The question is too vague to answer, Obbe. In what context are we being asked to regard 'reality' and how do you define 'alive'.
I think those terms are somewhat subjective. If I defined them, the definitions would answer the question for me making this thread pointless. I made the thread to start a discussion with other people and their perspectives. If you woild like to take part in the discussion use the definitions that make sense to you. What does reality mean to you? What does alive or living mean to you? Would you say reality is alive?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 10, 2014, 08:34:30 pm
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on September 11, 2014, 12:59:36 am
No.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 11, 2014, 01:54:45 am
To quote myself:
Would you say that 'you' are alive? And that 'your' cells are alive? Sure. But would you say the molecules which make up those cells are alive? Or the atoms?
If 'water' is not alive, does that mean that 'you' are also about 70% not alive??
There are no organisms where there isn't an environment to support them. Can we really separate the organism from the environment? Only with language.
Does "life" have to be this little pocket trapped within the nonliving? Life would not be possible without the entire picture, so why don't people consider the entire picture to be alive?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on September 11, 2014, 03:27:03 am
I'm guessing people don't consider the entire picture to be alive because it would make things very confusing very quickly and render the whole concept of life pretty useless.
'woah, that rock over there is fucking ALIVE, man"
This doesn't really change anything. The fact that life is dependent on the environment doesn't mean that the environment must also be alive, at least not every aspect. I'm not following that logic. A rock still lacks just about every function we associate with life.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 11, 2014, 10:15:57 am
A rock still lacks just about every function we associate with life.
So does an atom in your body. But your body is still considered to be alive. A rock may lack whatever it is you consider to be life, does reality? Reality produces life pretty much wherever we look for it. In a way, can't it be said to be alive? Depending on what you consider life and reality to be.
Maybe the concept of life is useless already. You are made up entirely of "nonliving" materials that happen to be organized in a way that allows you to grow and reproduce and define yourself as alive. If we built complex robots that could replicate the functions of biological life, would the robots be alive? Or what if they couldn't replicate every function of biological life but could at least build more robots, and they were intelligent enough to consider what life is - would they consider themselves to be alive in some way? Would they consider the concept of life to be useless or pointless?
I understand what you're getting at. "Life" is just a word used to differentiate between things like mice and rocks. But I think it can be more than that, to some people.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 11, 2014, 07:06:58 pm
Composite objects can have qualities not possessed by their parts. Atoms may not be alive but humans still can be. Similarly, some of the contents of reality might be alive but reality itself can itself be non-live.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Calzone on September 11, 2014, 08:34:15 pm
Everything is organic matter. Rocks, trees, us, etc. Everything around you has either been part of a living organism at one point or will be at some point in the future. Do I believe reality itself is alive? No. That's some sci-fi shit right there. But if you bend your definition of alive, you could probably consider the Earth itself to be fully alive.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: GothicSeraph on September 12, 2014, 02:11:50 pm
The question is too vague to answer, Obbe. In what context are we being asked to regard 'reality' and how do you define 'alive'.
I think those terms are somewhat subjective. If I defined them, the definitions would answer the question for me making this thread pointless. I made the thread to start a discussion with other people and their perspectives. If you woild like to take part in the discussion use the definitions that make sense to you. What does reality mean to you? What does alive or living mean to you? Would you say reality is alive?
Aww shit, Obbe is doing that thing he does.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: stentor on September 13, 2014, 12:28:25 pm
Reality would be the template for all living things, waves and particles aren't alive unless you completely skew the biological definition and parameters for what makes something alive.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: alphadog1 on September 13, 2014, 12:40:33 pm
Cells that divide and replicate are alive . Molecules are not alive. What separates humans from other animals and from plants and germs is the fact that we are also sentient, or self-aware
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 13, 2014, 06:00:07 pm
Cells that divide and replicate are alive . Molecules are not alive. What separates humans from other animals and from plants and germs is the fact that we are also sentient, or self-aware
Heh, there's another thread in this forum that makes it clear "self awareness" is kind of ambiguous. By one meaning it's a property that many, not not all, lower animals have. By another it's a synonym for meta-awareness which seemingly only humans have and it's unclear if it's the same thing as sentience or not.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Darkhunter on September 13, 2014, 06:26:53 pm
No one is alive nor dead.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 13, 2014, 11:44:03 pm
Think to basic physics. You don't touch anything, do you? Think Schrodinger's Cat.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 15, 2014, 09:54:59 am
Well now I don't know what to think. If you were going for something like, alive and dead are somewhat arbitrarily defined states, I could see what you're saying. I have no idea what you mean by basic physics, or how I don't touch anything.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Infinityshock on September 15, 2014, 10:03:23 pm
there is no reality
only the perception of reality
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Max Headroom on September 15, 2014, 10:24:13 pm
I was just thinking about this earlier today. Reality is existing, and existing is being. But even though human beings are living, it doesn't neccesarily mean that everything that's being is a living being.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 15, 2014, 10:52:00 pm
It's subjective perception. It's not really a thing you can back up with facts because it's all subjective.
