A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Use this philosophy forum to discuss and debate general philosophy topics that don't fit into one of the other categories.

This forum is NOT for factual, informational or scientific questions about philosophy (e.g. "What year was Socrates born?"). Those kind of questions can be asked in the off-topic section.
Post Reply
User avatar
Sy Borg
Site Admin
Posts: 14997
Joined: December 16th, 2013, 9:05 pm

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Sy Borg »

Atreyu wrote:
Atreyu wrote:Altered states of consciousness can only be understood by experiencing them (empiricism),
That will be like saying that the only way blindness can be explained is by going blind yourself.
Count Lucanor wrote:No, because I said "understood" not "explained". Nice try.

Of course you can explain things you know nothing about and have never experienced, such as near death states. People do it all the time. What you can't do is understand near death experiences unless you experience them yourself.

So a blind man can explain (falsely) what 'red' is. It will be an explanation based on imagination, but an explanation nonetheless. But the blind man will never be able to understand 'red' unless he can experience it. And in addition to experiencing it he would also need a certain amount of knowledge about it as well.
We have just entered Mary's Room (aka the knowledge argument). This ultimately speaks of Nagle's (obvious, but well elucidated) observation about the relative opacity of each entity's conscious workings. All we can do is draw up rough approximations from intuition, behaviour, and expression.

The "fireworks" reported in dying brains is extraordinary and interesting. One would logically expect that, rather than falling into ultra lucid states, the dying brain would simply fall into chaos until it was so disorienting that the person would pass out.
Gary_M_Washburn
Posts: 47
Joined: October 11th, 2017, 8:55 am

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

Greta,
There is also something called "exploding head syndrome". It can happen while conscious. I can testify to this.

I have Moral Questions and Equality and Partiality, but no subject listings. If your references (to Nagel) are in either of these please guide me to them for a more complete response.

The thing is, are we trying to create an edifice (wall), or tear one down? Is philosophy science or critique? I mean, what we try to do or conceive may well be quite inferior to what we win by not trying, but by critiquing, instead. We cannot teach our children to become speakers in the language we already take for granted as if born to it, and, similarly, we may acquire understanding, even a kind of experience of each other, not from what we try to find in each other, but by what we win by critiquing that effort and each other.

-- Updated November 25th, 2017, 9:37 am to add the following --

Qualia? I don't think that's going to bring any clarity to this discussion. Wikipedia says Nagel's contribution to that confusion is to confuse it further by claiming bats have a sense we do not. Fact is, we do. There are even 'apps' that turn a personal device into a sonar system, but some blind persons can do this unassisted, by creating a sound of their own. But the analytic penchant for slicing reality into distinct pieces and then posing the problem of getting from one part to the other is just a slightly updated version of Zeno's paradox. The real problem is that there is no such thing as synthesis. There really is only analysis. Which leaves us in a quandary about how we arrive at the initial condition for analysis even to get started. The answer is that the analysis is incapable of completeness. Its final term, its last and least reductive term, is the differing of all its terms. What 'connects' two conditions divided by intrinsically differentiated terms is that each is its own challenge or critique of the incompleteness of the other. Each alone fails to be anything at all, and it's just impertinence or anomaly. But together they become a community changed the conditions of each other. If they do indeed establish such a community, and do so as the result of rigorous analysis, the limitations of analysis become the engine of the only synthetic term. Between the ontic and the ontological, between the red apple and the redness of it, and between my perception and yours, of this difference, we engender a language expressing both, both the difference of perception and the difference between this case and its being a case 'of'. Between subject and predicate. Between the ontic and the ontological.
User avatar
Count Lucanor
Posts: 2318
Joined: May 6th, 2017, 5:08 pm
Favorite Philosopher: Umberto Eco
Location: Panama
Contact:

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Count Lucanor »

