Origin Quesitons

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Marvin_Edwards
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Re: Origin Quesitons

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Steve3007 wrote: May 10th, 2020, 2:45 pm
Marvin_Edwards wrote:Right. I am making a faith statement about the nature of empirical reality.
It's not what I'd call faith. I'd call it Inductive reasoning. You see a pattern in your observations. As a working hypothesis, you assume that the pattern will continue. If you call that faith, then almost everything we do at every moment of our lives is an act of faith; my belief that my car is outside my house right now, because that's where I left it a couple of hours ago, is an act of faith.

If we call that faith then we have no word left for the things that we normally refer to as faith.
Like you say, I might be wrong (but what are the chances of that?)
Well, that's an interesting question. What are the chances that an inductively derived generalization will continue to be accurate? Do we conclude that the more instances of a pattern we observe, the higher the chance that the pattern will continue in future observations? That's certainly what we intuitively tend to think, isn't it?
Like I said, it's a matter of faith. It is something that I trust is true, even though the magician makes things appear out of thin air, I still believe that something cannot come from nothing. And I suspect this is a common belief. Even the religious insist that something cannot come from nothing, so they invented something eternal that could create stuff. But that just begs the question "Where did She come from?"
NukeBan
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Re: Origin Quesitons

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Steve3007 wrote: May 10th, 2020, 12:54 pmThe whole thing about how a system of logic invented by half-mad apes can't be expected to understand the Universe;
To clarify a bit, it's not been proven that half mad apes have the ability to understand everything at every scale, thus it's reasonable to question an assumption that they can. Such a process seems especially reasonable on any philosophy forum where close to nobody is doing such questioning.

There's an easy example of why such questioning is reasonable. Should we assume without questioning that some holy book is qualified to answer the largest of questions? Obviously not. I'm just applying this principle to all chosen authorities of all parties, an even handed open minded process which is called reason.

To clarify a bit further, the above is not "the whole thing". It is instead a small part of a larger effort to understand the nature of thought, that which all philosophers and all philosophies are made of.
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Re: Origin Quesitons

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Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 10th, 2020, 4:25 pm If you call that faith, then almost everything we do at every moment of our lives is an act of faith; my belief that my car is outside my house right now, because that's where I left it a couple of hours ago, is an act of faith.
Apologies, but this is a VERY common error. You're starting with a daily life human scale activity where we have proven competence and then trying to map that on some of the very largest questions about the most fundamental nature of all reality. Your belief about your car is not faith, your belief about nothing being incapable of generating something is.
Even the religious insist that something cannot come from nothing, so they invented something eternal that could create stuff.
Like I said, very common error. And at least those who started the world's major religions have the excuse that they didn't have access to modern physics, which reveals reality to be a very strange place indeed.

A place to begin again could be to back up, slow down, and question whether something and nothing are really two different phenomena. As example, every something is made overwhelmingly of what we call nothing. At the least this should generate some questions about the validity of our simplistic either/or paradigm of something vs. nothing.

EXAMPLE: The greatest minds among us have been arguing for centuries about whether God exists or not, one or the other, yes or no. And yet when we observe reality, the overwhelming vast majority of it can not be easily filed in to either the "exists" or "doesn't exist" categories.

This is evidence (not proof) that our minds may be creating simplistic dualistic either/or concepts which don't always reflect the nature of reality very well. At human scale such simplistic concepts work well enough, but that doesn't automatically equal them being useful for the very largest of questions.
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Re: Origin Quesitons

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NukeBan wrote: May 10th, 2020, 7:13 pm
Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 10th, 2020, 4:25 pm If you call that faith, then almost everything we do at every moment of our lives is an act of faith; my belief that my car is outside my house right now, because that's where I left it a couple of hours ago, is an act of faith.
Apologies, but this is a VERY common error. You're starting with a daily life human scale activity where we have proven competence and then trying to map that on some of the very largest questions about the most fundamental nature of all reality. Your belief about your car is not faith, your belief about nothing being incapable of generating something is.
Even the religious insist that something cannot come from nothing, so they invented something eternal that could create stuff.
Like I said, very common error. And at least those who started the world's major religions have the excuse that they didn't have access to modern physics, which reveals reality to be a very strange place indeed.

A place to begin again could be to back up, slow down, and question whether something and nothing are really two different phenomena. As example, every something is made overwhelmingly of what we call nothing. At the least this should generate some questions about the validity of our simplistic either/or paradigm of something vs. nothing.

EXAMPLE: The greatest minds among us have been arguing for centuries about whether God exists or not, one or the other, yes or no. And yet when we observe reality, the overwhelming vast majority of it can not be easily filed in to either the "exists" or "doesn't exist" categories.

