Comments

  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    Interesting post. Some thoughts.

    I can see two perspectives for answering.

    First Perspective: No, I would not agree because I would not trust the technology to not have a bug which might lead to a nightmarish experience.

    Second Perspective: Suppose God Himself assured me that everything is as described in the post; that there will be no unpleasant surprises.

    In this case, I have a question: if I picked “could forget,” would there be any discernible difference between my experience of the world now, and my experience after the procedure? If I could not distinguish the two types of experience, then maybe I’d accept the procedure because, for all I know, I might currently be in a simulation, and so I would merely be trading one simulation for another, more enjoyable simulation.

    If I picked “could not forget” then I would know that I was in a simulation. I might not trade in what is, or, at least, what may be, reality for a simulation.
  • The Adelson Checker Shadow Illusion and implications
    Suppose two "perspectives" - first person and third.
    Posit that we cannot know what causes our sensations.
    Supose first person accounts to be "more certain" than third person accounts.
    Conclude that one doesn't see what one's eyes see.
    Now I don't follow that. The argument is incomplete.
    Banno

    Here's a bare bones argument
    1. I clearly see squares A and B are a different color.
    2. Squares A and B in reality are the same color. Therefore, the light reaching my eyes reflected from squares A and B is the same color.
    Conclusion: I do not see what my eyes see. Rather, my mind processes the light reaching my eyes and presents me with the image I do see.
  • The Adelson Checker Shadow Illusion and implications
    What is the argument?Banno
    The argument is in the OP.
    The conclusion is that I don't even see what my eyes see.
    Rather, I see what my mind interprets.
    That's why do not appear to me to be the same color.
  • Free Will
    Fun fact: if you did throw a dart at an infinitely dividable board, and you got the x,y coordinates of the point it landed, you'd be more likely to land on irrational numbers than rationalflannel jesus
    Fun fact 2: There are a countable number of points with rational coordinates and an uncountable number of points with irrational coordinates (and some with mixed, as in (1,pi), which I'll ignore). This makes talking about probability difficult as the straightforward way of calculating probability
    > (number of points with rational coordinates) / (total number of points)
    which is
    > (countable) / (uncountable)
    which, it can be argued, equals 0.

    So there is 0 chance of hitting a point with rational coordinates?

    Yes, just like the probability is zero of geting EXACTLY 0.5 on a wheel with real numbers from 0 to 1.
  • Free Will
    No, the reason is that people cannot cope with the fact that we don't have free will.Christoffer
    So, do you believe that the man in the OP does not have free will? At the moment, the poll is 80% does not have free will and 20% other.
  • Free Will
    Logically, he would go directly diagonally across the field. Being tired he decides not to exercise his free will as to another path. I don't get it.jgill
    So he goes directly diagonally. The covering is removed. Only his diagonal path is black. The remainder of the field has been painted white. Did he have free will, or not?
  • Does Religion Perpetuate and Promote a Regressive Worldview?
    I think that's a caricature. It would take a bit to unpack it all.baker
    It's certainly simplified but I don't think it's incorrect. An in-depth discussion might require an entire book of its own.
  • Does Religion Perpetuate and Promote a Regressive Worldview?
    I’d love to hear your thought on how his arguments don’t hold up!T4YLOR
    Check YouTube for multiple criticisms of Craig's Kalam Argument.
    (The Kalam is a Kalam-ity of an argument.)
  • Does Religion Perpetuate and Promote a Regressive Worldview?
    Many posts seem to me to ignore or misunderstand the OP.
    Let me try again with a simple example.

    2,000 years ago, many people believed sin and demons cause disease.
    This belief found its way into stories about a certain miracle worker, Jesus.
    By one count, Jesus performed 34 miracles and 23 of them concern healing.
    How did Jesus heal?
    By forgiving sin and casting out demons (although once he used some supernatural spittle to cure a blind man.)