BlindedWantsToSee wrote: Count Lucanor, the regularity of physical forces are testifying to us that intelligence, purpose and consciousness are attributes or properties of physical forces, of energy, and of matter.
It happens to testify just the opposite. The consistency and predictable repetitiveness of the laws of physics point at invariant mechanical cause and effect processes, in which given sets of conditions produce the same results. Two hydrogen atoms will join one oxygen atom to form a water molecule, which will have the corresponding properties, as in all matter. Consciousness and purpose are absent in this relation, otherwise matter in general would behave without any restrictions, capriciously, purely determined by intentions, and you would see water not being water, or gravity working differently under the same conditions. The regularity of nature's forces implies that there's nothing making choices.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote:The claim that matter or energy is not, or cannot be, conscious or intelligent is just an assumption, not a proven fact.
That's not precisely what is being claimed. In fact, living beings, which are nothing but physical entities, are conscious. We say they are alive and conscious because of the type of processes and functions that they carry out autonomously, by themselves. They have been singled out and explained thoroughly. And we have seen that this living beings have operated in a very tiny fraction of time and in a minuscule place, overwhelmingly overshadowed by a vast, soulless, cold universe of matter and energy that does not show any of the processes and functions of living matter. And that's it. Whenever someone wants to show that the universe is conscious, I mean, if they really want to make a solid case, they will have to show something more than just stating the baseless opinion that "it looks as if being alive and having consciousness".
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: I can't explain it all or prove anything, but it is obvious to me that energy (or at least some of it) is intelligent. You are justified in dismissing my claims or trying to debunk them, if that is what you would like to do. However, this discussion about the material or non-material nature of our reality is really of no consequence to the main idea of this post, to what I'm claiming regarding the nature of life.
Since you are acknowledging that you are not able to present and sustain your case, there's no need to debunk much. If you only feel compelled to state the things in which you believe, I can just say I don't have to believe them.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: As an illustration, let us assume that sunlight or solar radiation is harmful to human skin and can cause skin cancer. I don't know if this is really true, but for this example let's say it is true. I come along and say: 'hey, everybody, I have noticed that exposure to the sun is damaging our skins and giving some of us skin cancer. We should do something to protect ourselves'. The sun may or may not be consciously and purposefully hurting us. But the fact is, in this example, the sun is damaging people's skin and giving some of them skin cancer. The sun may not want people to get cancer or be aware at all, yet it is doing the harm. This is why I say that the exact nature of the Source is not really relevant here. Life is a certain way, and this way is hurtful for the vast majority of the 7 billion human souls upon this world. That is what I am talking about.
The sun, however, is not a mysterious thing, inaccessible to our senses and lacking concrete physical properties. We know what the sun is made of and which things it does that have an effect on people's skins. We wouldn't know it's the sun doing the harm if we didn't know all these properties. It's been a long time since we lacked enough tools to make inferences based solely on wild guesses from naked eye observations. So the source of the harm is relevant, since its properties, related to its essential nature as a star that emanates ultraviolet radiation, are also directly related to the effect caused on people's skins.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: Yes! Imperfect nature of the designer is the right answer. Ok, you are going to want proof for everything I say. I don't have proof; I have hints and clues, evidence. Here is where I get the information that helped me arrive to the conclusion of imperfect designer. There is a video on YouTube entitled "Lloyd Pye Everything You Know Is Wrong". I told Gary I would not bring this up, but it's necessary here. In the video, Lloyd Pye explains why he believes that human beings were genetically engineered by an alien race of people about 200,000 years ago. They did not do a good job.
I'm very sorry, but I'll have to pass on this one. I don't think I can get into a fruitful discussion with a "Vondanikener", any more than with a "flatearther". For pure respect, I'll just watch the video (hope is not too long) and will make no comment.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: YES! Right again. I can't agree with you more here. We disagree, it seems, because you believe there is just nothing beyond what we can see, and hear, and touch, and smell, and taste or measure with scientific instruments; and I believe there is something that escapes our perception, and senses, and ability to measure scientifically. It is definitely not a supreme ruler that puts harmony in the universe.

Life is what it is, and there is a reason for that. It is not an accident. I have given my theory of why life is the way it is.
Let's put it this way: I prefer someone believing aliens, made of flesh and bone, are behind the emergence of life on Earth, instead of divine immaterial entities dwelling in a spiritual dimension.

-- Updated November 25th, 2017, 10:15 pm to add the following --
Atreyu wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote: That will be like saying that the only way blindness can be explained is by going blind yourself.
No, because I said "understood" not "explained". Nice try.
Explaining and understanding are just two instances of the same process, so it really makes no difference. I could have used "understood" or "explained" in the same sentence and the meaning is the same.
Atreyu wrote: Of course you can explain things you know nothing about and have never experienced, such as near death states. People do it all the time. What you can't do is understand near death experiences unless you experience them yourself.
Well then, you're admitting you cannot understand anything related to so called "near death experiences", so you cannot assert nothing about it either. And about people who claim they have experienced them, you can only have their claims, right?
Atreyu wrote: So a blind man can explain (falsely) what 'red' is. It will be an explanation based on imagination, but an explanation nonetheless. But the blind man will never be able to understand 'red' unless he can experience it. And in addition to experiencing it he would also need a certain amount of knowledge about it as well.
But you're talking from an omniscient point of view: as if you DID KNOW that the blind man cannot experience red, despite yourself asserting that only the experiencer can understand the experience. How did you get to understand blindness as being unable to catch redness if you have never lived it yourself? How would you get to talk about "altered states of vision"?

And what happens when the blind man comes back to having vision? His explanation is any better now for the inquirers? Note that the inquirers are exactly in the same position they were before: they have not lived blindness.

Now add that people claiming to have had "near death" experiences are not really dead, otherwise they would not be talking about it. So they are not talking about the experience of being "fully" dead. If you get me a one-month corpse talking, don't hesitate to call me.
Atreyu wrote: But they are 'out of reach' for everyone, including the people experiencing them. Even the experiencers themselves will not be able to understand their experiences without a sufficient amount of knowledge about their nature.
Understanding is the resultant of knowledge and experience.
But then you're admitting that experience alone is not enough for understanding something. In any case, it seems you're equating or reducing "experience" to "personal experience". So, the ONLY scientific research of blindness, if we followed your argument, would come from blind people. The only scientific knowledge about Jupiter would come from a traveler to that planet. The only valid scientific research of hurricanes would come from people that have been swept away by one. And the only scientific knowledge of the mechanics involved in hitting a baseball, will come from a baseball player. It doesn't make sense. Actually, experience encompasses more than eye-witnessing, it involves also indirect sensing of data by measuring instruments, creating models, testing, analysis and many other tools that, combined, actually produce a better understanding of phenomena than plain sight. That's why blind people must learn from the science of vision to really understand their blindness. And that's why engineers can work in the design of baseballs and baseball bats. That is not to say that anyone can understand how it feels to be blind better than a blind person, but in feeling the processes involved are more related to emotions, than to the cognitive high-order reasoning of the neocortex. Just in case: that's the part where you actually understand things.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Gary_M_Washburn
Posts: 47
Joined: October 11th, 2017, 8:55 am