But it's a claim about the world, how can you tell someone else what the world is and be like "yeah but I can't back that up since it's subjective"? It's like me telling you the sky doesn't exist and then being like "it's subjective maaaan". That's just dumb.
But it's a claim about the world, how can you tell someone else what the world is and be like "yeah but I can't back that up since it's subjective"? It's like me telling you the sky doesn't exist and then being like "it's subjective maaaan". That's just dumb.
Or is he just stating his opinion without saying "in my opinion..." ?
It's clearly not obvious to me and if it holds up to scrutiny then you should have no problem supporting it with evidence or a well reasoned argument.
Why should anyone have to prove anything to you? If they are right, that everything is subjective, how could they possibly prove it to you? Would an inability to prove that everything is subjective be considered evidence that everything is subjective? Probably not. So what's left? Proving objective reality? Is that possible?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 16, 2014, 01:03:43 am
Or is he just stating his opinion without saying "in my opinion..." ?
If that's so then it's a baseless opinion, but whatever. The context suggests that's not the case however.
Quote
Why should anyone have to prove anything to you?
Presumably if you're on a forum you're looking to, or at least willing to, engage in discussion.
Quote
If they are right, that everything is subjective, how could they possibly prove it to you? Would an inability to prove that everything is subjective be considered evidence that everything is subjective? Probably not. So what's left? Proving objective reality? Is that possible?
If a theory can literally not be defended at all, by its design, then why should anyone hold it?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 16, 2014, 01:53:34 am
Presumably if you're on a forum you're looking to, or at least willing to, engage in discussion.
IME that isn't always the case, especially in communities like this one. And even when someone is willing to actually take part in a discussion, most of the discussions had don't revolve around proving anything at all. What's your point?
If a theory can literally not be defended at all, by its design, then why should anyone hold it?
Proving a theory and defending a theory are two different things Lanny. So what if someone can't prove that reality is subjective? Are you going to stop believing that people have their own subjective perspective? Who cares? People are going to think whatever they think despite what you think because, at least to some extent, reality is subjective. Why does that even matter to you? Should we now similarly expect you to prove that reality is objective? If someone disagrees with you, wouldn't that qualify as evidence of subjectivity?
Isn't it obvious that reality is both subjective and objective to some extent?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 16, 2014, 02:20:49 am
IME that isn't always the case, especially in communities like this one. And even when someone is willing to actually take part in a discussion, most of the discussions had don't revolve around proving anything at all. What's your point?
What's your point? I want him to justify his claim, I think that's a reasonable request but if it's not I guess he can just leave the thread or something.
Quote
Proving a theory and defending a theory are two different things Lanny.
Sure, so what? I've never asked for definitive proof, I've asked for a defense of claims made.
Quote
So what if someone can't prove that reality is subjective?
Then a rational person should not accept the position in the same way a rational person declines to believe in all baseless claims.
Quote
Are you going to stop believing that people have their own subjective perspective?
That was not the position presented thus not the one I'm asking for a defense of.
Quote
Who cares? People are going to think whatever they think despite what you think because, at least to some extent, reality is subjective. Why does that even matter to you?
I care. Obviously the total absence of an objective reality has really significant philosophical implications.
Quote
Should we now similarly expect you to prove that reality is objective? If someone disagrees with you, wouldn't that qualify as evidence of subjectivity?
