>>
>> i know, you're the second person that missed the sarcasm. i thought
>> begging the logical delimma after that statement would have made it clear
>> that i was being intentional. :)
>>
>
> Ah, Too subtle for a dull Thursday morning with caffiene levels at
> critical...
>
>>> That the total complexity of life is in fact based on simple rules.
>>>
>>> The way that a simple 5 lines of code can produce the mandelbrot set.
>>>
>>> God is probably just an amoeba.
>>
>> less...he is the pennacle of man's imagination and the apex of his
>> laziness.
>>
>
> Pennacle?

lol. yep...it's a dull, coffee-less thursday morning. :)

>>>> the most reasonable answer would be...something more complex than the
>>>> designer. begging the same question ad-nauseum of each increasingly
>>>> more complex creator.
>>
>> there's the indicator that i was being sarcastic.
>>
>>>> lest we forget, gawd is a 'special' case and being omni* does not
>>>> require something more complex to create him/her/it/them.
>>>>
>>> Well that's just a copout logically speaking.
>>
>> exactly. sad that people actually think that's a good answer.
>>
>>> I MUCH perfer the Buddhist lexcicon.
>>>
>>> The 'Tao is that which exists through itself'
>>
>> which is quite illogical speaking in descartian terms.
>
> Descartes was a fool. Plenty of non thinking things evidently exist. Most
> Xtians for a start.

i don't think you understand what descartes wrote. you have read this,
right?

it's about being able to verify, to know for sure, what is real and what is
not. the only thing - and this is completely on an introspective, individual
basis - that can be known for certain is that *i* exist. 'i think therefore
i am' is not enough of a reduction, and here's why. to get to this point,
descarte demonstrates how our perceptions of things are simply faulty and
unreliable. in order to establish what is real, or be more certain of its
'realness', we must have multiple observers with which we can share an
experience - yet, we cannot still be absolutely certain of the realness of
any observer but ourselves. thinking is an activity that requires more than
myself to observe since my senses may be off; whether from neurosis,
hormonal imbalance, or some environmental factor such as fog obscuring my
vision. thinking then, cannot be the final reason that i know i exist. it
must simply be that i am aware i exist because logically, if i was not aware
i'd not care to fuss about knowing if i did or did not exist.

as for 'plenty of non thinking things evidently exist[ing]', you missed the
point. descartes is demonstrating that you can only know that you exist. all
else may be illusionary. he would begin challenging your posit by simply
asking, "how do you know anything exists".

it is arrogant and foolhearty to call descartes a fool...unless you either
demonstrate yourself, in what ways he is a fool. you must first begin, then,
by knowing what descartes has said. and that, beyond a cursor glossing.

>>tao can only know that it exists (though NOT via 'thinking == am'), else
>>it wouldn't care to ask whether or not it did.
>
> Thats implying that the tao is a French philsopher. It isn't.

the saying of which you are so fond, personifies tao. according to
descartes, tao can know it exists. you, however, can only know that you
exist. logically, since both your and tao's senses can fail yourselves and
given that each is not certain that the other person (or object, whatever,
tao) is real, you are left to conclude that it is impossible to absolutely
know not only whether or not a thing exists, but also whether or not the
thing is existing through itself - which is wholly circular logic anyway and
should be thrown aside.

to me, it's just more religion mumbo-jumbo.

>> 'through' is an activity that requires 3rd party verification. it is
>> objective. and, since one cannot be certain that anything is real, beyond
>> the 'first case' - i exist - then one has no reliable means to verify
>> *how* one exists, i.e. 'through itself'.
>>
>
> Indeed. Its a nonsensical statement that is used to show how the logic of
> human thought cannot apply to the fundamentals aspects of things.

it's simply nonsensical because it is a self sustaining philosophy with no
possible means of falsification! the 'fundamentals aspects of things' are
subatomic particles. not only can humans conceive of such things, we've
objectively verified them. i reject both statements outright.

> Remember thats a translation from another language. The mneaiong miay be
> aking top a 'train that lays its own tracks'.

and in the real world, tao would be bound to the same laws of physics that
we are. it would leave evidences that could be observed. and at its best,
energy would be the most applicably analogous notion one could to affix to
tao - a self-sustained thing. enter entropy and the demise of whatever tao
is or may be.

> Its poetic statement also. Buddhism understands that not all thiungs can
> be described directly and logically.

i've read better poetry. again, tao is associated with the chinese via
taoism. buddhism is associated with the rest of asia and in particular,
japan. eitherway, buddhism understands NOTHING. men conceptualized buddhism.
men are all subject to great moments of clarity and at achieving it
sometimes through inference - non direct or overtly logical means. it
doesn't matter from where you hail. we are all capable of this. it need not
be an activity that you most closely associate with buddhism.

> "To (peer) behind (consciuousness) with (consciousness), that cannot be
> done"

says who? look at the field(s) of psychology. we not only have a great
understanding of the sub-conscious to include many different layers and have
been able to quantify and qualify what the responsibilities are for each.
this was done via theory (non-direct influence), observation, testing,
validation, etc.. apparently, science too, understands that not all things
can be described directly. we can however, fashion falsifiable theories to
prove things. this science is *western* in origin, btw.

i still don't see how that quote is demonstrative to the claim of buddism
understanding things being explained via analogy. it is non sequitor to
me...and, we all use analogy.

>> btw, afaikr, that's 'taoism' and has very little to do with buddhism. in
>> most cases, taoism and buddhism have very differing opinions on things.
>>
>
> well Taoiskm is proto buddhsim IIRC. Or is it the other way round?

i'll forgive you there as i can't rightly recall their origins either, at
present.

>>> No personalization, no worship, no god bothering: A nice simple
>>> philosophic statement of naming the unnameable..
>>
>> but equally subjective as any other religion.
>>
>
> Everything is ultimately subjective. I wouldn't call Buddhism or Taoism a
> religion either..its more a philosophy. And a practical guide to doing
> weird things to your head ;-)

oh, they are religions. they may lack a centralized god-head, however they
have all the ingredients.

>>> The confusion arises from the Western mindset,where causality is imbued
>>> in our language, and the way we interpret reality.
>>
>> same thing applies to eastern religions...perhaps moreso. asian peoples
>> are more comfortable mixing statements of reality and the metaphysical,
>> and speaking of them both at the same time as if all are objective
>> experiences. the confusion sets in because all religion is *subjective*.
>> not surprising since no religion can provide objective proof for it's
>> truthfulness.
>>
>
> No one can provide objective 'proof' for anything, actually. All we can do
> is construct as elegant and simple structures possible that seem to model
> the world(s) we seem to find ourselves in.

correct.

> My objection to God based ones, is that they sacrifice effectiveness for
> simplicity. Ultimately you can do anything with religion at all. "Just do
> what the Law says, and God will see you right, OK?"

effective at not answering hard questions, perhaps. nothing more. and, i
value truth over the search for simplicity...although they typically flock
together.

> Boring and useless.

useless, yes. historically boring, no. causes much uproar.

>>> Naturally that leads to a Prime Cause,. and the need to invent one.
>>
>> i don't think that's where it starts. i think man, being a toolmaker and
>> being highly inventive, saw from his beginning that each tool had a
>> purpose. he most logically extended that range of thought to all things
>> he observed. god is simply the ulitimate, eventual answer/notion for
>> people who didn't have the knowledge or means to learn how the natural
>> world works. plus, who wants to toil to survive and not get some kind of
>> reach-around after dying?
>>
>
> Who wanted to be born? I don't remember asking for it?
>
> I think you underestimate the intelligence of the primitive peoples.
>
> I think they actually were far more aware of the reality of life,
> untrammeled by too much thinking about it.

eventually...not all at once. the key being his great success with tools
leading to more free time. idle hands you know. :)

> My interpreation of Genesis,is that at some point Man started thinking
> about it, and forming concepts, and that took him from a state of blissful
> ignorance to a state of paranoid suspicion,where he was surrounded by
> things that MIGHT be.

ok.

>>> The answer is to reject Causalitu as a univverals principle, and simpley
>>> state in plain English.
>>>
>>> "Some things just ARE".
>>
>> good point. i love to hear people argue stats when it comes to
>> probability of things being the way they are. and, that if one single
>> tiny thing were different, the universe wouldn't exist as it is. it's
>> funny because the stem from the same assumption...that what we see has
>> all been an eventuality. the simple answer is, yes, if the universe were
>> different, the universe would be different. a moot point. :)
>
> The anthropic principal.

quite.

>>> At a stroke, the logical underpinnings such as they are of god bothering
>>> collapse and are seen for the house of carsds that they really are.
>>>
>>> "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity"
>>>
>>> There is no need to introduce any more supernatural entities than that
>>> one statement
>>>
>>> "Some things just ARE"
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> erwin, on the notion of irreducibly complex...has the proponent of that
>>>> argument *ever* been able to show something that was? and that's
>>>> forgiving the man-made, relative notions of complexity, order,
>>>> randomness, etc..
>>> The information contained in the universe has been shown to require a
>>> computer..as large as the universe..to hold it..
>>
>> good analogy. :)
>
> Apparently it is a fact, or as near a fact as anything else is.
>
> Whilst te laws of nature may be incrediubly simple. teh initial state of
> the data, so to speak, ciontains mosrt of te complexity.l
>
> I guess you could replace 'Big Bang, broken symmetry;' by 'Gods fart,. bad
> pizza'
>
> But somehow it isn't quite the same is it?>

no, but may get more attention in the press. :)

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

"Erwin Moller"
wrote in
message news:476a41e7$0$85783$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...

> Yes, that is the problem if you want to defens the statement that
> complexity can only be created by something more complex.
> It is an endless loop.

Such is the infinite nature of the universe.

--
All things tend toward entropy.
Entropy tends toward chaos.
Chaos tends toward all things.

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

"Sanders Kaufman" wrote in message
news:7rAaj.71221$RX.70203@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net...
> "Erwin Moller"
> wrote in
> message news:476a41e7$0$85783$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>
>> Yes, that is the problem if you want to defens the statement that
>> complexity can only be created by something more complex.
>> It is an endless loop.
>
> Such is the infinite nature of the universe.
>
> --
> All things tend toward entropy.
> Entropy tends toward chaos.
> Chaos tends toward all things.

chaos is a relative and ficticious term. there certainly is randomness in
the universe, however there is NO chaos. chaos is associated with the
break-down of laws being enforced on things. the laws of physics are
constant. they only change based on our understanding of those laws. in
that, there can be no chaos.

as for entropy, it tends toward the dispertion of energy...nothing more. the
only relationship is that it occurs at a greater frequency the more ordered,
or complex, a thing is. as for *trying* to related that to chaos, good luck!
even in entropy, the path of dispertion is *always* the quickest
route...meaning, my heated house will lose heat unevenly if i open a window.
so, even entropy itself follows the order inherent in physics. again, in
complete absense of chaos.

finally, not ALL things tend toward entropy...just energy. lest you think
that the evolution of life forms began as infinitely complex and have
entropied to human form now. that would put you in agreement with the
op...that everything complex was begat by something more complex. that is
just NOT something seen in nature.