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

Count,
I mostly agree with your critiques of Blinded. He is trying to create a shortcut to wisdom. There is none. But that's not the end of the story. Not even the beginning. Logicians speak, boastfully I believe, of truth and fact. But there is and can be neither fact nor truth in the rules of inference. Only validity. Which is very much not the same. Fact and truth are matters of experience, not inference. The empirical and 'pure reason' cannot be reconciled by fiat. Curiously, it is our emotions that motivate us between these. In this sense feeling is a 'higher faculty' than either reason or perception. Feeling is the recognition of the impossibility of moving between empirical fact and truth to rational inference without 'deranging' (as some French thinkers put it) or denaturing the terms, and our competence in them, of both. And if emotions can move us to seek a shortcut, they are also indispensably part of pressing the rigor of both to a fuller experience and more valid analysis. This, because recognition of the hermetic seal between experience and reason is what emotion is.
BlindedWantsToSee
Posts: 58
Joined: October 12th, 2017, 10:56 pm

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by BlindedWantsToSee »

Count Lucanor wrote:... The consistency and predictable repetitiveness of the laws of physics point at invariant mechanical cause and effect processes, in which given sets of conditions produce the same results. Two hydrogen atoms will join one oxygen atom to form a water molecule, which will have the corresponding properties, as in all matter. Consciousness and purpose are absent in this relation, otherwise matter in general would behave without any restrictions, capriciously, purely determined by intentions, and you would see water not being water, or gravity working differently under the same conditions. The regularity of nature's forces implies that there's nothing making choices.
I really need to get off this particular subject because it is inconsequential to the main idea of the theory I'm proposing regarding the iniquity of the nature of life. However, before I do that, please allow me to just say that matter is not just matter. Water, for example, is not just water. Water is actually energy which for a time takes the form of water. That energy is the same energy that takes the form of a rock sometimes and the same energy that takes the form of a human being. This energy behaves without any restrictions, capriciously, purely determined by its intentions when it takes the form of a living being that displays consciousness, or intelligence, or purpose; but other times it takes the form of heat or of the various templates galaxies follow when they form. Energy behaves capriciously and intelligently because it behaves with absolute regularity in what we call inert matter, but it displays irregularity in what we call conscious or living beings; yet it is all the same energy.

To me, just like to you, the idea of a divine, all powerful, perfectly benign figure does not make sense, based on the evidence I see all around me. I mentioned the word "God" in the body of my theory as a means to making myself understood by those who believe in such being. However, the fact that a cosmic Santa Claus cannot exist in reality does not mean that our universe cannot be alive or conscious. I say it is alive and conscious because of the type of processes and functions that it carries out autonomously, by itself. We could not be intelligent, unless the energy that makes up the whole of our beings (and the whole of the universe) is intelligent. Anyway, this is the last I will say about this topic. I'm pretty sure we cannot persuade each other as to the correctness of each other's point of view. I like your style of argument and the effort you put in this discussion, though.

Count, thanks for your intention of at least trying to watch the video I recommended. It is long, so I'm not too hopeful you will be interested, maybe you'll be able to watch it someday, if you are totally bored and have absolutely nothing better to do :)

-- Updated November 26th, 2017, 3:33 pm to add the following --
Greta wrote:We have just entered Mary's Room (aka the knowledge argument). This ultimately speaks of Nagle's (obvious, but well elucidated) observation about the relative opacity of each entity's conscious workings. All we can do is draw up rough approximations from intuition, behaviour, and expression.

The "fireworks" reported in dying brains is extraordinary and interesting. One would logically expect that, rather than falling into ultra lucid states, the dying brain would simply fall into chaos until it was so disorienting that the person would pass out.
... draw up rough approximations... + ultra lucid states... when dying! This makes total sense to me.
User avatar
Count Lucanor
Posts: 2318
Joined: May 6th, 2017, 5:08 pm
Favorite Philosopher: Umberto Eco
Location: Panama
Contact:

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Count Lucanor »

