[del]

Again, physical causation is not a necessary relation; and logical necessity sets out the way things might be spoken about, not the way things are. — Banno

Doesn't allow for the fact that mathematics is predictive, enabling discovery of hitherto unknown facts (e.g. 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences'.) You can't reduce philosophy to 'language games'.

I didn't say it was. I said that scientific laws (or principles) are where 'logical necessity meets physical causation'. As was established at the beginning, these are separate but in practice the application of logical and mathematical principles to physics is fundamental in science.

We may look at the universe and believe, "Its unlikely this could happen by chance," but there's actually nothing to back that. — Philosophim

The 'anthropic principle' is quite well established, actually. It comprises observations about the fact that there are a small number of constants which, had they been different by a very small degree, would have prevented the formation of matter, stars, and living organisms. This line of reasoning goes back to the astronomer Fred Hoyle's discovery of carbon resonance (which you can read about here) later formalised in a paper by Brandon Carter. (There's a current thread on 'fine tuning', going back a few years but recently active again.)

The rest of your response, really, is just that 'anything is possible' - which is not actually an argument. And unless you have some idea what you're looking for, then there's no way to look for or assess evidence or what should be regarded as evidence.

"Logical necessity" in this context implies that for the laws to be different would be a logical contradiction. — Janus

what I think it means, is simply that you can make reasoned predictions and draw conclusions based on both observation and inference. Something very close to Kant's synthetic a priori.

well, he’s written a book on it……

Do they consider the worlds the cultural members live in as real worlds, or merely as study objects? — Haglund

Have you done any units in it? I did a couple of years of anthropology and found it utterly fascinating. Agustin Fuentes seems fascinating. (So many books, so little time.) Anthropology has this way of being able to transcend all the usual disciplinary boundary stuff and open up wholly new perspectives on humanity. So, of course if they're worth their salt, they will reveal those perspectives.

You might like this article on Aeon https://aeon.co/essays/how-trance-states-forged-human-society-through-transcendence

Mark Vernon is a writer I have a lot of time for. Very intelligent analyst of cross-cultural and trans-historical sources of spirituality.

Incidentally I didn’t like the suggestion in the OP at all, because it’s Darwinian. Darwinian theory is crap at this kind of thing.

mine is currently the last reply in that thread.

The argument for a God must be done through evidence. — Philosophim

An empiricist will say that. A rationalist philosopher might argue that it’s a matter of abductive inference - which means reasoning from effect to cause. They might point to something like the "anthropic cosmological principle", and argue that, even though it seemed likely that the Universe should emerge from the Big Bang into a state of chaos, it actually emerged in just such a way as to enable the formation of stars, complex matter, and then living beings who can reflect on all of the above. Of course many philosophers will disagree, but the point is that the argument is not based on evidence as such but on an interpretation of the meaning of existence.

there is nothing different about a God from any other existence — Philosophim

That is not supported by, or informed by, philosophical theology. 'God' is not simply one factor in a causal chain; there's an ontological distinction between God and nature (hence, it might be a form of dualism.) The major distinction made in the traditional arguments is between 'contingent' and 'necessary' being. The way you present your argument treats God as simply the first in a series of events - presumably just another contigent being. But if God is uncaused, then such a being is not contingent and not dependent on anything. So there's an ontological distinction here - a distinction in kind - which I don't think your OP is reflecting.

Of course there are a great many philosophical conundrums and difficulties in these arguments but then it is a discussion of the origin of the Universe, so there's no reason to think it should be something easy to fathom. But I suggest finding a proper presentation of the cosmological argument to get a better handle on what 'necessary being' actually means.

:clap: :up:

Theists claim God exists, but they make it a point to state that God's immaterial/nonphysical. — Agent Smith

An excerpt on Tillich's negative theology:

Tillich came to make the paradoxical statement that God does not exist, for which he has been accused of atheism. "God does not exist. He is being itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him."

