Are you trying to dispute that “chirstianity has no future” is an empirical statement?
Understood. I was just offering a bit of Perspective that some might find relevent.
(Bye the bye, I was reading that studies seem to indicate the present decline of Xtianity in Amerikkka.)
Exactly.
Exactly.
Nah, it isn’t a belief, there simply has never been any evidence in support of such a notion as ‘future’. Ever been there? Ever had that experience? Neither has anyone else. Ever. There is, in evidence, only Now! One can play mind games such as asserting that we are ‘presently’ (Now!) in yesterday’s ‘future’, but that game boggs down in meaninglessness as we would then also be ‘presently’ (Now!) in tomorrow’s ‘past’ also. Ultimately it all collapses into Now!
A timeless Now! highlights the absurdity of the notion of ‘causality’ and the belief in ‘free-will/choice’. That, in itself, will bring emotional and egoic (but not rational/logical) ‘argument’.
I don’t know about your ‘isms’, but the only evidence supports our timeless existence in the ‘present’ Now! I see no (evidence/logic) ‘fuel’ to debate the timeless reality of Now! Any debate, as I see it, can only be based on fallacious reasoning/foundation.
Peace
Explained in previous post.
If you have an actual point to make, a few well chosen words will suffice. If not, all the flash and glitter means nothing, a waste of space. This is a philosophy forum, not an art-class.
How presumptuous… (And it appears to me that the mods are weak and in error allowing this sort of fruitless and wasteful ‘showboating’.
As are you. I think it quite inappropriate in this context.
In the name of honesty, I didn’t attempt to wade through all that bright and gaudy graffiti for possible pearls; it is hard on my eyes, and I saw nothing to indicate that the effort would be fruitful. A simple paragraph, might have been read.
I wouldn’t agree with that. There is no evidence of an “external world”. That would have to be established prior to the discussion that you propose.
Your perceptions are the ‘external world’. One and the same. Thats where all the evidence lies.
Zat so? All my years studying science I have never encountered your term of “Facsimile Realism”. (If you are talking of empiricism, it is foundationally refuted, and ‘science’ is moving past it!)
If I knew what you were talking about, I could agree or point out the error.
Not before me you won’t, as I still see no reason to endure the eyestrain.
I still assert that all the ‘flash’ obfuscates a lack of content. Waving hands and distractions won’t work on me. Put it in a well written and thought out paragraph, using common and/or defined terms (like defining your “Facsimile Realism”), and I might read it and respond. Without the bells and whistles and glitter, lets see what you got, if anything. Occam’s razor immediately strips all your glitz away and leaves… what? Your graphic facility has already been noted; this is a philosophy site, do philosophy, if you can.
Nameless:
Your view is called presentism: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism … hy_of_time .
Like I say: it’s not the kind of thing I enjoy to debate. Like you I think common sense is more likely to yield results than philosophical debate in this area.
Christinaity’s main markets are in China and Africa now. A pretty good article is:
I find that whenever anyone tries to (tell me what my view is…?) shoehorn me into some ‘-ism’ or other, there arise immediately contradictions and problems. Not the least of these is; I followed the offered link and got the following;
Presentism (philosophy of time
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Look for Presentism (philosophy of time on one of Wikipedia’s sister projects: Wiktionary (free dictionary)
Wikibooks (free textbooks)
Wikiquote (quotations)
Wikisource (free library)
Wikiversity (free learning resources)
Commons (images and media)
Wikinews (free news source)
Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.
No article title matches
No page with that title exists.
etc…
If you wish the term ‘presentism’ to mean that we experience the present and nothing else and therefore tentatively accept the preponderance of evidence that we exist Now!, until there be any evidence to the contrary, then fine, for the moment, and strictly in this context, you may define that portion of me that is relevent, a ‘presentist’ (which seems a rather silly unnecessity as we are all ‘Here/Now!’) Are you an ‘airist’ because you breathe air?
As far as Xtianity goes, I couldn’t care less; I have no use for it at all. Unfortunately, it’s myriad noxious heads seem to arise, Hydra -like, again and again, excreting death like halitosis, in my face, as I walk peacefully through life. Like a virus, it tries to infect, to ‘breed’…
Oops, got a bit rantical… sorry. But, suffice to say, if i never hear another word about Jeeeezus!, well… that would be ‘heaven’! *__-
i don’t follow you.
it seems you hold that a mind requires something internal and random?
