Calm Posted March 20, 2021 Posted March 20, 2021 (edited) Some comments I found from Clark with reference to mind-body dualism...the same thing, correct? I will just post his first comment if there are more and let you read the link if interested. Quote Quick tangental comment. Why does everyone automatically assume infinite regress is bad? It seems like some philosophers, most notable C. S. Peirce, allow for true continuity (i.e. infinity) and sometimes real higher order infinities. (Kelly Parker has a great book on this in Peirce) Peirce explicitly uses an infinite regress to argue against mind/body dualism in explaining how mind can affect matter. But I really can't think of too many folks outside of Peirce who do this. Typically philosophers follow a more Aristotilean approach that assumes infinities are bad and we need some variation of an "unmoved mover" or first cause. Posted by: Clark Goble | October 18, 2004 https://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2004/10/will_you_or_wil.html I will add as I come across anything of substance. Quote I know Moreland has pushed supposed NDEs as evidence of substance dualism. But I just don't see it. Not just because NDEs are typically problematic when tested empirically. Rather it seems like the phenomenal character of NDEs suggest a location and place which seems to argue against substance dualism. After all if a mind is immaterial how on earth can phenomena with place be an argument for it? http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2006/10/paranormal-phenomena-and-substance.html?m=1 Edited March 20, 2021 by Calm
Physics Guy Posted March 20, 2021 Posted March 20, 2021 (edited) 20 minutes ago, Calm said: Perhaps I missed this, but if everything is matter/energy, how is this dualism which I understood to suggest two fundamentally different somethings...one matter, one not matter nor a property of matter. The dualism is in having spirit, on the one hand, and the ordinary kind of matter that everyone agrees counts as matter, on the other hand, be two different kinds of substance. Whether the two kinds of substance are both within the larger category of matter, or whether spirit and matter are two separate categories of substance, is not so important. That's just nomenclature. The only alternative to substance dualism that I know is the idea that spirit is not a substance of any kind, but a thing that certain samples of ordinary matter can do. So something like combustion rather than something like hydrogen or oxygen; something like plot twist rather than something like paper and ink. A verb rather than a noun, as it were. Edited March 20, 2021 by Physics Guy 1
mfbukowski Posted March 21, 2021 Posted March 21, 2021 1 hour ago, SeekingUnderstanding said: Philosophy is a weak point of mine, but I don’t know that he’d disagree with you here. He happens to think his epistemological framework is the best at interpreting the world, but I would assume that you think yours is. He uses the analogy of “planets of belief” briefly described here: “One concept I talk about is that of a “planet of belief” — rather than grounding our beliefs on an unshakeable foundation, we assemble a collection of beliefs that hold together under a mutual epistemological attraction. That’s not a mistake, it’s the best we can do. The secret is not to grow so attached to our planets that we equip them with impregnable defense systems, so that they can never be altered no matter what new things we learn.” Yes then I think you are right- I certainly have no problem with what you have quoted above.