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

Steve wrote:
> "The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
> news:1198162599.86045.0@demeter.uk.clara.net...
>> Steve wrote:
>>> "The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
>>> news:1198154467.74006.0@iris.uk.clara.net...
>>>> Steve wrote:
>>>>> "Erwin Moller"
>>>>> wrote
>>>>> in message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>>>>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>>>>>> Excuse me!!
>>>>>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>>>>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>>>>>> Who has made it?
>>>>>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>>>>>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>>>>>> Who made your designer?
>>>>>> .....
>>>>>> Well??
>>>>> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced has
>>>>> begun as something more simple,
>>>> Actually, science assumes the reverse is the case.
>>> i know, you're the second person that missed the sarcasm. i thought
>>> begging the logical delimma after that statement would have made it clear
>>> that i was being intentional. :)
>>>
>> Ah, Too subtle for a dull Thursday morning with caffiene levels at
>> critical...
>>
>>>> That the total complexity of life is in fact based on simple rules.
>>>>
>>>> The way that a simple 5 lines of code can produce the mandelbrot set.
>>>>
>>>> God is probably just an amoeba.
>>> less...he is the pennacle of man's imagination and the apex of his
>>> laziness.
>>>
>> Pennacle?
>
> lol. yep...it's a dull, coffee-less thursday morning. :)
>
>>>>> the most reasonable answer would be...something more complex than the
>>>>> designer. begging the same question ad-nauseum of each increasingly
>>>>> more complex creator.
>>> there's the indicator that i was being sarcastic.
>>>
>>>>> lest we forget, gawd is a 'special' case and being omni* does not
>>>>> require something more complex to create him/her/it/them.
>>>>>
>>>> Well that's just a copout logically speaking.
>>> exactly. sad that people actually think that's a good answer.
>>>
>>>> I MUCH perfer the Buddhist lexcicon.
>>>>
>>>> The 'Tao is that which exists through itself'
>>> which is quite illogical speaking in descartian terms.
>> Descartes was a fool. Plenty of non thinking things evidently exist. Most
>> Xtians for a start.
>
> i don't think you understand what descartes wrote. you have read this,
> right?
>
> it's about being able to verify, to know for sure, what is real and what is
> not. the only thing - and this is completely on an introspective, individual
> basis - that can be known for certain is that *i* exist. 'i think therefore
> i am' is not enough of a reduction, and here's why. to get to this point,
> descarte demonstrates how our perceptions of things are simply faulty and
> unreliable. in order to establish what is real, or be more certain of its
> 'realness', we must have multiple observers with which we can share an
> experience - yet, we cannot still be absolutely certain of the realness of
> any observer but ourselves. thinking is an activity that requires more than
> myself to observe since my senses may be off; whether from neurosis,
> hormonal imbalance, or some environmental factor such as fog obscuring my
> vision. thinking then, cannot be the final reason that i know i exist. it
> must simply be that i am aware i exist because logically, if i was not aware
> i'd not care to fuss about knowing if i did or did not exist.
>

Very good explanation. Shows how translation makes sense into non-sense.

I'd always taken 'cogito ergo sum' to mean the 'act of thinking creates
me', which is very close..but no cigar..My friend who spends his life
studying this stuff stated that all the problems of French philosophy
would be solved if they had written in German..




> as for 'plenty of non thinking things evidently exist[ing]', you missed the
> point. descartes is demonstrating that you can only know that you exist. all
> else may be illusionary. he would begin challenging your posit by simply
> asking, "how do you know anything exists".
>

I would also state that even that is not necessraily the case.

I prefer Wittering Stein 'the truth is whatever is the case' or some such.

Existence exists. The Ego bit is not a given. In fact nothing is a
given. All is relative. In order to *have* an objective world one must
have an observer. However neither are *necessary* for existence to exist.


> it is arrogant and foolhearty

Foolhardy. I should have popped in a smiley.

> to call descartes a fool...unless you either
> demonstrate yourself, in what ways he is a fool. you must first begin, then,
> by knowing what descartes has said. and that, beyond a cursor glossing.

Cursory.

Well I just did.

Existence can be experienced without thought.
>
>>> tao can only know that it exists (though NOT via 'thinking == am'), else
>>> it wouldn't care to ask whether or not it did.
>> Thats implying that the tao is a French philsopher. It isn't.
>
> the saying of which you are so fond, personifies tao. according to
> descartes,

Which is why I refute Descartes. All one can truly say is that one is
aware of existence, so existence and one, exist, as a necessary duality
required for objective consciousness.

BUT we know hat when we fall asleep, we lose objective consciousness:
Ergo, either existence ceases when we fall asleep, or existence
continues apart from our experience of it.

Using Occam's razor, the latter is a more elegant and simple explanation.


> tao can know it exists. you, however, can only know that you
> exist. logically, since both your and tao's senses can fail yourselves and
> given that each is not certain that the other person (or object, whatever,
> tao) is real, you are left to conclude that it is impossible to absolutely
> know not only whether or not a thing exists, but also whether or not the
> thing is existing through itself - which is wholly circular logic anyway and
> should be thrown aside.
>
> to me, it's just more religion mumbo-jumbo.
>

Well I don't take it that way. Any more than I take Descartes to be that.

Its an honest attempt to drive a stake into the fabric of 'whatever is
the case', and say, 'here is a starting point'.

In essence all religions and philosophies do that. The Xtians drive a
stake in and say ;heres' God, and the Bible is the explanation: start
from there and it all makes sense'.

I don't object to that on absolute grounds, I merely note that it is -
whilst at first a simple and clean starting point -, ultimately pretty
useless. And actually on inspection far more complicated than simply
saying 'lets start from a simple point, existence exists,., and
awareness of existence is something I, presumably others like me, (and
presumably other life as well) have'


That doesn't to me mean existence has to have personality: Descartes is
too tied up in personality. Probably a catholic upbringing. Personality
to me is not a priori for existence: Only for objective reflection of it
into a worldview.



>>> 'through' is an activity that requires 3rd party verification. it is
>>> objective. and, since one cannot be certain that anything is real, beyond
>>> the 'first case' - i exist - then one has no reliable means to verify
>>> *how* one exists, i.e. 'through itself'.
>>>
>> Indeed. Its a nonsensical statement that is used to show how the logic of
>> human thought cannot apply to the fundamentals aspects of things.
>
> it's simply nonsensical because it is a self sustaining philosophy with no
> possible means of falsification! the 'fundamentals aspects of things' are
> subatomic particles.

That again is a statement of faith, not fact. An inference drawn from a
a particular worldview, but that worldview is not absolute: A worldview
that places a stake in the ground, calls it 'PHYSICAL reality', and
makes its existence the most basic thing there is. THAT faith is called
material realism. And even that doesn;t actually result in subatomic
particles, as we can see. We are now into 10 dimesnional string theory,
which is hardly particles at all.


>not only can humans conceive of such things, we've
> objectively verified them. i reject both statements outright.
>

I think you should spend less time with Descartes, and more time with
e.g. Karl Popper. And maybe Kant.

The 'physical world' is only a description of the aspects of existence
of which we happen to be particularly aware. And upon which we have
arrived at a degree of consensus. In the final analysis there is much of
our experience which is personal, unique, and cannot be agreed upon,
because it IS personal and unique. Nevertheless that experience exists.


>> Remember thats a translation from another language. The mneaiong miay be
>> aking top a 'train that lays its own tracks'.
>
> and in the real world, tao would be bound to the same laws of physics that
> we are.

I think - and I am not going to make a stronger statement than that -
that the Taoist would argue, that the Tao IS the laws of nature, so to
speak. But they would not restrict that to physics.

Lets examine the Rational Materialist worldview: At its core is Stuff,
space-time, and Laws. These are the things that 'just are' without
explanation as to why they 'just are' At a given level that is no more
silly than saying 'God IS, and he did the rest all by himself'

Its true to say that the big bang theorists go a little deeper, and
posit a state at which 'stuff', space time, and laws all arise
simultaneously as a 'twist' in the fabric of Reality..

Now you and I can appreciate that - almost..try saying that on a rocky
hillsied in Isreal 4000 years ago, and blank incomprehension is the
result. So, 'in the beginning was god, and god said 'let there be
light'..mnakes a decent enough sort of parable.

My objection is the literality with which such a parable is interpreted
TODAY. And its lack of functionality.

You cant DO anything with it.

Instead, it's all spun into a doctrine of unnatural laws that proscribe
human behaviour.


> it would leave evidences that could be observed. and at its best,
> energy would be the most applicably analogous notion one could to affix to
> tao - a self-sustained thing. enter entropy and the demise of whatever tao
> is or may be.
>

I think you miss what I take to be the point. All Taosist philosophy
seems to be saying is that there exists natural laws, and the sensible
person does not attempt to deny or work against them, but with them.

The difference being that the Taoist comes from a different worldview -
one that does not place 'stuff,. space time and laws' as the a priori
assumptions, but more places existence, laws (together being the Tao)
and consciousness of them' as the primary points. The physical world is
held to be derivative of them, rather than the creator of them. In a
sense the actuality of physics as she is today, is somewhat converging
on this viewpoint. Certain aspects of what we have held to be hard
physical reality only actually come into existence IF we make an
'observation' upon them.

We seem to be faced with an important principle here: the system by
which we make judgments about the physical world, is held to be part of
that world: That leads to a recursive situation that is very difficult
to get around. If we have no point truly outside of the physical world
from which to asses it without altering it, the myth of the 'objective
observer' - which is in fact a myth that is UTTERLY 'spiritual' in its
essence - ceases to be upholdable.

Either we have an abstract spiritual component, (consciousness?) which
is above and beyond the physical, in which case we can examine the world
in a godlike detached way, or we don't. All we are is a temporary focus
through which one part of existence is reflected into another. We are
not experiencing the world at all, *directly*, only our own *conception*
of what a part of it actually is.


This is a viewpoint that is expressed by the concept of Maya, I suspect.
NOT as is generally translated, that the world is an illusion, but that
our REFLECTION of it via consciousess into a worldview of physical
reality, is NOT reality itself, merely our useful picture of it.

Twisting Descartes a little, you end up with not Cogito Ergo Sum. But
Cogito Ergo Sum et Est.

That is, that act of thinking about the world, brings the self, and the
world AS WE CONCEIVE THEM BOTH TO BE, into existence. Without thinking.
existence is, but only thinking turns existence into us, in a world,
that we can deal with. A MAP of the world, NOT the world itself.

Essentially from this point of Christianity and the Semitic religions
are actually the foundation of material realism ans Western science.
Both hold - one explicitly and as a source of awe and wonder - the other
implicitly and totally hidden - the view that there exists some sort of
independent-to-physical reality godlike objective viewpoint..a soul or
'objective consciousness' that lies so far outside of physical reality
that it can make accurate judgments about it, without it affecting it in
the least.

