Laying it down like it is
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ak5Lr3qkW0[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mfbUhs2PVY[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHtxZBZfFfs[/youtube]
I’m guessing from your username you’re not happy he’s a monist? 
Where does it say he’s a monist?
web.archive.org/web/200008160048 … _chat.html
Btw, being dualist doesn’t automatically entail rejection of all monisms: it’s all in the definition
This guy is nothing more than a pretentious windbag screaming ideas of utopic cooperative delusions while taking in and enjoying the stench of his own brain farts…
I love him…
Sorry, not in the films, you’re right. I hadn’t heard of him, so I Googled and found his theory:
ctmu.org/
He’s a holistic monist. On first reading, a sort of Spinoza hijacks Russell, ignores Godel and asserts anthropological cosmology. 
Is this some hoax? Einstein’s brain was average and woman are no thicker than men. I stopped watching after that. Just goes to show IQ ain’t everything.
i like this guy a lot, but his theory doesn’t seem to hold much water.
He makes the familliar claim that we are all parts on the mind of “god”.
He then indicates that our minds are obviously not as powerful as gods mind, being only a part, but who is to say thast the giant universal mind isn’t utterly retarded?
He must assume that our minds influence the overall mind in such a way that our individual strengths are combined, personally i think this is an unwarranted assumption.
It could be that our minds exist and have an entirely neutral effect on the mind of god. Our minds may not contribute and might just be a superfluous action within the universal mind.
why cannot the universal mind exist as a part of a larger, and even still, less intelligent mind.
Why cannot a more intelligent yet microscopic or infinitesimally small mind exist within my mind?
He makes too many assumptions, though they are assumptions which are intuitively easy to make.
I imagine that the biggest contributions to human awareness and intelligence now-a-days do not come from new theories, but from eliminating what is not correct, sort of like discovering how not to make a lightbulb.
In such a case this Chris Langan fella will only point out the most error.
Because it would be a superior totality being within an inferior totality. Logical impossibility.
can perfection exist within imperfection?
can imperfection exist in perfection?
The notion that the totality of one mind which exists within a larger mind cannot be more intelligent than the totality of the larger mind is not apt, and it is not apt because the premise that complexity gives rise to further intelligence is not a necessary one, though it is plausible that a more complex mind is capable of greater intelligence, it is not necessary that a more complex mind gather more intelligence than a less complex one.
a baby genius alien versus Einstein might fail?
This is maybe more something for the Philosophy board… Have you read his site? It’s not easy on the eyes, a huge block of white text on a slightly-patterned dark background (you’d think an intelligent guy would think to present things better) but his reasons are given. Basically, it’s a Spinozan god, a superset containing itself. The superset, rather.
Now, ask yourself, if you had access to all of the information in the universe - if you were all the information of the universe - what could it mean to be intelligent? There are no problems to solve. You’re thinking like a human. Same with desire/will; if you are everything, there’s nothing to want. Our minds must be an aspect of God, not separated - an imprint or hologram in some sense.
Now, there are criticisms I could make of his theory - he seems to ignore Russell and Godel; he takes mathematical existence as an (or rather, the) ontological fact, without considering that mathematics may not have this status (or at least not arguing it); he’s basically taking a pre-Hume rationalist stance and adding in more recent mathematics to support it. But standard anti-theist arguments aren’t really relevant, so much as anti-rationalist ones.
Any philosophy that starts from theorising about how things must be according to pure reason imports non-mathematical assumptions or ends in a sort of delirious solipsism.
The universe is defined as all that is real. The larger mind would then be the universal mind. The second point isn’t argued.
define within
no
you stated the larger mind was more intelligent therefore more perfect. gathering intelligence has nothing to do with perfection. if you are the only thing in existence (perfection) there is nothing else to know except your own existence.
As opposed to sense-perception being the ontological fact?
They’re the same arguments
This is just an imprecise version of Hegel’s dialetic/Geist.
close Loop - synthesis and anti synthesis are cyclical, and man is an important/inherent element of the cycle.
Mankind is a participant - Man uses rationality to move toward absolute being, and unites subjectivity with the absolute and completes the dialectic.
Science and religion are compatible: Hegel’s entire program was to make rationality and romanticism work together in one system.
I have do admit, I am also moved by the beauty of it, but to actually believe it seems impossible.
