A Few Questions For The Random Thinkers...

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Here’s my list of questions/answers of which I would like to discuss:::

01- What is the meaning of life?
My answer A.T.M. is that our purpose is non-existant, that we do not have a real purpose, and that the only true or settling answer is that we create a purpose/task to keep ourselves from unfortunately delving into a subject which cannot be answered because there is no answer, there is only the question.

02- Is there a such thing as heaven/hell?
My answer is simple - it does not physically exist at all - it can be compared to the physical universe, but is meant more as a metaphor than as an actual place.Perhaps it could be (probably just is) a state of being or consciousness.

03 - Is there a supernatural being/presence in the universe?
My answer is- DEFINITELY. I believe this because it exists through ourselves, as a physically generated being from our minds and sub-conscious.

04 - Is there a such thing as magick?
My answer is yes. As one of my major theories (yes, i know, theories-here we go again…), I believe that the human mind can actually manipulate and/or generate intangeable/tangeable things, only through the useage of extreme belief - the ability to believe so much on a conscious and sub conscious level that it becomes real.>>>This may otherwise lead to my other beliefs that the univrese is a gathering of beliefs and thoughts that have grown on humans (made us accustomed to its presence), and that humans cannot manipulate the universe A.T.M. because we do not posess the power of extreme belief.

05:::
Here’s a question:
If everyone believed that the moon did not exist on a conscious/sub level, would it exist anymore? Is this what is decieving us from the truth which may be right in front of our faces(like the moonwould be-LOL)???

06::
A girl -who believes that the apocalypse or something catastrophical is coming in 2012- asked me a question recently about identity :
→ If two people view a colour and claim it as blue, are they viewing the same colour, or are they mearly recognizing the colour they see AS blue, when they may be actually viewing two different colours because of the way that they TRULY see???

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I won’t comment on the questions you answered, but I’ll try to answer the question you asked according to my own opinions.

My answer is no, no matter what we believe, we cannot affect the existence of another object . I cannot believe you out of existence. We certainly have the power to affect our perception of the moon… we do have the power to not see it. But, I don’t think we have the ability to stop it from existing.

Isn’t this essentially the same question as - if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound?

cheers,
gemty

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My point of question 5 is:
How can we really know if what we can see/sense is there is ACTUALLY there?I mean, if we believed hard enough, of course the moon will still be there, but we wont percieve it as being there, as IF it did not exist. Or maybe it doesn’t even exist at all and when we try(if what they do is real) landing on the moon, we are actually not on the moon, but are only imagining it, and are are actually -i dunno- floating in space. It’s more so the question if our bodies do differently than our minds percieve…

Oh, and as for the question " If a tree fals in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound"—I believe that the tree still amkes the soundwaves, only our ears cannot recieve the soundwave because we are not there. Even if we cannot be there to experience the soundwave, it still affects the environment around it–Chaos Effect–eventually leading to something that will happen due to the soundwave and its variables…lol…

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  1. I agree.

  2. I agree, but to a greater extent.

  3. I disagree, and don’t get your answer… I think you’ve taken the pantheist position, where god and the universe are the same thing, so the former term may as well be dropped!

  4. There’s no such thing as magic per se, although there are lots of devious things that can be done (see Derren Brown, David Blaine, etc.)

  5. I agree with gemty. Regarding the falling tree, I agree that it would generate a sound wave, but believe that if no-one was there, there’d be no sound. This is because a sound is something that’s felt by a mind, and not a property of the heard-thing in itself.

  6. I believe in the colour wheel. My theory is that the first seeing brain(s) in the past “took” this wheel, cut it (arbitrarily?) between red and purple, and grafted it onto the EM spectrum in what we call the visible band. So, I’m convinced that we would all agree on the order of the colours, but I can’t for the life of me say whether or not we’d agree on an individual colour. My hunch is that we’d agree, as we’re all probably descended from the same proto colour-perceiving brain.

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Okay, okay, good anwers. I’m not sure about myself being a pantheist, though. I do believe that God and the Universe actthe same/have the same impact , but not that they are the same. And yeah, I know, the idea that our minds can generate substances and properties is a little harsh. But now I’m a bit confused - How is sound something that is felt by the mind, not being a property of the heard thing itself? Are you talking about the way our ears convert those waves into the sound and interpret it?
Oh, and by ‘magic’ - I meant the ability to use the mind.
I’ve gathered a few friends a few weeks ago, and I’m gonna use this info for that colour wheel thing:

  • Isn’t there no real origin of the human species
  • …

Anyways, to some more stuff:

07 - The (great) Theory Of Time Travel:
-----any input------

08 - Do humans have souls/spirits?
-----any input------

09 - --------Questions for me----------

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As for sound being seperate from sound waves: the sound we perceive is our neurological conversion of sound energy into electricity in the ears and brain. We do not directly perceive sound waves. As such, the sound we hear (perceive) is seperate from the sound waves that struck our ears.

  1. If humans were to ever invent time travel in the future - where are all the time travelers? (Someone else’s brilliant question about time travel - can anyone help with the attribution?)