The Eastern PHILOSOPHIES (I don't like calling them religions really)
don't take that view so far: they seem to accept as a given that the
physical world is a function of consciousness, as much as of 'whatever
is the case'. Sure there is plenty of unproveable mumbo jumbo there as
well - reincarnation, the 40,000 gods and devils that beset the man on
the path to enlightenment etc.etc.. but the core principle - that the
world *as we know it*, is as much something we create, and can be
altered by changing the way we relate to it - as it is a function of
'whatever is the case' remains. And is rapidly - as I said - converging
with the view of the experimental physicists dealing with quantum
reality. In essence neither can take the observer and the act of
observation out of the equation of *perceived* reality.


>> Its poetic statement also. Buddhism understands that not all thiungs can
>> be described directly and logically.
>
> i've read better poetry.

:-)


> again, tao is associated with the chinese via
> taoism. buddhism is associated with the rest of asia and in particular,
> japan. eitherway, buddhism understands NOTHING. men conceptualized buddhism.
> men are all subject to great moments of clarity and at achieving it
> sometimes through inference - non direct or overtly logical means. it
> doesn't matter from where you hail. we are all capable of this. it need not
> be an activity that you most closely associate with buddhism.
>

These are very definite statements. Sounds almost like statements of
Faith to me.

I wish I could be so sure..;-)

I have found great benefit in examining ALL human knowledge and myth, IN
THE CONTEXT IT WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN. The great mistake is to
misinterpret it from a position that is many miles removed from the
original listeners and target audience. Language and culture are very
important.

I was once asked by a rather radical young black man, in Johannesburg
pre the end of Apartheid 'why we have to learn English, or Afrikaans,
rather than Zulu'..pointing to a Philips screwdriver ~I asked him 'what
is the word for that in Zulu'? 'We don't have a word for it'

'Ah'.. I said..

A friend who speaks Welsh, once told me that to say that 'I am going too
pump up my tyres' actually translates as 'I will go to put wind in my
wheels'.

The Inuit have 47 different words for snow.

If your language doesn't have clear words for something, you cannot
express it other then 'poetically'. You yourself will be hard put to
even form a concept that doesn't map into a language that you know.

We don't actually HAVE a word for 'enlightenment' as its translated.
'Bliss' 'State of Grace' 'Spiritual Ecstasy' - really do NOT convey the
right sort of time to Western Rationalist.

I would say more 'unthinking awareness' myself..which is bland, and
conveys no essence of what it FEELS like. But then our logical rational
scientific language doesn't really *do feelings* at all. Since they cant
be touched, measured, seen or catalogued mathematically, it simply
doesn't deal with them ;-)

Religion to my mind, is a perfectly reasonable way of trying to map the
'touchy feely' aspects of life: My great objection to it is that in its
modern evangelist of Jihadist guise, it seeks to do far far more than
that. It seeks to present a literal - a VERY literal view of what the
world and people are, what they should, or mostly should *not* do, and
is a complete obstacle in the way of the development of human thought
and understanding. Our OP and his ilk, and our Xtian friend are
Luddites. Having grown up with one useful tool once, they resist any
attempts to come up with better ones, on the grounds that it invalidates
the ways they have come to understand things, which 'were good enough
for their ancestors, so ought to be good enough for us'.

Patently they are not..

And what irks moire, is that they probably understand the basis of their
faiths, and the philosophical implications thereof, less than I suspect
I do.



>> "To (peer) behind (consciuousness) with (consciousness), that cannot be
>> done"
>
> says who?

'Book of te Golden Flower' IIRC - Richard Wilhelms Jungian inspired
translation of a Chinese work of philosophy and meditation..

look at the field(s) of psychology. we not only have a great
> understanding of the sub-conscious to include many different layers and have
> been able to quantify and qualify what the responsibilities are for each.

I think you take an awful lot for granted there. Karl Popper's original
impetus to derive a clear understanding of the nature of what
constitutes science was prompted in part at least by a deep suspicion
that psychology a la Freud, and to an extent Jung, was not a science at
all.

Sorry to dent your faith, but science, psychology, and indeed pretty
much all of Rational Materialism when examined deeply rests on just as
shaky ground as Christianity, Islam and anything else.

The defense of rationalism should not rest on its factual correctness:
If you understand Popper andf the implications of what he says, plus a
smattering of Kurt Godel and others in other ares, you come to realise
that there is no one irrefutable fact that can be relied upon, and
Popper understand that..science and the rational view is not about
finding the Truth,so much as refining models into simple functional and
effective descriptions that can be shown to be false, but haven't been
yet...

MOST of psychology fails to meet his criteria.

Check out instrumentalism, as an extreme example of relativistic
scientific philosophy: The Instrumentalist simply does not care whether
his hypotheses reflect any underlying reality of the Universe at all.
Only that they work, produce results that match observations, and are
internally consistent. I think that right now this is an effective way
to proceed in the context of high energy physics. Get sums that work, so
to speak, and worry about what it means later.

> this was done via theory (non-direct influence), observation, testing,
> validation, etc..

I think not actually.

Not where psychology is concerned. Neuropscience is battering away at
the fringes of things for sure, but no real model of consciousness
exists yet, and many people argue its very validity as a scientific
concept at all. If you want to uspet nearly all te established
scientific and philosophical people around today, tell them that you
have a theory of consciouness. You will last about 5 minutes..



>apparently, science too, understands that not all things
> can be described directly. we can however, fashion falsifiable theories to
> prove things. this science is *western* in origin, btw.
>

Well, actually its deeply Christian btw. In the sense that without the
concept if a detached disembodied spiritual consciousness, the *utterly*
objective world we take for granted could not have actually come into
existence..


> i still don't see how that quote is demonstrative to the claim of buddism
> understanding things being explained via analogy. it is non sequitor to
> me...and, we all use analogy.
>

I take it merely as a poetic statement equivalent to Godel's
incompleteness theorem. A statement about recursion.

I am slowly trying to write a book. Its called, deliberately, 'Thinking
about Thinking'.

What does 'Thinking' mean? Its an old word..it means essentially turning
the world into 'things'. Now we want to turn the process of doing that
into yet another 'thing' ..Doesn't that strike you as a teeny bit - well
- suspect?

Like trying to use a saw to cut out the saw that you are using from a
block of steel...;-)

Theres a lovely Escher cartoon of a pair of hands, each one of which
holds a pen that draws the other..another statement of the absurdity of
trying to be too clever..


>>> btw, afaikr, that's 'taoism' and has very little to do with buddhism. in
>>> most cases, taoism and buddhism have very differing opinions on things.
>>>
>> well Taoiskm is proto buddhsim IIRC. Or is it the other way round?
>
> i'll forgive you there as i can't rightly recall their origins either, at
> present.
>

I must look it up.

There is a theory - which I ascribe too - that the whole dwmn lot
actually are development of a pan global shamanic animistic
culture..that arose at the same time that man became self aware and
started to construct language, and move away from a touchy feely
relationship with the world, into a more concrete and definite one, of
which science is perhaps the ultimate pinnacle. Religions remain as a
literal (and hence very poor) description of the touchy-feeliness that
we have become rather distant from.

Don't get me wrong, I am a great fan of science: But I also recognise
for reasons of my own, that there is great utility in a touchy feely
approach to certain things. Trying to reconcile those two ways of
relating to the cosmos has been the driving force that has led me to
dive into an awful lot of mumbo jumbo, to try and understand the
essential dichotomies, and resolve them. The resultant synthesis is
weird..weirder than you can imagine, BUT it 'saves the data' as the
Instrumentelists say, and does potentially offer some falsifiable
hypotheses. Hence the book. I suspect it will succeed only in uniting
the religious and teh scientific community in blatant condemnation, if
anyone takes it seriously at all, which is doubtful. However I feel
compelled to make the effort.. ;-)



>>>> No personalization, no worship, no god bothering: A nice simple
>>>> philosophic statement of naming the unnameable..
>>> but equally subjective as any other religion.
>>>
>> Everything is ultimately subjective. I wouldn't call Buddhism or Taoism a
>> religion either..its more a philosophy. And a practical guide to doing
>> weird things to your head ;-)
>
> oh, they are religions. they may lack a centralized god-head, however they
> have all the ingredients.
>
Well, if you want to go that way, so is science too.

That is why I do not like to go that way. I make a clear distinction
between systems of thought that attempt analyse a worldview and develop
pragmatic ways of exploring it, and those that seek to impose a tip down
explanation of it, that brooks no other interpretation, and forces its
adherents into a 'one size fits all' system of thought and belief.

The radical difference between the Eastern and Western 'religions' is
that the Eastern are all based on the principle, that you can *see for
yourself*, what is being talked about, if you care to make the effort.
And if you don't, that's entirely up to you.

The Western ones have doctrine of infallible givens, that are not to be
questioned, and almost no methodology to allow and certainly not to
encourage, people to 'see for themselves'. Possibly because if there
were, and they did, they wouldn;'t last more than a few years ;-). At
least not in their present form.


>>>> The confusion arises from the Western mindset,where causality is imbued
>>>> in our language, and the way we interpret reality.
>>> same thing applies to eastern religions...perhaps moreso. asian peoples
>>> are more comfortable mixing statements of reality and the metaphysical,
>>> and speaking of them both at the same time as if all are objective
>>> experiences. the confusion sets in because all religion is *subjective*.
>>> not surprising since no religion can provide objective proof for it's
>>> truthfulness.
>>>
>> No one can provide objective 'proof' for anything, actually. All we can do
>> is construct as elegant and simple structures possible that seem to model
>> the world(s) we seem to find ourselves in.
>
> correct.
>
>> My objection to God based ones, is that they sacrifice effectiveness for
>> simplicity. Ultimately you can do anything with religion at all. "Just do
>> what the Law says, and God will see you right, OK?"
>
> effective at not answering hard questions, perhaps. nothing more. and, i
> value truth over the search for simplicity...although they typically flock
> together.
>

Well you will hasve some success with truth, but Truth will always
remain elusive. Its like trying top measure an infinite desert of
identical sand grains 'where is it| menaingless. How far ist it to
somewhere else? how would you know yuou *were* somewhere esle, since it
all looks the same.,

Until you nail a post in the sand and say 'this is the center of the
world, I will define everythiing relative to here' can you actually
start to turn it into anything other than an infinite expanse of nothing
in particular.

Consciousness is the man doing the nailing, and the landscape that
reusults depend on waht sort of post you nail in, and how you do the
measurements.

Nailing in one called 'God' simply doesn't get you very far at all.


>> Boring and useless.
>
> useless, yes. historically boring, no. causes much uproar.
>

Personally boring.


Heaven and hell are BORING. There are so many OTHER places to go..