I hold that a mind must logically follow from the constructs and confines of the reality it is in
sure there is an external world
just because the consciousness doesn’t exist on the plane of reality in which is created doesn’t mean that plane of reality doesn’t exist.
it stops existing to the consciousness in a superficial and pragmatic way.
if i’m following you correctly, all you have to do is deconstruct reality down to the smallest and simplest material unit and you will have found and end.
like 1’s and zeroes in binary language.
the function or cessation of the cerebral cortex which is a lynch pin in the concept of psychophysicalism which is a lynch pin in your argument that perception is distinct from “reality”.
if i was a body floating around in space and i believed i was watching a movie then i would not be functioning. my perceptions derived entirely from “reality” would no longer be the case, i would be reliving a facsimile. But not a facsimile.
On another note, the blind still have the sense of touch which can give them perceptions of a 3 dimensional existence.
perceptions do not exist independent on “the external world”. the external world creates them, just as the external world creates our own consciousness.
we cannot, we can only assume that there is a potential degree or error in our perceptions.
we can only assume that our personal realities are potentially abstract from what really exists.
sure we know nothing about them. But we know they exist.
then again, i don’t really know if you exist or not, and that this is not some universal truman show where you are all hollow farces.
so long as that is not the case we must assume electrical activity in our brains is a part of the reality which creates our brains and our consciousnesses themselves.
Think of how a computer reads seemingly chaotic and abstract information and turns it into something more specific for use in interpretation.
There once was a kid born with no eyes. By clicking his tongue and using echo location he can paint a mental picture of his surroundings.
maybe “the external world” isn’t 3 dimensional. We honestly don’t know. All we do know is we are caught i the middle.
who cares about shape or appearance?
I am talking about existence.
the external world dictates our perceptions, by whatever alterations…
because it is created within it, and our perceptions are created by mechanisms within the external world. they follow the same physical or metaphysical laws as does our brains and subsequently our consciousnesses.
i didn’t say mimics, i said reflects. it is a distorted translation which is reflected, not necessarily accurately or with likeness.
like the kid using echolocation and turning it into a coherent image. (not that the world is 3 dimensional, more on this at the end)
[/quote]
if ever anything was spontaneous, it was the development of the consciousness.
All i mean by reflect is that they are created by the external world.
we are created by the external world. we are reflected in it.
so are our perceptions. they external world somehow creates our consciousness and our perceptions.
i don’t think the external world is as complicated as our own, so i don’t think it’s fair to say whether our realities are similar to the externnal world or not, just that they reflect one another.
this phenomena exists in the external world…
unless determinism isn’t acceptable…
a phenomenal portrait? what exactly is that?
isn’t “purely phenomenal” the same as saying"coming from nothing?
I say it comes from the external world.
we perceive the external world, but not directly .
Everything we are is influence by the happenings of the external world (from a temporal perspective).
We simply cannot understand the full complexity of our own universe. we see things that our brains can work with.
Yes sorry that ws my fault. The link was missing the closing bracket. Seems to be something with the way the board works but it always puts the last bracket outside of the link, can’t figure it out but if your interested just add the closing bracket yourself.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism … hy_of_time
Actually the article is crap but the main definition is in place:
“In the philosophy of time, presentism is the theory that only the present exists and the future and the past are unreal”
Actually it is far from a universally agreed upon theory. Many people think that the rules of special relativity alone render it false (apperently the present isn’t universal anyway). Many people would argue that both the future and past exist. Some even argue that there is no such thing as the present. Anyway, all of these arguments have the potential to send an insomniac in to a coma so thats about as much as I’ll ever write about them.
This looks to me like a simple and obvious solution to most of the problems that PG is proposing. Nail on the head, I’d say. I think basically it’s indirect realism.
‘Past’ and ‘future’ exist (real?), but as ‘notions/memory’.
Existence in it’s totality is not a linear thing; just little corners.