mfbukowski Posted March 21, 2021 Posted March 21, 2021 (edited) 20 hours ago, Calm said: Some comments I found from Clark with reference to mind-body dualism...the same thing, correct? I will just post his first comment if there are more and let you read the link if interested. https://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2004/10/will_you_or_wil.html I will add as I come across anything of substance. http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2006/10/paranormal-phenomena-and-substance.html?m=1 I really miss Clark. Really really miss Clark We would go round and round about this stuff he was a Peirce guy and I was a James guy- so it was like two family members who pretty much were totally together on 90% and working on the other 10%. This was the other 10! Let me just say it quickly and as clearly as I can You simply cannot get out of your brain to think you have a perfect view of what is "outside" your brain because it ain't. I don't know why that is so hard to see. Worrying about taking a scientific stance on God being made of matter or not and the metaphyhsics of how worlds are created and mixing it with physics to me is just living in a fantasy world! YOU CAN"T GET BEYOND PHENOMENA PERIOD. And so the problems go away. For all pradctical purposes- and all we have are practical purposes the world of PHENOMENA IS ALL THERE IS. Science pretends it is "out there" but it is not! The perfect hard science is astronomy. All this empirical evidence etc for the big bang etc- that's very nice and interesting but theoretically something HUGE could have happend several thousand years ago- meaning several thousand light years- and we would not even know it until suddenly WE are the ones affected. Other sciences are the same in principle but the time lag is so negligible that we think that what we see is "what is out there" while, like is obvious in astronomy, WHAT APPEARS to be "out there" IS DEFINITELY INCORRECT! What we see in astronomy and "know" happened minutes ago, hours ago, or thousands or millions of years ago. "Evidence" is what we think it is- there is no getting around it. None. Everything we know HAS TO fit through that little black box on the top of our necks we call our "head". Then we tell others what is happening in our heads and they tell us what os happening in their heads. But it is all in the head. And of course even that statement is wrong because it is only in my head. And so Phenomenologists and Pragmatists agree that for all practical purposes- there IS no distinction between reality and appearance. What you see is what IS- until you find out that the puddle in the road was a mirage. And so a testimony experience is just as real as anything else- it is just private. It's like knowing you brushed your teeth in the morning when no one else saw it. Hope the plain talk communicated. Edited March 21, 2021 by mfbukowski 1
strappinglad Posted March 22, 2021 Posted March 22, 2021 Can we think without language , or is language " applied " to thinking ?
mfbukowski Posted March 22, 2021 Posted March 22, 2021 (edited) 16 hours ago, strappinglad said: Can we think without language , or is language " applied " to thinking ? It's a matter of definitions I suspect, but I suspect not. But surprise and raw experience breaks through all that. I distinctly remember an experience I had camping one night in northern California at a forest. I was very impressed of course with the milky way. I Went into my tent and was thinking about the milky way, The big Bang etc when suddenly there were snarling animal noises and the sound of falling Branches immediately next to the tent. At first I was terrified. But I can tell you this I was no longer thinking about the big Bang. I was experiencing the world directly and non verbally. Add the emotions of that event were part of the event part of the experience and completely also part of the reality. To say that reason is not emotion or vice versa is to miss the reality of life. It is not true empiricism to say that emotion was not part of that reality. There was no doubt about the reality of the event or whether or not my perceptions corresponded to the world. It turned out to be two fighting Raccoons. Add so I went back using my verbal logic to think about the big Bang. You can think of driving along a mountain road, And suddenly a gorgeous vista opens before you. I think that sort of thing is experiencing reality directly because it is nonverbal. There is no doubt or thought about its reality. And I believe that that is Essentially what is happening in a testimony experience. And like the raccoons fighting the emotion is completely part of the reality of the experience. And empirical analysis's must include that ,or it is not a useful or accurate representation of the experience Likewise in a testimony experience the words drop away and we are immersed in reality. So language becomes the disconnect between raw reality and the interpretation of that Reality. Thought is creating little black boxes and inserting memories of the experience and into Box A or Box B etc. It is pure interpretation OF reality - it is human processed experience. If the wheat in the field is experience, quantum theory is a Cliff bar on the shelf, thoroughly humanized. Anyway that's what I think. Edited March 22, 2021 by mfbukowski 4
Ahab Posted March 22, 2021 Posted March 22, 2021 On 3/20/2021 at 2:02 AM, Physics Guy said: It's nice to confirm that substance dualism isn't simply a straw man, that some people really do believe it. Would you mind if in future I quote the above line to illustrate that? I won't attribute it any more specifically than "a poster on a message board". I didn't use the word "dualism" so just be clear on what I was talking about if you want to try to associate one of your ideas with one of mine.