>>>> Naturally that leads to a Prime Cause,. and the need to invent one.
>>> i don't think that's where it starts. i think man, being a toolmaker and
>>> being highly inventive, saw from his beginning that each tool had a
>>> purpose. he most logically extended that range of thought to all things
>>> he observed. god is simply the ulitimate, eventual answer/notion for
>>> people who didn't have the knowledge or means to learn how the natural
>>> world works. plus, who wants to toil to survive and not get some kind of
>>> reach-around after dying?
>>>
>> Who wanted to be born? I don't remember asking for it?
>>
>> I think you underestimate the intelligence of the primitive peoples.
>>
>> I think they actually were far more aware of the reality of life,
>> untrammeled by too much thinking about it.
>
> eventually...not all at once. the key being his great success with tools
> leading to more free time. idle hands you know. :)
>

Er..I think that is actually the reverse. Its been estimated that the
average hunter gather sopend about 2 hours hunting and gathering, about
another one eating, and the rest of the time crapping, sleeping and
having sex. That's about it for our dogs and cats anyway. Except they
only play at hunting..

It's been a downhill spiral from then on really ;-)

The worst invention was agriculture: huge efforts to just produce enough
food to stay alive..did you ever read 'Larks Rise to Candleford' - a
documentation of the last gasp of the rural English peasant..a life of
unremitting toil and hardship. THAT is the context in which modern
Xtianity was developed..a promise that after all, life was worth going
along with, and a simple set of rules that defined 'morality' - the
morality of hard work, thrift, general good neighbourliness etc etc.


>> My interpreation of Genesis,is that at some point Man started thinking
>> about it, and forming concepts, and that took him from a state of blissful
>> ignorance to a state of paranoid suspicion,where he was surrounded by
>> things that MIGHT be.
>
> ok.
>
>>>> The answer is to reject Causalitu as a univverals principle, and simpley
>>>> state in plain English.
>>>>
>>>> "Some things just ARE".
>>> good point. i love to hear people argue stats when it comes to
>>> probability of things being the way they are. and, that if one single
>>> tiny thing were different, the universe wouldn't exist as it is. it's
>>> funny because the stem from the same assumption...that what we see has
>>> all been an eventuality. the simple answer is, yes, if the universe were
>>> different, the universe would be different. a moot point. :)
>> The anthropic principal.
>
> quite.
>
>>>> At a stroke, the logical underpinnings such as they are of god bothering
>>>> collapse and are seen for the house of carsds that they really are.
>>>>
>>>> "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity"
>>>>
>>>> There is no need to introduce any more supernatural entities than that
>>>> one statement
>>>>
>>>> "Some things just ARE"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> erwin, on the notion of irreducibly complex...has the proponent of that
>>>>> argument *ever* been able to show something that was? and that's
>>>>> forgiving the man-made, relative notions of complexity, order,
>>>>> randomness, etc..
>>>> The information contained in the universe has been shown to require a
>>>> computer..as large as the universe..to hold it..
>>> good analogy. :)
>> Apparently it is a fact, or as near a fact as anything else is.
>>
>> Whilst te laws of nature may be incrediubly simple. teh initial state of
>> the data, so to speak, ciontains mosrt of te complexity.l
>>
>> I guess you could replace 'Big Bang, broken symmetry;' by 'Gods fart,. bad
>> pizza'
>>
>> But somehow it isn't quite the same is it?>
>
> no, but may get more attention in the press. :)
>

Well the whole bloody thing needs debunking, so we can see the bits that
stand up to it.


>

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

Steve wrote:
> "Sanders Kaufman" wrote in message
> news:7rAaj.71221$RX.70203@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net...
>> "Erwin Moller"
>> wrote in
>> message news:476a41e7$0$85783$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>
>>> Yes, that is the problem if you want to defens the statement that
>>> complexity can only be created by something more complex.
>>> It is an endless loop.
>> Such is the infinite nature of the universe.
>>
>> --
>> All things tend toward entropy.
>> Entropy tends toward chaos.
>> Chaos tends toward all things.
>
> chaos is a relative and ficticious term. there certainly is randomness in
> the universe, however there is NO chaos. chaos is associated with the
> break-down of laws being enforced on things. the laws of physics are
> constant. they only change based on our understanding of those laws. in
> that, there can be no chaos.
>

Semantics.

Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics. The mathematics of
discontinuous functions. Of which it seems the universe is at least
partly accurately modelled by.



> as for entropy, it tends toward the dispertion of energy...nothing more. the
> only relationship is that it occurs at a greater frequency the more ordered,
> or complex, a thing is. as for *trying* to related that to chaos, good luck!
> even in entropy, the path of dispertion is *always* the quickest
> route...meaning, my heated house will lose heat unevenly if i open a window.
> so, even entropy itself follows the order inherent in physics. again, in
> complete absense of chaos.

Chaos as he d=efines it is infinitely dis-ordered. Nothing in the laws
of nature precludes that.


>
> finally, not ALL things tend toward entropy...just energy. lest you think
> that the evolution of life forms began as infinitely complex and have
> entropied to human form now. that would put you in agreement with the
> op...that everything complex was begat by something more complex. that is
> just NOT something seen in nature.

Well it depends on how you look at it.

The Big Bang was a singularity that introduced extreme order into total
formlessness.

Ultimately its pretty much the same as the God explanation, although
the timescales are different, and the big bang is not generally supposed
to be the conscious act of a supernatural entity. Nor does it dictate
that we bow down and worship it, nor that our lives or deaths will be an
any measurably significant way affected, if we do.

As far as creation myths go, its pretty neutral really. And the huge
unanswered questions that it leaves, are at least honest ones. It does
not attempt to paper over *all* the cracks with a big grinning
monstrosity 'Full of Eastern Promise'. (I wonder who among ye recognizes
*that* particular ad line)













>
>

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
news:1198243301.21036.0@proxy00.news.clara.net...
> Steve wrote:
>> "Sanders Kaufman" wrote in message
>> news:7rAaj.71221$RX.70203@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net...
>>> "Erwin Moller"
>>> wrote in
>>> message news:476a41e7$0$85783$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>>
>>>> Yes, that is the problem if you want to defens the statement that
>>>> complexity can only be created by something more complex.
>>>> It is an endless loop.
>>> Such is the infinite nature of the universe.
>>>
>>> --
>>> All things tend toward entropy.
>>> Entropy tends toward chaos.
>>> Chaos tends toward all things.
>>
>> chaos is a relative and ficticious term. there certainly is randomness in
>> the universe, however there is NO chaos. chaos is associated with the
>> break-down of laws being enforced on things. the laws of physics are
>> constant. they only change based on our understanding of those laws. in
>> that, there can be no chaos.
>>
>
> Semantics.

not very.

> Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics. The mathematics of discontinuous
> functions. Of which it seems the universe is at least partly accurately
> modelled by.

yes, and chaos theory simply doesn't allow for the possibility of man being
able to know all the input variables. in fact, sits blindly aside it. it is
like saying the laws of geometry change for a game of billiards simply
because we've added a billion balls to the table. i go back to your
'universe in a large computer' analogy. if that computer exists or could be
created, we could very well make ourselves omniscient beings. not because we
would know all from a present perspective, but we would be able to predict
all based on such laws...perfect predictability. we simply have to know the
laws accurately and then define every variable. once in motion,
predictions - of even things like thought and behavior - could conceivably
be pefectly predictable.

i have never been a fan of the chaos theory. and again, randomness and chaos
are not semantically different in definition and meaning, they are
completely describing two very different and distinct things. one abides by
law and the other disregards it.

>> as for entropy, it tends toward the dispertion of energy...nothing more.
>> the only relationship is that it occurs at a greater frequency the more
>> ordered, or complex, a thing is. as for *trying* to related that to
>> chaos, good luck! even in entropy, the path of dispertion is *always* the
>> quickest route...meaning, my heated house will lose heat unevenly if i
>> open a window. so, even entropy itself follows the order inherent in
>> physics. again, in complete absense of chaos.
>
> Chaos as he d=efines it is infinitely dis-ordered. Nothing in the laws of
> nature precludes that.

actually, yes. the law of maximum entropy negates the possibility of
infinite disorder. again though, chaos is realted to UNPREDICTABILITY, not
with disorder strictly.

>> finally, not ALL things tend toward entropy...just energy. lest you think
>> that the evolution of life forms began as infinitely complex and have
>> entropied to human form now. that would put you in agreement with the
>> op...that everything complex was begat by something more complex. that is
>> just NOT something seen in nature.
>
> Well it depends on how you look at it.

thats what logically follows for me when i reflect on it. how do you see it?

> The Big Bang was a singularity that introduced extreme order into total
> formlessness.

sorry, the moment *before* the big bang was as ordered as the resultantan
universe could ever achieve after the big bang. the singularity event was
the point at which entropy in our universe began. to take your sentence
literally would mean the big bang produced order...instead of entropy acting
on the existence of order.

> Ultimately its pretty much the same as the God explanation, although the
> timescales are different, and the big bang is not generally supposed to be
> the conscious act of a supernatural entity. Nor does it dictate that we
> bow down and worship it, nor that our lives or deaths will be an any
> measurably significant way affected, if we do.

right, however it's important for us to discuss because we can be damned
sure some idiot with no background in science will start saying that god
staves of entropy somehow because the second law of thermodynamics says
so...having no clue at all what that law says, who said it, and why it
doesn't apply to whether or not complex beings and systems can arise in the
light of entropy.

> As far as creation myths go, its pretty neutral really. And the huge
> unanswered questions that it leaves, are at least honest ones. It does not
> attempt to paper over *all* the cracks with a big grinning monstrosity
> 'Full of Eastern Promise'. (I wonder who among ye recognizes *that*
> particular ad line)

nothing one can't google. :)

i'm not neutral about creation myth. i'm certainly not going to leave it as
goddidit. i don't need to know immediately, 100% accurately. i'll wait for
intelligent, provable theories that are reviewed by an objective board of
peers.