This is evidence (not proof) that our minds may be creating simplistic dualistic either/or concepts which don't always reflect the nature of reality very well. At human scale such simplistic concepts work well enough, but that doesn't automatically equal them being useful for the very largest of questions.
Personally, I like to grab gray by the throat and shake it until it's black and white. But, to each his own.
NukeBan
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Re: Origin Quesitons

Post by NukeBan »

Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 10th, 2020, 7:45 pm Personally, I like to grab gray by the throat and shake it until it's black and white. But, to each his own.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. Thought wants to take the gray, and divide it in to black and white. There's a built-in bias for division which should be taken in to account. Everyone is free to ignore this built-in bias, but the price tag may be a distorted understanding of reality.
Steve3007
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Re: Origin Quesitons

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NukeBan wrote:To clarify a bit, it's not been proven that half mad apes have the ability to understand everything at every scale, thus it's reasonable to question an assumption that they can.
"Proof" is itself part of the reasoning and logic that those half-mad apes try to map onto the world in order to attempt to describe and predict (or some might say understand) it. So no, obviously it would make no sense to talk about proving that we have the ability to understand everything at every scale. That would amount to talking about proving the applicability of proof.

I suspect one reason that few people discuss this idea of yours (that our system of logic and reasoning is not capable of understanding everything at every scale) is that, by definition, there's nothing to say about it. Every time we attempt to say anything about anything we are using our language, logic and reason. If you propose that some things are forever beyond the grasp of those tools then obviously we can never know the extent to which that might be true and we can never say anything at all about those things.

This is what you've persistently said to various posters, on all sides, who have tried to engage in the age old theism versus atheism debate isn't it? ...
Such a process seems especially reasonable on any philosophy forum where close to nobody is doing such questioning.
...So, given that you yourself have said that there's nothing to discuss on that subject, what process do you have in mind?
There's an easy example of why such questioning is reasonable. Should we assume without questioning that some holy book is qualified to answer the largest of questions? Obviously not. I'm just applying this principle to all chosen authorities of all parties...
And, after we've answered your question with "no" in all cases, what more is there to say? As I've said, if you propose that some things are forever beyond our ability to reason then, by definition, we can't say or know anything about those things.
...an even handed open minded process which is called reason.
Careful now. The thing which you are proposing to be limited, and to be fundamentally incapable of understanding/answering what you refer to as the biggest questions, is human reason. Are you now proposing to use reason to demonstrate the in-applicability of reason to big questions?
To clarify a bit further, the above is not "the whole thing". It is instead a small part of a larger effort to understand the nature of thought, that which all philosophers and all philosophies are made of.
So, in what sense do you seek to understand the nature of thought, other than to state (as you often used to do previously) that it is divisive and that it is not unlimited?
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Re: Origin Quesitons

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Marvin_Edwards wrote:Personally, I like to grab gray by the throat and shake it until it's black and white. But, to each his own.
I tend to find that the opposite happens. If I shake black-and-white it turns to grey. But no amount of shaking of grey will turn it back into black-and-white. Or at least, not on a sensible timescale. But maybe this metaphor is getting too strained.
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Re: Origin Quesitons

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Steve3007 wrote: May 11th, 2020, 5:00 am
Marvin_Edwards wrote:Personally, I like to grab gray by the throat and shake it until it's black and white. But, to each his own.
I tend to find that the opposite happens. If I shake black-and-white it turns to grey. But no amount of shaking of grey will turn it back into black-and-white. Or at least, not on a sensible timescale. But maybe this metaphor is getting too strained.
Well I suppose it's a silly thing for me to be saying in the first place. There are problems though that can be better addressed with pragmatism. Definitions of terms, for example, can be found by looking for their utility, that is, how they are used in operation. We needn't trap ourselves in our own abstractions.

All theories of existence, for example, must cope with the same real world problems. The atheist and the theist both live on the same planet, so both philosophies must adapt to the same reality. Translating problems into concrete examples should make cooperation easier. Empiricism sorts things out.
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Re: Origin Quesitons

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NukeBan wrote: May 10th, 2020, 7:13 pm
Steve3007 wrote: May 10th, 2020, 2:45 pm If you call that faith, then almost everything we do at every moment of our lives is an act of faith; my belief that my car is outside my house right now, because that's where I left it a couple of hours ago, is an act of faith.
Apologies, but this is a VERY common error. You're starting with a daily life human scale activity where we have proven competence and then trying to map that on some of the very largest questions about the most fundamental nature of all reality. Your belief about your car is not faith, your belief about nothing being incapable of generating something is.
I think they are both, equally, faith statements. And I believe it is more likely that the car would be stolen than that something could come from nothing.
NukeBan wrote: May 10th, 2020, 7:13 pm
Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 10th, 2020, 4:25 pm Even the religious insist that something cannot come from nothing, so they invented something eternal that could create stuff.
Like I said, very common error. And at least those who started the world's major religions have the excuse that they didn't have access to modern physics, which reveals reality to be a very strange place indeed.

