If I can sum up what I thought about that post in a few words:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=Qw9oX-kZ_9k[/youtube]
James you are making no sense. If I said I know it’s true that would mean I know for sure, that is not something that science deals in: absolutes, that’s religions remit. All experiencing or reading something does is contain what might be to within parameters of what can’t be.
You seem to be misinformed. In physics, a dimensionless physical constant (sometimes fundamental physical constant) is a universal physical constant that is dimensionless – having no unit attached, so its numerical value is the same under all possible systems of units. The best known example is the fine structure constant α, with the approximate value 1/137.036.
However, the term fundamental physical constant has also been used (as by NIST) to refer to universal but dimensional physical constants such as the speed of light c, vacuum permittivity ε0, Planck’s constant h, or the gravitational constant G. [Wikipedia]
How does that apply to anything you said?
Lords a mawksey who are you and what have you done with logic? Physics is all very well but it applies very badly to philosophy which is the, if I may, crap you were spouting.
If I may point out this is the religion forum not the science forum. If I may point out hence why on Earth would you use physics in a philosophical argument. This is half the problem with philosophy, you like to marry bullshit with nonsense. Keep it real son. 
The fine structure constant is arbitrary your Feigenbaums is not, in the context you abuse it in.
If you were or had any confidence in what you said you would post it not in a maths forum on here, but in a physics forum somewhere out there, that was not prone to nonsense.
Hello Felix
— Since you would not assert that unless you had evidence to support the same, you must be withholding the evidence from me.
O- What evidence Felix? Evidence about God is a matter of faith. The distance I speak of is the creation of theological idols.
— Then you ain’t feeling my fear and trembling.
O- not particularly.
— It’s a proposition. I got tired of all the question-entitling on threads. It’s stated as a quasi-fact or factoid in order to evoke responses like yours.
O- Well you got my curiosity but don’t misinterpret question marked threads. There might be a point to them, even a theological point.
— Indeed, does it tell us there is a God? What is needed is a means for pure potentials to become actualized. If that implies a god, what kind? It definitely implies a process. So, if there is God, it seems God is a process.
O- So the object is actually process? I think there is something to that. Tradition has been fond of portraying God as man. Powerful and infinite but as a man and not as a process. But I think that there is no necessary difference if we regard man as a process as the imperfect-never to be-perfected. Incomplete. Not a one-and-done. I conceive God as always exceeding the concept.
— Since FC is a recent discovery, it suggests that there are other eternal objects to be discovered that we are not aware of. It may imply that God’s “envisagement” [Whitehead’s term] of the eternal objects or potential forms is an event in God’s primordial nature. God’s consequent nature would then be God’s “prehension” [Whitehead’s term again --think grasping ] of the actual entities constituting the world.
O- ill have to ask you to clarify a bit more.
It seems to me, if anything, it is an eternal facet of objects in this universe, rather than an object in itself.
(Some constants have recently shown potential to actually be temporary, as an aside.)
Back to the first point…eternal facets of objects in this universe may not be eternal at all if this universe or the universe itself is not eternal. Though perhaps I am not using the same definition of eternal.
Also if we think of this constant as a facet, rather than an object, it is not merely conceptual. I would say it is concrete or as you imply, well pretty much assert, empirical.
I suspect that it might be useful to bone up on chaos theory before tackling Feigenbaum. Yes, he provided much of that math that explained the experimentation, but there is more to chaos theory than his math…
I think that if everything has a basis, then it can’t be random, because a basis is something.
A true-random would be baseless. It would be something because of nothing.
When we roll a dice, it’s not randomness. It is simply unpredictable because of how the shape of the object is effected by force. It’s a complex process, but it isn’t a baseless process.
“Random” means, “void of discernible pattern”.
Actually the eternal existence of energy is enough to prove God’s existence, just not your Santa Claus version of “God”.
If that’s true then is it not enough to prove Odin or Zeus. Try again James.
Eternal objects a re the potentials that supply the form for actual occasions whether they be physical or mathematical. You said that applying a constant to something in our experience was a waste of time. Now I have cited a number of physical constants and you reject them. Meanwhile, your idea of argumentation is to dump inflammatory language on my propositions. I don’t find that conducive to civil discourse. If I am wrong demonstrate how. Call my ideas names gets us nowhere.
Show me where my logic is wrong. Calling it names is no argument.
Why wouldn’t I use physics in a philosophical argument? Imaginative speculation involves taking principles from the sciences and applying them in fresh new and situations of greater generality much as you apply a math formula. You’ll have to do better than calling my method bullshit.
What do you mean? Can you provide an example? I don’t see how a constant can be arbitrary.
I explained before that I am interested in the religious implications of the eternal objects as defined by Whitehead. I’m using Feigenbaum’s constant as instance of an eternal object. I’m not doing any original math or physics.
You have got to be kidding me you cut my post into so many slithers, that it makes, no, sense.
I can’t reply to that, everything you have said is a mess based on a mess?
Can you explain what you mean without cutting everything of context?
Dude you are neither doing maths or physics or philosophy, what you are doing is making stuff up. Equations are like right as long as you balance them, philosophy is right only if it has more than a few constants and a desire to make maths fit your religion.
