There is no ontological basis for the world of chairs, building, etc.
These are all man-made things thus cannot be ontological but realities subjected to the human conditions.
Chairs are made of trees chopped by humans and sawn into pieces of wood by humans, and humanly designed and constructed by humans, joined with nails or glue.
A tree is merely a human concept of a certain arrangement of atoms and molecules.
The humanly defined molecules and atoms of the wood pieces and planks are made of sub-atomic particles.
There is no certainty as to what humanly defined sub-atomic particles are and their existence is totally dependent on human participation, i.e. Wave function collapse, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function_collapse
So where is anything of reality down to the finest particle that is ontological and independent of the human conditions.
Can you [as human] ever convinced any one [human] that are ontological things that exist independent of the human conditions?
Note why people are driven to the ontological is due to some desperate psychological impulses [of degrees] within.
No, I’m aware of Hume’s overall disposition toward science and things religious. You missed my point. It wasn’t that Hume agreed with me, it’s that his observation rings true–as do virtually all secular observations of how existence “works”–with the function of ontological value, as the proposed value mechanism is able to predict. Including ‘no ought from is’ (material information is static and inert, prescriptive information is vibrant and robust).
You are one of a curious lot of atheists today who, despite loudly proclaiming that there is no God nor objective moral standards, nonetheless spend incredible amounts of time in social media venues discussing God’s inexistence and why there are no moral absolutes. This is curious; you seem to not grasp the nature of true impossibilities. Impossibilities are unable to provide information to minds because reality must have structured information in order for them to achieve apprehension. [The informational structure of reality alluded to in previous post is based in part on this principle btw.] Take the simple example of a three-sided circle. The mind readily grabs hold of “three-sided” and “circle” because each individually provides structured information to grasp. But put the terms together and the mind slams shut. “Three-sided circle” fails the requisite informational structure for apprehension of real things. A three-sided circle is a true impossibility.
In light of the above, your thread attempting to show the “impossibility” of God fails before it gets out of the gate by virtue of the hours upon hours discussion atheists have with theists about God. The idea of God provides sufficient informational structure to your and virtually everyone else’s mind to discuss objectively. This is true of all abstract entities…except of course the impossible ones, whatever they might be. You remind me of Tolkein’s Treebeard: “They come with fire! They come with axes! Gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning!! Destroyers and usurpers” What possible motivation could there be for atheists to constantly gnaw, bite and hack away at moral ideas they claim don’t even exist? The ontological value mechanism is also able to provide reasonable answers. The secular term is cognitive dissonance theory, which in my world is caused by the presence of value within information itself.
It would work something like this…falsity is naturally adverse to truth. In reduction to single iotas of information only a simple repulsion exists between true components and false. As information builds in complexity, a sum of f - t (or t - f) disjunctions (in arguably ‘locational configurations’ with respect to the formation of prescriptive propositional content i.e., ideas, beliefs, etc.) within a sufficiently fragmentally falsified mind produces an accumulative repulsive force [dissonance]. Thus, various degrees of revulsion builds on the macro (conscious) level forming predispositions of opposition to true prescriptive propositions. While this holds for all–theist and atheist alike will hate certain prescriptive truths and embrace others, which explains much of the doctrinal infighting among just the Christian denominations–in the big questions (does God exist for example) one side is defending a truth and other trying to dismantle it. The hard part is, since God is silent on the subject, which side is the defender and which the usurper? This might be the ‘hard problem’ of value mechanics.
So how is it you spend so much time and energy refuting impossibilities like God and objective morality Prism?
Also, I’m aware that our ‘steadfast’ scientific notions seem to have gone sideways with the double slit experiment. But it’s much too early in the game to make the kind of dogmatic statements you do: There is no certainty as to what humanly defined sub-atomic particles are and their existence is totally dependent on human participation It might be prudent to wait and see how knowledge of the quantum realm actually develops before using the little we now have as a club to beat those deplorable theists with.
Not sure what is your definition of ontological.
My definition of ontological is related to things that are independent of the human conditions.