All moments are synchronously arising and annihilating; even moments of people ‘feeling’ linear time and imagining ‘pasts’ and ‘futures’ and ‘unicorns’. Everything exists (is ‘real’) within context.
Yesterday is a trick of memory, tomorrow, of fantasies/hopes/desires/thoughts…
People still think that people can ‘rise’ from death (and not be zombies), walk on water, go to heaven or hell, so, no, it isn’t a big surprise that they would argue what they do…
Se above.
See above.
Everyone carries the idiot gene. Where and when and duration of manifestation vary from moment to moment and self to self.
Brother, a coma sounds good right about now!
Peace
nameless:
[b]The “external world” is the reality believed to have existed before there was such a thing as consciousness—that exists behind the ‘deprivation chamber’ of a particular person’s private, subjective experience—and presumablyl continues to exist despite the loss of consciousness of any conscious being and once all consciousness everywhere no longer exists (according to secular belief about the eventual end of life in the universe).
So…if there is no evidence of the “external world”, does this mean that the “external world” does not exist? Are you saying that anything that is not “where all the evidence lies” (our perceptions) does not exist?
Wait, before you answer that …[/b]
If you believe that the brain generates consciousness (such that consciousness cannot exist unless first there are such things as brains that generate consciousness) this means that “your perceptions” (which are, by the way, the only ‘external world’ according to you), and the evidence that lies within them exist only when electrical current courses through biological material in form of neurons.
These cease to exist upon cessation of electrical activity in the neurons of the cortex (according to the mind/body causal relationship). Thus, all the evidence, the ‘external world’ ceases to exist when the brain no longer functions. Is the brain, then, and the subjective world to which it gives rise (if in fact the brain does generate our subjective worlds) the only thing that exists?
[b]Of course you’ve never encountered the term: “Facsimile Realism”—I created it. Since you will not bother to read the captions of the OP piece above (in which it is defined), I will define it here:
Facsimile Realism is the view that the subjective content of visual experience possess real, actual, counterparts that potentially exists independent of the content itself.
Example: In Facsimile Realism there is a conscious being and that conscious being’s visual perception of a tree, and there is the ‘actual’ tree that exists (or that is believed to exist) before the being—or any being—perceived it, and that would continue to exist if the perceiving being—or every perceiving being—were to cease to exist.
If every conscious being in the universe were to suddenly lose consciousness and drop like flies in the streets, would trees, planets, buildings, etc. suddenly vanish from existence? If your answer is “no”—you’re advocating Facsimile Realism.[/b]
Facsimile Realism is defined above.
[b]Occam’s Razor strips away the fact that our consciousness and the world that (presumably) exists independent of our consciousness (if one believes that something more than consciousness exists) are two distinct entities, with one able to exist without the other?
Occam’s Razor strips away the fact that it is believed that electrical current flowing through neurons somehow causes subjective experience to exist?
Occam’s Razor strips away the fact that, if Facsimile Realism is true (or assuming it is true for the sake of argument, which I always do in my arguments), there is no external world counterpart for non-visual experience?
Occam’s Razor strips away the fact that, if the brain is the sole arbiter of consciousness (such that there is no conscious experience, including will or thought, that does NOT occur in the absence of some neural circuit generating it) that all of our beliefs about the external world are what they are because of the neurons that happen to be present within one’s brain and how those neurons just happened to fire?
What, in my arguments in the OP piece above and elsewhere—does “Occam’s Razor” strip away?[/b]
On a final note:
Wikipedia, at least, defines empiricism thus:
"In philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from experience. Empiricism is one of several competing views about how we know “things,” part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, or “the Theory of Knowledge”. Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas (except in so far as these might be inferred from empirical reasoning, as in the case of genetic predisposition).
In the philosophy of science, empiricism emphasizes those aspects of scientific knowledge that are closely related to evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. Hence, science is considered to be methodologically empirical in nature.
(Wikipedia: Empiricism)
[b]I suppose my question is…how is "the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas—and the discounting of innate ideas (except in so far as these might be inferred from empirical reasoning…) foundationally refuted? How is science moving beyond being methodologically empirical in nature??
J.[/b]
Sure, it has to be a ‘belief’;
I said that;
“there is no evidence of an external world”. In the void where there is no evidence to examine, belief fills it with all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons.