No, because I haven't claimed that reality is objective, in totality or in part. Someone disagreeing with me is evidence that our experience is somewhat subjective, sure, but that's something entirely different from what was claimed.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 16, 2014, 03:13:18 am
Someone disagreeing with me is evidence that our experience is somewhat subjective, sure, but that's something entirely different from what was claimed.
No it isn't.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 16, 2014, 03:20:19 am
"You will see that the purely electro-static repulsion between electrons is not the only reason why you hover above your chair. In the normal case, it’s about as strong as the Pauli Exclusion Principle when it comes to pushing things apart,. It’s actually a combination of these two effects dominating the actual behavior. By that, I am speaking of the unbelievable idea that electrons know where every other electron is, and they try to avoid each other as much as possible, resulting in an exponential decrease in the force between electrons, even without the electromagnetic repulsion in play.”
proof reality is alive. electrons know what's up. bunch of sketchy cunts by the sound of it.
/thread
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Darkhunter on September 16, 2014, 05:00:07 am
"You will see that the purely electro-static repulsion between electrons is not the only reason why you hover above your chair. In the normal case, it’s about as strong as the Pauli Exclusion Principle when it comes to pushing things apart,. It’s actually a combination of these two effects dominating the actual behavior. By that, I am speaking of the unbelievable idea that electrons know where every other electron is, and they try to avoid each other as much as possible, resulting in an exponential decrease in the force between electrons, even without the electromagnetic repulsion in play.”
proof reality is alive. electrons know what's up. bunch of sketchy cunts by the sound of it.
/thread
Dead cells have the same ideas too. You're telling me rotting corpses are also alive?
//thread.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 16, 2014, 05:43:38 am
my feelings and drug induced ramblings are more important than evidence or reality
///thread
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Darkhunter on September 16, 2014, 05:47:57 am
"You will see that the purely electro-static repulsion between electrons is not the only reason why you hover above your chair. In the normal case, it’s about as strong as the Pauli Exclusion Principle when it comes to pushing things apart,. It’s actually a combination of these two effects dominating the actual behavior. By that, I am speaking of the unbelievable idea that electrons know where every other electron is, and they try to avoid each other as much as possible, resulting in an exponential decrease in the force between electrons, even without the electromagnetic repulsion in play.”
proof reality is alive. electrons know what's up. bunch of sketchy cunts by the sound of it.
/thread
Dead cells have the same ideas too. You're telling me rotting corpses are also alive?
//thread.
Part of the circle of life, sure. Also if you can "never touch anything" and all the electrons in "you" are avoiding each other then what are you? Pretty interesting stuff.
Claiming your feelings are important, Lanny, is subjective.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Darkhunter on September 16, 2014, 10:17:01 am
"You will see that the purely electro-static repulsion between electrons is not the only reason why you hover above your chair. In the normal case, it’s about as strong as the Pauli Exclusion Principle when it comes to pushing things apart,. It’s actually a combination of these two effects dominating the actual behavior. By that, I am speaking of the unbelievable idea that electrons know where every other electron is, and they try to avoid each other as much as possible, resulting in an exponential decrease in the force between electrons, even without the electromagnetic repulsion in play.”
proof reality is alive. electrons know what's up. bunch of sketchy cunts by the sound of it.
/thread
Dead cells have the same ideas too. You're telling me rotting corpses are also alive?
//thread.
Part of the circle of life, sure. Also if you can "never touch anything" and all the electrons in "you" are avoiding each other then what are you? Pretty interesting stuff.
The question you pose has no defined answer.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 16, 2014, 10:29:19 am
Sounds right to me.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 16, 2014, 03:02:46 pm
Drugs don't have anything to do with this. Try to keep it on topic.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 18, 2014, 06:33:26 pm
drugs are on topic though
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 18, 2014, 06:39:59 pm
From another thread:
We all know that life invariably leads to death. And we all know that "dead" or "inorganic" matter has the potential to become life. Life and death, or "alive" and "dead" are defined as two different very states of being, complete opposites.
However, it seems to me that life and death are just words, imperfect human attempts at defining something that may very well go beyond definition. At what point does a person become alive? Or at what point does the living material of a mother and father become a person? Well according to society, it is whenever the law declares it to be.