That statement is a continuation of Tillich’s earlier conclusion that God cannot be conceived as an object, no matter how lofty. We cannot think of God as a being that exists in time and space, because that constrains Him, and makes Him finite. Thus we must think of God as beyond being, above finitude and limitation, the power or essence of being itself. There is a clear logic in Tillich’s development here, and he makes it plain that denying God’s “existence” is in fact needed in order to affirm him. Still, at times he makes it hard to avoid the impression that there simply “is” no God, which is largely due to his use of the notion of existence. Again, the apologetic nature of Tillich’s discourse should be remembered. The purpose of such statements is to forcibly remove incorrect notions from the minds of his audience by creating a state of shock.. — New World Encyclopedia

This was also made explicit by John Scotus Eriugena:

things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to be exist, whereas anything which, “through the excellence of its nature” (per excellentiam suae naturae), transcends our faculties are said not to be exist. According to this classification, God, because of his transcendence is said not to be exist. He is “nothingness through excellence” (nihil per excellentiam). ...This mode (of thinking) illustrates Eriugena’s original way of dissolving the traditional Neoplatonic hierarchy of being into a dialectic of affirmation and negation: to assert one level is to deny the others. In other words, a particular level may be affirmed to be real by those on a lower or on the same level, but the one above it is thought not to be real in the same way. If humans are thought to exist in a certain way, then angels do not exist in that way. — John Scotus Eriugena

The point being that according to today's empiricist philosophy only that which can be conceived of as existing in time and space is considered real. There's no conceptual category for the transcendent, and no way of conceptualising it or reaching it through discursive philosophy.

See also God does not exist.

You and he posted arguments, which I was not persuaded by. Nothing to do with quantum physics.

My conclusion is that scientific law is where logical necessity meets physical causation. I haven't seen an argument to dissuade me of that original idea, although I keep an open mind.

Putin’s plan was the Ukrainian army would fold and Russia would install a puppet regime in days or st most weeks. They even had the press releases drafted. That is the fantasy he had which all the sycophants around him echoed. But he’s been mugged by reality.

then the war can continue.. — ssu

With what resources? Presumably, if one wins a war, one can then lay claim to the spoils. Oil, wheat, all the minerals and resources that Ukraine has to offer. But what if there is no victory? Can Russia continue to engage in this campaign of wanton destruction and mass killing indefinitely while making no actual gains? Wars are not simply media opportunities, some party actually has to win. And since day 1, Putin has not been winning, and he’s still not winning. When are Russian tractors going to be tilling those wheat fields and Russian companies running those oil wells? That is what ‘victory’ would look like, and we’re not seeing anything remotely resembling it.

In any case, the Americans seem to have realised that Putin might be utterly beaten in Ukraine. Early May was Putin’s deadline, in time for V day, or whatever it is called there. Instead that will be about the time that the Western banks declare they won’t accept repayments in rubles, and the four-hour queues for sausage will once again become reality for the vast majority of Russians.

of course Lavrov is trading in threats. That is the only language he has.

I would read it as a veiled threat. We talking about apophasis the other day, to say something by pretending not to sy it. This is an example. 'Nice world you have, shame if something happened to it'.

Christians just beg to be crucified, don’t they? And it’s so easy to oblige.

It's good that even despite the inconclusive discussion about the actual topic that we've at least been able to sort out the fate of the Universe. Makes you think your day hasn't been entirely wasted.

have a look at that OP pinned to my profile, The Neural Buddhists, David Brooks. Always felt that probably describes my overall orientation quite well.

I don't know. Thomas Nagel says he 'lacks the sensus divinatus'. I recall realising about age 6 that there was such a thing as atheism and finding it shocking. But I wasn't brought up in a religious household, my parents were not religious, and I don't feel much affinity with the Church. So it's quite possible that what I understand by God is different to what others do. I've never imagined a sky-father type of God. I don't believe in a literal God. In fact I don't believe in a God. It's quite possible that many tub-thumping evangelicals would consider me atheist, and they'd probably be right. But then I discovered that the theologian Paul Tillich understood this point. It's also implicit in many of the medieval mystics (who often skirted heresy).

As I've said many times on this forum, it's why I studied comparative religion (for which I've recently been severely criticized as it's apparently a totally bogus discipline.) But I was trying to understand what enlightenment or illumination meant. At the time I started out on that, I had no sense that it was connected to what I had been taught as 'religion' at all. But over the years, and through books like William James Varieties of Religious Experience and Alduous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy, I began to see the connections. I had also had 'peak experiences' under the influence of enthoegens which conveyed a strong sense of the numinosity of nature. Impossible to convey in words, of course. And some encounters with charismatic teachers - likewise.