    Since then, we've learned that bacteria and viruses cause disease.
    But the false teachings of Jesus are enshrined in scripture.
    The result? Google “Christian parent deny medical treatment child dies"

    Old beliefs (which may have seemed rational at the time) find their way into scripture where they are preserved and propagated even today. Some results: disbelief in evolution; belief in an young Earth; and children dying of curable disease because their deluded religious parents deny them medical treatment.

    To cite another example, a Jehovah Witnesses may refuse a blood transfusion even at the cost of their own life due to words written in a book that has a talking serpent, a mythological worldwide flood, and a flight of Jews from Egypt that even Israeli archeologists say never happened.

    There are some good teachings enshrined in scripture. And there are some very bad teachings, as well. The enshrining occurs because of religion's childish epistemology where because some book or alleged prophet or god-man said something, it must be true.
  • Does Religion Perpetuate and Promote a Regressive Worldview?
    it seems hard to justify the idea that religion makes people particularly more regressiveCount Timothy von Icarus
    It seems obvious to me that for many believers, believing in witchcraft and demons, and denying evolution and geology (Young Earth Creationism) derive from Christian belief. Not for liberal Christians. But for Christians who take the Bible literally, i.e., fundamentalists. For example, Sarah Palin and Mike Johnson are fundamentalist Christian lunatics.

    Hegel, Cantor, Maimonides, Descartes, Dogen, Avicenna, Augustine, Eriugena, Proclus, Newton, Eckhart, Avarroese, Leibniz, Porphyry, Pascale, Maxwell, Berkeley, Ibn Sina, Bonaventure, Hildegard, Al-Ghazai, Cusa, Erasmus, Rumi, Merton, Plotinius, Anselm, Abelard, Al-Farabi, Ibn Kaldun, Plato, Schelling, Bacon, Magnus, Boyle, Kelvin, Eddington, Pierce, Godel, Faraday, Mendel, Pastier, ListerCount Timothy von Icarus
    Quite a list but not to the point.
    Plato was not Christian
    Plotinius, Porphyry and Proclus were Neoplatontic philosophers.
    Ibn Sina, al-Ghazai, Rumi, Al-Farabi, and Ibn Kaldun were Islamic
    Some of the Christians you mention were not fundamentalists.
  • Does Religion Perpetuate and Promote a Regressive Worldview?
    ( Lisa Barrett, How Emotions are Made)
    Josh, you seem to have some objection. Can you put it in your own words?
  • Does Religion Perpetuate and Promote a Regressive Worldview?
    Do you suppose there might also be educated Christians and uneducated atheists?Hanover
    I do.
  • Does Religion Perpetuate and Promote a Regressive Worldview?
    "CAN religion perpetuate and promote a regressive worldview?" or "can religion be USED to perpetuate and promote a regressive worldview".LuckyR
    If someone is a fundamentalist Christian then their religion MUST accept a worldwide flood. Etc.
  • The Indisputable Self
    It follows that your emotions, thoughts, and inner world are not you.creativesoul
    Good point. The only candidate for our permanent, enduring self is our awareness. But we also have a relative self. When someone says something about me, they usually refer to my thoughts, emotions, body, profession, family, nationality, etc.
  • The Indisputable Self
    A human is so much more than that. Being aware is so passive.Banno
    The idea is to determine what about me is enduring (or, at least, relatively enduring). Thoughts and emotions change in a second. The body changes slower but changes nonetheless. Awareness seems to be the only possible candidate for an enduring, relatively unchanging self.
  • The Indisputable Self
    Because in their original context such doctrines and teachings were part of an integrated spiritual culture.Wayfarer
    I have the eclectic attitude that if something is true, then it's true regardless of context. If natives believe the bark of a certain tree can cure headaches and have folk beliefs about why the tree does so, that doesn't prevent scientists from extracting the active ingredient and synthesizing it as aspirin.
  • The Indisputable Self
    This paragraph is a different topic, which I have no experience in, so I won't speculate.Patterner
    It goes beyond what I've personally experience, too.
  • Speculation: Eternalism and the Problem of Evil
    What I'm getting at is similar to the difference between watching a documentary and being a part of that documentary. I think that ambiguity may be built in to your speculation. The difference is in who is doing the "watching". If you go back and re-live a part of your life, will you be you, now, re-experiencing that life? If so, you are not re-experiencing, so much as watching from the outside.Banno
    The fundamental question, I believe, is of personal identity. One view is that our physical, emotional, and mental sensations being temporary, don't constitute me in the deepest sense. Rather, the more permanent consciousness which is aware of the sensations constitutes my personal identity. Under this view, I (my awareness) would be re-experiencing the current life I'm experiencing.