Now, lets let the ogre go back to his horses where he belongs.
this is definitely not what i meant.
I believe that complexity can be a step away from perfection.
I didn’t say that the larger mind was more intelligent, i proposed that it could be less intelligent.
existence could contain an infinite series of larger and smaller minds, where there is no correlation between size and intelligence or perfection
perfect knowledge is the term i think is proper here, as you stated, if you are the only thing in existence and you know yourself, then you know everything, but what about the larger mind?
Does this mind understand the minds within?
Thats because you are bringing realization into perfection. There is no realization in perfection, there is no becoming, there is just being. Realization is for imperfection/incompletion
This is all that matters because there is no gathering information when you are it’s source
The larger mind would be perfection unless there is something greater than it that spawned it. Perfection doesn’t have to become an abstract concept, it can simply be epitomized as full completion.
what if absolute perfection is impossible, and we are left with a measure of more or less perfect?
Yes i said it’s plausible that a larger mind is more complex and more intelligent or more perfect, i stated it for the purpose of bringing to light that it is possible for a less complex mind to be more intelligent.
As for your point about me bringing realization into eprfection, i don;t quite follow you.
How can something be complete without ever having been incomplete?
Perfection is only a human concept, and is meaningless in itself. It means nothing at all outside of a limited and relative human standard of evaluation which compares a thing to an imagined ‘ideal’ with regard to some value judgment.
But no such standard or value actually exist in reality. Things just are what they are.
then non-existance would be impossible, as nothing exists without it’s opposite. Of course, we know this isn’t the case.
The concept doesn’t become: the concept is eternal, unchanging, complete. Change is imperfection.
How can something become complete from a state of incompleteness? Imagine I chopped off your arm; you would be considered less complete. Then imagine if I attached an Anakin Skywalker metal prosthesis. Would you be more complete? Some might say yes because the functionality has been improved while some might say no because you will never experience the feeling of having a real human arm again. Who’s right? It’s a judgement call, people analyze it from different situations and attempt to bottleneck it into a universal constant. They don’t realize the only constant is the concept in itself, not how it impacts the world of experience. They can’t percieve beauty as it truly is, the majestic splendour of eternity, and are therefore relegated to a piteous life of vain conceit.
We are reduced to talking a lot of esoteric nonsense.
First of all, completeness from incompleteness is just too vague a concept to continue debating, secondly, i am curious to know why “nothing exists without its opposite”.
if there is god is there an anti god?
What do you mean and why are you right?
Agreed.
It is just the idea that the existence of one thing immediately implies that its “opposite” must also exist, provided it makes sense at all to speak of opposites. We do not say that there is an anti-apple for every apple, but we do say that every apple contains, within its elemental parts, opposite polarities. Physics would define these in terms of electromagnetism and by the Laws of Cause and Effect and Thermodynamics.
Another example would be light and darkness, as the existence of light or dark implies the necessary existence of the other, to exactly the same degree, because without this opposing force “light” and “dark” would be meaningless, as there is no way to experience light if there is no corresponding darkness. Likewise with pain/pleasure, hot/cold, etc.
Polarity is simply a law of our reality. Electricity and magnetism are the best example of this, especially when we realise that all matter is merely energy anyways.
That’s a generalisation from out of nowhere. It does make sense to talk of opposites, sure. But that doesn’t mean that everything has one, or the opposites apply in every case. The example that I like to use is to drill straight 'down" to the center of the Earth. And then keep going. You are then drilling “up”. But you haven’t changed direction. Yet the opposite of down is up. What does it mean? It’s a convention - a convenience.
We do? Of course, this is question-begging, for the very notion of polarity contains, necessarily, opposition. Which is fine, but it is just a language thing.
There is evidently something I don’t know about the physics of apples.
This is probably the worst example possible. Light is understood along a spectrum. It can certainly be experienced in colors or tones. We can discern many properties of light without once referring to darkness.
Nyet. Opposition is either language or metaphysics, depending upon how seriously you take it, epistemically speaking.
Firstly, we are not talking about two things, here, but one - electromagnetism. Secondly, it is the result of particles in motion - opposition does not play a role. That doesn’t mean that magnetic poles don’t exist, or that opposition is not a useful idea. It just means that opposition or polarity is not a fundamental force in nature.