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
news:1198242515.19935.0@proxy00.news.clara.net...
> Steve wrote:
>> "The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
>> news:1198162599.86045.0@demeter.uk.clara.net...
>>> Steve wrote:
>>>> "The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
>>>> news:1198154467.74006.0@iris.uk.clara.net...
>>>>> Steve wrote:
>>>>>> "Erwin Moller"
>>>>>> wrote
>>>>>> in message news:4769595c$0$85795$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>>>>>> ???? ??? ?????? wrote:
>>>>>>>> Excuse me!!
>>>>>>>> Would you stop for a moment?!
>>>>>>>> O...man...Haven't you thought-one day- about yourself ?
>>>>>>>> Who has made it?
>>>>>>>> Have you seen a design which hasn't a designer ?!
>>>>>>> Good question, ???? ??? ??????!
>>>>>>> Who made your designer?
>>>>>>> .....
>>>>>>> Well??
>>>>>> well, obviously since nothing complex that we've every experienced
>>>>>> has begun as something more simple,
>>>>> Actually, science assumes the reverse is the case.
>>>> i know, you're the second person that missed the sarcasm. i thought
>>>> begging the logical delimma after that statement would have made it
>>>> clear that i was being intentional. :)
>>>>
>>> Ah, Too subtle for a dull Thursday morning with caffiene levels at
>>> critical...
>>>
>>>>> That the total complexity of life is in fact based on simple rules.
>>>>>
>>>>> The way that a simple 5 lines of code can produce the mandelbrot set.
>>>>>
>>>>> God is probably just an amoeba.
>>>> less...he is the pennacle of man's imagination and the apex of his
>>>> laziness.
>>>>
>>> Pennacle?
>>
>> lol. yep...it's a dull, coffee-less thursday morning. :)
>>
>>>>>> the most reasonable answer would be...something more complex than the
>>>>>> designer. begging the same question ad-nauseum of each increasingly
>>>>>> more complex creator.
>>>> there's the indicator that i was being sarcastic.
>>>>
>>>>>> lest we forget, gawd is a 'special' case and being omni* does not
>>>>>> require something more complex to create him/her/it/them.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Well that's just a copout logically speaking.
>>>> exactly. sad that people actually think that's a good answer.
>>>>
>>>>> I MUCH perfer the Buddhist lexcicon.
>>>>>
>>>>> The 'Tao is that which exists through itself'
>>>> which is quite illogical speaking in descartian terms.
>>> Descartes was a fool. Plenty of non thinking things evidently exist.
>>> Most Xtians for a start.
>>
>> i don't think you understand what descartes wrote. you have read this,
>> right?
>>
>> it's about being able to verify, to know for sure, what is real and what
>> is not. the only thing - and this is completely on an introspective,
>> individual basis - that can be known for certain is that *i* exist. 'i
>> think therefore i am' is not enough of a reduction, and here's why. to
>> get to this point, descarte demonstrates how our perceptions of things
>> are simply faulty and unreliable. in order to establish what is real, or
>> be more certain of its 'realness', we must have multiple observers with
>> which we can share an experience - yet, we cannot still be absolutely
>> certain of the realness of any observer but ourselves. thinking is an
>> activity that requires more than myself to observe since my senses may be
>> off; whether from neurosis, hormonal imbalance, or some environmental
>> factor such as fog obscuring my vision. thinking then, cannot be the
>> final reason that i know i exist. it must simply be that i am aware i
>> exist because logically, if i was not aware i'd not care to fuss about
>> knowing if i did or did not exist.
>>
>
> Very good explanation. Shows how translation makes sense into non-sense.

not sure i follow. was the explanation non-sense or my interpretation not
germain to descartes true contention?

> I'd always taken 'cogito ergo sum' to mean the 'act of thinking creates
> me', which is very close..but no cigar..

yet it doesn't effect my point in the least. in fact, it uses the *exact*
wording i used. the 'act of thinking'. read my explanation again. i cannot
accurately observe what it is i'm doing. i may think i'm thinking when i'm
actually dreaming...or a number of other things. the act of thinking needs
to be verified by others so that we all agree that i was, actually,
thinking. however, since i can't know that the others doing such
verification exist for sure, then i've go no way of truly knowing what i'm
doing...much less to call it thinking. make sense? no matter how you
translate that, the problem still exists, unpreturbed.

btw, 'cogito' means 'i think'. 'ergo' means 'therefore', and 'sum' means 'i
am'. there is no other way to translate it. however, descartes original
words were:

Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum

'i doubt, therefore i think, therefore i am'...and that was a notion first
considered by st. augustine ('if i'm mistaken, i am').

:)

> My friend who spends his life studying this stuff stated that all the
> problems of French philosophy would be solved if they had written in
> German..

you know, i use 'roflmao' all the time whilst not actually being on the
floor...or doing much more than giggling. this time, i had to grab for my
desk as my chair fell over with me in it! THAT was hilarious! kudos to your
friend.

:)

>> as for 'plenty of non thinking things evidently exist[ing]', you missed
>> the point. descartes is demonstrating that you can only know that you
>> exist. all else may be illusionary. he would begin challenging your posit
>> by simply asking, "how do you know anything exists".
>>
>
> I would also state that even that is not necessraily the case.
>
> I prefer Wittering Stein 'the truth is whatever is the case' or some such.
>
> Existence exists. The Ego bit is not a given. In fact nothing is a given.
> All is relative. In order to *have* an objective world one must have an
> observer. However neither are *necessary* for existence to exist.

and what a discredit we'd be doing to existent things were we to surround
them with things that were just figments of our imagination or to perceive
them differently than they are. any observer must be able to know how it is
that he knows what he knows - epistimology. as for the merit of a thing
simply existing without observers, that's the oldest consideration/cliche i
know...

if a tree falls in the woods but there is no one to hear it...

the answer for me would be, who cares. look at it this way...i cannot leave
ego out of the equation. if i can only verify that i exist and that i am
aware that this is about all i can confirm, then it is relative, completely,
whether or not *anything* else exists - in whatever form of reliability that
may be. something very well may exist if i'm not around to verify that it
does, but, do i care?

>
>> it is arrogant and foolhearty
>
> Foolhardy. I should have popped in a smiley.

i know...i warned you that i didn't have coffee yesterday. :)

>> to call descartes a fool...unless you either demonstrate yourself, in
>> what ways he is a fool. you must first begin, then, by knowing what
>> descartes has said. and that, beyond a cursor glossing.
>
> Cursory.

i know, i know. :)

> Well I just did.

i don't think you did. maybe highlight the key point(s) that counters
descartes so i can see what i missed?

> Existence can be experienced without thought.

i don't think this can be demonstrated, can it?

>>>> tao can only know that it exists (though NOT via 'thinking == am'),
>>>> else it wouldn't care to ask whether or not it did.
>>> Thats implying that the tao is a French philsopher. It isn't.
>>
>> the saying of which you are so fond, personifies tao. according to
>> descartes,
>
> Which is why I refute Descartes. All one can truly say is that one is
> aware of existence, so existence and one, exist, as a necessary duality
> required for objective consciousness.

i don't think this is anti-ergo-sum...i think this would be the
preface...'cogito'. :)

> BUT we know hat when we fall asleep, we lose objective consciousness:
> Ergo, either existence ceases when we fall asleep, or existence continues
> apart from our experience of it.

we assume we know. what descartes begins with in his statements *is* the
dream delimma. the question begged of him, "how do you know a dream is real
or if it is something else?" however, here, the context is existence...not
our perceptions of it. at no time, dreaming or awake, does 'cogito ergo sum'
become invalid. thinking simply switches from a temporily conscious state to
a less objective one.

> Using Occam's razor, the latter is a more elegant and simple explanation.

but neither apply to our awareness of our existence. so, when we are asleep
or awake, we are aware of the fact that we exist. you are putting forward a
delimma that simply doesn't have conflict.

>> tao can know it exists. you, however, can only know that you exist.
>> logically, since both your and tao's senses can fail yourselves and given
>> that each is not certain that the other person (or object, whatever, tao)
>> is real, you are left to conclude that it is impossible to absolutely
>> know not only whether or not a thing exists, but also whether or not the
>> thing is existing through itself - which is wholly circular logic anyway
>> and should be thrown aside.
>>
>> to me, it's just more religion mumbo-jumbo.
>>
>
> Well I don't take it that way. Any more than I take Descartes to be that.
>
> Its an honest attempt to drive a stake into the fabric of 'whatever is the
> case', and say, 'here is a starting point'.
>
> In essence all religions and philosophies do that. The Xtians drive a
> stake in and say ;heres' God, and the Bible is the explanation: start from
> there and it all makes sense'.
>
> I don't object to that on absolute grounds, I merely note that it is -
> whilst at first a simple and clean starting point -, ultimately pretty
> useless. And actually on inspection far more complicated than simply
> saying 'lets start from a simple point, existence exists,., and awareness
> of existence is something I, presumably others like me, (and presumably
> other life as well) have'
>
>
> That doesn't to me mean existence has to have personality: Descartes is
> too tied up in personality. Probably a catholic upbringing. Personality to
> me is not a priori for existence: Only for objective reflection of it into
> a worldview.

i agree with what you've said. i think the starting point for me is
determining how it is that we know what we know. i think descartes clearly
used 'cogito ergo sum' as his starting point. in that light, it doesn't
matter what other object is considered. they will all be considered realtive
to that perspective...simply because you can't prove all is not an illusion.
i don't think he requires personality to be prerequist to existent. just
that he can verify his own existence but nothing more. as for, say, a
rock...it may well exist though it is not animated. from *our* perspective,
we need a way to make sure it is real to *us* - regardless of if it has a
personality or not.

all may be real or all may be false. my starting point is finding a way to
reliably tell.

btw, i didn't miss the catholic joke. :)

>>>> 'through' is an activity that requires 3rd party verification. it is
>>>> objective. and, since one cannot be certain that anything is real,
>>>> beyond the 'first case' - i exist - then one has no reliable means to
>>>> verify *how* one exists, i.e. 'through itself'.
>>>>
>>> Indeed. Its a nonsensical statement that is used to show how the logic
>>> of human thought cannot apply to the fundamentals aspects of things.
>>
>> it's simply nonsensical because it is a self sustaining philosophy with
>> no possible means of falsification! the 'fundamentals aspects of things'
>> are subatomic particles.
>
> That again is a statement of faith, not fact. An inference drawn from a a
> particular worldview, but that worldview is not absolute: A worldview that
> places a stake in the ground, calls it 'PHYSICAL reality', and makes its
> existence the most basic thing there is. THAT faith is called material
> realism. And even that doesn;t actually result in subatomic particles, as
> we can see. We are now into 10 dimesnional string theory, which is hardly
> particles at all.

*sub* atomic was a term used specifically to point to the ever increasing
discoveries of smaller and smaller and smaller particles...such that it
leads to the notion of string theory. as for 'through itself' NOT being
falsifiable, how is that a statement of faith?

>>not only can humans conceive of such things, we've objectively verified
>>them. i reject both statements outright.
>>
>
> I think you should spend less time with Descartes, and more time with e.g.
> Karl Popper. And maybe Kant.

i've read lots of kant...i'm not a big popper fan however.

> The 'physical world' is only a description of the aspects of existence of
> which we happen to be particularly aware. And upon which we have arrived
> at a degree of consensus. In the final analysis there is much of our
> experience which is personal, unique, and cannot be agreed upon, because
> it IS personal and unique. Nevertheless that experience exists.

and here's where i tend to lose a bit of interest. and this is particular to
me, so take it as you will. i want to know how it is that we know what we
know, and that, objectively. i realize that i 'experience' dreams and that
others have hallucinations and others experience fully verifiable events.
while all of these things result in an experience of one type or another in
my mind, there must be a way to distinquish them. for me it's important
because while they can all be beneficial, they can also be
detrimental...relative to my survival or well-being in general. i can for
the most part control the objective, but can't always with non-objective
things. i certainly discount none.

