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tonyrey
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In Jesus.
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Partinobodycula
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If my experiences are the means by which I form the concept of “I”, then to argue that I’m the source of those experiences, is to argue that I gave rise to myself. Since this would seem to be logically impossible, you can’t be me talking to myself.
To put this into “philosophy speak”, it would mean that I’m contingent upon you, not you upon me. This is how it follows from 3, that there is no me without you. This is also why it’s wrong to believe that a solipsist should be indifferent or egotistical. For what am I, without you?
Of course to you, the problem is reversed. But just as I can know that I didn’t give rise to you, you can know that you didn’t give rise to me. Unfortunately, nether of us can assume that the other one isn’t simply an illusion created by something else. Your consciousness may be the only one that exists. Does this possibility mean that you’re going to appreciate our discussion any less? I don’t think so, but that’s up to you. But then again, it was always up to you. Solipsism doesn’t negate free will. Your choices, are still your choices, and not anyone else’s. Nobody said the choices were going to be easy.
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e_c
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Partinobodycula - Do your mind and soul some good.
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inocente
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An initial condition is just the value of something when you first start looking at it. For instance, depending on how you define the system, the initial conditions could be the positions of everything in the system.
The rules of the system then tell you how the values will change from then on; in this example how they will move.
But what you’re proposing is something that somehow simultaneously contains every possible set of initial conditions, with no rules for how they change from then on (since you say it’s not deterministic). So in this example, everything would be everywhere simultaneously, and continue to be everywhere simultaneously forever.
But what you’ve described isn’t a system as there’s nothing which unifies, it’s completely formless, and as such can’t form anything or be anything.
Now be realistic, it’s not yet an argument as such
. Needs a bit of work shall we say.A physical law is considered omnipotent in the sense that it must always be found to work, for if just one exception was discovered, it would no longer be a law. But each law is of course just one sliver of God as seen through a glass, darkly.
See Tony’s post. Plus, if God was merely an abstract idea then it would follow that we created God in our image.
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Nixbits
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I have no idea what any of this means or even if it addresses my question about what it means for ‘more reality’ to be added to an essence (from your post #136, 3rd sentence). Your response seems to be a string of deepities. Can you, or anyone else, explain it clearly?
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Partinobodycula
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I had to chuckle when I read this. Because solipsists are the ultimate in realists. In spite of what I’ve been advocating in this thread about numbers, and infinity, and their spooky resemblance to God, I know that in the end this is complete nonsense. Just like I can know that Aquinas’ arguments are complete nonsense too. Why? Because there’s no way that I can ever know if they’re true. They might look perfectly reasonable, but that doesn’t mean that they prove the existence of God, or whether anything other than me exists at all. That’s what being a solipsist means. It means that I don’t know. But not just that I don’t know, but that I can’t know. So you see, solipsists aren’t idealists, they’re realists.
But yes, this argument does need some work, and that’s what I’m attempting to do, lay it out one logical step after another. If at any point nobody’s interested then that’s fine, I’ll just let the argument fade off into the dustbin of digital oblivion.
What you say is absolutely true. Which is why I need some way to unify the behavior of this random set of numbers. I need to make them less random, and more deterministic. Well first off, I can’t make them that way. They’re either that way or they’re not.
As you may have noticed in an earlier post, yppop asked me to be specific about what type of numbers I was referring to, to which I replied, integers. I did this because integers contain all the positive and negative whole numbers, plus zero. Now if we take an infinite set of positive and negative numbers we’ll notice that there’s a natural relationship between the two. They always add up to zero. Now having long been a fan of Feynman’s sum over histories, this means that any change on one side, can be matched by a corresponding change on the other side. So now I have at least one rule that governs the set of numbers. Any change, must be met with a corresponding change.
Which means that WOOHOO!!! I now have an actual set of numbers. Even if the numbers are random, there’s an underlying and unifying relationship between them.
At this point I should probably go on to the next step. But there really are things that I need to attend to, so I’ll get back when I can.
Before I go I just wanted to respond to this. Something that I didn’t do when Tony posted it, because I do kinda think that it’s a bit silly. First because I do believe that it goes against Catholic doctrine. And second, because it would mean that God is a middle-eastern male.