Gary_M_Washburn wrote:Count,
I mostly agree with your critiques of Blinded. He is trying to create a shortcut to wisdom. There is none. But that's not the end of the story. Not even the beginning. Logicians speak, boastfully I believe, of truth and fact. But there is and can be neither fact nor truth in the rules of inference. Only validity. Which is very much not the same. Fact and truth are matters of experience, not inference. The empirical and 'pure reason' cannot be reconciled by fiat.
Facts are related to our convictions about what is objectively real, what there is in the world independent of us. Facts are then found in the intersection of logical reasoning and experience, the type of inference introduced by Pierce as abduction. Truths, on the other hand, are related to certainties held intersubjectively, whether they point to the facts of abductive reasoning, or to pure logical relations (deduction). Validation comes from its intersubjectiveness. The rules of inference operate in this field of social consensus and can produce truths that are valid in their particular sphere, either inductive or deductive, but if they don't conflate in abductive reasoning to yield the best explanation, they will be not be dealing with facts, just partial or relative truths, or no truth at all.
Gary_M_Washburn wrote: Curiously, it is our emotions that motivate us between these. In this sense feeling is a 'higher faculty' than either reason or perception. Feeling is the recognition of the impossibility of moving between empirical fact and truth to rational inference without 'deranging' (as some French thinkers put it) or denaturing the terms, and our competence in them, of both. And if emotions can move us to seek a shortcut, they are also indispensably part of pressing the rigor of both to a fuller experience and more valid analysis. This, because recognition of the hermetic seal between experience and reason is what emotion is.
Validation, as social consensus, takes us to paradigms. No doubt that, as humans, our emotions and self-interest drives intervene. Non-bias, completely neutral scientists doesn't exist. They are human, all too human. What saves the day is the method itself, designed to withstand the predicaments of paradigmatic constructions, of social validations, so that objective truths and facts are revealed, despite our desires. Emotions can intervene and drive people to proof what they want to be held as facts, but they'll face the opposite reaction from skeptics, probably moved by their own interests. But both will move seeking objectivity. The French guys, of course, as we know, inaugurated (did they?) another type of struggle for truth, one in which there's no objective truth at all. But that's another discussion.

-- Updated November 26th, 2017, 10:57 pm to add the following --
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: I really need to get off this particular subject because it is inconsequential to the main idea of the theory I'm proposing regarding the iniquity of the nature of life. However, before I do that, please allow me to just say that matter is not just matter. Water, for example, is not just water. Water is actually energy which for a time takes the form of water. That energy is the same energy that takes the form of a rock sometimes and the same energy that takes the form of a human being. This energy behaves without any restrictions, capriciously, purely determined by its intentions when it takes the form of a living being that displays consciousness, or intelligence, or purpose; but other times it takes the form of heat or of the various templates galaxies follow when they form. Energy behaves capriciously and intelligently because it behaves with absolute regularity in what we call inert matter, but it displays irregularity in what we call conscious or living beings; yet it is all the same energy.
All I will say is: E = mc^2. There you have a non-capricious notion of energy and mass.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: Count, thanks for your intention of at least trying to watch the video I recommended. It is long, so I'm not too hopeful you will be interested, maybe you'll be able to watch it someday, if you are totally bored and have absolutely nothing better to do :)
Actually, as it was Saturday night and just returned from a tiring trip, so I had nothing else to do and watched most of the video. Just skipped some parts. It was entertaining and reminded me of the days as a young enthusiast of these subjects. I just loved "In Search of..." with Nimoy and consumed a lot of UFO and cryptozoology pseudoscience literature back in those days. I got over it, of course, but the entertainment is still there for sure.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Gary_M_Washburn
Posts: 47
Joined: October 11th, 2017, 8:55 am

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

Count
Validity is the only mode of correct inference. A syllogism is not true or false. Only its premise is true or false, and logic simply has no tools for determining which. Abduction is just another word for a guess. Combined with something like Ockham's Razor it gives itself scientific smelling airs (Pierce's forte!). But it is still an emotive state. And emotion is the energy of its conclusion. Reason has no unassailable axioms. The "Law of the Excluded Middle' is only valid a priori as a relation between quantifiers, and this only becomes invisible to its practitioners where the universal qualifier (is), itself gets taken as a quantifier. Check out Kant's 'Square of Opposition' to see what I mean. It is only conflicting quantifiers that are strict contradictories. Only the logic of contraries, while subject to the same rules of validity, engenders the conditions for a language by which the relation between fact and inference can become an issue. And if that relation cannot be resolved in either experience or in logic, then the continuity of reason must have its moods. That dynamism is intrinsic to and more fundamental than the axioms of logic and science. But it is also far more fruitful in the production of terms than either alone ever could be.

Like contraries that prove contradiction no axiom of anything real, the calculus is a system of summation of geometric shapes (slender triangles) supposedly defined mathematically to approximate each other, though this is only necessary precisely because some portion of the curve so described is impossible to define either mathematically (at least in a way that supports inferences) or by the rules of geometry. Kepler reduced Tycho Brahe's data about comets and found that the area described by the arc centered upon their orbits around the sun was the same for any given period of time. This introduced the idea that otherwise indefinable change could be analyzed mathematically through the calculus (though Archimedes may have invented the idea some eight hundred years earlier). Problem is, the whole system relies on a patently false assumption. The assumption, that is, that the irrational portion of the summation can be made negligible via the reduction to infinitely small segments in the summation. But as the segments shrink the irrational portion does not vanish, and, I rather suspect, actually overwhelms the rational part long before the infinitesimal is 'reached'. Quibble about this as you will, but the same reasoning supports either claim. But my claim is, not just that the irrational is not negligible at all, but that it is in fact the very issue claimed to be rendered rational! That issue is time.

E=MC2 is rather more capricious than you seem to realize! Why only so much? Why stop there? Why doesn't the whole universe blow up? What seems such a lot is really only a little at a time. Infinitesimal, in fact. In the macro world as we experience it the only form of energy is heat. Even radiation is particles. Of matter. Does matter limit how much shaking up it will tolerate? After all, if there were no such limit, what would energy be?
User avatar
Count Lucanor
Posts: 2318
Joined: May 6th, 2017, 5:08 pm
Favorite Philosopher: Umberto Eco
Location: Panama
Contact:

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Count Lucanor »

Gary_M_Washburn wrote:Count
Validity is the only mode of correct inference. A syllogism is not true or false. Only its premise is true or false, and logic simply has no tools for determining which.
Logical validity is only related to the formal coherence of the syllogism, so that given premises will lead to the same conclusion in all possible worlds. But this type of inference, unless composed of tautologies (which will count as axioms), doesn't provide truths about the real world by itself, as I already explained. Being valid only in its deductive sphere, it produces half-truths or no truths at all.