‘Evidence’ can be just one single Perspective’s perception. Sans that evidence, there is no existence.
I do not beleve anything. Nor do I think that the brain generated Consciousness. Materialism is long refuted, and there is no current evidence in support of said hypothesis.
It is within Consciousness that the brain exists.
Sounds like ‘materialism’ to me.
Perhaps this poorly worded (but the science is sound) old writing of mine will provide a bit of food for thought;
How much credence should we give our five senses to portray a true and accurate representation of “the true nature of existence”? I open my eyes and look up at the sky and the evidence of the senses is that there is a beautiful blue sky up there. ‘Reality’, right? You see the same thing don’t you? Does consensus define reality? Should it?
Lets look at that blue sky up there for a moment. Picture a perfectly dark, clean room. There are windows on two opposing walls. Through one window is shined a light aimed out the opposing window. It is a coherent beam of light, not spreading out at all, not hitting the walls, and there is no glass in windows. There is no dust in the air of this clean room to disturb the happy passing of this beam of photons. In order for us to perceive light, out there, photons have to enter the eye and stimulate the cells in the retina and associated receptors, sending information to the brain for analysis (for possible action), or storage. (These brain functions produce a slightly, to one extent or another, toxic byproduct called ‘thought’. More on that later.) We sit in this room and see no beam of light because no photons are being reflected into our eyes. Our eyes give us information that there is no light in this room. Yet we know that there is! The photons don’t have any kind of magic that makes them glow. Photons are dark! They emit NO light!! But, you argue, we fortunate sighted people all SEE a world of color, light, patterns… out there! We just saw, in a simple experiment, how photons are completely dark. They have to stimulate the appropriate sensory receptor, finally having information translated in the brain into light, color, etc… OUT THERE. Putting two and two together, shaken, not stirred, we find we live in a totally, absolutely blackest of black, dark universe. All those colors, patterns, old familiar faces, …are all in your head. Literally! In front of your nose, despite the information of one of the Original Five senses, is absolute darkness!!! So much for the “obvious”…
“If a tree falls in the forest, and there are none to hear (goes the old Zen koan), does it make a sound?” I say NOT! It makes a SILENT shockwave. The silence of the shockwave can be demonstrated in a similar experiment to the one we performed with light. These silent shockwaves must act upon, stimulate, the eardrum, or similar membrane, and be translated in the old reliable brain as sound. The world around your ears is quieter than the emptiest reaches of deep space. Absolute silence. The place where all sound exists, (thank you Beethoven!), is, again, in the head. As the perceiver and translator of signals from the ear drum, the brain creates a concept of sound and attributes appropriate meaning to it, then stores the data. Outside your head… silence. Darkness.
Likewise for all of those Original Senses. There are no deliciously aromatic clouds of fragrances hovering over a summer garden. There are bits of “random programming” (the stuff from which atoms are “made/discerned”) that stimulates our olfactory sense. After filtering the information through our whole life history, making various modifications, lots of computing (albeit in a very short amount of time), correlating memories like a “line-up” at the Brain-land Police Station. We then “perceive” an odor, a perfume in the air all around. Ah, lilacs! Sorry, all in the mind. Without, there is “potential”, within, a deliciously fragrant garden.
‘We don’t see things as 'they’ are, we see them as WE are!’
My answer would be Yes.
Occam’s razor does not slice away ‘facts’ but errors, illusions, fallacy… (from a scientific, logical Perspective)
As per my illustration above, the sense of ‘vision’ is no different than all the other ‘senses’. In front of your nose, it is absolutely silent, absolutely dark, textureless, odorless, tasteless, etc… no ‘features’ at all. Consciousness has no features or qualities as it is ‘monism’, ‘perfect symmetry’.
It is not, nor has it been, shown to be so. Consciousness does not exist in the brain; the brain exists within Consciousness. QM’s Copenhagen interpretation calls Consciousness “the Ground of All Being!”
The first thing stripped is the ‘artwork’ as unnecessary, distracting, trivial to the discussion.