A place to begin again could be to back up, slow down, and question whether something and nothing are really two different phenomena. As example, every something is made overwhelmingly of what we call nothing. At the least this should generate some questions about the validity of our simplistic either/or paradigm of something vs. nothing.
I'm a pragmatist. Although there are relatively wide-open spaces between the electrons and the nucleus, I'll still claim the table is solid if I can set a cup of coffee on it and it doesn't fall through. Perhaps all matter is nothing more than fields of energy. That's still "something" rather than "nothing".

A flaw of reductionism is that we are tempted to say that when we have explained something, that we have somehow "explained it away". But functionally, its still there. We've only explained what it's made of.
NukeBan wrote: May 10th, 2020, 7:13 pm EXAMPLE: The greatest minds among us have been arguing for centuries about whether God exists or not, one or the other, yes or no. And yet when we observe reality, the overwhelming vast majority of it can not be easily filed in to either the "exists" or "doesn't exist" categories.
So, like Steve's car being still outside, it remains a matter of faith. And we'll adjust our faith to accommodate reality when they come into conflict. For example, "God always answers prayers, but sometimes the answer is no."
NukeBan wrote: May 10th, 2020, 7:13 pm This is evidence (not proof) that our minds may be creating simplistic dualistic either/or concepts which don't always reflect the nature of reality very well. At human scale such simplistic concepts work well enough, but that doesn't automatically equal them being useful for the very largest of questions.
I'm skeptical as to whether "the very largest of questions" are meaningful or relevant, especially if their answers remain unknowable. At least with pragmatism we can translate these questions into something useful, by seeking their implications (if any) to daily life.
Steve3007
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Re: Origin Quesitons

Post by Steve3007 »

NukeBan wrote:
Marvin_Edwards wrote:If you call that faith, then almost everything we do at every moment of our lives is an act of faith; my belief that my car is outside my house right now, because that's where I left it a couple of hours ago, is an act of faith.
Apologies, but this is a VERY common error. You're starting with a daily life human scale activity where we have proven competence and then trying to map that on some of the very largest questions about the most fundamental nature of all reality. Your belief about your car is not faith, your belief about nothing being incapable of generating something is.
You've got a bit mixed up with your quotes here. The quote you've attributed above to Marvin_Edwards was me replying to Marvin_Edwards, and your reply to it seems to suggest that by cutting off the start you've interpreted it as saying the opposite of what it actually says.

Here it is in situ:
viewtopic.php?p=357611#p357611

As I said, in my view, neither beliefs about my car nor beliefs about conservation of matter are acts of faith. They are inductive generalizations. Faith covers such things as belief in God. Neither my belief that my car is outside where I left it nor my belief that matter is not created or destroyed are in the same category as such things as belief in God. They are generalizations abstracted from experience.
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Re: Origin Quesitons

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NukeBan wrote:It seems we agree logically, but what remains unclear is the degree to which logic accurately represents reality.
Just to briefly make this point again:

Such concepts as logic, reason, proof and language go together. They are parts of the same system. Bearing that in mind: It is of course quite conceivable that large swathes of reality are fundamentally un-representable by our systems of logic. If that is so, then they are beyond the reach of such things as language, reason and proof. That being so, it is absolutely impossible for us ever to know of their existence or describe them in any way. They are beyond any form of human analysis or discussion.

Given the above, is there any meaningful sense in which you think it is useful to think of those parts of reality as existing? Should we simply note that they exist, note that we've no idea how much of reality they represent, note that there is nothing whatsoever to say about them, and then move on to things that it is possible to talk about? Or should we do more or less than that?
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Re: Origin Quesitons

Post by Steve3007 »

Marvin_Edwards wrote:Although there are relatively wide-open spaces between the electrons and the nucleus, I'll still claim the table is solid if I can set a cup of coffee on it and it doesn't fall through.
Why would these discoveries about electrons and nuclei cause anybody to change their view as to whether a table is solid? If they were thinking clearly, then I would expect them to consider themselves to have discovered something about what it means for something to be solid, not to have discovered that the table somehow isn't solid.
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Re: Origin Quesitons

Post by Steve3007 »

Marvin_Edwards wrote:I'm skeptical as to whether "the very largest of questions" are meaningful or relevant, especially if their answers remain unknowable.
I am similarly sceptical. If we decide that there exist some questions and that we don't really know clearly what the questions are and are absolutely incapable of ever knowing their answers, it strikes me that they're not very interesting questions.
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Re: Origin Quesitons

Post by Atla »

Steve3007 wrote: May 10th, 2020, 1:02 pm
Atla wrote:You also say that it's not logical that something can't come from nothing.
If you begin a sentence with "You say..." then please end it with something that I've said.
In another thread you argued for pages against the idea that something from nothing is logically impossible.

Whatever, you talk about pure logic when it suits you, and you talk about logic applied to reality when it suits you. Like one could freely flip-flop between the two and then deny any contradictions.
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Atla
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Re: Origin Quesitons

Post by Atla »

Maybe it's really true that the three classical "laws" of logic are simply not part of some or most people's natural thinking. Hence all the confusion.
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