>
>>> Remember thats a translation from another language. The mneaiong miay be
>>> aking top a 'train that lays its own tracks'.
>>
>> and in the real world, tao would be bound to the same laws of physics
>> that we are.
>
> I think - and I am not going to make a stronger statement than that - that
> the Taoist would argue, that the Tao IS the laws of nature, so to speak.
> But they would not restrict that to physics.
>
> Lets examine the Rational Materialist worldview: At its core is Stuff,
> space-time, and Laws. These are the things that 'just are' without
> explanation as to why they 'just are' At a given level that is no more
> silly than saying 'God IS, and he did the rest all by himself'

save the fact that they can all be verified, of course. :)

> Its true to say that the big bang theorists go a little deeper, and posit
> a state at which 'stuff', space time, and laws all arise simultaneously as
> a 'twist' in the fabric of Reality..
>
> Now you and I can appreciate that - almost..try saying that on a rocky
> hillsied in Isreal 4000 years ago, and blank incomprehension is the
> result. So, 'in the beginning was god, and god said 'let there be
> light'..mnakes a decent enough sort of parable.
>
> My objection is the literality with which such a parable is interpreted
> TODAY. And its lack of functionality.
>
> You cant DO anything with it.
>
> Instead, it's all spun into a doctrine of unnatural laws that proscribe
> human behaviour.

exactly correct. i find the solution problematic however...god doesn't seem
to want to inspire any corrections to the book or communicate in general, as
he did when we were still so limited in understanding. to me, that's an
indication that man created god rather than the other way around. but
anyway, i think we aren't arguing that point at all.

>> it would leave evidences that could be observed. and at its best, energy
>> would be the most applicably analogous notion one could to affix to tao -
>> a self-sustained thing. enter entropy and the demise of whatever tao is
>> or may be.
>>
>
> I think you miss what I take to be the point. All Taosist philosophy seems
> to be saying is that there exists natural laws, and the sensible person
> does not attempt to deny or work against them, but with them.
>
> The difference being that the Taoist comes from a different worldview -
> one that does not place 'stuff,. space time and laws' as the a priori
> assumptions, but more places existence, laws (together being the Tao) and
> consciousness of them' as the primary points. The physical world is held
> to be derivative of them, rather than the creator of them. In a sense the
> actuality of physics as she is today, is somewhat converging on this
> viewpoint. Certain aspects of what we have held to be hard physical
> reality only actually come into existence IF we make an 'observation' upon
> them.

while i don't follow, or hold steak in, taoism, i have always held the
notions of universal law forming reality. thus, all the 'stuff' is an
extension of the laws. i think that is as congruent to the truth as is the
notion of life adapting to environment - 'a product of environment'...an
extension. again however, i'm only interested in what i can experience. and
in experiencing, i want to be able to tell what is real and what is
imagined.

i think that's why i've never been a big tao fan.

btw...i have to break here and pick up reading later on. it's good to
finally see someone who actually studied for some reason other than a grade.
:)

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

Steve wrote:
> "The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
> news:1198243301.21036.0@proxy00.news.clara.net...
>> Steve wrote:
>>> "Sanders Kaufman" wrote in message
>>> news:7rAaj.71221$RX.70203@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net...
>>>> "Erwin Moller"
>>>> wrote in
>>>> message news:476a41e7$0$85783$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>>>
>>>>> Yes, that is the problem if you want to defens the statement that
>>>>> complexity can only be created by something more complex.
>>>>> It is an endless loop.
>>>> Such is the infinite nature of the universe.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> All things tend toward entropy.
>>>> Entropy tends toward chaos.
>>>> Chaos tends toward all things.
>>> chaos is a relative and ficticious term. there certainly is randomness in
>>> the universe, however there is NO chaos. chaos is associated with the
>>> break-down of laws being enforced on things. the laws of physics are
>>> constant. they only change based on our understanding of those laws. in
>>> that, there can be no chaos.
>>>
>> Semantics.
>
> not very.
>
>> Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics. The mathematics of discontinuous
>> functions. Of which it seems the universe is at least partly accurately
>> modelled by.
>
> yes, and chaos theory simply doesn't allow for the possibility of man being
> able to know all the input variables.

Which is of course reasonable, since its been calculated that you need a
computer as large as the Universe to hold all the data..


> in fact, sits blindly aside it. it is
> like saying the laws of geometry change for a game of billiards simply
> because we've added a billion balls to the table.

Not really. no.

Its more like saying the laws of planar geometry change when the
billiard table is cracked in half with a 6" gap in the middle

Or rather that they cease to apply;-)

Chaos theory simply states that under certain conditions, random
fluctuations in the microcosmos can utterly change the course of events
in the macrocosmos.

Its the breeze that lets the bullet wander 5mm to the left so it misses
a major artery..turning a very imprecise fluctuation into a life or
death event..


It's Schroedingers cat..

Its the incomputability of even some quite simple natural laws..

> i go back to your
> 'universe in a large computer' analogy. if that computer exists or could be
> created, we could very well make ourselves omniscient beings. not because we
> would know all from a present perspective, but we would be able to predict
> all based on such laws...perfect predictability. we simply have to know the
> laws accurately and then define every variable. once in motion,
> predictions - of even things like thought and behavior - could conceivably
> be pefectly predictable.
>

The point is. its been shown to be impossible to construct such a
computer. Even if the Universe WAS totally deterministic, what emerges
is the idea that the computer IS the universe, as it were.. you see its
NOT just the fact of identifying the actual laws, assuming these are
deterministic - and current quantum theory is not at the level its at
right now - its stochastic..but also of measuring every aspect of the
universe WITHOUT ALTERING IT IN A WAY WE COULDN'T PREDICT to establish a
starting point for our computer simulation, and then storing that data,
and then running it faster tan time itself, to get ahead of the game to
get an answer THAT WOULD NOT AS A RESULT OF OBTAINING IT CHANGE THE FUTURE..

At every single point in this chain of thought, we are deeply mired.
Quantum physics is not at the micro level, deterministic. Schrodingers
cat may be alive or dead, and we cannot predict which. Measuring the
universe changes it. Simulating it changes it. the storage needed
exceeds the available computational storage of the universe, and of
course we would find it hard to model the computer itself in the model
of the whole universe..

And that is before you get to Godels incompleteness theorem..


> i have never been a fan of the chaos theory. and again, randomness and chaos
> are not semantically different in definition and meaning, they are
> completely describing two very different and distinct things. one abides by
> law and the other disregards it.
>

Nothing disregards immutable laws..how could it? Chaos theory merely
states that small and very hard, or impossible to predict micro eventrs
*can* have massive impact in the macrocosm. Its possible to say that
that is in fact what the big bang was in any case.




>>> as for entropy, it tends toward the dispertion of energy...nothing more.
>>> the only relationship is that it occurs at a greater frequency the more
>>> ordered, or complex, a thing is. as for *trying* to related that to
>>> chaos, good luck! even in entropy, the path of dispertion is *always* the
>>> quickest route...meaning, my heated house will lose heat unevenly if i
>>> open a window. so, even entropy itself follows the order inherent in
>>> physics. again, in complete absense of chaos.
>> Chaos as he d=efines it is infinitely dis-ordered. Nothing in the laws of
>> nature precludes that.
>
> actually, yes. the law of maximum entropy negates the possibility of
> infinite disorder. again though, chaos is realted to UNPREDICTABILITY, not
> with disorder strictly.
>

Thats not true at all.

If infinite disorder has a meaning at all, its possible.

Chaos theory - as opposed to chaos in the poetic sense, is NOT related
to unpredictability at all. Discontinous functions are not
unpredictable, just very sensitive to small changes, and very hard to
compute accurately around the discontinuity.

Tan(theta) is a simple example.As theta tends to 90 degrees it tends to
infinity..as theta passes 90 degrees it becomes minus infinity. A very
large change for a very simple function to display over an infinitesimal
variation in its input. This is not about the fact that tan(x) is not
defined, or is not in obedience to laws. Its about the fact that very
small input changes result in massive output changes, and the difficulty
of measuring very small things. And the perturbability of very small
things by (random?) quantum events..

Its like balancing a ruler on its edge. It may stay up..just. It has a
narrow platform of stability. But once something moves it, its going to
fall that way till its flat. Whether it falls on the nuclear war button
and sets of WWIII or on the Presidents coffee cup is extremely hard to
predict.

As engineers and constructors of reliable predictable machinery, we
steer well clear of such systems. Nature however does not. An exploding
supernova in a distant galaxy a billion year ago might JUST nudge a
comet into the path of the earth, and destroy life on
earth..completely..for a long time.

>> finally, not ALL things tend toward entropy...just energy. lest you think
>>> that the evolution of life forms began as infinitely complex and have
>>> entropied to human form now. that would put you in agreement with the
>>> op...that everything complex was begat by something more complex. that is
>>> just NOT something seen in nature.
>> Well it depends on how you look at it.
>
> thats what logically follows for me when i reflect on it. how do you see it?
>
>> The Big Bang was a singularity that introduced extreme order into total
>> formlessness.
>
> sorry, the moment *before* the big bang

There *was* no moment before the Big Bang ;-)

Thats what it created. Time. Space. Energy. Matter. Natural laws. If you
take the view that the Universe is completely deterministic, everything
that was ever going to happen, happened then..the rest is just watching
it unfold exactly as it was always going to, and there is nothing you
can do about it. "Slaughterhouse 5" stuff. There's a word for that. The
future was *implicit* in the particular broken symmetry of the big bang

> was as ordered as the resultantant
> universe could ever achieve after the big bang. the singularity event was
> the point at which entropy in our universe began. to take your sentence
> literally would mean the big bang produced order...instead of entropy acting
> on the existence of order.

I am not a great fan of entropy. It all depends on what you mean by
order. Is a strill pond infinitely ordered, or disordered? Entropy is a
thermodynamic things, and there's lots of stuff that could and maybe
does break entropy. Maxwell's Demon is one nice sort of thought.

>
>> Ultimately its pretty much the same as the God explanation, although the
>> timescales are different, and the big bang is not generally supposed to be
>> the conscious act of a supernatural entity. Nor does it dictate that we
>> bow down and worship it, nor that our lives or deaths will be an any
>> measurably significant way affected, if we do.
>
> right, however it's important for us to discuss because we can be damned
> sure some idiot with no background in science will start saying that god
> staves of entropy somehow because the second law of thermodynamics says
> so...having no clue at all what that law says, who said it, and why it
> doesn't apply to whether or not complex beings and systems can arise in the
> light of entropy.

Sure. But it behooves us to be better at understanding our science, than
most fundies are at understanding their religion. Replacing one leap of
faith by another, and parroting 'laws of nature' as if they were FACTS
will not suffice.

Science explains many things in far more detail and far more elegantly
and in a way that allows us to predict the future with far better
accuracy than God bases stuff.

God based stuff is far more comforting, far simpler for imnmature minds
to grasp, and is essentially a complete, if pragmatically pretty useless
explanation.

However in the final analysis neither can be held to be true, or based
on *fact*. The virtue of science is not that its *true*, but that it
*works*. The great logical flaw in religion is that it doesn't predict
ANYTHING, other than an unprovable and unfalsifiable assertion that life
continues after death.


*******random thought

{
God is like socialism - what the yanks call liberalism - in that if you
vote for it, it promises to tell you how to behave and how to run your
life, and then it will look after you for ever. And when it doesn't its
full of excuses why not.



Its the greatest irony that the Republican party is in fact kept in
power by devout god botherers, when in fact what it is supposed to be
about, is the complete opposite.