Empiricism requires repeatability assuming the same conditions, at any time, and the ‘objectivity’ of the observer. These errors are pointed out by QM’s famous double slit experiment. Every moment is a different context as is the ‘consciousness’ of the observer at that moment. What (the observer is looking for) and how the observer observes (tools used), Perspective, determines what the observer sees. Ten witnesses to a car accident tell ten different accounts, all true.
Some food for thought from the net;
Logic trumps empiricism, and so does praxeology.
If someone came up to you and said, “I just observed something that is A and not A at the same time,” you wouldn’t chuck out logic. You’d probably think the person was crazy, or look for some basic error in their assumptions (e.g. an fallacy of equivocation, one of their A’s is not really identical to the other.)
Enough of such study and we find the new and larger world/universe that QM has opened for business.
If someone told you that they saw water running uphill, you wouldn’t say, “Oh well, the law of gravity doesn’t hold.” Again, you’d look for errors in assumptions related to the law of gravity. Was it an optical illusion? Was energy added (a hand pump?) Did it occur in a space capsule? Similarly, if someone says a rise in price, of apples, gold, iPods, or labor, didn’t result in lowering sales, you don’t chuck out the praxeological law that people prefer more to less. You look for assumptions that don’t hold. Was it really ceterus paribus, or unconsidered factors effect it?
The assumptions of empiricism are refuted in the findings of QM.
A Rational Cosmology: The Errors of Empiricism-Positivism
June 08, 2007 by
G. Stolyarov II
This is Essay I of Mr. Stolyarov’s series, “A Rational Cosmology,” which seeks to present objective, absolute, rationally grounded views of terms such as universe, matter, volume, space, time, motion, sound, light, forces, fields, and even the higher-order concepts of life, consciousness, and volition. See the index of all the essays in “A Rational Cosmology” here.
Contemporary science is often mired in a terrible superstition, which forms a glaring breach between its findings and the conclusions and observations ubiquitously available to any man whose five senses function properly.
This superstition is not a belief in witches or cosmic spirits, but rather a new form of denying the evidence of man’s most common faculties. It has been nurtured by a long line of philosophers, but its greatest emergence was seen during the twentieth century, as modern science increasingly succumbed to subjectivism, unverifiable theorizing, the dominance of “intuition,” groupthink, and ultra-specialization which detached scientists from any findings or interactions outside their bizarrely narrow fields.
This superstition can be called many names, but its most comprehensive, and the one that shall be used throughout this treatise, is empiricism-positivism.
Very mildly put, empiricism-positivism holds, as its fundamental tenet, that any assertion, no matter how general, depends on some particular observation. The empiricist-positivist will claim that one cannot make any conclusions about space or time without first studying advanced quantum mechanics. He will claim that one cannot make any generalizations about human nature independent of the historical context of any given time period.
As a corollary to this inseparable attachment of empiricism-positivism to some specific observations, this doctrine holds that man cannot be certain about anything, since, because all conclusions depend on specific observations, some future observation always has the chance of refuting one’s present appraisal of anything whatsoever!
But what will the empiricist-positivist say to the man who dares proclaim, “I exist!”? Is this a statement contingent on further observations? Can some further piece of evidence come along during that man’s lifetime which can disprove his assertion?
What about another basic proposition: “Existence exists.”? Can some new twist of quantum mechanics or ultra-microscopy refute that?
It is clear that, to base science, the quest for knowledge, on a doctrine that postulates man’s perpetual ignorance and uncertainty, is a clear contradiction that fundamentally undermines the very purpose of science. The result is the sorry state of many of today’s scientific branches.
To be clear, observation is critical to scientific progress; no man’s mind can operate in a vacuum. Man’s inherent capacity for rational thought is useless unless he has something to think about. However, true science, as a quest to systematize human knowledge, must depend on all observations, not just the esoteric or highly particular ones. In order to overcome the errors of empiricism-positivism, it is necessary to recognize that besides particular observations, there exist ubiquitous observations that any man can grasp and use to better understand reality.
Later
The OR doesn’t do anything of the sort. It is a methological suggestion about investigating the hypothesis with less entities first, as long as there is no compelling reason to investigate the hypothesis with more entities first. The OR does not give one permission, somehow magically, to slice away ‘illusions’ or hypotheses that are not confirmed by current science.
namelesss:
[b]Well…I certainly wasn’t expecting the type of response above. It certainly knocked me for a loop.