Ahab Posted March 22, 2021 Posted March 22, 2021 On 3/20/2021 at 4:00 PM, Physics Guy said: The dualism is in having spirit, on the one hand, and the ordinary kind of matter that everyone agrees counts as matter, on the other hand, be two different kinds of substance. Whether the two kinds of substance are both within the larger category of matter, or whether spirit and matter are two separate categories of substance, is not so important. That's just nomenclature. The only alternative to substance dualism that I know is the idea that spirit is not a substance of any kind, but a thing that certain samples of ordinary matter can do. So something like combustion rather than something like hydrogen or oxygen; something like plot twist rather than something like paper and ink. A verb rather than a noun, as it were. Matter is matter, but not all forms of matter are the same. Try to think of spirit as a form of living matter, in contrast to a form of inert or dead matter. Some kind of living being vs a rock or a grain of sand. All matter is composed of atoms with a particular number of electrons and protons and neutrons orbiting around a nucleus but not all forms of matter are living creatures, whether if they are living they are amoebas or zygotes or the fully formed kind of being we are. Go back to your drawing board while working on trying to understand what we are talking about when we refer to a spirit while we know there are many other kinds of living beings than just us.
rodheadlee Posted March 25, 2021 Posted March 25, 2021 (edited) https://www.livescience.com/LHCb-hints-new-physics.html https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a35917019/large-hadron-collider-new-physics/ It appears we don't know all we think we know. To be clear they believe they have discovered a new force that will revolutionize physics. Edited March 25, 2021 by rodheadlee 2
SeekingUnderstanding Posted March 25, 2021 Posted March 25, 2021 (edited) 1 hour ago, rodheadlee said: https://www.livescience.com/LHCb-hints-new-physics.html https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a35917019/large-hadron-collider-new-physics/ It appears we don't know all we think we know. To be clear they believe they have discovered a new force that will revolutionize physics. Just to be clear, we (and Sean Carroll is included in this) are 100% certain that the standard model is incomplete. This is obvious from looking at the universe on a grand scale. What the standard model applies to (its domain of applicability) is the universe and energy levels we interact with every day. These are covered by and are matched with the predictions of the standard model. Edited March 25, 2021 by SeekingUnderstanding
Popular Post rodheadlee Posted March 26, 2021 Popular Post Posted March 26, 2021 6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said: Just to be clear, we (and Sean Carroll is included in this) are 100% certain that the standard model is incomplete. This is obvious from looking at the universe on a grand scale. What the standard model applies to (its domain of applicability) is the universe and energy levels we interact with every day. These are covered by and are matched with the predictions of the standard model. Kind of like the matter described in Doctrine and Covenants 131:7 It is more fine or pure and can only be discerned by purer eyes. I'm fine with purer eyes being scientific tools. 5
SeekingUnderstanding Posted March 26, 2021 Posted March 26, 2021 41 minutes ago, rodheadlee said: Kind of like the matter described in Doctrine and Covenants 131:7 It is more fine or pure and can only be discerned by purer eyes. I'm fine with purer eyes being scientific tools. When something is sufficiently vague, everything and consequently nothing is evidence for it.