Still one doesn't expect sense in America.
}

******end random thought**********

>
>> As far as creation myths go, its pretty neutral really. And the huge
>> unanswered questions that it leaves, are at least honest ones. It does not
>> attempt to paper over *all* the cracks with a big grinning monstrosity
>> 'Full of Eastern Promise'. (I wonder who among ye recognizes *that*
>> particular ad line)
>
> nothing one can't google. :)
>
> i'm not neutral about creation myth. i'm certainly not going to leave it as
> goddidit. i don't need to know immediately, 100% accurately. i'll wait for
> intelligent, provable theories that are reviewed by an objective board of
> peers.
>
>

There are no provable theories. That is the first and most basic flaw in
most '"rational materialists'" assumptions. There are only theories that
do something and work, and theories that don't. Science evolves
precisely BECAUSE ,in the final analysis, its carefully enough thought
out to understand that no theory is a final theory, and there may always
be a better one.

Religion is static, hidebound and ossified, precisely because it DOES
think it has the FINAL solution, no matter how useless and illogical, to
everything.


For the sort of populist semitic type religions it goes like this.

"God made it, its all god's plan, shut up and let god get on with it,.
and don't ask questions, oh, and by the way, we are gods chosen people
so that's us telling YOU, what to dol, right, and if a spear in the guts
is not enough, it will be hellfire and eternal damanation, which is MUCH
WORSE, OK?"

"Whereas if you come along and play happy-clappies with us at the gospel
meeting (or solemn obeisance in the mosque), you get a pat on the head,
a personal fortune cookie from God, and we promise not to rape your
sister OK?"

Plus of course the ultimate chance for 15 minutes of fame on CNN as the
nice quiet guy who blew up a shopping mall and 50 people.

I mean..really. Is it THAT hard to understand whats going on here?

This isn't about God. This is about power politics.

Re: Would you stop for a moment?!

Steve wrote:
> "The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message


> the answer for me would be, who cares. look at it this way...i cannot leave
> ego out of the equation. if i can only verify that i exist and that i am
> aware that this is about all i can confirm, then it is relative, completely,
> whether or not *anything* else exists - in whatever form of reliability that
> may be. something very well may exist if i'm not around to verify that it
> does, but, do i care?
>

Thats where a smidgeon of transcendental bollocks shifts ones
perespective, old boy.

Its possible to subjectively verify existence without actually being
there at the time..sort of.

Itds more a 'Cogitas, ergo est' at that point.

Or 'Non cogito, sed semper est' perhaps.

Its a finely balanced point, somewhere in the continuum of possible
states of consciousenss, but enough people have been there..


>>> it is arrogant and foolhearty
>> Foolhardy. I should have popped in a smiley.
>
> i know...i warned you that i didn't have coffee yesterday. :)
>
>>> to call descartes a fool...unless you either demonstrate yourself, in
>>> what ways he is a fool. you must first begin, then, by knowing what
>>> descartes has said. and that, beyond a cursor glossing.
>> Cursory.
>
> i know, i know. :)
>
>> Well I just did.
>
> i don't think you did. maybe highlight the key point(s) that counters
> descartes so i can see what i missed?
>
>> Existence can be experienced without thought.
>
> i don't think this can be demonstrated, can it?
>

It can be experienced tho. Just about every shamanic or religious order
has a deep mysterious Path To God/Enlightenment or whatever.. They ALL
work. I reckon. You probably get one every moring when you wake up,
before normality asserts itself..you are awake, but not functioning
rationally.

If you don't end up in a mental hospital first, there are plenty of
tried and tested methods of extending the state for longer. Post coital
bliss is a halfway house. For example. Cf Aleister Crowley and the 'true
meaning of the 'Whore of Babylon'' ;-)


>>>>> tao can only know that it exists (though NOT via 'thinking == am'),
>>>>> else it wouldn't care to ask whether or not it did.
>>>> Thats implying that the tao is a French philsopher. It isn't.
>>> the saying of which you are so fond, personifies tao. according to
>>> descartes,
>> Which is why I refute Descartes. All one can truly say is that one is
>> aware of existence, so existence and one, exist, as a necessary duality
>> required for objective consciousness.
>
> i don't think this is anti-ergo-sum...i think this would be the
> preface...'cogito'. :)
>

It depends on how interpret the statement.

I would say more like 'existence exists, *something* thinks, and I and
the world come into being as a necessary pair' - that part of existence
thats doing the peering, and the thing it thinks its peering at.;-)

So for me the most simple structure is that stuff is..not physical stuff
either - data, raw experience, and some part of that knots itself up
into a mirror, and reflects the rest of it into it..and calls the
reflection 'the physical world' and the thing that's both doing the
knotting, and looking into the mirror,. the 'self' - the knotter being
roughly the subconscious, and the looker, the conscious, mind.

(cf God the father (existence), God the son (the percieved world), God
the holy ghost (the subconscious manipulation of data into structure) et
al, ad nauseam)

However these are crude terms, because in order to talk about them, we
have to stick them in the mirror..and make them 'part of the world'

This is where I think religion and spirituality OUGHT to be making the
point - they don't of course - and that is that what the world seems to
be is largely what we make it. I am not saying there isn't a deeper
reality behind it, somewhat independent of our minds, but the whole
shape it appears in is down to unconscious mental effort. Buried deep in
Christian mysticism you DO find such hints, but by and large the
response of Christianity has been to take this - in my mind purely
mechanical process - that constructs a meaningful world out of raw
experience, externalise it and call it God. The Creator Of The World.
Well in a sense, so it is. but not in the sense that the silly sheep think.

It does leave me in a peculiar position. In a sense I understand - or
feel I understand, the basis of world religions very well, and see some
merit in all of them, as pointers towards a particular system that I
think maps reality rather well.

However not one of them seem to realise what knowledge they are actually
supposed to be peddling. Which expressed in modern terms is really the
science of consciousness..if that makes sense, and the fact that
consciousness is what created the world, as we know it. Out of the
world, as we can't know it directly..unless we believe the Gnostics etc.


>> BUT we know hat when we fall asleep, we lose objective consciousness:
>> Ergo, either existence ceases when we fall asleep, or existence continues
>> apart from our experience of it.
>
> we assume we know. what descartes begins with in his statements *is* the
> dream delimma. the question begged of him, "how do you know a dream is real
> or if it is something else?" however, here, the context is existence...not
> our perceptions of it. at no time, dreaming or awake, does 'cogito ergo sum'
> become invalid. thinking simply switches from a temporily conscious state to
> a less objective one.

Ah..well thats extending the concept of thinking a fair bit. I tend to
make it solely verbal conscious thought..there is a lot going on
elsewhere, I grant you, but I tend not to apply that label to it..and
indeed 'cogito' is very much a verb of conscious thought..dreaming is
dreaming, and other forms of awareness are not thinking either.

>
>> Using Occam's razor, the latter is a more elegant and simple explanation.
>
> but neither apply to our awareness of our existence. so, when we are asleep
> or awake, we are aware of the fact that we exist. you are putting forward a
> delimma that simply doesn't have conflict.

When I am asleep I am not aware of my existence. If you are, you
probably are a witch doctor..

I cant say for sure, but the most reasonable explanation is that
existence exists whether we are aware of it or not. You cant really
twist that around and claim that if it exists, its because its thinking
about itself. Thats really another way of saying the universe is an
intelligence, and that's that. Might as well stick with God.

>
>>> tao can know it exists. you, however, can only know that you exist.
>>> logically, since both your and tao's senses can fail yourselves and given
>>> that each is not certain that the other person (or object, whatever, tao)
>>> is real, you are left to conclude that it is impossible to absolutely
>>> know not only whether or not a thing exists, but also whether or not the
>>> thing is existing through itself - which is wholly circular logic anyway
>>> and should be thrown aside.
>>>
>>> to me, it's just more religion mumbo-jumbo.
>>>
>> Well I don't take it that way. Any more than I take Descartes to be that.
>>
>> Its an honest attempt to drive a stake into the fabric of 'whatever is the
>> case', and say, 'here is a starting point'.
>>
>> In essence all religions and philosophies do that. The Xtians drive a
>> stake in and say ;heres' God, and the Bible is the explanation: start from
>> there and it all makes sense'.
>>
>> I don't object to that on absolute grounds, I merely note that it is -
>> whilst at first a simple and clean starting point -, ultimately pretty
>> useless. And actually on inspection far more complicated than simply
>> saying 'lets start from a simple point, existence exists,., and awareness
>> of existence is something I, presumably others like me, (and presumably
>> other life as well) have'
>>
>>
>> That doesn't to me mean existence has to have personality: Descartes is
>> too tied up in personality. Probably a catholic upbringing. Personality to
>> me is not a priori for existence: Only for objective reflection of it into
>> a worldview.
>
> i agree with what you've said. i think the starting point for me is
> determining how it is that we know what we know.

Well I know the answer to that one. We *don't* know that we know. It's
merely an ad hoc predicate of seeing ourselves in the way that we do, in
the world we think we live in.

Cut through the crap. Stop the thinking, and see for yourself! SOMETHING
is aware (of the world?), allright,. but it ain't YOU, as you know
yourself Jim! :-). Change the way you think or stop thinking, and the
world changes round you. And you change as well. What's going on? YOU
are not what you think you are, that's all. YOU may not even EXIST more
than a figment of (your own? Something elses?) imagination.

Lewis Carroll is particularly good in this area. Too many mushrooms
probably.


>i think descartes clearly
> used 'cogito ergo sum' as his starting point. in that light, it doesn't
> matter what other object is considered. they will all be considered realtive
> to that perspective...simply because you can't prove all is not an illusion.

Indeed. In fact I suspect all IS an illusion, apart from a teeny nub of
reality. Its a jolly useful and convenient and comfortable illusions and
it works pretty well..BUT its all whats reflected in the mirror. Not
whats being reflected. I think Descartes simply did not go far enough.
Kant tried, but it came out almost incoherent.



> i don't think he requires personality to be prerequist to existent. just
> that he can verify his own existence but nothing more. as for, say, a
> rock...it may well exist though it is not animated. from *our* perspective,
> we need a way to make sure it is real to *us* - regardless of if it has a
> personality or not.
>
> all may be real or all may be false. my starting point is finding a way to
> reliably tell.
>

Why bother? If it works, use it. You can only work on the basis of where
you seem to find yourself, real or illusory makes no difference if you
can't tell, and we can't. Unless you take the red pill its never 'bye
bye kansas' and you can't arrive at a point of reference sufficiently
outside the one you are in to compare it with anything else.