I assumed you were just another member of the psychophysicalist/externalist “herd”. I was shocked to find out that you are not—and whether you realize it or not (or care) I have been preaching in my threads all along the very ideas you presented above (to a fault). Case in point:[/b]
And this is what I’ve been saying all along. My statement concerning the ‘external world’ is simply what most people happen to believe. I state such things, using them as “bait” to trap believers in psychophysicalism and Facsimile Realism within a reductio ad absurdism demonstrating that there is no rational basis to their externalistic belief. My argument is that there is no evidence of the external world, and that all assertions about the nature of that world are merely beliefs whose referents and processes exist only in the head of the believer.
I don’t go this far, as I believe that things can, in principle, exist without evidence. For my part, while there is no evidence of an external world, I believe that an external world exists----it is just that it does not possess mind-independent counterparts of the visual content of conscious beings.
Neither do I. I “propose” psychophysicalism as “bait” for those who believe in psychophysialism in order to demonstrate that it is inherently irrational to hold that the brain generates consciousness.
Materialism is refuted to some (myself included), but not to others (but that’s their problem). And, yes, there is no evidence of materialism—given that there is no evidence of the external world. Materialism ultimately depends upon the existence of ‘external world’ brains composed of ‘external world’ neurons.
Or as I put it: there are only ‘virtual’ (within consciousness or subjectively perceived) brains.
It does not.
Just to make things difficult: “information” really only “electrical current”. But how does electrical current give rise to conscious experience (“perception of light” and “the toxic byproduct called thought”) from a previous nonexistent of a current experience?
One of my short term goals is to conceptually demonstrate to believers in facsimile realism that vision—the one sensory perception upon which facsimile realism vitally depends—is ultimately just as “ephemeral” and “in our heads” as non-visual perception.
Again, my point exactly (with the appendage of causal dependence of our vision upon something else in the external world, an external world that does not contain mind-independent copies of what we perceive).
To my surprise, of course. Yes is the correct answer–although we answer “yes” for different reasons.
See “moresillystuff”'s rebuttal to this above.
My sentiments exactly. Would like to read the content behind QM’s interpretation of Consciousness as “the Ground of All Being…”
You’re probably subsuming “empiricism” into “methodological empiricism”—but I’m not going to split hairs beyond this point.
Don’t count on it now, but I plan to revert to my past “textbook” form of thread (large paragraphs of text interspersed with illustrations) in the future.
This is the expected: criticial analysis and examination for error in proposition is the backbone of philosophical argument. We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we simply believed a statement without analysis.
I’ve accessed site through your link and copied several chapters from the essay index. What I’ve read so far I cannot refute and there are many things that I wish I could have said the same way. (I have a rebuttal–of sorts—against his atheism).
[b]At any rate, despite the fact that you are, or can be, quite abrasive, it seems that we actually believe the same things (to a point).
But…
If the external world does not exist (per your statement: “Sans that evidence, there is no existence”)…and if the brain does not create or generate consciousness…then where does the consciousness of a particular person “come from”? Using yourself as an example, do you eternally exist? How did you come into existence (if you do not eternally exist)?[/b]
J.
Yes it does. That is how entrenched academic/corporate science advances. The razor is a tool that trims crap, however you wish to express it. The way to essence is the trimming away of unnecessary crap. I could suck a definition out of some dictionary also, but what i said remains valid anyway. But thanx for the Perspective. The more views/Perspectives of the elephant, the better the understanding of the elephant.
How they advance is one thing, the OR is another. The OR does have a cliche, distorted form, that certain rationalists use as if it was evidence that simpler theories are better, per se, or that one can dismiss postulated entities - postulated by those one disagrees with - simply by mentioning the OR, but the fact remains that one must be in a great deal of basic agreement with others before you use the OR TOGETHER. (as an irony Occam was a theist)
Well, you can keep saying it, but no it isn’t. To ‘trim crap’ means that one recognizes the crap before testing. Which is hardly what Occam was suggesting, regardless of the form of testing - inductive, deductive. ‘Hey, that’s crap. there are no ghosts. The OR says keep it simple. I have trimmed some crap.’ This is hilariously off. Perhaps not quite what you are saying but what you are saying is easily interpreted this way. The OR must be seen in context, how it will be used between colleagues. It is not something, at least not the way Occam intended it, to be weilded against enemies as if it backed up some sort of metaphysical position over others.