    But there are, of course, other views of personal identity.
  • Speculation: Eternalism and the Problem of Evil
    Banno,
    I'm thinking of the the Block Universe as completed, done. And I'm thinking of a disembodied consciousness as having some sense of self. And also as choosing to experience a life (or portion thereof), a life of which every part already exists in the Block Universe. I may sit down and watch a movie and lose myself in the movie, becoming so lost in the drama that I forget I'm just sitting on a couch and watching. The idea is vaguely similar: the disembodied consciousness experiences the movie of a life, but better because the movie is in 3D, and has sound, odors, touch, and taste sensations, too.

    ... it is the soul that gets reincarnated; that thoughts, feelings, the body are not the self.baker
    I think the concepts of "soul" and "disembodied consciousness" are similar, if not exactly the same. Choosing to live a life is choosing to experience all that life's physical, emotional, and mental sensations. So, we are in a 3D movie where 3 refers to physical, emotional, and mental sensations. I think that idea is similar to the idea that we are living in a matrix.
  • To be an atheist, but not a materialist, is completely reasonable
    I think "supernatural" is a vacuous term because we do not yet know the limits of the natural world.
    We can assume some phenomenon is beyond what is naturally possible, but we cannot know that is is.
  • The Importance of Divine Hiddenness for Human Free Will and Moral Growth
    Very interesting question. First, it's important to clarify that the initial argument about divine hiddenness was focused on its role in fostering human free will and moral growth during our earthly existence. The nature of heaven and its impact on free will and moral growth may be significantly different from the conditions on Earth. While divine hiddenness may no longer be present in heaven, it does not necessarily imply the loss of free will or the cessation of moral growth.gevgala

    I took your initial assertion as God is hidden to protect our free will. Now, you seem to be saying that ON EARTH God is hidden to protect our free will but things may be different in heaven. How is this not special pleading? If God is blatantly obvious in heaven but we nonetheless have free will in heaven, then free will and knowledge of God CAN co-exist.

    Besides, didn't Adam and Eve know God existed? Did they have free will? And then there's God appearing to Moses, talking to Abraham, Moses, Elijah, etc. Did all those people lose their free will after God spoke to them?
  • What can I know with 100% certainty?
    Thank you for your reply "Art48." I am 100% certain that I am conscious. No infinite regress is involved with this. Did you watch the Robert Sapolsky video excerpt? If so, what do you think?Truth Seeker
    OK, I'd agree about 100% certainty of my own awareness.

    I watched part of the video, but it’s part 5 of 6, so I decided to watch all of part 1 of 6 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX7bs4uvPyc

    I think that no free will and entirely free will are two extremes, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
  • What can I know with 100% certainty?
    Does the concept of 100% certainty involve an infinite regress?
    A: I know X with 100% certainty.
    B: But are you 100% certain that you know X with 100% certainty?
    A: Yes, I am 100% certain that I know X with 100% certainty.
    B: OK, but are you 100% certain that you are 100% certain that you know X with 100% certainty?
    etc.
  • Enlightened Materialism
    Yeah, "nihilism" has been used as a boogeyman for a long while now. It's like the Reefer Madness of philosophy.wonderer1
    !LOL
  • Enlightened Materialism
    If I really do cease to exist when I die, then I’ll never know it. If I cease to exist, there’s nothing left to know I no longer exist. — Art48

    The problem that introduces is nihilism. Nihilism doesn't have to present itself in a very dramatic form, like a deep sense of foreboding or dread. It can simply manifest as the sense that nothing really matters. So if death nullifies or negates any differences between what beings do in life, that amounts to a form of nihilism
    Quixodian

    It is unarguable that if it's a FACT that I cease to exist, then I'll never know I'm dead.Because I no longer exist.