Hume never agreed to such a meaning of ontological.
That is why he insisted there is no ontological ‘ought’ from empirical “is”.
Nope I am not any curious non-theists [btw, don’t favor the term ‘atheists’].
Why I am so concerned with theism is due to a high level of empathy and compassion in reaction to the terrible evil and violence brought forth by SOME theists in the past, present and will commit in the future.
I posted this somewhere;
Why I am so involved in countering the existence of God is because many theists had committed terrible evil and violent acts against humanity in the name of or as commanded by God.
My definition of ‘evil’:
Evil is the essence of any human act or thought that is net-negative to the well being of the individual, others and humanity.
DNA/RNA wise ALL humans has the potential to commit evil and violence acts.
Unfortunately a certain percentile [conservatively 20%*] of all humans are born with an active tendency to commit evil acts ranging in various degrees.
*why? this need to be discussed further.
I believe ALL evil acts and violence in the World must be addressed and resolved ASAP. I have discussed this generally.
To be effective in problem solving, one need to break down whatever the problem, in this case evil, into its smallest units and search for various patterns, e.g. the fishbone technique. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram
One person cannot address ALL the evil potential of the World from all sources.
Whilst not a Buddhist, I have adopted one of the Boddhisattva’s vow re extending empathy and compassion to all living persons and things. Thus when one see so much sufferings, as a concern citizen of humanity one must strive to contribute in the most effective way possible.
This is why the best I can do is to focus on what I am capable to contribute, i.e. religious-related evil. I have competent knowledge in Philosophy of Evil plus Philosophy of Religion. This is why I am ‘localizing’ my effort re evil to ‘religion’ and not in areas like politics, etc. which I do not have competence.
Since most of the religious evil acts are related or commanded by God, getting rid of the illusory idea of God will eliminate all God-based evil and violent acts.
The worst ongoing trend of a God driven evil and violent acts is this;
The above trend has the potential to exterminate the human species when these extremists get access to cheap and easily available WMDs [nuclear and biological]. They have nothing to lose since either way they will end up in Paradise with eternal life. The killing of all infidels and their kind [with consensus] will grant them instant passport to Paradise with eternal life [for some 72 virgins].
My reasoning for this idea is developed partly from “Body & Soul” (Moreland and Rae, 2000) in which they argue for substance dualism. One of their strongest arguments imo is their distinction between property things and substances, which I take to stand for inorganic and organic entities. They offer as primary separation between the two, “…a crucial distinction between the structures of a substance and a property thing: the internal structure of a substance is a set of internal relations, and the structure of a property thing is a set of external relations.”
Though Moreland and Rae use different terminology, this set of features describes what I’d call ‘informational dualism”, i.e., inorganics possessing only descriptive value or information and organics an amalgam of descriptive and prescriptive.
The idea is that the soul is a single thing that conforms or bonds to the material configuration, in reduction to its micro-level state. This prescriptive truth dynamic is often described in theological circles as the ‘animating principle’. The graphic posted earlier illustrates this as a one-to-one attachment of material and prescriptive iotas of information. Following the organization of the first, the soul-body graphic below demonstrates the dualism of disparate kinds of value-information. Bonded together into a single organism or person, the informational structure of the whole seems consistent with the idea of a single entity of conjoined internal-external relations. Am not under the illusion this is what Moreland and Rae have in mind in their defence of substance dualism, just my adaptation of their base ideas into an informational format.
The authors describe external relations of property things as not entering into the nature of the parts and the parts as indifferent to relations, where substance is what it is by virtue of the relations between its parts. This rings true in informational dualism because the particularity of the soul in the P-Q organization is unfalsifiable—the soul remains a single, same identity—while Q, being fragmentally falsifiable on a micro level, contributes this corruption by its internal relations to the whole. The whole remains the same thing but its moral and physical “flavour” changes by virtue of these internal value relations.
