You tell me. Some sort of vitalism? A deity? or yes, a soul?

Yeah, it's necessary to assume something like that as the "agent", but no one really understands it. That's just the facts of life.

Every single theory has an agent. There has to be because somewhere, somehow there has to be the "impulse". The latest one one I've come across is Dennett's "Moist Robot", a rather obvious attempt to dehumanize humans into electronics. Before that Dennett had his "Selfish Gene". And then of course there is your run of a mill Evolution, Laws of Nature, and the very poetic (for science that is) Thermodynamic Imperative, a phrase that inherits all the beauty of the Élan vital while still retaining that wonderful scientific appeal. I suppose the Will of Entropy might also do fine. A wonderful choice of name. And let's not very forget God.

Those who prefer priests to guide their lives lovingly embrace the externalization of the agent, the priest being the mortal conduit to the truth. Those who are comfortable in their own skin and fully embrace their own creative force will no doubt prefer their very own Mind.

it's necessary to assume something like that as the "agent", but no one really understands it. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think that our language developed an approach to action based around our own agency, and finds itself unable to easily present the undirected agency of evolution. — Banno

Have you any reason to think it more than a bad translation?

I think that our language developed an approach to action based around our own agency, and finds itself unable to easily present the undirected agency of evolution. — Banno

Yes, God is mysterious. Appreciate your making my point.

Hm. "And this we call God".

God is not a satisfactory explanation for anything; because god explains everything.

Evolution? God did it. Creation? God did it. The cat has been sick? God did it.

Evolution? God did it. Creation? God did it. The cat has been sick? God did it. — Banno

Evolution did it. Omnipotence is always associated with the externalized impetus.

Priests being the conduits to the mystery of God, who do you suppose are the conduits to the mystery of Evolution?

I love the symmetry of the human condition. Somethings just never change.

Two bad answers do not get us anywhere.

Oh, I'm not giving any answers. Just commenting on the mysterious, omnipotence of the omnipresent Evolution.

Every theory has a name for the impetus. Those who prefer a more religious-like force will externalize it and set up a priesthood structure whose job is to provide the Truths. To understand this provides deep insight into the human condition because it repeats throughout history.

Oh, I'm not giving any answers. — Rich

Indeed.

Indeed — Banno

Didn't you like the rest post?

BTW, I used induction for this observation.

I used induction for this observation. — Rich

Did you? Where?

I obseved that your religion has exactly the same structure say lots of other religions. It is mysterious, external, omnipotent, dogmatic, and it has priests who alone have access to the truth and demands full obedience from its flock as its Truths shall go unquestioned. It even battles with other religions as being the one and only true religion. Your faith is unquestioned, am I correct?

The similarities are spooky.

I'm an atheist.

Where did you use induction?

I think that our language developed an approach to action based around our own agency, and finds itself unable to easily present the undirected agency of evolution.

Have you any reason to think it more than a bad translation? — Banno

No, it's not a matter of translation, it's a matter of understanding. That we understand ourselves to act with purpose, and we compare the purposeful activities of other beings, to our own purposeful acts, is not a "bad translation". The study of biology and evolutionary theory tells us that we are fundamentally, not much different from other animals. So, the purposeful acts within ourselves, are probably very similar, fundamentally, to the purposeful acts in other animals.

If our purposeful acts can be attributed to "agency", then why wouldn't we attribute the purposeful acts of other animals to "agency". What would support such a boundary between humans and others?

“For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present and
future is only an illusion, however persistent.” Albert Einstein

Whenever I come across any explanation that uses illusion to explain a concept, a know immediately that the explanation is lost. Everything we experience in life is exactly as we experience it. What creates illusions are the explanations. The explanation must be evaluated and change.

In Einstein's case, his explanation of time creates the illusion. Eliminate the equivalency between clock time (oscillations in space) and the real time of life (duration of action or concretely change in memory) then the illusion disappears. Of course, when someone builds an entire career around illusions (e.g. David Copperfield), then it's tough to admit to the sleight if hand.

Similarly, when one proclaims that mind and thinking is an illusion because wave-particles (by some magic) create the illusion, all one needs to do is make the mind real and the illusion is gone.

Everything in life is exactly how it is being experienced. There are no illusions.