At what point is a person who is dying in a hospital bed considered dead? At what point is a corpse no longer considered to be a person? When the "professionals" declare it to be so.
We all know these declarations are just attempts at making a clean cut where the truth is actually much more vague. We don't really know when a person becomes a person. We don't really know when they cease to be. We just try to make sense out of a vague situation, try to get all the pieces of the puzzle to line up straight.
Life and death are not absolute opposites. We may define them in such a way to feel like we understand our reality a little better, but the reality is that life and death are connected and lead into each other in a vague and mysterious way. Because life and death are just human attempts at understanding something that is beyond life and death. Life and death are our attempts at fitting reality into little boxes. In reality there is no life and death, there is just this continuous, vague phenomenon that builds up and releases, that goes up and down, back and forth, in and out and changes all the time.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 18, 2014, 07:24:59 pm
This seems to be a theme with you and it's dumb. Yes there are ambiguous life/death states but you go and try and blow it up and act like human knowledge is leveled by a few undecidable cases (or you act like you now have license to stretch the meaning of "life" to ridiculous extremes). It's ironic that you're the one here who seems to have fallen for a false dichotomy. Yes, live/death is a taxonomical classification and it can't clearly categorize every piece of matter in the universe. This does not mean "there is no life and death" or "the universe i s alive".
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 18, 2014, 07:35:42 pm
This seems to be a theme with you and it's dumb. Yes there are ambiguous life/death states but you go and try and blow it up and act like human knowledge is leveled by a few undecidable cases (or you act like you now have license to stretch the meaning of "life" to ridiculous extremes). It's ironic that you're the one here who seems to have fallen for a false dichotomy. Yes, live/death is a taxonomical classification and it can't clearly categorize every piece of matter in the universe. This does not mean "there is no life and death" or "the universe i s alive".
Did I ever say the universe is alive?
Life and death are just concepts Lanny. The reality is much more vague then our conceptions of it. And so what if it is?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 18, 2014, 07:42:19 pm
What does that even mean? What is "vague" when applied to reality?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 18, 2014, 08:16:56 pm
What does that even mean? What is "vague" when applied to reality?
Life and death. :roll:
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 18, 2014, 08:30:59 pm
drugs are nice sometimes but if you use too many too often you too may bed up like poor obbe
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 18, 2014, 08:37:03 pm
Can't you stay on topic? We don't really know when a person becomes a person. We don't really know when a person ceases to be. We just try to make sense out of a vague situation. But I will say this - life and death are really one thing. Just two sides of the same coin, or two ends of one stick. Lanny might think that's delusional drug induced nonsense, but drugs have nothing to do with this.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 18, 2014, 09:15:46 pm
yes, because two sides of a coin are TOTALLY THE SAME THING and that analogy isn't shitty and broken at all
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 18, 2014, 09:19:32 pm
Can't you stay on topic? We don't really know when a person becomes a person. We don't really know when a person ceases to be. We just try to make sense out of a vague situation.
There can be a lack of definition around the transition points, over than that it is usually crystal clear when a person is dead or alive.
But I will say this - life and death are really one thing. Just two sides of the same coin, or two ends of one stick. Lanny might think that's delusional drug induced nonsense, but drugs have nothing to do with this.
1 =/= 2.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: RisiR on September 18, 2014, 10:05:42 pm
How many sides does a sphere have?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 18, 2014, 10:12:35 pm
Side is just a concept. There is nothing separating one side from another.
Except for the fact that the sides are actually different, have different properties, and don't share identity by merit of the fact that we can even refer to the in the first place.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: RisiR on September 18, 2014, 10:23:00 pm
I've mentioned a sphere, guys. Are you seizuring already?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Idiosyncrasy on September 18, 2014, 10:30:41 pm
Lanny, Obbe confirmed that his idea has nothing to do with drugs. Let's keep it on topic please.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Slave of the Beast on September 18, 2014, 10:36:01 pm
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on September 18, 2014, 10:45:47 pm
I wish that I caught this earlier
So instead, I'll just say no, reality is not alive.
If reality, which is right now, always, were alive, then that would mean the past is dead, and the future unborn. Well, I certainly have called the past dead, but metaphorically. Perhaps I've even called this moment alive.