The human soul is arguably falsifiable by improper choice. This isn’t very controversial on a large scale—Joe ignores warnings that drugs are dangerous, partakes anyway, eventually becomes addicted. Addiction is a falsification of the good of mental and physical health with respect to its perfection. Most would likely accept the common sense notion that Joe’s choice played a role in his falsification/addiction. Addiction has both physical and mental correlations which I believe can be traced back to changes in value states. Thus, addiction is very much a “spiritual disease” whose effects show in both mental and physical spheres.
That a person retains identity despite the constant replacement of physical parts suggests the internal relations of the person (soul) are maintained while material external relations operate in constant restructuring, i.e., elimination and change of particularity (P) of micro level parts in order to maintain its properties (Q) and thus its status as a property thing. Particular cells either die naturally (apoptosis) or from trauma. Trauma might be seen as an end result of falsification—by environmental or outside affects, but hypothetically also for internal value changes re the ‘falsified operation’ demonstrated in the graphic in the lower cluster of organic information where the falsification of the soul’s Q affects on a micro level proper operation of juxtaposed components within soul and body. Apoptosis might be described as the property thing performing its natural machine-like rebuilding process, while death by trauma as unplanned (non-natural) falsification, against which biological repair functions are called to action.
The aforementioned preservation of identity despite the body’s material state or soul’s Q state of change suggests steadfast truth value of the soul’s P or identity as a particular thing. But the change of moral character for better or worse within the particular person suggests the mutability of the overall value state in the soul’s Q or essence.
From the above it appears to me that moral properties are not in actions themselves. Rather, degrees of falsification of living entities are made known to a perceiver representationally in interpretation of material events within states of affairs. The punch thrown in anger is from a material point of view is merely the exchange of spatial and temporal positions of the particles of A’s face and B’s fist. There’s no ought to be found in the exchange itself. Acts (air waves in recognizable patterns interpreted as anger in B’s voice, cries of pain and blood flowing from A’s mouth) by living organisms are interpreted for their value content by the value-bearing information of intellects in value-reactions to those circumstances. Just to clarify, it would have been better stated for me to claim “non-material” than “non-empirical”, though my experience suggests not all would accept representation in perception as empirical.
In graphic below, normal operation indicates micro level true - true (t - t) juxtapositional connections of soul-soul, body-body and soul-body, a wholly true or perfect operation. Falsification demonstrates possible defects in operation. This is a micro level and fragmentary illustration; it would theoretically take considerable falsification of the soul before these changes would begin to show forth in mental, physical, emotional, etc. contexts in the person on a macro, everyday level.
I suspect you are likely correct about reality and our perceptions and conceptions of it as paltry in comparison. But I find your notion of it being complacent beyond belief to reduce one’s view to iotas misplaced. In my worldview, reality is all there is—and you describe it quite adequately Silhouette; we can only guess what all it might entail—but is distinct from existence, which I see as all the intellect is able to apprehend. Existence on this view hypothetically consists of structured information—that is, structured in the same way minds are. Existence thus defined is analogically probably all that is going on inside a single cell, which is a tiny part of that greater reality as a whole. In other words, I find it apropos that we use the terms and conceptualizations we do to describe the informational existence we occupy. I don’t for a moment propose that reality consists in iotas of structured information, at least not structured in the sense existence is.
Karpel Tunnel said,
My worldview is in a constant state of evolution, and have 25 years of writings, notes, book chapter outlines (and several of semi-finished chapters that never get finished), hundreds of downloaded PDFs, DOCs and MP3 lectures on philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, etc. Though I posted my definition of truth in this thread already, I’m pretty sure I’ve edited it at least once since then, so here’s the latest:
[i]Value
Truth and falsity are the dynamic denominations of value inherent in the information of all existents as a primary “condition of being” from which the apprehension of value in the minds of agents—often framed propositionally in value’s effects as goods and evils—derives.
Truth function
Truth as a force [dynamic] in an existent engenders natural reciprocal dispositions with truth in other entities (information juxtaposed or otherwise in extension), effecting the organization, interaction and compatibility with associated information. Truth’s force in both prescriptive and descriptive categories is a “solicitation of unity”, maintaining information’s persistent, stable or perseverant place in existence. This feature of the congruent persistence of existents naturally generates properties like derivation, the most pronounced of which is the inference that goods and evils follow respectively from truth and falsity.