If our purposeful acts can be attributed to "agency", then why wouldn't we attribute the purposeful acts of other animals to "agency". What would support such a boundary between humans and others? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't have a problem with ascribing intent to animals.

I do not think we can ascribe intent to evolution.

Of course. I think we went through this, "evolution" refers to a description of the result, the effect of the actions of living things. Evolution is not an acting agent itself, it is the result of the activity of agents. So we cannot ascribe intention directly to evolution, just like we cannot ascribe intention to directly to my computer, which is the result of the intentional acts of agents.. We ascribe intent to the agents which are responsible for evolution, the individual living organism which act with intent.

Let's say that there is a compilation of activities carried out by living beings, and the result of all these activities, the effect, is what we call evolution. If you agree that these activities are purposeful, then why wouldn't you agree that the result, evolution, is also purposeful? My computer is purposeful despite the fact that we wouldn't assign intent to it. It is something which came about from intent.

If you agree that these activities are purposeful, then why wouldn't you agree that the result, evolution, is also purposeful? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because that's an invalid inference.

...evolution, is also purposeful — Metaphysician Undercover

Evolution is not an acting agent itself — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah. Somehow you think this not a contradiction.

Everything in life is exactly how it is being experienced. There are no illusions. — Rich

I agree. There is a strong tendency to call primary experience an illusion relative to some true but hidden reality. Yet this hidden reality can only manifest itself as an idea within experience and the experience of its consequences.

As far as I can tell, 'illusion' is relative to purpose. To hallucinate an oasis in the desert is to an experience an illusion with respect to quenching thirst. But the hallucination may be success for another purpose. Maybe I go to the desert to have visions.

(In the first post I responded to, I like how the comment you quoted revealed the metaphysical baggage (what we think we know about time) that we tend to bring to a quantitative and geometrical theory. I suspect that some of Einstein's power came from seeing the situation with fresh eyes. I've read a bio or two, and he was a strong personality, even a bit of a 'rock star' (confident nonconformist) as a young man.

Somehow you think this not a contradiction. — Banno

Evolution has occurred as the result of the actions and interactions of many living beings, along with their interactions with the environment. It is how we describe what has occurred. It is a description. What on earth would make you think that evolution is an acting agent?

Take another description for example, "my dog bit the mailman". Would you say that this description is an acting agent? Of course not, the things described my dog, and the mailman, are the acting agents. Likewise, in this description "evolution", the living beings, and the environment are the acting agents.

Yes, I agree. Once an illusion is admitted as a possibility then there are no ways to set boundaries to the illusion. Everything can be an illusion and the illusion of everything can be an illusion. For me it makes the investigation of anything an illusion. Is gravity an illusion. Is Einstein and his work an illusion, seeing as time itself is an illusion according to Einstein. Anytime illusions pop up as a answer, I walk in a different direction.

As far as Einstein himself is concerned, I feel he may be a rockstar but more in the vein of Milli Vanilli than Bruce Springsteen. In his own letters to his first wife Milena Malic, he talks of their partnership with respect to the development of Relativity as he was involved in an affair at at time. Milena was a gifted mathematician who never had a chance to nourish her talents as she worked to build Einstein's career. Einstein never gave her involvement credit for the work on Relativity, and it is unknown to what extent Milena's mathematical work contributed to Relativity. She did receive the entire Nobel Prize award money. Hush money?

To the extent my opinion means anything, I have always been whole unimpressed by Einstein's philosophical musings and as far as science is concerned, his refusal to accept the probabilistic nature of quantum theory throughout his career is dumfounding. He may have been more about ego and glory than a real investigation of nature.

To the extent my opinion means anything, I have always been whole unimpressed by Einstein's philosophical musings and as far as science is concerned, his refusal to accept the probabilistic nature of quantum theory throughout his career is dumfounding. He may have been more about ego and glory than a real investigation of nature. — Rich

I haven't read much of his prose, so, when I think of Einstein as a philosopher, I think of the philosophy implicit in his science. He thought about time and space in a new way. His thought experiments were triumphs of imagination that led to technical revolutions.