    You seem to be taking issue with the BELIEF that I cease to exist after death and asserting the belief implies life is meaningless. That's arguable but, in any case, is not what I'm saying and an entirely different question, i.e., does life have meaning?
  • Personal Jesus and New Testament Jesus
    I suspect that there's a third Jesus - that of the religious community a person belongs to. Often based on a priest's or preacher's version. Many followers are too 'frightened' to formulate their own notions and surrender to the account of a compelling and authoritative apologist or cleric.Tom Storm
    I'd say that a person's personal Jesus incorporates some of the religious community's picture of Jesus.
    I think we agree. How we decide to count the number is not important.

    This is why any authentic spirituality, I contend, must necessarily be apophatic - the way of negation, the cloud of unknowing.Quixodian
    Would you agree that the idea that personal Jesus is a mask implies that at least some of personal Jesus' characteristics must be inaccurate and, thus, should be negated? (Negated in the sense that a person ceases to believe those characteristics apply to the God behind the mask?
  • Personal Jesus and New Testament Jesus
    The problem with God-behind-all-masks is the classic problem with Kant's reality-behind-all-appearence.plaque flag
    Regarding Kant, Schopenhauer noted that since we are a thing-in-itself, it should be possible to directly experience at least one thing-in-itself, i.e., our own existence. If God is our ultimate ground of existence (per Vedanta, Ekhart, & other mystics), we are capable of experiencing the God-behind-all-masks.

    I suggest that appearance should not be understood as a blanket thrown over reality but simply as that reality from a perspective. Consciousness is not illusion or screen but the being of the world itself. Along these lines, God is already something we are looking it from different perspectives.plaque flag
    But some perspectives can be false, as when we see a mirage and think we are seeing water. If God is ultimate ground of all existence, then I agree that God is already something we are looking at. But most of the time, we don't see God. Rather, we see people and places and things.
  • Born with no identity. Nameless "being".
    A state where embarrassment, prejudice, bias, shame, guilt, hatred and resentment are no where to be seen. Because these all depend on having a sense of self consciousness, a sense of discrete and defined relationship to the external world.Benj96

    I've been watching some videos about Advaita Vedanta as presented by Swami Sarvapriyananda. I think it can be argued that Vedanta aims to help us return to that state (not 24/7, of course, unless we're ready to leave the body).
  • Is Intercessory Prayer Egotistical?
    There is no counter-evidence. The truth is there is no way to know if a particular outcome is from God, it could simply be chance or even deterministic.Sam26
    I agree. If someone believes God always answers prayers but that sometimes the answer is "No" then there is no way to tell if prayer works or not.
  • Is Intercessory Prayer Egotistical?
    T Clark, I agree they are trying to convey compassion and fellow-feeling, but there are many ways to convey that. I don’t see anything wrong with analyzing the particular way they select.

    180 Proof, Carlin was a better theologian than some professional theologians.

    Banno, “Prayer is incoherent. Like most of Christianity.”
    Amen. Here’s a new book I’m reading that makes the same point.
    “The Anti-Christian Book: Truth is Anti-Christian. The Bible tells Enormous Lies about God.”
  • God and the Present
    Here's something to think about. Try to pinpoint the present, the exact point in time, which divides the future from past. Every time you say "now', by the time you say "now" it is in the past.Metaphysician Undercover

    A bullet at any instant is at some point in space but my perception limits me to perceiving it in some region of space in that I cannot tell exactly where it is. Ontologically, the now may be a point in time even if I perceive it as a small region of time.
  • God and the Present
    As to the OP, what is important, I think, is not what we say of it, but what we do. I can imagine two outcomes. 1) Someone practices trying to often reflect on how now is always the same, until they actually see the world that way. Or 2) someone doesn't. For 2), it doesn't really matter if they agree with the OP or not; the result is the same.