The power of truth to induce proper function between existents operates under the administration of external force (Form) in various modes, resulting in the proper ordering of reality and production within this natural organization of characteristic functions—as in the active organizational processes of autopoiesis—and goods, i.e., unity, harmony, accord, concurrence, perfection, rightness, precision, etc.
Falsity is truth corrupted and stands in natural opposition to those features listed above.[/i]
Yes, I believe truth is an actual, intrinsic ‘condition of existence’. It’s also intuitively the only object in existence that holds in reality, e.g., in all possible worlds. This alone qualifies value imo as the only imaginable absolute. I can picture nothing else in this world necessary to persist in both existence and reality (as defined in my response above to Silhouette above) though of course I stand ready to be corrected.
Not sure why value has to be either/or? Can’t it be in existence as a part of reality? Also not sure that value reduced to some form of energy can’t be reality itself, but this is an abstraction that stretches past the limits of my currently receding intellectual abilities.
Not sure I understand; my grasp of philosophical view of truth is that it is a thing minds grasp as a relation between things or an idea raised in the mind of a property of things—not an actually existing property, but some power or capacity in a thing to produce mental content. If this comes anywhere close to describing a philosophical view of value then I reject this definition and substitute the one above as qualified to take its place.
I’m struggling to understand how you define “reality”. I don’t use what I take to be a materialistic view of reality or real as things that occupy time and space. For me, existence is structured information: minds, matter and abstract objects all have the same informational structure. I break this structure down metaphysically to individual abstract iotas as individual “pieces” of existence, like the body can be reduced to individual atoms. Each iota of information is comprised of two elements or aspects, particularity (P) and quintessence (Q). Each existent is a that composed hypothetically of a complex of P, and what, some quantity of Q. P and Q each exist in one state, true or false.
I think we have no grasp of reality beyond the supposition that our existence of structured information is a part of it, and that at least truth (of the two components of value) qualifies as an absolute, a bit of reality that keeps existence orderly, glued together and running properly. Falsity can’t logically be an absolute because falsity produces properties like disunity, dissonance, conflict, disintegration [prescriptive], discord, inconsistency, etc. Where truth generates unity, coherence, propriety in integration, accord, etc. which are natural to absolute existence, falsity, if its growth is unhindered, inevitably ends in total chaos and destruction; unsuitable to the realm of the absolute.
This is understandable. Folks aren’t used to thinking of value this way. Truth in an inorganic thing is the underlying force that maintains that thing’s particularity and essence. An analogy might be in how the nuclear force holds the atom’s constituents together to maintain that particular atom.
Below is an excerpt from a chapter I’ve been editing that might help explain.
“…“built in” instinctive behaviors [in animals] are the sorts of features that truth in material information, by its dynamic of “proper ordering” or attraction with compatible units of contiguous truth-bearing information. This ordering is brought into sharper focus in autopoietic systems, but this is of course a secular approach… Truth content within individual iotas of information provides on micro and macro levels the natural force to maintain organization within informationally complex particulars. The same dynamic is at work on every level found, from the organization of atoms to that of persons, societies and governments. That existence retains its orderly structure and lends itself to mapping into categories open to mathematical, logical, scientific and psychological evaluation points to a testimony that these are the sorts of features truth as a force permeating the essence of all existents would naturally produce.
On a social level, biological entities generally and humans specifically are driven to work together in degrees of partnership. Biologists committed to autopoiesis emphasize that organics function within certain definitive coordinating patterns. But truth as a dynamic in the intellect would produce the same sorts of organization; the seeking of higher order goals; personal growth, meaning for our lives, success, happiness, creativity, betterment, etc. These are again just the kinds of traits that would be produced by the power of truth’s solicitation of unity. These are informational functions where built-in truth is the engine driving the universe toward its perfection—the natural objective of a truth-driven existence. The same principles operate in the prescriptive [vital] realm except that actual falsity dirties the landscape and sidetracks progression toward perfection
For our existence to further approach reality a philosophical machinery of value is required, this is true. I only pause at your notions of untruth as corruption - may untruth not also simply be a requirement of the perfectly necessary partiality of existents? Or do you see all truth as uncompromisingly and unbendingly, unwavering- or wanderingly amounting to one singular order of truth?
