will be listening for the god story, looking for a clue to something profound. Hint: I don't think they made us. Nor did we make them. It is a conspiracy and we are both in on it — Constance

Well, they made the universe, with all life evolving in it. I don't think we made them.
You mean it's a conspiracy that both the gods and life are involved in?

What if someone theorized in a way that violated the principle of causality? Putting aside that someone has in fact done this, ask your self how well this sits with your understanding. It is a blatant absurdity, apodictically impossible. — Constance

In 1912, Bertrand Russell wrote "On the Notion of Cause" in which he makes the argument that causation is not a useful way of thinking about the world. In 1943, R.G. Collingwood wrote "An Essay on Metaphysics" in which he wrote something similar. My point? It is not "absurdity" to deny the principle of causality.

I think that goes to show that you and I think too differently about the world for this to be a fruitful discussion.

To know at all is to take up the world AS this knowledge claim is expressed. Taken APART from the knowledge claim, pure metaphysics. The cup on the table, e.g. is qua cup, a cup, but qua a palpable presence not a cup at all. — Constance

I don't know what this means. More evidence you and I do not have the language to talk to each other about this.

Of course. But we also have to condition the subject, i.e, us. There is no such thing as "an observation". Thats already a theoretical claim. How and what we observe is not theory-laden but a theory, a story on its own. Space can have an objective existence, like the bending of it. A bend space(time) is a physical reality. The GW hunters at LIGO don't wanna chase metaphysical ghosts! — EugeneW

But this is just what I say space cannot have. Try to conceive of something bending without a medium in which something can bend. All possible examples of bending require a stable foundation of space as an assumption such that bending can be understood relative to this stability. If I bend a stick or a piece of paper how is this bending determined? By identifying spatial changes in position. This is how all change, movement is measured and determined, vis a vis something that does not change or move. If it is posited that space itself changes or moves or bends, then this in turn requires the same stabilizing setting.
So to say space bends requires yet an additional medium in which space is, for all bending requires this in order for 'bending" to make sense.
This is certainly not to say another space is therefore to be posited. It is to say that our geometrical ways of stabilizing the space of the world are just projections onto an otherwise impossible presence. Reason, logic, language are utilities, only thrown, if you will, unto a world that otherwise has nothing of this "utility". This plays out across the board in every and all attempts understand in all the sciences, for these attempts are propositional, categorical, and the world is nothing like this. Science does not speak to us about the world; it speaks what we need to say about it in order to deal with it.
The world? Utterly metaphysical.

Well, they made the universe, with all life evolving in it. I don't think we made them.
You mean it's a conspiracy that both the gods and life are involved in? — EugeneW

I mean the term 'gods' was certainly an invention, a fiction created by humans long ago; but it is not the case that this means there are no gods if it can be shown that such a term is necessitated by conditions of actuality. In other words, while we did an awful lot of invented, narrating, imagining through the ages, there are actual material conditions of your being human beings that are that from which our narratives find their meaning. Metaphysics is not a myth. We are it.

I mean the term 'gods' was certainly an invention, a fiction created by humans long ago — Constance

That's a questionable assumption...

But this is just what I say space cannot have. Try to conceive of something bending without a medium in which something can bend. — Constance

You can't bend space like a stick. You bend it with mass.

In 1912, Bertrand Russell wrote "On the Notion of Cause" in which he makes the argument that causation is not a useful way of thinking about the world. In 1943, R.G. Collingwood wrote "An Essay on Metaphysics" in which he wrote something similar. My point? It is not "absurdity" to deny the principle of causality. — T Clark

Read that Russell essay and you will find Russel, in good analytic fashion, is complaining about how well causality can be explained using available means to do so. To utter a definition at all is to bring the wrath of analytic clarity upon you, and this applies to your cat and your sofa, as well. But this is not how we take causality, as a concept with an unproblematic analytic profile. It is an apodictic intuition: one cannot imagine a spontaneous effect. And that is all.It is not that this can be laid out in language that can be equally coercive to the understanding. Language is at best interpretative. But to just sit an imagine an object moving by itself, in good faith, it is clear as anything can be: impossible. A coercive to the understanding as modus ponens.

To know at all is to take up the world AS this knowledge claim is expressed. Taken APART from the knowledge claim, pure metaphysics. The cup on the table, e.g. is qua cup, a cup, but qua a palpable presence not a cup at all.
— Constance

I don't know what this means. More evidence you and I do not have the language to talk to each other about this. — T Clark

Sorry about that. It simply means that language and the sensuous intuitions that it is about are qualitatively distinct. The former cannot be about the latter for they are separated by a chasm of difference.

one cannot imagine a spontaneous effect. — Constance

I can.

But to just sit an imagine an object moving by itself, in good faith, it is clear as anything can be: impossible. — Constance

No.

That's a questionable assumption... — EugeneW

But you have to see the whole idea presented. I am not way the gods do not exist, or did not. I am saying a comprehensive understanding of what this could be cannot be done thinking about divine creation nor human imagination. It issues from both, but looking into this requires a good deal of compromise. Much, no, most that we casually understand has to be dismissed.

You can't bend space like a stick. You bend it with mass. — EugeneW

It is not about how something is bent. It is about bending as such.