  2. Dunno

  3. Not right now, but if I think of some I’ll let you know.

Cheers,
gemty

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Here’s an analogy: imagine that a sound is a rock, a hearer is a torch, and a sound is a shadow. With no torch, there’s just a rock in the dark. When a torch is shone onto the rock, it casts a shadow, whose shape is intimately related to that of the rock. In short, there’s no shadow without a light, but neither is there a shadow without an obstacle. Does this makes sense?

What gemty said.

I don’t think so.

Why does matter attract matter? :slight_smile:

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kk, right.

A lot of philopophers write that time has different streams(perhaps even an infinite amount) on which to travel.When one travels into the past, one of these things might happen:

01- There is a destiny on which they were meant to travel into the past, and they would not be able to alter their future.
02- There is no such thing as a destiny, where the one person affects the entire universe around them, whenever they enter the past, and once they alter their past, their future is destroyed and recreated(only one continuous stream)
03- There are multiple pasts, presents, and futures on which one may intermingle with. There is almost certainly no way to return to the origin in this case, because there may be infinite amounts of universes(so to speak)
04- --------any ideas(work from there)-------------

There is relative information that assists in the theory that souls do exist, but i will not go further because i am unsure of the entire concept of this yet (that is why i added it as a question). Personally, i think that humans have something that is similar to a soul, but more like a position or energy or structure that is unique about the person, like (x, y, z, t= you )

Why does matter attract matter?
I think that it is because of gravity. But other cases, I guess it might be due to unknown circumstances leading to the attraction
ex: When you flush a toilet, it’ll either go clockwise, or counter, but that depends on a lot of variables(especially how it is made)(lol)…

Oh, don’t forget, I’m just in this discussion to learn(probably like you, i hope) and to open up my perspective of things. :slight_smile:[/list]

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Freelancer, concerning your original questions –

  1. Why must all life carry a universal meaning? I think the first step is to recognise that no two lives are the same, and therefore they cannot assume have equal purpose.

  2. Heaven and Hell can exist if you want them to.

3.Supernatural - Literally exceeding nature? Or our scientific understanding of nature? There is always more to the universe than we can ever comprehend, so I would say yes.

  1. magic(k) is relative. Go back a few hundred millennia and show a cave man a flashlight and wonder what he thinks about it…

  2. You don’t have to observe something for it to exist. Even if people don’t recognise it, it would still be there.

  3. Does the frequency of light that emits from the surface change? No. But absorbing that into a different set of eyes might do, as well as different brains interpreting the information. In any case, they are recognising what they are seeing as the colour blue. *

  • out of interest you should ask your friend why she thinks the World is going to end just because the Mayan Calander ends then. It’s amazing you don’t see these people running wild every year around December time, when their advent calendar comes to an abrupt end. #-o
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Meaning of life is much like a “physical law”. It is part of the behavior of the subject or object, not independant of the object, but common between copies of that object or subject.

Each species has its own meaning, but the general meaning of life is survival. All of your senses, feelings and abilities are mostly used and meant for your survival. If you don’t like that, kill yourself, because our own existence is our main meaning.

Depends of a portion of consciousness is invinsible or not.
I’d say chances of heaven or hell are lower then 50%…

Supernatural doesn’t exist, but what is rare and hard to understand–is “natural” in an extraordinary way. An unusual presence or being? I suspect it is not a “being”, it is more of a complex earthly force.

I give it a yes, also.
faith healers, psycics, etc. These people are rare, and I call them “spiritual mutants”. New senses and abilities newly and rarely evolved, perhaps some of them will eventually become standard in humanity, given enough time. Certian “myracle workers” of ancient times where more likely mutants then “God’s” messengers.

Maybe in less then a century we’ll have AI’s capable of ESP. That’s gunnu be the hottest subject for the pentagon! :wink:

That is a question of the sensory organs and preseptive tools.
As we gain more preseption, we gain more insight about the previously unknown.

Well, our body is unique but it is still human.
Our finger print is different then others, but it is still a finger print.
Our handwriting is unique, but it is still the same language.

^ Now apply this principal to thought.
We each have a unique world view, but it is still a world view. A unique angle, on the same simple and basic things.

2012 may be a revolutionary year. As I’ve said at other forums, this may be when an optical supercomputer in Japan is completed, making it possible to model and restructure human DNA. The beginning of the end of “natural” humanity, and a new “Intelligent design” based on human designers. That’s just a guess. “The end of the world” is a prepetual bullshit claim that’s never gunnu happen antil billions of years from now, when that midcycle of the sun endz.

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:evilfun: :evilfun: Danielson…not yet, first you must learn…wax on, wax off…then you will have the power over it… :evilfun: :evilfun:

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If everyone believed that the moon doesn’t exist, then it would be as if the moon didn’t exist. However, I doubt that the nocturnal advisor would forsake its celestial dwelling and cease to affirm its substance. And I bet that if it were to come stumbling down on Earth, we’d all be in for a big surprise.

Now is the moment that I’d like to hear what the humeean skeptik otherwise known as SIATD has to say about this. He advocates the opinion that science is based on the same premises as religion and deserves as much credit. Which is why (I read in the subtext) we know close to squat about the world around us and all we know is based on assumed leaps of faith… Hmmm… Is that right ?