Is not rather the domain where truth is lost the terrrain where values do their work? Because there is no greater glory than to establish truth, which comes with such sacrifice. The purification of value.
In a realm of perpetual correspondence there can be no satisfying way to look at error, yet the Earth is a realm of suspended correspondences. Some correspondences are immediate but most rare not - they slumber, sometimes for thousands of years like pots with scrolls in caves and have their way with old errors and create cultures out of the discrepancies. There is a lot of fermentation between truth and untruth and only in this inscrutable chemistry does a thing like life arise which relies on appearances and thus on prescriptive truths rather than on universal facts alone.
So this prescribing of truths, giving value to the future to bring it about. The values are existence, and existence is valued into being. By what? This can only be understood subjectively, as being qua its being.
It can only be understood without alternative. This means: not dispassionately, but rather the opposite. Truth can not be apprehended dispassionately, in fact to apprehend it causes a great disturbance, much lightning before the sky clears to reveal a fullness of calm order.
For an entity to exist of its own accord it must be inscrutable to its neighbours, and for it to have the courage to perpetuate its existence it must be carrying its weight.
Not all existence carries existence, there is a hierarchy of structural integrities, such as we understand in terms of nobility, also noble metals. Value draws existence to it, circular time, seasons and cycles.
Others have made similar arguments, citing Aquinas’ notion of evil as a deprivation. I reject this view on the basis that a deprivation is a mere subtraction, and in the same sense one can divide the number one through infinity without ever reaching zero, the division of good by a subtraction never achieves evil; it only produces less and less good. Evil exists in the world, so Thomistic deprivation fails to account for it as I see it. Besides, evil is an effect, not a cause. Falsity seems a cause able to account for the effect. Deprivation is certainly a property of falsity, but not able to account for evil, which appears to come from a deeper cause within the soul.
But the only reason there is any need for “work” in the realm of value is because falsity produces tension and resistance to truth. Truth lost needs to be regained; it’s never the case that the false or falsehood is an acceptable quality to acquire or pursue. This is only a consideration of falsity qua falsity of course. Utilitarian cases like the mother who has to smother her crying baby so Nazi’s don’t discover a number of people hiding from them in a basement is a difficult example of committing an evil in order to produce a greater good. Because we live lives as fragmentally falsified [error-prone] human beings, there are countless examples like this. I wish the majority would share your view that “there is no greater glory than to establish truth, which comes with such sacrifice.” I see the general unrest and problems the world seems to currently be descending into directly related to the abandonment of recognition that truth is itself the only absolute, the only value worthy of pursuit, the source of all goods. The growing tension and resistance arising in both individual and corporate (organizational, as in left vs. right, etc.) is a predictable outcome of the abandonment of truth in the mechanism of value hypothesis.
Not grasping some of this. How do you define “perpetual” and “suspended correspondences”? Will have to disagree with your assessment that “There is a lot of fermentation between truth and untruth and only in this inscrutable chemistry does a thing like life arise which relies on appearances and thus on prescriptive truths rather than on universal facts alone” I believe the proper correspondence of value to existence is that life itself–arguably the greatest of goods–is wholly dependent on the possession of truth value in particulars. Truth is the cause and underlying generator of goods like unity, honor, freedom, harmony, peace, health, life. Falsity creates evils: disunity, shame, subjugation, sickness, discord, chaos, death. I take the position that life is most vibrant and achieves its perfection in an entity whose being subsists in a wholly true state. Falsity is an attack on the good and on life in particular.