I would submit that we can’t help but represent God as an abstract idea. For what is an unmoved mover, an uncaused cause, or a necessary being, other than abstract ideas. And using these abstract ideas hasn’t Aquinas simply created an idealized version of ourselves? All that I’m really doing is taking that which Aquinas represented conceptually, and representing it mathematically. What you must realize is that neither method really captures the essence of God. Aquinas isn’t saying that God is an immobile being, and I’m not saying that God is a number.
Again, I may have to focus on other things. That’s life. You may have to go on without me for awhile. So sad.:crying:
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Wesrock
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Realism is, by definition, an affirmation that the outside world is real and that our experience with it tells us real things about it. Solipsism is not philosophical realism, and it rather makes the pursuit of anything scientific rather absurd unless you’re willing to assume realism as a starting point. People who do so say the world is one way, but apparently don’t let that have any influence on their actions and the way they live their lives.
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Partinobodycula
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Yes, I know, I was simply using a play on words. Sorry for the confusion.
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CJMartel
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Everything that is. A friend once told me that it would take a room 12’ X 12’ just to hold the schematics for the human eyeball, this is called “Intelligent Design”
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e_c
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It’s an account of God’s simplicity and necessity. The word “reality” is perhaps not the most useful, as it is a bit broad.
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Bradski
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I can do it in two lines:
Have a mutation cause a cell to be slightly light sensitive and give the owner a very slight survival advantage because of it. Rinse and repeat for a million years or so.
Ooh, look. An eyeball…
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tonyrey
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Catholic doctrine states that Jesus is true God and true man: the Council of Chalcedon, AD 451. It doesn’t mean that God is **only **a middle-eastern male. Is there anything objectionable about our Creator choosing to share our humanity? Is being a male or from the Middle East a sign of inferiority?
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IWantGod
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You can’t get something from nothing, so where did all the information come from? You did not give rise to yourself, this is true. And if my intellect is distinct from your intellect, then it is operating on its own and or at least not operated by you.
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IWantGod
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Irreducible complexity has never been convincing enough for me. And I think the development of the human eye can be explained naturally. But the fact that an eye exists within a unified system that generally functions to the end of preserving its genes within the environments that it reproduces, and the natural end of the eye is seeing or sensing an environment that just so happens to exist, does this not appear like goal direction to you? Does this not imply that the information that organisms operate with is in fact meaningful and intelligently directed? I don’t think that such can be explained naturally even if organisms evolve naturally.
In other words I don’t think that it is a coincidence that eyes or brains exist regardless of whether or not they were actualised by chance or some random event. Its not a coincidence that an eye can see or sense an environment and that environments that can be seen or sensed in fact exist. They meaningfully relate to each-other in a very goal directed way, and it makes complete rational sense that they do if there is an intellect behind the universe.
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Bradski
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You are expressing amazement that there are fish AND water. And air and birds. And earth and worms. Can’t be a coincidence, surely…
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IWantGod
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Well if there’s air, and an organism keeps evolving in the direction of effectively flying through the air, and a fish comes out of the water and keeps evolving to the extent that it is effectively a land mammal…? Hmmmmmm is it really a coincidence that organisms in general have a tendency to adapt to their environments even though there is a plurality of adaptation no-matter how poor or efficient or unique? Its interesting that organisms evolve like this.
Perhaps your right Bradski. But it looks like goal direction to me.
So yes it is amazing to me that environments that can be sensed exist and at the same time sensory perception that can sense the environment has evolved in that environment from a non-sensory state of being! No Bradski, its not a coincidence.
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Aloysium
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It is totally and absolutely AMAZING!! Birds in earth and worms in the air would not be amazing, but rather bizarre.
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Bradski
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It does to me as well. But there is a world of difference in how something appears to be and how it actually is.
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tonyrey
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It is indeed a coincidence but a planned coincidence! The very fact that we don’t allow our lives to be ruled by chance demonstrates that the power of reason is an infinitely superior explanation to mindless molecules which don’t know what they’re doing. No sane person would leave important decisions to a throw of the dice. The best test of any theory is whether it works in practice:
“By their fruits you shall know them” is as true now as it always has been. The wisdom of Christ far surpasses the folly of sceptics who don’t treat their family and friends as freaks of nature - unless they are insane…
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