But overall, I do see atheism, in the sense of Dawkins-Dennett style of materialism, as a lack, something not seen, a missing dimension, and that's just going to remain an irreconcilable difference I'm afraid.

I'm not sure if I'm right about this, but in physics, especially quantum physics, there seems to be an inclination towards eastern philosophies. — Haglund

Do you know Tao of Physics? That was published in the early 1970s. Of course it has its critics but Heisenberg was interviewed by the author and he approved it. Carlos Rovelli's RQM model makes explicit reference to the Buddhist philosophy of Nāgārjuna. There are many such parallels. Have a read of Schrodinger and Indian Philosophy, Michel Bitbol.

The experience of the sacred is clear; there is nothing clearer. Clarity par excellence. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Agree, even if glimpsed from afar.

The problem/catch is that sacrednsss is used as an excuse/reason to stifle free thought, the classic example being, at the moment, Islam - it doesn't take much to elicit a fatwa from the grand Ayatollah of Iran if you catch my drift. — Agent Smith

Of course that is true. Religions can be a source of oppression, no doubt about that, but they’re not only that.

What do you understand by 'the sacred' can it be a secular notion? — Tom Storm

Not in the context of post-Enlightenment western culture, because secular culture was explicitly defined against religious culture. The word itself goes back to the secular calendar, distinguished from the sacramental calendar (and its holy days), the secular calendar being concerned with the day-to-day affairs. But in a philosophical sense the division is not so clear cut. Einstein held to his ‘cosmic religious views’ expressed in many of his later-in-life writings, even though he reviled organisational religion as childish and immature. As discussed in the ‘concept of religion’ thread a few weeks back, it’s really impossible to arrive at a simple definition of religion (outside the stereotypical post-Enlightenment attitude, which makes it dead easy.)

Marxism is to all intents a secular religion. Heck, Darwinism is too, to some people. Richard Dawkins used to hold school camps to imbue children with a satisfactorily scientific-rationalist mindset.

What’s that satirical verse I sometimes quote….

I believe in a single substance, the mother of all forces, which engenders the life and consciousness of everything, visible and invisible. I believe in a single Lord, biology, the unique son of the substance of the world, born from the mother substance after centuries of random shuffling of material: the encapsulated reflection of the great material sea, the epiphenomenal light of primordial darkness, the false reflection of the real world, consubstantial with the mother-substance. It is he who has descended from the shadows of the mother-substance, he who has taken on flesh from matter, he who plays at the illusion of thought from flesh, he who has become the Human Brain. I acknowledge a single method for the elimination of error, thus ultimately eliminating myself and returning to the mother substance. Amen.

(I believe that is paraphrased from The Book of the Tarot.)

But then, on the other hand, the Buddha was,relative to the culture of his day, a secular philosopher, as he rejected the authority of the Vedas and taught a method that was arguably more like that of the ancient sceptics and stoics than the early Christians. As far as the Brahmins were concerned he was a nihilist. But ultimately, his aim was to transcend the eternal cycle of birth and death, and that can’t be fit comfortably into a secular framework (notwithstanding the earnest efforts of secular Buddhism.) But then, the Buddhist conception of dharma cuts across the Western divisions of sacred and secular, in that it emphasises ‘seeing for oneself’ and acquiring insight through disciplined meditation, which is like neither what we think of as religious dogma, nor empirical science.

One question I would like to ask is of atheism is the sense in which atheism is the denial of the category of 'the sacred' or 'the holy'. The denial of the idea of the holy is not quite the same as denying that there is a God although there's obviously an overlap. But the 'experience of the holy' is a much broader category, in that it may or may not be centred around God. Buddhism for example has no belief in a creator god, yet it seems to be similar to theistic religion in terms of its ethical philosophy and behavioural demands (celibacy, non-violence, non-coveting etc) and even in many philosophical respects.

The OP, by a contributor who was banned almost as soon as joining, asserts that belief in the supernatural is 'asinine' on the basis that it cannot be 'proven' - meaning, I presume, that it cannot be made subject to empirical validation. But this is basically just junior-school positivism so I don't think warrants consideration.