I agree that he was a bad boy. It's possible though that achievement and a kind of selfishness go together. When Einstein is selfish, for instance, he's selfish for 'science.' His personal achievement is also an achievement of the species. Similarly a novelist or composer might be a nightmare in personal relationships and yet a kind of saint in his or her development of potentially shared symbolically stored awareness. To be sure, lots of self-proclaimed geniuses (actually mediocre or worse) are probably out there being a-holes in the name of their universal mission. But if the future cannot be calculated in the present (which is to say that a genuine future exists), then it's not easy to sort out the geniuses from the mediocre a-holes.

I agree. In my heart of hearts, I really question whether he was a genius at all, but b rather piggy-backed his way into history, taking into account all of his major work was accomplished during his association with Milena. This is a very revealing exchange. Let's face it, none of this was for science, it was all to keep his reputation in tact.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-forgotten-life-of-einsteins-first-wife/

In 1925, Albert wrote in his will that the Nobel Prize money was his sons’ inheritance. Mileva strongly objected, stating the money was hers and considered revealing her contributions to his work. Radmila Milentijević quote from a letter Albert sent her on 24 October 1925 (AEA 75-364). ”You made me laugh when you started threatening me with your recollections. Have you ever considered, even just for a second, that nobody would ever pay attention to your says if the man you talked about had not accomplished something important. When someone is completely insignificant, there is nothing else to say to this person but to remain modest and silent. This is what I advise you to do.”

I read the link. New to me. What I get is that Einstein had help, though, and not that he wasn't himself important to the genesis of the idea. Still, he was apparently a jerk to let the credit fall only on him.

A so-called Bergsonian who proclaims that there is no such thing as illusion. The only conclusion to draw is that he’s never read Bergson in his life insofar as both Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution continually make it their aim to… dispel illusions (MM: "But we find here once more, in a new form, the ever-recurrent illusion which, throughout this work, we have endeavored to dis­pel…” p. 141/ CE: “[instantaneous juxtaposition in space of time is] an illusion, no doubt, but an illusion that is natural, ineradicable, and that will last as long as the human mind!” p. 361). Almost everything Bergson wrote was set against the ‘illusions’ of spatialisation that he constantly wrote against.

As for everything in life being ‘exactly how it is being experienced’ - again, one wonders how any one calling themselves a Bergsonian could utter such crap. Matter and Memory famously extolls its reader to place themselves at the well known “turn of experience”, where we must disconnect experience from perception in order to install ourselves in duration, which requires us “to give up certain habits of thinking, and even of perceiving, [which is] is far from easy.” This just is the method of intuition, one which requires a critical and discerning effort at not taking experience for what it is, insofar as experience is bound up with precisely the many illusions that Bergson aims to draw our attention to.

Merleau-Ponty once famously wrote of the ‘two Bergsons’: "The truth is that there are two Bergsonisms. There is that audacious one, when Bergson’s philosophy fought and… fought well. And there is that other one after the victory, persuaded in advance about what Bergson took a long time to find, and already provided with concepts while Bergson himself created his own. When Bergsonian insights are identified with the vague cause of spiritualism or some other entity, they lose their bite; they are generalized and minimized. What is left is only a retrospective or external Bergsonism. . . . Established Bergsonism distorts Bergson. Bergson disturbed; it reassures. Bergson was a conquest; Bergsonism defends and justifies Bergson. Bergson was in contact with things; Bergsonism is a collection of accepted opinions.”

As someone who continually identifies Bergson with precisely the "vague causes of spiritualism”, it’s no secret which Bergson Rich subscribes to.

A so-called Bersonian who proclaims that there is no such thing as illusion — StreetlightX

Who ever said I was a Bersonian. All I said is that your mummification of Bergson was a joke and it was and it is.

The rest of your post pretty much illustrates my point. I always say that people should do their own homework. Hopefully this thread encourages people to read not only Bergson, but also Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake, and watch Stephen Robbins' video on his interpretation of Bergson's theory of perception.

Beyond this, I hope people go out and experience life and all its dimensions so that they don't have to rely on laughable diatribes such as yours for information. Your understanding of Bergson is the worst I've ever read and I have read tons.

If by 'read tons' you mean 'watched a few Youtube videos'.

No, I've read tons which I why I threw De Broglie right at your asinine comments. Not that one should take De Broglie's opinion over yours. Mine should be sufficient. Your comments were the most ludicrous that I've ever read about Bergson. And you thought your stupid insults would be sufficient? Is that what they taught you in your courses?

So, what's the status on this? Have we gotten clear on Bergson yet?