Physics Guy Posted March 30, 2021 Posted March 30, 2021 Concerning the possibility of new particles: First of all it's best not to get too excited. "Hints" like this come up every few years but mostly go away again. Sometimes they go away because there turns out to have been some glitch in the experiment, other times it's because the apparent signal was just a statistical fluke. This is quantum mechanics, so all the phenomena are random and what we care about are the probability distributions. Are they what we expect or are they different? The logic is like that of deciding whether a die is fair by rolling it a lot. A lucky or unlucky string of rolls can have you convinced the die is weighted, but after a lot more rolling you may change your mind. Not infrequently the data is perfectly good but it turns out that it doesn't disagree with the Standard Model after all; people just didn't work out the predictions of the Standard Model carefully enough. These are pretty hairy calculations. When you're looking at slight statistical deviations among high-energy collision products, an enormous zoo of possibly relevant processes have to be taken into account. Sometimes some are initially overlooked. Secondly, though, there are revolutions and revolutions. Particle physics has been a horribly boring subject for decades now. Finding the Higgs boson was a triumph for the old guard but a miserable disaster for all the young people because it just confirmed their parents' old Standard Model and left no new things for the younger generation to do. So particle physicists are desperate to see something new. Back in the 1960s there were new particles discovered every few months for a while. Why can't those glorious days come again? It's maddening that nothing beyond the Standard Model has shown up in all this time, because there has never been any good reason to expect that the Standard Model really includes all existing particles. It's constrained by a few deep principles (relativity, renormalizability) but beyond that it's mostly empirical. The reason it only includes so many different kinds of particles is just that those are the only ones we've detected so far. There's no principle which says there can't actually be any more. So finding more kinds of particles would be very interesting, in kind of the way it would be very interesting to find life on another planet, but it wouldn't overthrow any principles of modern science, any more than finding alien life would. What Analytics and Sean Carroll have been saying, though, is that there can't be any new particles that interact significantly with the familiar particles that make up normal matter, because if there were any particles like that, then we would already have seen them. This rules out mind or spirit as any kind of substance, because mind or spirit that doesn't interact significantly with ordinary matter could never initiate nerve impulses to make me twitch an eyelid. None of these hints of new particles are hints of new particles that interact strongly enough with normal matter to be the hypothetical particles of mind or spirit or whatever. Instead they are—if they are actually anything—particles whose only effect on ordinary matter is slight statistical bumps in the streams of particles, which are themselves exotic and unstable things like muons, that are born from collisions between other particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. No ultra-relativistic collisions between charged particles are happening in anyone's brain, and slight tweaks in the spin of a muon are not going to have any effect on neurochemistry anyway, let alone somehow move our muscles directly. So whatever these newly hinted things may be, if the hints grow instead of fading away, they still won't have any bearing on Carroll's point about spirit as substance. They won't show that all bets are off because something surprised us, any more than finding life on Mars would overturn our understanding of heart disease. What Carroll is talking about is stuff that we know very well, while a few new high-energy particles would be completely different stuff with no relation to the things he is saying. 4
OGHoosier Posted April 9, 2021 Posted April 9, 2021 I don't intend to make any grandiose statements as this is definitely beyond my expertise, but the following New York Times article just came up and I thought it would be interesting to participants in this discussion. Make of it what you will. A Tiny Particle’s Wobble Could Upend the Known Laws of Physics: Experiments with particles known as muons suggest that there are forms of matter and energy vital to the nature and evolution of the cosmos that are not yet known to science. 3
Kenngo1969 Posted April 10, 2021 Posted April 10, 2021 "No-evidence-at-all-for-the-Book-of-Mormon" to "particle physics." Certainly, this is an interesting and entertaining discussion! Carry on!
SeekingUnderstanding Posted April 10, 2021 Posted April 10, 2021 (edited) On 4/9/2021 at 12:39 PM, OGHoosier said: I don't intend to make any grandiose statements as this is definitely beyond my expertise, but the following New York Times article just came up and I thought it would be interesting to participants in this discussion. Make of it what you will. A Tiny Particle’s Wobble Could Upend the Known Laws of Physics: Experiments with particles known as muons suggest that there are forms of matter and energy vital to the nature and evolution of the cosmos that are not yet known to science. A couple weeks late on the post. See above. Edit: Need to learn to read before speaking. This is a different experiment. I apologize for the error. Edited April 11, 2021 by SeekingUnderstanding
mfbukowski Posted April 10, 2021 Posted April 10, 2021 (edited) On 3/20/2021 at 2:02 AM, Physics Guy said: It's nice to confirm that substance dualism isn't simply a straw man, that some people really do believe it. Would you mind if in future I quote the above line to illustrate that? I won't attribute it any more specifically than "a poster on a message board". You are a kind man, and a fine example of the Quarker faith. We still need to remember that science itself including its religious implications for or against, all come through interpretations generated by a human brain with it's limitations. I am still waiting for a particle that shows us the PURPOSE of life and somehow I think that will never happen Edited April 10, 2021 by mfbukowski 1
rodheadlee Posted April 11, 2021 Posted April 11, 2021 12 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said: A couple weeks late on the post. See above. No, that's a different experiment, different location. 1
SeekingUnderstanding Posted April 11, 2021 Posted April 11, 2021 11 hours ago, rodheadlee said: No, that's a different experiment, different location. Well, I'm embarrassed. Thank you so much for the correction. I will edit the original post.