That change takes place in the chemistry of war between true and false Is spot on. When the arrogant man is publicly shamed in the midst of his acting arrogantly, he suffers the hurt associated with shame. But the next time he is in a public setting, he thinks twice about exhibiting his arrogance. He is materially the same person he was when shamed a few days ago, but something within him outside space and time was changed in a direction one would call ‘good’. Something false was destroyed, a partial death took place, and the false restored with a truth, creating a partial resurrection from within the midst of a dead land. To some real degree, the arrogant man was changed for the better, and it was truth itself, the double-edged sword, that accomplished it. This is, in the form of reduction to its parts, the Christian message of salvation. The worrisome thing for me is that unless this kind of change comes upon a society in decline before it reaches the point of no return, it’s destined for implosion and collapse and can only be salvaged in a restorative destruction like that of the arrogant man. The cause behind that descent has to be removed as cancer is the cause of the decline of the good of health in an individual and has to be removed to restore wellbeing. Same method by which the arrogant man was changed for the better in the midst of his suffering.
I think you’ve stated this well, FC. Christ showed whoever has eyes to see that He was crucified specifically because He told prescriptive truths to men whose falsified hearts were stung into hatred. This is the power of prescriptive truth. He wasn’t showing that the Jews were bad people; He merely used them as a actors on the stage of history as a metaphor for what exists in every human soul, the stuff that falsity produces, why the false has to be eradicated and restored to a true state–to the perfection of life.
Don’t know if anyone reads my unorthodox stuff, but decided nonetheless to post an excerpt from a piece in the process of being finished up that might present some food for thought from a dualist’s perspective.
The soul as conceived here is, like all [existents] an entity made up of information. For all intents and purposes, it is considered synonymous with (whether or not identical to) the intellect. Like all other existents, the soul subsists in the same structured informational format. That damage to certain areas of the prefrontal cortices of the brain have been shown to affect moral and other judgments is evidence which suggests what dualists have long known, that there are necessary correspondences between soul and body. The soul in reduction seems to work well as an explanatory hypothesis for such evidence because while it has no logical spatiotemporal position per se, its union with the physical body in reduction allows the immaterial soul to participate in the physical body’s locality. When this sharing of locality is traced to constituent parts, the value function begins to make sense as a necessary—perhaps the most necessary—component of life. Assuming there is from the subatomic level upwards a union—from neutrons and electrons to atoms to cells to organs, etc.— of the prescriptive soul with the descriptive brain, the process of functional propriety within all levels of this amalgamation, would, from a value standpoint, require a bottom-up appropriate (t - t ) synthesis of the two. The value states in both components are equally important since proper function is logically achieved in the macro realm by the complex of sufficient truth bonds of the constituents involved to achieve those mental and physical states we call “proper”.
When brain parts are damaged, the resultant t – f connections present partial falsification to the brain’s normal operational parameters; dysfunction occurs. When those portions of the brain that affect the formation of moral propositions, beliefs and motivations are damaged, proper operation of those cognitive functions will naturally result. As spatial and temporal orientation are part of the descriptive cognitive landscape, moral orientation is part of the soul’s normative functions. Any malfunction of either side of this union will effect a dysfunction on macro level physical and/or mental health, as the operable and serviceable function of either requires some sufficient quantity of shared t – t soul-body connections.
Would I be correct to interpret the above thusly:
Where Anomaly holds truth as the only absolute in reality and thus the ultimate value, Fixed Cross holds the value determined by each individual to be the ultimate value (necessarily non-absolute?)??
I think you’re saying truth and falsity are necessary to “propel” or “fuel” existence [my interpretation of your meaning]. maybe those ways truth becomes itself (or becomes one?) is unfathomable is because intellects are fragmentally falsified things. Fragmental falsification creates the ‘gray areas’ of unknowing or of incompleteness of knowledge. Example: newsprint used to create grayscale by placement of black dots on white paper. [archaic technology] The black dots obscure the complete whiteness of the paper. The whiteness is truth, the black dots, falsity. If the black dots can be gotten rid of, the paper can exist free of falsity’s imposition; falsity is thus a disease.