I mean that's the whole point of Karl Popper, and the instrumentalists
go further..we aren't arriving at fundamental truths here..thats a
fiction for the sheep. We are arriving at elegant reductions of the data
that save the data..thats all. Its handy to talk about 'going down the
shops' even when the actual reality may be a complex shift of
probabilities in a 10 dimensional universe that is in itself only one of
an infinite number of possible one that coexist interpenetrated with
each other..or whatever the latest quantum bollocks says..we wouldn't
GET down the shops if we had to deal with all that. FORTUNATELY for us.
Some mecahnism,. or some god, or something, reduces it all to a simple
matter of going out the apparent door,getting in the car, starting it
and driving down what seems to be a road, to what seems to be a
different location, and buying a pizza. Or whatever. Out 'thinking'
reduces ALL that complexity to the very few useful THINGS we need to
remember, and for which we have standard ways of dealing

THAT'S the miracle.



> btw, i didn't miss the catholic joke. :)
>
>>>>> 'through' is an activity that requires 3rd party verification. it is
>>>>> objective. and, since one cannot be certain that anything is real,
>>>>> beyond the 'first case' - i exist - then one has no reliable means to
>>>>> verify *how* one exists, i.e. 'through itself'.
>>>>>
>>>> Indeed. Its a nonsensical statement that is used to show how the logic
>>>> of human thought cannot apply to the fundamentals aspects of things.
>>> it's simply nonsensical because it is a self sustaining philosophy with
>>> no possible means of falsification! the 'fundamentals aspects of things'
>>> are subatomic particles.
>> That again is a statement of faith, not fact. An inference drawn from a a
>> particular worldview, but that worldview is not absolute: A worldview that
>> places a stake in the ground, calls it 'PHYSICAL reality', and makes its
>> existence the most basic thing there is. THAT faith is called material
>> realism. And even that doesn;t actually result in subatomic particles, as
>> we can see. We are now into 10 dimesnional string theory, which is hardly
>> particles at all.
>
> *sub* atomic was a term used specifically to point to the ever increasing
> discoveries of smaller and smaller and smaller particles...such that it
> leads to the notion of string theory. as for 'through itself' NOT being
> falsifiable, how is that a statement of faith?
>

The statement of faith is that physical reality really exists in the way
you think it does; Don't be insulted. In order to be a normal conscious
being there has to be some a priori assumptions. The Xtian starts with
God, the Materialist starts with the physical world. I would say the
only difference in what I do, is that I know what assumptions I make,
and for what purposes, don't consider any of them grounded in *facts*,
and use other assumptions at a moments notice. I.e. I am not BOUNDED by
faith. It's a servant..not a master. If you like faith in the integrity
of my cars mechanics gives me the confidence to take a corner fast, but
it doesn't mean I consider it never needs servicing, or that I will be
unduly alarmed if the back steps out on a patch of ice. And if it goes
into a total; uncontrolled skid. I'll probably be praying it hits
something relatively soft ;-) Heck. Might as well play the percentages
eh? :-)


>>> not only can humans conceive of such things, we've objectively verified
>>> them. i reject both statements outright.
>>>
>> I think you should spend less time with Descartes, and more time with e.g.
>> Karl Popper. And maybe Kant.
>
> i've read lots of kant...i'm not a big popper fan however.
>
>> The 'physical world' is only a description of the aspects of existence of
>> which we happen to be particularly aware. And upon which we have arrived
>> at a degree of consensus. In the final analysis there is much of our
>> experience which is personal, unique, and cannot be agreed upon, because
>> it IS personal and unique. Nevertheless that experience exists.
>
> and here's where i tend to lose a bit of interest. and this is particular to
> me, so take it as you will. i want to know how it is that we know what we
> know, and that, objectively. i realize that i 'experience' dreams and that
> others have hallucinations and others experience fully verifiable events.
> while all of these things result in an experience of one type or another in
> my mind, there must be a way to distinquish them.

There is, but thats where it gets far too weird for usenet. espceially
comp.land.php...


> for me it's important
> because while they can all be beneficial, they can also be
> detrimental...relative to my survival or well-being in general. i can for
> the most part control the objective, but can't always with non-objective
> things. i certainly discount none.
>

I will make a bald assertion that is not verifiable, and is totally
unscientific. Based on my personal experience. You can FEEL what is
going on, better than work it out logically, in some cases. The
(subconscious?) will try and map whatever it feels is important, via
whatever means it gets it, to whatever state of mind you happen to be
in. Hallucinations are always based on *something*. If you are highly
visually oriented thats juts your subconscious trying to pass on
something in the only way it can. Ditto hearing voices etc..Being an
invetreta daydreamer, I have had more weird stuff happen like that than
I would care to mention. Some remains inexplicable. Some was obvious at
the time. Some I worked out at least to my own satisaction later.

Colin Wilosn said the the purpose of consciousness was not to let things
in, but to keep things out. I largely ascribe to that.
I finally noticed taht what was actually going on when I
(a) stopped thinking
(b) became aware of aberrant perceptions

That they were always accompanied by a FEELING. In time I learnt to feel
the feelings and the aberrant perceptions largely vanished.

The touchy feely sense is the one to explore other worlds than the
rational. Its saved my bacon a few times. I guess you might call it
instinct..

I will dislike someone because they make me literally feel bad, they
give me a pain in the neck, or make me literally feel sick. Later I can
rationalize that to other people, and justify it. At the time though,
its a straightforward gut reaction. I don't claim supernatural powers
tho. Could just be that my subconscious has recognised a behaviour its
seen before in other troublesome types..and is trying to tell me..



>>>> Remember thats a translation from another language. The mneaiong miay be
>>>> aking top a 'train that lays its own tracks'.
>>> and in the real world, tao would be bound to the same laws of physics
>>> that we are.
>> I think - and I am not going to make a stronger statement than that - that
>> the Taoist would argue, that the Tao IS the laws of nature, so to speak.
>> But they would not restrict that to physics.
>>
>> Lets examine the Rational Materialist worldview: At its core is Stuff,
>> space-time, and Laws. These are the things that 'just are' without
>> explanation as to why they 'just are' At a given level that is no more
>> silly than saying 'God IS, and he did the rest all by himself'
>
> save the fact that they can all be verified, of course. :)
>

Well can they?

How do you verify the material world? Ok you kick it and it hurts..but
that doesn't 'prove' it exists in the wasy you think it does,. It merely
shows that a certain action produces as certain response. You *could* be
plugged into the Matrix with all your nerves being stimulated by a
computer simulation..;-)

There is no ultimate bedrock on which to construct your mental edifices.
Get used to it. Keep em light and portable I say. Or build them on
Faith, but then you are stuck in one place..


>> Its true to say that the big bang theorists go a little deeper, and posit
>> a state at which 'stuff', space time, and laws all arise simultaneously as
>> a 'twist' in the fabric of Reality..
>>
>> Now you and I can appreciate that - almost..try saying that on a rocky
>> hillsied in Isreal 4000 years ago, and blank incomprehension is the
>> result. So, 'in the beginning was god, and god said 'let there be
>> light'..mnakes a decent enough sort of parable.
>>
>> My objection is the literality with which such a parable is interpreted
>> TODAY. And its lack of functionality.
>>
>> You cant DO anything with it.
>>
>> Instead, it's all spun into a doctrine of unnatural laws that proscribe
>> human behaviour.
>
> exactly correct. i find the solution problematic however...god doesn't seem
> to want to inspire any corrections to the book or communicate in general, as
> he did when we were still so limited in understanding. to me, that's an
> indication that man created god rather than the other way around. but
> anyway, i think we aren't arguing that point at all.
>

I think that God, like man, arrives out of a twist in the mental fabric.
Certain sorts of people will look out on certain sorts of worlds, and
find a god therein, or not,depending on the nature of the twist. It
depends what they consider inside themselves, and what they consider
outside themselves. I myself am quite happy with a smart subconscious
that sends me signals, constructs my reality, and do not need to pretend
it ain't there, and its God talking to me. Others obviously find that a
far more preposterous and disturbing concept than Big Daddy in the Sky.
For a start, it means taking total responsibility for your life. Not
many people really achieve that.


>>> it would leave evidences that could be observed. and at its best, energy
>>> would be the most applicably analogous notion one could to affix to tao -
>>> a self-sustained thing. enter entropy and the demise of whatever tao is
>>> or may be.
>>>
>> I think you miss what I take to be the point. All Taosist philosophy seems
>> to be saying is that there exists natural laws, and the sensible person
>> does not attempt to deny or work against them, but with them.
>>
>> The difference being that the Taoist comes from a different worldview -
>> one that does not place 'stuff,. space time and laws' as the a priori
>> assumptions, but more places existence, laws (together being the Tao) and
>> consciousness of them' as the primary points. The physical world is held
>> to be derivative of them, rather than the creator of them. In a sense the
>> actuality of physics as she is today, is somewhat converging on this
>> viewpoint. Certain aspects of what we have held to be hard physical
>> reality only actually come into existence IF we make an 'observation' upon
>> them.
>
> while i don't follow, or hold steak in, taoism, i have always held the
> notions of universal law forming reality. thus, all the 'stuff' is an
> extension of the laws. i think that is as congruent to the truth as is the
> notion of life adapting to environment - 'a product of environment'...an
> extension. again however, i'm only interested in what i can experience. and
> in experiencing, i want to be able to tell what is real and what is
> imagined.
>

Assume its all in your mind, and see where that leaves you. Or lets put
it another way, whats imagined is real. Everything is imagined. That's
not the point. The point is how useful are those imaginings?Many a time
I have stood at the checkout in a supermarket, im,agining that I had a
smachine gun, and just how many out of the revolting array of
overweight, dull self absorbed specimens of humanity I would, given the
chance to get away with it, take out in an orgy of destruction. On
particularly bad days it approaches 95% :-)

Now I do not have to tell myself that 'God told me to do it',. nor do I
take out the gun and do it. I see it simply as a sad reflection on my
perception of how basically unaware most of the people around me are.And
what problems that causes. I am fully aware that my subconcious has a
wicked sense of humour, and is trying to tell me to be the same..Not
that Satan is tempting me or some such bollocks.

You can only deal with what you are aware of. The important thing to
remember is that none of it is totally real, and yet it all is real.
Thoughts and feelings can be witnessed: They exist every bit as much as
sticks and stones. The difficulty is in finding a way to deal with them,
as the usual rules do not apply.

> i think that's why i've never been a big tao fan.
>
> btw...i have to break here and pick up reading later on. it's good to
> finally see someone who actually studied for some reason other than a grade.
> :)
>

Oh, I had my reasons allright. Too much weird stuff and no explanations.
Well as the moral sciebtists say, when you are stuck, go back to first
principles.

Descartes did not go far enough, for me. Most philosophy consists in one
person or another nailing a stick in the gound and saying 'this is your
reality checkpoint: measure all from here'

Noble stuff, but they are all stick in differing places.

I am more a metaphysician. The point I came to was this.

"Assuming we cannot find the One True Point in which to mail the Reality
Checkpoint, because in the final analysis, all points are equal, should
we nail one in at all, and if so does it matter where"?

My conclusion was, that if you needed one at all, to lean on when
walking got tiring, right where you happened to be was plenty fine.

Just don't turn a useful crutch,into a fixed inescapable location, and
for heavens sake, don't bow down and worship it when you have.That is
plain SILLY.

Even sheep don't do that..











>