I actually think this is a very limiting heuristic device. Useful when there is crap, but damaging when we have, for example, been trained NOT to notice certain things. They when we begin to notice them this heuristic device comes in and trims, before we even have a real chance to test or deepen our experience.
When you have, for example, a theist/atheist battle, you cannot simply say the theists are positing more entities. Imagine how the pantheists will laugh at that one. These groups have overlapping and widely disparate entities. They lack common ground in many ways. They lack common experience. They ARE NOT colleagues. They cannot together look at two explanations for the world and say
this one has 3 entities.
this one has 3 entities + 1.
The first set of entities covers everything.
Therefore the first set is a more elegant and parsimonious hypothesis.
They don’t ever get near to that point because their entities are of different kinds, overlapping, subsumed, etc.
They don’t ever get near to that point because their experiences are often radically different. So their needs for entities are not the same.
The OR is not a weapon against opponents. It is a tool between those in basic agreement. It suggests an approach.
Mr Grafitti,
it seems to me in most discussions of this issue the deck is stacked from the beginning.
I’ll call this stacked deck
The Head/Senses are a Periscope for the Homonculus
Axioms
There is a world outside us
We are inside
Our senses bring us information through the periscope
somewhere inside the real ‘I’ watches the images constructed ‘inside’
The moment someone says ‘external world’ all these axioms are already shoved down our throats.
They rarely mention the homonculus because then problems like infinite regress raise their ugly head.
As there is no real distinction between the perceiver and the perceived, the notion of a ‘world external’ to perception is meaningless.
The definition of existence is appropriate if referring to an ‘existing external world’.
Everything perceived (evidence) exists.
The unperceived cannot exist.
What we perceive as existence is Mind (undifferentiated potential, quantum possibility wave field, perfectly symmetrical chaos…) as can now be perceived through the magic and limitations of Conscious Perspectives (souls, us). Anything not perceived ‘is’ not.
Electrons, quarks, cheeseburgers and dreams, all exist as perceptions. Information is not ‘existent’ until perceived. All perceived is ‘information’. From ‘nonexistence’ to the appearance of existence.
The ‘perfectly symmetrical’ (Mind/Consciousness) has been analogized to an endless quantity of glass. Perfectly transparent in all directions, with no qualities perceivable. We hit it with a hammer, and it crazes throughout. Now we can ‘see/perceive’ the glass in perceiving, actually, the crazing. It is the limitations of Perspective that can now discern ‘crazing’ and, thus, perceive existence therein. Consciousness cannot ‘differentiate’ the ‘undifferentiated potential’ of Mind as ‘it’ is a perfect symmetry.
Perspective is necessary for Consciousness to ‘know’ Mind (Self).
In a sense, we are god’s (Consciousness/Tao’s) ‘enlightenment’.
‘Belief’ and ‘critical thought’ are in a diametrically oppositional ratio; the more of one in a brain, the less of the other. One can exist where the other cannot. The intensity of the presence of one matches the intensity of the lacl of the other.
I have found it not only futile, but seriously dangerous, to attempt to mess with a persons beliefs. Beliefs, in their viral nature, have only two imperatives; to survive and to propagate. (Think Crusades/Inquisition/Holocause (thank you Jesus))
Belief and critical thought/logic are very different ways of seeing the elephant, both essential to the greater ‘Reality’ as presented to Consciousness. But to place them in the same ring and expect them to fight, and the ego component always will, by the same rules to common results would be fruitless and futile. Only one infected with belief will know the moment that a belief is the weakest and perhaps ready to die. Perhaps that might be the moment of your conversation with them, so… do what you gotta do. (Not like there’s any ‘choice’, anyway…)
“Say what you know to be true, do what you know to be right, and leave, with faith and patience, the consequences, to god.” - Rene’ Guinon
It isn’t a rebuttal, but simply another Perspective of the elephant.