Is bending curving? Space can have curvature. The metric can change.

Is bending curving? Space can have curvature. The metric can change. — EugeneW

Bending, curving, arching, swaying, leaning, accelerating, moving, and on and on. Things move IN space, e.g., space cannot move unless it moves In something else.
The metric? you mean the standard of measurement. But this doesn't enter into tit. It is bending as such.

Much, no, most that we casually understand has to be dismissed. — Constance

Casually yes. Non-casually, after deep contemplation ("out yonder, is this huge world, which exists, independently of us human beings, and which stands before us, like a great eternal riddle; the contemplation of this world beckons, like a liberation"), no.

How can space be accelerated or lean? Can it sway? The metric yes. But can the metric accelerate?

space cannot move unless it moves In something else. — Constance

Space dont move. Only the objects in it. It can expand or contract but has no speed. The metric is the just the metric of GR.

Casually yes. Non-casually, after deep contemplation ("out yonder, is this huge world, which exists, independently of us human beings, and which stands before us, like a great eternal riddle; the contemplation of beckons, like a liberation"), no. — EugeneW

Well then, you seem willing to drop what is familiar and venture into alien territory when it comes to talking about God, the grand narratives strewn out over the ages, and how sensible thinking can find where the two meet. How would you do this?

Space dont move. Only the objects in it. It can expand or contract but has no speed. The metric is the just the metric of GR. — EugeneW

No, it can't expand or contract. Expansion is a spatial term; it presupposes space.

No, it can't expand or contract — Constance

Yes. You are right and wrong. The global expansion of the universe is apparent but to bend around mass it can stretch, which is indeed different from expansion.

How would you do this? — Constance

The medium of the dream could inform. Maybe that's how the gods contact us.

I am saying a comprehensive understanding of what this could be cannot be done thinking about divine creation nor human imagination — Constance

Why not?

Why not? — EugeneW

Well then, you seem willing to drop what is familiar and venture into alien territory when it comes to talking about God, the grand narratives strewn out over the ages, and how sensible thinking can find where the two meet. How would you do this?

where the two meet — Constance

Which two? Alien territory and the familiar?

Which two? Alien territory and the familiar? — EugeneW

God, the grand narratives strewn out over the ages
and
how sensible thinking can find where the two meet

Ah yes! I think God is a grand narrative. There are a lot of grand narratives. Who is to tell which stands close to gods? I think my narrative is the true one. Why? Ill tell you after I walked our dog!

And that narrative is? And it is true because?

I had a dream. Im writing a short story about it. Ill letya know!

A building contains far more materials than the "blueprints, scaffolding and tools" (logic) used to build it. If your point is that, by analogy, "a map of the territory" (concept) does not exhaust the territory (object), I agree; but that does not mean that the latter is occluded or "falsified" by the former, only that one is (narrowly) interested in the latter (object) at a given moment in terms consistent with the former (concept). An astronomer, as you mention, does not project his "observational protocols and astronomical models" onto the stars anymore than wearing glasses with corrective lenses "corrects" whatever lies in the wearer's visual field. Logic, IME, is simply a way of seeing, so to speak, commensurable (to varying degrees) with the ways nature shows itself to itself (e.g. its 'intelligent' participants); this is so because, it seems, whatever else nature is, it is also logical (i.e. structurally consistent ~ computable (though, I think, not 'totalizable')).

But this is just what I say space cannot have. Try to conceive of something bending without a medium in which something can bend. — Constance

There is curved space - a type of geometry, and there is spacetime curvature, a way to interpret general relativity.

Empty space doesn't bend, IMO. :chin:

Empty space doesn't bend, IMO. :chin: — jgill

What if you put mass in it?

What if you put mass in it? — EugeneW

Be my guest. It distorts spacetime in the appropriate metric. Space by itself doesn't bend.

Isn't frame-dragging bending? Or is torsion the real bending? You can stretch space without bending but can you bend without stretching?

If space curves time curves.

A building contains far more materials than the "blueprints, scaffolding and tools" (logic) used to build it. If your point is that, by analogy, "a map of the territory" (concept) does not exhaust the territory (object), I agree; but that does not mean that the latter is occluded or "falsified" by the former, only that one is (narrowly) interested in the latter (object) at a given moment in terms consistent with the former (concept). An astronomer, as you mention, does not project his "observational protocols and astronomical models" onto the stars anymore than wearing glasses with corrective lenses "corrects" whatever lies in the wearer's visual field. Logic, IME, is simply a way of seeing, so to speak, commensurable (to varying degrees) with the ways nature shows itself to itself (e.g. its 'intelligent' participants); this is so because, it seems, whatever else nature is, it is also logical (i.e. structurally consistent ~ computable (though, I think, not 'totalizable')). — 180 Proof

It depends on what you mean by the object. Really, the fur of this cat shares something with a principle of organization (concept) that is used to talk and think about it? You think there is a "territory" that is qualitatively shared with the concepts used to refer to it? Nature " shows itself to itself" through logic?

These are pretty strong claims and i don't think any of them are right. I would have ask, how is it that a natural object reveals itself through logic? What do you mean by "natural"? Obviously, what you say does depend on this. Nature?