That's why we must be concerned with the facts of the world, which implies taking a look at the premises of the argument, and determining if they are true or false. If the argument is valid and the premises are true, then the argument yields a truthful fact. Each of the statements in the premises could be either analytical or synthetic, allowing different combinations that will produce different type of statements, either analytical or synthetic. So, unless proceeding by pure tautologies, our problems about the facticity of things must come from merging logical reasoning with experience, which is what abduction is about.
Gary_M_Washburn wrote: Abduction is just another word for a guess. Combined with something like Ockham's Razor it gives itself scientific smelling airs (Pierce's forte!).
That's of course an oversimplification to dismiss abduction summarily, but since you're advocating that nothing can be inferred logically that will produce true statements, I guess you have no other way to say it.
Gary_M_Washburn wrote: But it is still an emotive state. And emotion is the energy of its conclusion. Reason has no unassailable axioms.
An emotion the energy of its conclusion? Is this out of a Dada Engine? Other than sounding like any other postmodernist essayist, there's nothing there to reflect upon.
Gary_M_Washburn wrote: The "Law of the Excluded Middle' is only valid a priori as a relation between quantifiers, and this only becomes invisible to its practitioners where the universal qualifier (is), itself gets taken as a quantifier.
To be honest, I'm familiar with universal and existential quantifiers, but not so with the term "universal qualifier", which seems to be replacing "universal quantifier". At the same time, "is" takes the function of a copula in a sentence, which is a qualifier by definition, that just affirms or negates, so I don't get how it gets to express quantity without referring to a typical quantifier. You better show some examples if you want to make your point crystal clear.
Gary_M_Washburn wrote: Check out Kant's 'Square of Opposition' to see what I mean. It is only conflicting quantifiers that are strict contradictories. Only the logic of contraries, while subject to the same rules of validity, engenders the conditions for a language by which the relation between fact and inference can become an issue. And if that relation cannot be resolved in either experience or in logic, then the continuity of reason must have its moods. That dynamism is intrinsic to and more fundamental than the axioms of logic and science. But it is also far more fruitful in the production of terms than either alone ever could be.

Like contraries that prove contradiction no axiom of anything real, the calculus is a system of summation of geometric shapes (slender triangles) supposedly defined mathematically to approximate each other, though this is only necessary precisely because some portion of the curve so described is impossible to define either mathematically (at least in a way that supports inferences) or by the rules of geometry. Kepler reduced Tycho Brahe's data about comets and found that the area described by the arc centered upon their orbits around the sun was the same for any given period of time. This introduced the idea that otherwise indefinable change could be analyzed mathematically through the calculus (though Archimedes may have invented the idea some eight hundred years earlier). Problem is, the whole system relies on a patently false assumption. The assumption, that is, that the irrational portion of the summation can be made negligible via the reduction to infinitely small segments in the summation. But as the segments shrink the irrational portion does not vanish, and, I rather suspect, actually overwhelms the rational part long before the infinitesimal is 'reached'. Quibble about this as you will, but the same reasoning supports either claim. But my claim is, not just that the irrational is not negligible at all, but that it is in fact the very issue claimed to be rendered rational! That issue is time.
Interesting story, but if Kepler didn't get his calculus right, surely Newton and Leibniz did manage to get it right. Even Godel's incompleteness theorems won't make any serious scientist or mathematician to back down on the possibility of arriving to truth and facts. That Godel proved his theorems is enough indication.
Gary_M_Washburn wrote: E=MC2 is rather more capricious than you seem to realize! Why only so much? Why stop there? Why doesn't the whole universe blow up? What seems such a lot is really only a little at a time. Infinitesimal, in fact. In the macro world as we experience it the only form of energy is heat. Even radiation is particles. Of matter. Does matter limit how much shaking up it will tolerate? After all, if there were no such limit, what would energy be?
E=MC2 capricious? Heat the only form of energy? If you're going to go against mainstream physics (which is actually OK), at least produce some insight and evidence of this, perhaps some new branch of research, whatever, but don't assume we have to take it as you say it, prima facie.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Gary_M_Washburn
Posts: 47
Joined: October 11th, 2017, 8:55 am

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

Not a multiverse subscriber!? Correct: there is no inductive term. The only induction is the exhaustion of reduction (a more correct term than 'deduction'). 'If...., then'? The subjunctive is internally contradictory. If there is any if about it, there is no if about it. If there is no if about it it's all pretty iffy. To get from 'if' to 'then' you must violate some 'axiom'. I would not say that inference is impossible, only that the terms of any inference necessarily emerge from a dynamic of violating them. Either the inference (or 'extension') violates the premise or the axioms navigating that extension. The quantifier cannot determine how many and which one in the same logical progression. That is to say, analysis always in some sense doesn't know what the hell it is talking about. This is why philosophy falls into two camps, analysis (Anglo-American) and traditional terms or tradition of terms (Continental). Emotion is the engine of all linguistic functions. This means that, because reason is always in violation of its terms or its axioms (and after a few steps in the process unable to know which) the process cannot continue without altering the quality of its commitments. But since that alteration is meant to disguise the violation this does not become apparent until the moment where the reductive process meets its collapse. That collapse is the least term in the reduction. But it is also its completing term. The least term of time is all the differing it is.