Eternal objects doesn’t even make sense in science.
I’d call this thread a joke if there was anything to laugh about, but people just making stuff up is seldom funny…
The point is that everything is flux one actual occasion leads to another. God if God exists participates in the process of becoming and is changed by it.
To me you are the one making no sense. You don’t seem to understand what I’m talking about despite my attempts to explain it to you. Yours is skepticism not backed up by arguments or evidence. I’m not getting anything worthwhile from discussion with you. You have made your point that you don’t like what I am saying over and over. I get it. So please, if all you are going to do is repeatedly express your emotional distaste for my ideas, don’t post on this thread any more.
Hello Felix
— I was answering you statement that “this kind of speculation has been attempted, but, I contend, with the undesirable effect of detaching us from a vital encounter.” Where’s your evidence that that occurs? Let’s not go in circles.
O- it is a value judgment. My opinion on this type of theology. My evidence? The method partially determines your conclusion. Everyone creates structures under which to arrange the multiple instances. These become ideas. But as strong as they are they are suggestions we receive and assume as true. There remains a problem for the finite to bridge the infinite. Universals are postulated with a certain desire. They are not passively assumed. We gain something by their assumption. Plato’s arguments get as far as he can persuade his audience to assume his postulates, his concepts.
By their assumption the audience gains a height, a vantage point otherwise denied to us mortals. Yet it is the opinion of man that decides this is so. The structuring value of the assumption is not evidence for the truth of such assumption. The danger is that a universal idea may become unquestionable, assumed as true, as self evident, from which other universal ideas are then derived. Every assumption however is a facsimile of reality. The reality we actually encounter is fragmented. But the idea gains ascendancy and supplants that particular instance which is the moment which we can be sure of. That confidence is withdrawn and placed on the idea and every experience becomes an experience of what lies behind, hidden in the particular.
The results of this sleight of hand is that our relation is now to another level of what we now consider reality. Now don’t get me wrong, universals are swell but that convenience, that power, enhancement they provide us should put us on edge because you can be led away from reality and into a world of self promotion. Do we delve ever deeper into the secrets of reality or deeper into logical consistent ideas? Is our idea faithful to what is the case or simply faithful to reason? And how do you know except by another assumption?
So what then?
Well we are presented with a puzzle and a mind adept and connecting dots. But the danger is that our propensity to arrive at universals might mask them under the veil of truth, no longer an assumption, or speculation, but self evident, to give the person the ground to make another leap, this time not from the experienced particular but from the unexperienced but assumed universal.
— This strikes me as petty sniping. Thanks counselor. 
O- it isn’t. I am offering you my opinion on idealism and its limits.
— Eternal objects are manifest in actual occasions through the process of becoming.
O- you think. Have you asked yourself what would you gain if it was true? And whether this might condition you to accept it?
— The point is that everything is flux one actual occasion leads to another. God if God exists participates in the process of becoming and is changed by it.
O- “Everything” except…
Are universals processes as well? Are they in flux? Are they eternal or particular to a certain time? Of course they can’t be for that goes against the very concept…but that is it- is the concept favored over and above the flux? They are assumptions about what then would only seem in flux.
Tralix doesn’t do that. He just pops off with the first thought on his mind = “You are wrong, wrong, Wrong”.
…exposing his attitude and current color of education.
Someone needs to explain more about how philosophy is about reasoning.
Thanks for weighing in. I read it but I don’t see the problem. I am reminded of Refugee by Tom Petty. “Somewhere, somehow,
some metaphysician must have kicked you around some.” I’ll keep your objections in mind as I try to go forward.
OK
Of course, “I think”. I have admitted that I am speculating. Thought can vanish like dew in the morning sun. The avowed reductionists tear their hair. Whitehead said “Rationalism never shakes off its status of an experimental adventure.…Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought, progressive and never final. But it is an adventure in which even partial success has importance.”
Unfortunately, Whitehead was developing his profoundly new vision of the world just as analytic philosophy was rejecting metaphysics carte blanche. Consequently, they found metaphysical questions and answers to be literally meaningless. The need for a comprehensive vision of reality hasn’t decreased since Whitehead. A unifying vision of reality is needed more than ever. The discovery of new theoretical constants in the sciences extends the unifying vision supplied by process-relational thought. I think people need to see the interwoven, relational character of our world and our lives. Vision will enrich lives in a world where thought is too often fragmented and self-referential.
They are pure conceptual potentials not existent actual entities. How they are actualized is what relational process thought attempts to understand.
Existence is comprised of two distinct (separate) realms; The conceptual and the physical, each a realm of that which affects others within.
Why is that an issue?
That was surprising well said.
Right.
Perhaps because Descartes and other rationalists argued for Being over Becoming by insisting that the world is composed of physical and mental substances. Yes, of course, there is something important about the ideas of permanence. But recognition of the endurance of things needs to be rooted in the deeper recognition that no actual entity stays the same forever. If we cannot see the process, we don’t see the web of relatedness in which we live. Process thought, along with modern physics, emphasizes the universality of relatedness.