On 2/16/07, Tom Caylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Feb 13, 11:35 pm, Jesse Mazer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Tom Caylor wrote:
I'm talking about ultimate meaning, meaning which is ultimately based
on truth. Purpose would go along with that. I think that this
situation is similar (metaphysically isomorphic? :) to the primary
matter situation. I think you maintain that experience is enough. I
maintain that if all you have is relative references, you are having
faith that there is ultimately something there. I'm not interested
in any straw-man caricature god who decides what is valuable etc. on a
whim. I'm interested in the source of the wonderfully unexplainable
good in us.
In mentioning the idea of God deciding morality on a whim, you perhaps
allude to the old counterargument to grounding morality in God in the
first
place, known as Euthyphro's Dilemma from one of Plato's dialogues--if
God
*chose* these supposed laws of morality, then they are ultimately
arbitrary
since God could have chose a completely different set of laws, but if
moral
truths are in some sense beyond God's ability to change, much like many
philosophers would say the laws of mathematics or logic are, then it's
not
clear why you need God in your explanation at all, you could just cut
out
the middleman and postulate eternal platonic moral truths in the same
way
many on this list are prepared to postulate eternal platonic
mathematical
truths.
The only way in which I could see that it would make sense to relate
goodness to God is to imagine a sort of pantheist God that represents
a
sort of ultimate pattern or harmony connecting every individual part of
the
universe, so goodness would represent some kind of orientation towards
the
ultimate pattern which encompasses all of us, and which would override
individual conflicting interests. A variation on this might be the
Omega
Point idea that every individual finite being is on some sort of
long-term
path towards being integrated into an infinite superorganism (perhaps
only
as a limit that can never actually be reached in finite time), or in the
concepts of this list maybe a single infinitely complex observer-moment
with
memories of every other observer-moment, which could also be seen as an
ultimate pattern connecting everything (one might say, as in Frank
Tipler's
speculations about the Omega Point, that an infinite mind would itself
contain simulations of every possible history in every possible universe
leading up to it, so that the Omega Point would both be an endpoint of
history but also contain all history integrated within it). In this
view,
every instance of individuals trying to cooperate and to understand and
connect with each other is an incremental step in the right direction,
so
one could ground ultimate goodness in that. I recently came across an
interesting interview
athttp://www.wie.org/j34/swimme2.asp?%20from=lnk-zaadzdiscussing Teilhard de
Chardin's thoughts on the Omega Point, and many on this list will be
familiar with Frank Tipler's version which I mention above (even if
Tipler's
specific ideas about using the Big Crunch to do an infinite amount of
computation in a finite time are proven wrong, as a transhumanist I'm
still
crossing my fingers that intelligence will find some loophole in the
laws of
physics that will allow it to continue forever without violating the
laws of
thermodynamics). But neither of these versions of God bears much
resemblance to the creator-God separate from the rest of the universe
that's
imagined by most mainstream religions.
Jesse
Yes. Now we're startin' to talk! I don't know much of the language,
but I think that when people experience what some may call words like
enlightenment, cosmic consciousness, etc. they are experiencing
something that is really there. In fact, they use words like seeing
reality as it actually is, etc. They speak of wholeness and
integralness.
Except that people would still have the same experiences whether or not
something were really there, just as they would still experience the sky as
a dome whether or not it is in fact a dome. In other words, if you imagine a
being in a universe without meaning, cosmic consciousness, enlightenment and
all the other significant things which are supposed to be there, but with
otherwise the same physical laws etc., can you think of any reason why such
a being would or wouldn't come up with the same ideas as humans have,
assuming similar evolutionary provenance?
Stathis Papaioannou
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