The universal qualifier is the verb 'is'. The qualifier (verb) is the pivot articulating the proposition between subject and predicate. That is, a verb less universally "predicative" than 'is' qualifies the character in which the subject 'is' the predicate. Any extension of that character must conserve that character as well as that relation, but this can only be if all qualifiers are the same. Hence the universal qualifier. But since this is impossible except in an unreal language (like logic or digital systems) that qualifier is really used as if a quantifier. As if, that is, it determines which one as much as how many. This is why I asked in an earlier post, 'how many is one?', because it underscores the dilemma logical systems ignore (quite dogmatically!).

On the calculus, please just find some online source (or get a copy, you won't regret it) of Berkeley's The Analyst. If I were with you in a classroom I could draw you a picture that would make the point graphic. As it is, all I can do is point out that the whole thrust of the calculus is to obviate an irrational geometry. By pretending to reduce the irrational part to the 'infinitesimal' its proponents justify ignoring it. But, I reiterate, since the irrational part is what we are trying to understand, this 'justification' is groundless. This is not an issue if we are trying to navigate the macro world, but that is also an evasion, however satisfying our ability to whistle by the graveyard of our prejudices.

I'm not referring to physics, as few people do who recite 'Einstein's equation'. Actually, it is a trivial part of relativity. When it popped out of all the mess of symbols on the blackboard, when it was presented to me and my classmates, it was hardly noticed, and we went on to the interesting stuff, like describing a universe that is 'bent'. Actually, I suppose we do sense energy, in the form of light, but it is a rather attenuated form, as energy goes. But mostly we only sense energy as heat. That is, as the relative intensity of molecular vibration. And even an A-Bomb very quickly, in the blink of an eye, is really only there at all as residual heat. It may be a whopping residue, but nonetheless heat, mostly, if not entirely. All that's left of it. Point is, what is energy when it is not doing something to move matter about? Is it there at all? Even physicists rely, maybe entirely, on ways of tricking energy into doing something to visible matter that can then be inferred to mean something supposed to be there but invisible where matter is not all-shook-up. I have often wondered what does energy get up to when it 'interferes' with itself? Ordinary physics claims there is nothing there at all. And yet it can be coaxed back into reality by a bit of energy in sync with it. Where was the bugger? And what did it get up to when 'unreal'? Maybe we have here a candidate for 'dark matter'?

I do hope they've got the bugs out of this site!
User avatar
Count Lucanor
Posts: 2318
Joined: May 6th, 2017, 5:08 pm
Favorite Philosopher: Umberto Eco
Location: Panama
Contact:

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Count Lucanor »

Washburn:

it's hard to follow you. I mean, there are your statements and they seem to suggest something, but it's never clear what it is. What do you mean by reduction in the context of talking about induction? As I recall, induction departs from particular cases and moves towards a generalization, while reduction implies somehow the opposite movement. Why don't you show us an example of the subjunctive displaying its internal contradictions and inference violating its own terms? If reason beats itself, how can we know? I guess you imply we cannot and we only decant into whatever our emotions ask us to defend. But then why make logical arguments in its defense? The standard refutation of the argument that reason cannot produce facts and truths is that it implies that the argument itself must be false, in order to sustain its premise. It's a well-known unresolved apory from postmodernist discourse. Postmodernists couldn't care less, of course.

It was quite a tour de force the journey from the copula as qualifier in the predicate towards it becoming a quantifier, and moving, as if magically, from less universally predicative to more universally predicative.

Your statements in general, not only about the infinitesimal, are reminiscent of Zeno's paradoxes, which are known to be refuted. And by calculus, if I'm not mistaken, although simple common sense had sufficed, showing that Zeno's argument are perfect examples of sophistry. Infinitesimal calculus has been proven by its practical applications (pretty much the same way that a practical test refutes every time the claim that Achilles cannot ever reach the turtle). So, sorry, I'll have to decline on Berkeley, it's like asking the Pope to look for counseling in Anton LaVey.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Gary_M_Washburn
Posts: 47
Joined: October 11th, 2017, 8:55 am

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

You underestimate Berkeley, not only as a thinker but as an "authority". His argument is that the infinitesimal, in justifying the validity of the calculus, must get used as both a positive 'value' and as zero. Both something and nothing. The sense of approximation is reasonable enough "for all practical purposes', but not where the issue is the very thing deliberately omitted. I. e., time.

Is the causal nexus hermetic or leaky? If reality matches our reasoning it should not be possible to suppose otherwise. If it is not possible to suppose otherwise it is not possible to reason.