I have been known to wield the razor most efficiently, ie; to ‘uncover’ ‘universal truths’. So, i know what Occam’s razor is. And mss’s Perspective is a feature of the completeness of the razor, as are all Perspectives. Even those of purest conjecture.
Scroogle is a good search engine. It uses Google, but removes all traces of what they like to collect and give to the fascista about us and our online presense.
That sounds quite tasty. Easy on the eyes when reading and … it’s got pictures! hehe Sounds good.
I do not ‘believe’, I ‘think’, FWIW, and take quite tentative solace in that! heh
The Book of Fudd says;
“Believe nothing that your senses tell you is true and only half of what you think… and you never know which half!”
And, from Plato, re: abrasiveness (and thank you);
“The growth of the soul in man is as that of a pearl in an oyster, both being caused by irritation.”
There is no “consciousness of a particular person”. There is Consciousness, within which there is Perspective, within which there is Mind/information perceived as existence, within which and as existence. We imagine ourselves with autonomous consciousness just as the ego/thoughts imagine us as ‘in here’ and not ‘out there’. We are ‘existence’ within Consciousness, the Ground of All Being. Imagining individual consciousnesses is illusion, error (depending on Perspective, of course).
We, as existence perceived, arise as all moments of existence, synchronously, Now! and as opposite Perspectives arise…
“For every Perspective, there is an equal and opposite Perspective!” - Book of Fudd
…they instantly annihilate in that moment. In that Planck moment. A moment of too short a ‘duration’ (actually of no ‘duration’) to contain any actual temporal content. So a moment is timeless (10^-43/sec, one billion trillion trillion trillion moments in a second, almost. A ‘jiffy’ is 1/100/sec in comparison).
All ‘moments’ of existence are synchronous (at the same time existing).
All of existence, ever, ‘lasts’ for one timeless moment, then (can’t even say ‘then’ as that implies temporality/linearity), the end.
So, no, I am not ‘eternal’ (there is no such thing as ‘infinite’ and ‘eternal’ but as empty, devoid of concept or percept, words), but I/we are certainly ‘timeless’.
I am existence (as are you, goo goo ga joooob!), for a moment.
Peace
Not at all. ‘Crap’ can be revealed by various means; experience, reason/logic, thought (gedanken experiment…)…
Perhaps it might be more fruitful if you trained your critical thought on how; in what light, from what Perspective, what I offer might be ‘correct’? It takes the same energy as finding a context where the offered words are ‘incorrect’. I realize the hugely simplistic form that i worded what can be, as you have demonstrated, an intricate and rigorously conceived cognitive tool.
I still maintain that we are speaking of the same elephant.
Science does not train to ignore anything. Neither philosophy/critical thought’.
If someone borrows my drill, I assume that he knows how to use it safely, as the vast majority can do so. Neither would a drill need to be redesigned because some moron drills out his eye.
It is said that one cannot even begin to know one’s subject unless one can hold/understand at least three or four contradictory Perspectives and understand how all are correct.
Peace
this is where I think you do not understand. The OR is meant to be used BEFORE testing. You try to see which hypothesis has the least entities and yet is sufficient. Then you test that one. So to whip out the OR and say we can take away this or that ‘crap’ does not make any sense in the context of the OR.
You could continue to role model this for me in reaction to mine. This question sounds like you are now saying that what I am doing has gone too far.
Or crap to be trimmed.
perhaps.
I did not refer to these incredibly broad approaches. I refered to the heuristic device I referred to.
This seems like a very different voice from the one that views the OR as a tool to trim crap. and this was an appeal to an unnamed authority. If I used the OR, in your sense of the use of the OR on it, I could cut your assertion right off the bat to ‘one cannot even begin to know one’s subject unless one can hold/understand at least two contradictory perspectives.’
I could also ask about how you assertion has been tested.
But I will drop this line since we are off topic - relevently, but still. A pet peeve of mine the way the OR is used as an ontological assertion rather than as a methodological suggestion, and I don’t want to derail from peevishness.
I hope I didn’t misunderstand the original post. It seemed painfully obvious to me. Using the example of the tree, of course it is there. It is not made up in my mind. How my senses interpret the outside world is one thing and could differ from the next person to a degree. This idea that life and perception is nothing but illusion evades my logic.