    This approach sees a purpose of philosophy as transformation. This may seem as aiming too high. Maybe transformation of a human being into a person more in accord with reality is better left to psychology and/or religion?

    I don't mean to belittle any other purpose of philosophy but I think it's valid including transformation among those purposes.
  • God and the Present
    And what's any of it to do with God?Vera Mont
    I wrote,if God exists. The point being if we are only really in the present (not the past or the future), then if God is real, our only point of contact where we could possibly meet is the present.
  • A challenge to the idea of embodied consciousness
    Frank, the chart is interesting. Can you provide a link to the IIT project?

    Can you have consciousness without any content?frank
    We can see consciousness remains when the objects of consciousness change. I have a thought, then experience an emotion, then see a tree, then hear a song, then another thought. The contents change but consciousness remains. So, (for me, at least) it's easy to believe consciousness without content is possible. And, as TheMadMan points out, consciousness without content (i.e., pure consciousness) is a goal of meditation.
  • Which is worse Boredom or Sadness?
    For me boredom is worse. And personally I think boredom is closer to depression than sadness is. Because people can feel acutely and strongly upset regularly, but would not consider themselves depressed. They might consider themselves emotionally labile, dramatic, sensitive. But not depressed.

    I could well imagine a chronically bored person on the other hand saying things like everything is pointless and futile. Worthless. Meaningless.
    Benj96

    Of course, clinical depression exists but I've also seen some spiritual teachers say a stage of the path to enlightenment is where the world has lost its attraction (boredom) but awareness of higher truth is not yet established.
  • Which is worse Boredom or Sadness?
    People watch sad movies but don't watch boring movies.
    Apparently, sadness is more entertaining than boredom.
    So maybe boredom is worse?
  • Is consciousness present during deep sleep?
    Do you think computer's are conscious?wonderer1
    I don't think they are now. Not sure about the future.

    Consciousness is simply a bad word as it has come to build in a set of wrong beliefs about the architecture of mind.apokrisis
    You seem to say "consciousness" is a bad word for describing brain activity. If we limit consciousness to biological activity, that would imply a computer (or other silicon-based, non-biological entity) could never become consciousness. Would you agree?

    Also, I've heard that psychedelics reduce brain activity but increase awareness. If true, would that suggest that consciousness and brain activity are two different phenomena. Comment?

    The objection would presumably be that the brain remains receptive to some stimulibert1
    I'd say that the brain being receptive implies consciousness

    My own current view is that consciousness is always present, but psychological identity perhaps isn't. During deep sleep there are no memories, values, desires etc. The patient ceases to exist as a psychological entity. That might be consistent with your second pointbert1
    It is consistent.
  • Is consciousness present during deep sleep?
    Why think consciousness is required to be awakened from deep sleep by a noise, rather than a subconscious process monitoring input from the ears and starting a subconscious arousal process?wonderer1
    I'm using "consciousness" in a broad way, as something that perceives, something which is aware. Under that (admittedly broad) definition, a subconscious process would be a form of awareness, i.e., consciousness.
  • Deriving the Seven Deadly Sins
    I don't see why? I am aware of you, but you are not contained in my awareness.unenlightened
    Another person is not contained in my awareness. So, that person can be in pain or even deceased and I might not know it. But if soul is part of me, then if I can be aware of my soul it must intersect with my awareness. If soul and consciousness do not intersect, then I cannot be aware of my soul so why should I care about what is happening to it?