rodheadlee Posted April 11, 2021 Posted April 11, 2021 10 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said: Well, I'm embarrassed. Thank you so much for the correction. I will edit the original post. No problema, I enjoy your posts.
Esrom Posted July 7, 2021 Posted July 7, 2021 I am excited to join this forum. Been away from church for 30 years during which time I studied many other spiritual paths. It's a shock to me to be studying Mormonism again at this point in my life. I am finishing a re-read of the Book of Mormon, first time in 4 decades. All I can say so far is there's a richness and a spirit I've encountered on no other path. Members complain about the most petty things, not realizing what they have, imho. I briefly experienced exmo Tik Tok and was unprepared for the amount of sheer vitriol there. It seems as though a mass exodus is afoot. Interesting times! I hope to learn much here!
Kevin Christensen Posted July 7, 2021 Posted July 7, 2021 1 hour ago, Esrom said: I am excited to join this forum. Been away from church for 30 years during which time I studied many other spiritual paths. It's a shock to me to be studying Mormonism again at this point in my life. I am finishing a re-read of the Book of Mormon, first time in 4 decades. All I can say so far is there's a richness and a spirit I've encountered on no other path. Members complain about the most petty things, not realizing what they have, imho. I briefly experienced exmo Tik Tok and was unprepared for the amount of sheer vitriol there. It seems as though a mass exodus is afoot. Interesting times! I hope to learn much here! Welcome. There are many people here both able to help with questions and empathize with experience. Kevin Christensen Canonsburg, PA but currently visiting Harmony and the Priesthood Restoration sites. 2
mfbukowski Posted July 8, 2021 Posted July 8, 2021 19 hours ago, Esrom said: I am excited to join this forum. Been away from church for 30 years during which time I studied many other spiritual paths. It's a shock to me to be studying Mormonism again at this point in my life. I am finishing a re-read of the Book of Mormon, first time in 4 decades. All I can say so far is there's a richness and a spirit I've encountered on no other path. Members complain about the most petty things, not realizing what they have, imho. I briefly experienced exmo Tik Tok and was unprepared for the amount of sheer vitriol there. It seems as though a mass exodus is afoot. Interesting times! I hope to learn much here! Welcome welcome! I think we will be great friends! The word "petty" fits perfectly, and yes, members have no clue what they have. Joined at age 31 because of philosophy, former atheist - this is the best paradigm available for mankind!
smac97 Posted July 8, 2021 Author Posted July 8, 2021 20 hours ago, Esrom said: I am excited to join this forum. Been away from church for 30 years during which time I studied many other spiritual paths. It's a shock to me to be studying Mormonism again at this point in my life. I am finishing a re-read of the Book of Mormon, first time in 4 decades. All I can say so far is there's a richness and a spirit I've encountered on no other path. Members complain about the most petty things, not realizing what they have, imho. I briefly experienced exmo Tik Tok and was unprepared for the amount of sheer vitriol there. It seems as though a mass exodus is afoot. Interesting times! I hope to learn much here! Welcome! Happy to have you here. You'll find some "vitriol" here, too, I'm afraid. But it much more measured doses. The mods do a pretty good job of keeping things civil. Thanks, -Smac
Recommended Posts