Is the copula a straight and rigid conjunction (or disjunction) or a hinge? If articulate, like a hinge rather than a rigid brace, then further propositions also veer off, and the only correlation amongst all these values is the evolution of terms. An evolution that is constantly diverging from the hermetic seal between premise and conclusion. And if that enrichment of terms is the necessary outcome of the discipline convinced us of that hermeticity, then how can it be irrational? And if this means reason is more beholden to the dynamism of our terms, as the very result of our holding them constant, then surely what this explains of how language is generated is more valuable to reason than the 'science' of omitting it from our calculations? And if cause and effect are similarly dynamic or articulated, by qualifier if not by quantifier, then language and causal reality are more qualifying terms than quantifiers. That is, is time a term of change or duration? What is mapped out between markers like cause and effect, premise and extension, or a variance from both that neither can play any role at all in explicating? Are we omitting the central issue of life and reality? Does truth veer off from validity? I am not a relativist. But if there is more coherence between contraries against the constancy of rational terms than there is constancy in those rational terms, then reason must always be evaluating itself in terms of that difference. Even the logician is slave to his or her moods.
Gary_M_Washburn
Posts: 47
Joined: October 11th, 2017, 8:55 am

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

You underestimate Berkeley, not only as a thinker but as an "authority". His argument is that the infinitesimal, in justifying the validity of the calculus, must get used as both a positive 'value' and as zero. Both something and nothing. The sense of approximation is reasonable enough "for all practical purposes', but not where the issue is the very thing deliberately omitted. I. e., time.

Is the causal nexus hermetic or leaky? If reality matches our reasoning it should not be possible to suppose otherwise. If it is not possible to suppose otherwise it is not possible to reason.

Is the copula a straight and rigid conjunction (or disjunction) or a hinge? If articulate, like a hinge rather than a rigid brace, then further propositions also veer off, and the only correlation amongst all these values is the evolution of terms. An evolution that is constantly diverging from the hermetic seal between premise and conclusion. And if that enrichment of terms is the necessary outcome of the discipline convinced us of that hermeticity, then how can it be irrational? And if this means reason is more beholden to the dynamism of our terms, as the very result of our holding them constant, then surely what this explains of how language is generated is more valuable to reason than the 'science' of omitting it from our calculations? And if cause and effect are similarly dynamic or articulated, by qualifier if not by quantifier, then language and causal reality are more qualifying terms than quantifiers. That is, is time a term of change or duration? What is mapped out between markers like cause and effect, premise and extension, or a variance from both that neither can play any role at all in explicating? Are we omitting the central issue of life and reality? Does truth veer off from validity? I am not a relativist. But if there is more coherence between contraries against the constancy of rational terms than there is constancy in those rational terms, then reason must always be evaluating itself in terms of that difference. Even the logician is slave to his or her moods.
User avatar
Count Lucanor
Posts: 2318
Joined: May 6th, 2017, 5:08 pm
Favorite Philosopher: Umberto Eco
Location: Panama
Contact:

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Count Lucanor »

Maybe I underestimate Berkeley. There's high probability I underestimate many thinkers and disrespect the authority of others. In this particular case, not being a mathematician myself, I must submit to academic authority, in which calculus is a well consolidated field of mathematics. If we think of paradigm shifts, we always think going forward, not backwards. It looks to me that Berkeley's objections, which we know were motivated by his religious pursues, are artifices of sophistry very much like Zeno's. Formally, they are perhaps valid, but they rely on assumptions that, when looked closely, are false. Aren't irrational numbers real numbers? And even if Berkeley was right, his assumption that his findings could be transposed to the sphere of metaphysics, should be questioned, which nonetheless will give him the point that the inverse operation, the movement from the supposedly perfect completeness of mathematics to the perfect completeness of metaphysics, isn't more legitimate. Are the problems of magnitude the same as the problems of relations?
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
User avatar
Sy Borg
Site Admin
Posts: 14997
Joined: December 16th, 2013, 9:05 pm

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Sy Borg »

BlindedWantsToSee wrote: November 26th, 2017, 3:28 pm
Greta wrote:We have just entered Mary's Room (aka the knowledge argument). This ultimately speaks of Nagle's (obvious, but well elucidated) observation about the relative opacity of each entity's conscious workings. All we can do is draw up rough approximations from intuition, behaviour, and expression.

The "fireworks" reported in dying brains is extraordinary and interesting. One would logically expect that, rather than falling into ultra lucid states, the dying brain would simply fall into chaos until it was so disorienting that the person would pass out.
... draw up rough approximations... + ultra lucid states... when dying! This makes total sense to me.
I suppose it depends on one's Weltanschauung. For me, it seems most logical for a system in decline to increasingly descend into chaos, as opposed than to dying people falling into hyper functionality towards the end, such as blindsight and unexpected brief lucidity in some long term dementia patients.

Is it that the dying brain briefly unclogs signal blockages, or is it that as the brain's filtering breaks down we increasingly perceive something more akin to actual reality, the noumena? Both unexpected and thought provoking IMO.
Gary_M_Washburn
Posts: 47
Joined: October 11th, 2017, 8:55 am

Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

How much is 's' 'p'? Verbs and adverbs do not quantify the relation, they characterize them. Character is not a magnitude or quantifier, it is a modifier. It does not so much limit (assign a magnitude to) the relation as name it. It is not a 'numerical value' (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one!), but a linguistic one. I suppose I should at least be gratified that you recognize my effort to base my explanations in the literature. Actually, unlike science, philosophy does not render its past quaint. The greatest philosopher who ever lived was Plato, and we have yet to catch up to him. You might say that we are still rendered quaint even today, by comparison. The Analyst is mathematically rigorous. I, too, find Berkeley's religious bias suffocating, but he did his homework on this issue. 'Irrational' in the philosophical sense is rather different from useful constants like pi or e. But these are only approximations in most calculations and only render mathematically rational results where they fall out of the calculation altogether. But, back to the infinitesimal, if it is a positive 'value' for some purposes and zero for another, this amounts to saying zero and one are the same, which would be disastrous for digital system. But some irrational values are not numbers at all. They are anomalies that never synchronize with any calculation at all, not even to be reduced from it by subtraction or division. They may form a system of sorts, like the random motions of molecules that 'add up' to heat, or the changes in matter over time requiring differential calculus to concoct a rational formulation of. But even physical phenomena become irrational in the more complete sense at the smallest energies. smaller then quarks, as I find in them saying these days, are chaotic and innumerable events that cannot be rendered rational. This is where Steven Hawking's 'String Theory' come into play. But as I see it is no more than a conceit, like the sense a gambler gets that he is on a roll, or that the player is hot, or like the scene in the movie "A Beautiful Mind" in which the title character is having a manic episode and finding secret coded messages in ordinary publications. It is the mania of mathematical order. A mania that keeps blinding us (pace Blinded!) to the non-quantifiable reality of value and worth at the heart of all language. That reality is that time is a community in contrariety, not of replicated quantities. A community, that is, in which the contraries, even opposed to each other, act together in opposition to the system that would count them only (imperfect) replicates of itself. Better than the physical phenomena of sub-quark 'quanta' (hardly 'quanta' if properly irrational) is the phenomenon of life. An organism is a system of cells that each differentiate as they divide, and as tissues grow. That differentiation cannot be explained as a system, certainly not by DNA, if each time a cell divides it also differentiates. The organism as a whole is the system of that differentiation, not a system of replicates or replication. It is almost as if each cell is vying with all the rest to become the most differentiated, the most at a remove from the stem cell, and so the most committed to a limited duration of life. But if the life of the organism is the system of that commitment, then the organism is itself as a kind of recognition of that commitment. To die. Because time is more incalculably valuable and meaningful. The character of that commitment and worth, the character of change that comes as the direct effect of a rigorous system that can only know replication, or, rather, can only be the act of that differing in terms of a system of replication, then the character of that difference is the realness of time, not its duration. And, remembering the theme of this thread, this explains why evil seems to prevail in the world when in fact it is commitment to oppose that evil that motivates even that prevalence of evil.

Ran on, sorry. Contrariety is a huge issue, hardly touched upon, with endless ramifications.
Post Reply

Return to “General Philosophy”

2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise
by John K Danenbarger
January 2023

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023

The Unfakeable Code®

The Unfakeable Code®
by Tony Jeton Selimi
April 2023

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
by Alan Watts
May 2023

Killing Abel

Killing Abel
by Michael Tieman
June 2023

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead
by E. Alan Fleischauer
July 2023

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough
by Mark Unger
August 2023

Predictably Irrational

Predictably Irrational
by Dan Ariely
September 2023

Artwords

Artwords
by Beatriz M. Robles
November 2023

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope
by Dr. Randy Ross
December 2023

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes
by Ali Master
February 2024

2022 Philosophy Books of the Month

Emotional Intelligence At Work

Emotional Intelligence At Work
by Richard M Contino & Penelope J Holt
January 2022

Free Will, Do You Have It?

Free Will, Do You Have It?
by Albertus Kral
February 2022

My Enemy in Vietnam

My Enemy in Vietnam
by Billy Springer
March 2022

2X2 on the Ark

2X2 on the Ark
by Mary J Giuffra, PhD
April 2022

The Maestro Monologue

The Maestro Monologue
by Rob White
May 2022

What Makes America Great

What Makes America Great
by Bob Dowell
June 2022

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!
by Jerry Durr
July 2022

Living in Color

Living in Color
by Mike Murphy
August 2022 (tentative)

The Not So Great American Novel

The Not So Great American Novel
by James E Doucette
September 2022

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches
by John N. (Jake) Ferris
October 2022

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All
by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
November 2022

The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity

The Smartest Person in the Room
by Christian Espinosa
December 2022

2021 Philosophy Books of the Month

The Biblical Clock: The Untold Secrets Linking the Universe and Humanity with God's Plan

The Biblical Clock
by Daniel Friedmann
March 2021

Wilderness Cry: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach to Understanding God and the Universe

Wilderness Cry
by Dr. Hilary L Hunt M.D.
April 2021

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute: Tools To Spark Your Dream And Ignite Your Follow-Through

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute
by Jeff Meyer
May 2021

Surviving the Business of Healthcare: Knowledge is Power

Surviving the Business of Healthcare
by Barbara Galutia Regis M.S. PA-C
June 2021

Winning the War on Cancer: The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure

Winning the War on Cancer
by Sylvie Beljanski
July 2021

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream
by Dr Frank L Douglas
August 2021

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts
by Mark L. Wdowiak
September 2021

The Preppers Medical Handbook

The Preppers Medical Handbook
by Dr. William W Forgey M.D.
October 2021

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress: A Practical Guide

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress
by Dr. Gustavo Kinrys, MD
November 2021

Dream For Peace: An Ambassador Memoir

Dream For Peace
by Dr. Ghoulem Berrah
December 2021