The point I want to get at is broader. What, after all, is the meaning of the idea of revelation, from an anthropological viewpoint? Are there states of spiritual illumination? These kinds of insights arise, I think, from what us moderns would deem 'non-ordinary states' - this article posits trance states which have been culturally valued since pre-historic times. (Worth noting that 'ecstacy' means literally 'outside stasis' where 'stasis' is normal day-to-day consciousness.) Or again in Buddhism, in which 'there is a whole set of teachings pertaining to the topics of realisation and the aspect of lokuttara, (a ‘transcendent’ dimension). These teachings emphatically insist on the possibility of an embodied, subjective and numinous experience through the practice of meditation' (source).

So - does atheism sweep all of this off the table? It seems to me that it must, lest 'the divine foot is let in the door', as Richard Lewontin once put it. Or can it more limited, and so more nuanced, than that?

From what I’ve read, Pierce subscribed to a form of scholastic realism i.e. accepted the reality of universals, which would put him at odds with Hume and the other empiricists. In fact he praises Berkeley and says that overall his philosophy is sound with the caveat that Berkeley was a nominalist, that is, rejected the reality of universals.

//Check out this review. //

Although Peirce was a staunch proponent of the view that human life and thought is continuous with the rest of nature, he rejected the idea that the science of inquiry is a natural science. Logic is "an a priori science of formal, universal, necessary norms that license metaphysical conclusions" (p. 23). Peirce believed that logical/mathematical proofs are independent of any results of the natural sciences and rely on what he called "diagrammatic reasoning," operations on symbolic relational constructions of a kind with the geometric diagrams Euclid used in proving his theorems of geometry. Diagrams put one in direct contact with the relations under investigation and facilitate observation and experimentation of a kind with inquiry in the natural sciences.

Any idea of where to look for more info? — Manuel

Check out http://www.commens.org/

Understanding justice may be well beyond the realm of human understanding, but injustice might not be. Through understanding what we consider unjust, we may come to reflect on ethical and legal intuitions better than by trying to figure out "what the right thing to do" is, paraphrasing Michael Sandel's book title. I see here an analogy with coming to an understanding of God (theology) or reality (metaphysics). — Tobias

Perhaps. But it should be considered that in respect of both theology and metaphysics, there is (ostensibly at least) an over-arching framework - that of classical and traditional theology and metaphysics. And that in turn embodies further principles such as 'natural law' theory. But from the perspective of today's culture much of that framework is regarded as reactionary or at best archaic. So the question arises, could there be such a conception as natural law set against the backdrop of the supposedly mechanistic picture of the universe that secular culture envisages?

My thoughts about it are that the intuition of 'the deathless' represents a supremely important understanding, but that it is very difficult to understand correctly.

There's a Buddhist sutta (verse) called The Eastern Gatehouse. It comprises as dialogue between the Buddha and Sariputta. (It ought to be said that the figure of Sariputta, one of the Buddha's closest disciples, is customarily the figure in the Buddhist scriptures with whom the Buddha converses about matters of great depth or profundity.) The Buddha opens the dialogue with a rhetorical question:

Sariputta, do you take it on conviction that the faculty of conviction, when developed and pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation? Do you take it on conviction that the faculty of persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation?

In such verses, 'the Deathless' is a synonym for Nibbana, which is elsewhere depicted as freedom from the eternal round of birth and death. It might also be pointed out however that neither is Nibbana heaven - there are indeed heavens and hells in the Buddhist world but they are still aspects of saṃsāra, the round of birth and death.

I think that description is congruent with your second paragraph, but not with the idea of retaining one's sense of self and sense of others. Of course, for this reason, nibbana (Nirvāṇa) is often taken as a nihilistic idea, being the complete cessation of awareness or of being. But another sutra rejects this as a wrong notion (notice again that it is addressed to Sariputta but here represented in the Sanskrit as distinct from the Pali language, because from a Mahāyāna scripture):

Śāriputra, foolish ordinary beings do not have the wisdom that comes from hearing the Dharma. When they hear about a Tathāgata’s entering nirvāṇa, they take the wrong view of cessation or extinction. Because of their perception of cessation or extinction, they claim that the realm of sentient beings decreases. Their claim constitutes an enormously wrong view and an extremely grave, evil karma.

“Furthermore, Śāriputra, from the wrong view of decrease, these sentient beings derive three more wrong views. These three views and the view of decrease, like a net, are inseparable from each other. What are these three views? They are (1) the view of cessation, which means the ultimate end; (2) the view of extinction, which is equated to nirvāṇa; (3) the view that nirvāṇa is a void, which means that nirvāṇa is the ultimate quiet nothingness. Śāriputra, in this way these three views fetter, hold, and impress [sentient beings].