What organic matter makes it up? Life refers to the response to stimuli and an innate utilization of systems of physical organic matter. To be alive you have life. I was about to say reality does not have life, but I suppose it does, I suppose it does. Well done, sir 8)
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: RisiR on September 18, 2014, 10:47:38 pm
:suspect:
The guy is a faggot and I can't stand him but his channel is pretty cool.
Chick in the beginning wants the D SO BAD. So bad....
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: RisiR on September 18, 2014, 10:50:56 pm
So instead, I'll just say no, reality is not alive.
If reality, which is right now, always, were alive, then that would mean the past is dead, and the future unborn. Well, I certainly have called the past dead, but metaphorically. Perhaps I've even called this moment alive.
What organic matter makes it up? Life refers to the response to stimuli and an innate utilization of systems of physical organic matter. To be alive you have life. I was about to say reality does not have life, but I suppose it does, I suppose it does. Well done, sir 8)
Read The Langoliers by Stephen King or watch the horrible movie. Maybe you'll enjoy it.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 18, 2014, 11:10:32 pm
Side is just a concept. There is nothing separating one side from another.
Except for the fact that the sides are actually different, have different properties, and don't share identity by merit of the fact that we can even refer to the in the first place.
Only because you decided to define it that way. What you think of as things that are different could be thought of as one. There is nothing actually separating one side of a coin from a next. The sides of the coin run into each other, become each other. Just as all the notes of a song become each other, flow into each other and become a song. Just like inorganic matter can become what you define as alive, and what you define as alive can become what you define as inorganic matter.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Slave of the Beast on September 18, 2014, 11:36:48 pm
Side is just a concept. There is nothing separating one side from another.
Except for the fact that the sides are actually different, have different properties, and don't share identity by merit of the fact that we can even refer to the in the first place.
Only because you decided to define it that way. What you think of as things that are different could be thought of as one. There is nothing actually separating one side of a coin from a next. The sides of the coin run into each other, become each other. Just as all the notes of a song become each other, flow into each other and become a song. Just like inorganic matter can become what you define as alive, and what you define as alive can become what you define as inorganic matter.
I don't think Lanny has any say in how the laws of physics work.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 18, 2014, 11:41:12 pm
So the sides don't become each other? The parts of a song don't flow into each other? There is nothing at all unifying life with death?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Slave of the Beast on September 18, 2014, 11:46:06 pm
So the sides don't become each other? The parts of a song don't flow into each other? There is nothing at all unifying life with death?
Yes, they are connected, but they remain distinct enitities.
They might look different and be described differently but that doesn't mean they don't unite with each other, and their unification makes them one.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on September 19, 2014, 12:10:55 am
I'm always a little confused as to what I'm supposed to take away from an Obbe thread.
Putting aside the coin analogy for a second, say I accept that life and death are unified states, so what? It might be a nicer way of looking at it but it doesn't really change anything.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 19, 2014, 12:28:32 am
Quote from: Obbe
They might look different and be described differently but that doesn't mean they don't unite with each other, and their unification makes them one.
Ah, so we're back to the point where you deny basically everything including logic because "all is one". This is where the discussion always dies because it's a stupid faith claim that can't be argued for and which can't even be coherently stated.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 19, 2014, 12:30:33 am
I'm always a little confused as to what I'm supposed to take away from an Obbe thread.
Putting aside the coin analogy for a second, say I accept that life and death are unified states, so what? It might be a nicer way of looking at it but it doesn't really change anything.
Looking at something in a different way can be refreshing, inspiring, and might change a persons entire perspective. But even if doesn't, so what? It's just another point of view. It doesn't hurt you. Like you said, it doesn't change anything. Except, maybe it does, for some people.
Some people go out and look at the stars at night. And as they stare off into the great expanse they might feel somewhat insignificant. All of this has been going on for billions of years before they were born, and will continue to go on after they have died. But if they stare out at the expanse for long enough, they might just come to the realization that this great expanse is them. Everything that is not you is the condition of you being yourself, just as the back is the condition of being the front.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 19, 2014, 12:31:54 am
They might look different and be described differently but that doesn't mean they don't unite with each other, and their unification makes them one.
