On 9/4/2011 3:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 3:06 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 9/4/2011 12:13 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 1:42 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 9/4/2011 8:32 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 8:25 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 04.09.2011 07:51 meekerdb said the following:
...
If that's what you're trying you're giving aid and comfort to
the
enemy. Every religious fundamentalist in America hates
materialism
and believes in an immaterial spirit, distinct from brain
processes,
which is responsible for our thoughts and actions.
You know, I was raised in the USSR where the official religion was
atheism
and materialism. The results were disastrous.
Hence you could take the existence of people in the USA who
"believe in an
immaterial spirit, distinct from brain processes" positively. After
all,
they are working hard and contribute to prosperity.
In any case, I do not think that the ideology should affect
reasoning.
Evgenii,
The kind of atheism and materialism which stood as the official
religion of
the Soviet Union, and that held by most atheists today is naive. The
leading
scientific explanations for conscious are mechanistic, but taken to its
logical end mechanism leads to remarkable conclusions: consciousness is
not
attached to the body, it survives death of the body, it continues
forever, it
may be reincarnated into different forms, it may switch between realms.
In
this respect, science leads directly to something very much like a soul.
Only by taking partial theories and over extending them.
If you accept the first few steps of the UDA regarding duplication /
survivability
with clones (digital mechanism), and you accept any of the following: 1. the
universe is infinitely big, 2. many worlds interpretation, 3. string theory
landscape, 4. ultimate ensemble or 5. mathematical realism, then it can be
clearly
demonstrated. I think the only reason you call it "over extended" is that
you are
uncomfortable with the conclusion.
If by "accept" you mean "believe", I don't accept 2, 3,4, and 5. I
consider 1 to be
an inference from some theories, but I don't necessarily accept those theories.
When you make a long chain of inferences and arrive at a conclusion contrary to
experience that is called a reductio ad absurdum. Then it is time to
review your bets.
If you accept (believe) the universe is infinitely big then there are other locations in
the universe which have an identical configuration to you in this moment,
That doesn't follow. For example there could be infinite repetitions of a some other,
quite different subset of this universe. The universe would then be infinite while this
part is unique.
the whole earth in this moment, the solar system, the local group, the observable
universe. Just as any finite sequence of digits can be found in the digits of Pi.
But not in 1/3. Yet the decimal expansion of 1/3 is infinite.
Then if you accept that you could be reassembled (and saved from death) by the
appropriate arrangement of atoms (regardless of whether they were the original or an
entirely new set of atoms) then you can see how your consciousness will survive your
death in this universe.
I can see how it could be possible (and I thought of that when I was 16) but I don't
believe everything that is possible happens nor do I see any way to test such a vague
hypothesis.
Similarly, the materialist effort to explain the existence of this
universe
without invoking God ends up pointing to the existence of something
that has
no cause, exists timelessly, contains infinite variation (perhaps
everything
possible), may be identical to the sum of all truth, is everywhere and
everything. While not every scientist or person on this list agrees
with
this, it is the conclusion of any rational effort to explain the fine
tuning
of this universe.
I don't think any scientists agrees with all of that.
1. Something exists without a cause (Any Platonist believes this. Also, it
is
inconsistent to believe that nothing exists without cause, unless you
believe
something can come from nothing)
Most current theories of cosmogony say something like that.
Not out of nothing, but out of the vacuum <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_state>,
which is something.
Is it? Can you have less than a vacuum? Isn't it as 'nothing' as can be. Maybe the
philosopher/logician's "nothing"; the thing that has no properties is incoherent, an
illegitimate abstraction from the absence of something to the absence of everything.
According to present-day understanding of what is called the vacuum
state or the
quantum vacuum, it is "by no means a simple empty space",^[1]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_state#cite_note-Lambrecht-0> and again:
"it
is a mistake to think of any physical vacuum as some absolutely empty
void."^[2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_state#cite_note-Ray-1> According
to quantum
mechanics, the vacuum state is not truly empty but instead contains
fleeting
electromagnetic waves and particles that pop into and out of
existence.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_state#cite_note-2>
2. Exists timelessly (Again, every platonist accepts mathematical truth
exists
timelessly)
That is a peculiarly mathematical meaning of "exists".
Are there really different ways in which something can exist? The way I see it, either
something exists or it does not.
Me to. But to a mathematician, "exists" means a variable takes a value that satisfies a
proposition.
3. Contains infinite variation, perhaps everything possible (Mathematical
truth is
infinite in scope, and math contains all possible structures, again
according to
the platonist philosophy of mathematics (which is the most popular))
Which cardinality of infinite? All of them?
I don't know.
4. Is everywhere and everything (This follows from digital mechanism and
platonism. Most today are unaware of this of course, but I think if all the
choices were well defined and described most rational people would identify
with
platonism and finite mechanism.)
"Something exists everywhere and everything"? I don't understand what is
being
asserted. Is it a mere tautology?
All that we see ultimately is part of the same infinite object.
Only if "object" is defined as all that exists anywhere - in which case it is reduced to a
tautology.
Science isn't about justifying theories. It's about creating models that
have
predictive and explanatory power.
I agree, science is about explanations.
To ask what concept is scientifically justified is to misconceive the enterprise.
Some theories are better supported by evidence than others. Some are contradicted
by evidence. That's all.
That everything exists isn't contradicted by any evidence.
But it isn't supported by any either.
Brent
""What is there? Everything! So what isn't there? Nothing!"
--- Norm Levitt, after Quine
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