Which, of course, raises the question of the manner of a Buddha's existence in the 'deathless realm' - a question which cannot be answered from within the frame of reference of sentient beings.

"eternal life belongs to those who live in the present" — 180 Proof

Taking into account one's entanglement with actions that are to have future consequences. In other words, living fully in the present would imply the ending of all such ties - holding no hopes, no regrets, fully reconciled in the moment.

I studied physics but was allowed to master in a philosophical part. — Haglund

It's not showing. :roll:

Sorry. Couldn't resist. But you're de-railing the thread again.

Yes. I read all of Feyerabend and wrote a thesis on forms of reality, from empiricism, logical positivism, to van Fraassen, Radder, Pickering, etc — Haglund

As a matter of interest, what school or department was that thesis submitted to?

'Gods'? Gods went out with togas and chariots. I wrote that entry to highlight the distinction between philosophy and physics. They have some areas in common, but they're very different disciplines.

You will often read that the ultimate question for both philosophy and science is the nature of reality. But I would put it differently: I think the ultimate concern for philosophy is the nature of being. And even though ‘reality’ and ‘being’ are both very general words, and probably impossible to completely define, the connotation of concern with the nature of being, is that the matter of the enquiry is the reality of lived experience - not the purported ‘ultimate constituents’ of the objective domain from which one stands apart. Sure that sounds vague compared to the imagined crispness and precision obtainable through scientific measurement, but if the enquiry is focussed through a highly-attuned philosophical intelligence, then it is capable of precision of a different order - one example being the Buddhist abhidharma with its comprehension of the multi-factorial origins of consciousness.

The Via Negativa is associated with Orthodox spirituality and the negative theology of the Patristic tradition. The original point was based on the intuition that God was beyond all speech and description and could only be sought in silent contemplation - it is particularly associated with Orthodox monasticism.

Apophaticism has other applications in rhetorics:

There are many other modes of retaliation, which, for several reasons, I choose not to mention. — Thomas Paine, The American Crisis (1783)

I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience. — Ronald Reagan to Walter Mondale, 1984.

but I can't see how the reference to apophatic theology lends any support to your OP.

:100:

Well in that case you probably know a lot more than I do. That might be the source of my disquiet. I only know smatterings of everything.

Have you ever studied units in philosophy? Philosophy of science - Kuhn, Feyerabend, Polanyi? And of those books I mentioned? like Quantum, Manjit Kumar?

Philosophy has a curriculum and a history. Certainly it's become very eclectic and synthetic in modern culture which is kind of unavoidable, but there are some core themes and ideas running through it which are specific to that curriculum.

As far as physics and philosophy is concerned, they intersect at points but you don't expect that physicists would necessarily have to know anything about the subject of philosophy, and vice versa, although there are some who do - as I mentioned.

My take on your posts is, you have a curious mind, and are open-minded, you're not trying to push pet theorems, which is a big plus, but on the other hand, your posts don't seem particularly well-informed from a philosophical perspective, if you don't mind me saying.

Where do you see me using math? — Haglund

It's not a matter of using maths explicitly, but that most of the concepts in mathematical physics require a grasp of the maths in order to understand. The concept of the Hilbert space can't be understood except through the mathematics. So it's not that there's anything 'wrong' with them, only that unless you have that training, then it's not intelligible.

Would it be possible, though, to unpack "the philosophical implications of physics", without understanding "the debates going on within physics"? — Janus

To some extent! The books I referred to, like Manjit Kumar's Quantum, David Lindley's Uncertainty, Jim Baggott's Farewell to Reality - and of course Tao of Physics - are accessible to the lay reader. I think I have some drift of 'the debate between Bohr and Einstein', of the basic implications of the Copenhagen interpretation of physics vs 'many worlds', and something about physics from the perspective of the history of ideas.

There are philosophically-inclined physicists - the first generation of physicists were very much so. Heisenberg read Plato, Schrodinger read Schopenhauer and Vedanta, and Bohr's ' Principle of Complementarity' was a philosophically-sophisticated idea. But as physics moved from Europe to the USA and increasingly under the patronage of the military-industrial complex then it became much more a matter of shut up and calculate. See Quantum Mysticism: Gone but not Forgotten.

See! Lagrangian. What I said.