Ah, so we're back to the point where you deny basically everything including logic because "all is one". This is where the discussion always dies because it's a stupid faith claim that can't be argued for and which can't even be coherently stated.
How about instead of doing this, you actually put effort into creating an argument explaining how they do not unify.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 19, 2014, 12:51:53 am
Because you don't hold the prerequisite beliefs to parse an argument. Logic requires atomistic propositions and discrete structures/relationships. A radical monist (someone who argues for absolute unity) denies these things and thus can not sincerely engage in a rational argument.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 19, 2014, 01:02:39 am
Because you don't hold the prerequisite beliefs to parse an argument. Logic requires atomistic propositions and discrete structures/relationships. A radical monist (someone who argues for absolute unity) denies these things and thus can not sincerely engage in a rational argument.
I don't understand what you just wrote but I'm pretty sure it isn't an argument against the unification of life and death.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on September 19, 2014, 01:09:43 am
I'm always a little confused as to what I'm supposed to take away from an Obbe thread.
Putting aside the coin analogy for a second, say I accept that life and death are unified states, so what? It might be a nicer way of looking at it but it doesn't really change anything.
Looking at something in a different way can be refreshing, inspiring, and might change a persons entire perspective. But even if doesn't, so what? It's just another point of view. It doesn't hurt you. Like you said, it doesn't change anything. Except, maybe it does, for some people.
Some people go out and look at the stars at night. And as they stare off into the great expanse they might feel somewhat insignificant. All of this has been going on for billions of years before they were born, and will continue to go on after they have died. But if they stare out at the expanse for long enough, they might just come to the realization that this great expanse is them. Everything that is not you is the condition of you being yourself, just as the back is the condition of being the front.
(http://i.imgur.com/jpyTI.gif)
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 19, 2014, 01:16:13 am
There is no front without the back. There is no self without the other.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on September 19, 2014, 01:20:38 am
Yep, that definitely doesn't do anything for me.
ur so deep, maaan.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 19, 2014, 01:36:11 am
Not trying to be deep. Just tryig to talk about this with people and see what they think about it. If you're not interested in it you don't have to hang around regurgitating old cliches mistaking yourself for someone clever or funny.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Rizzo in a box on September 19, 2014, 01:51:54 am
I'm always a little confused as to what I'm supposed to take away from an Obbe thread.
Putting aside the coin analogy for a second, say I accept that life and death are unified states, so what? It might be a nicer way of looking at it but it doesn't really change anything.
I suppose ideally that realization could bring about changes in how one acts in life - for instance the dead would not really be dead and you'd probably communicate to them like shamans would their ancestors. Possibly you would no longer fear death, or would have an entirely different attitude about it. Perhaps you would see death as part of an ever continuing journey instead of a final end point.
Perhaps.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on September 19, 2014, 01:53:20 am
There is no front without the back. There is no self without the other.
So what is reality's other if it is alive?
Reality isn't self or other but the union of both.
says who?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Rizzo in a box on September 19, 2014, 02:20:13 am
One might say reality is more of a process than a static fact.
For instance, in the beginning stages of our universe physics was quite different and physical laws came into being one after another (I'm no expert here so someone correct me if I'm wrong) like gravity and electromagnetism and the strong & weak force...And as suns are born and die they create new elements within them that did not exist. This is pure speculation but is it totally naive to think that there might still be physical laws that don't exist yet that will?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on September 19, 2014, 02:20:21 am
Reality isn't self or other but the union of both.
As in relationship, yes? The impossibility of isolation, because that would be non-existent
Non-existence is the dark mother of creation, the total void the gives rise to the self generation of light & being.
er, this is humanities, not the religion forum. muh bad.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on September 19, 2014, 02:29:55 am
Perhaps before existence.
The reality as the relation between everything and it's always changing now-- but mere product of perception and residing only in consciousness, (from consciousness?) Perception and recollection, thereafter labels and definitions, of which reality cannot fit into alive, rather, a dynamicity of everything around as dimensions and energies collide to propel this moment forward in our minds
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on September 19, 2014, 02:47:17 am
One might say reality is more of a process than a static fact.
For instance, in the beginning stages of our universe physics was quite different and physical laws came into being one after another (I'm no expert here so someone correct me if I'm wrong) like gravity and electromagnetism and the strong & weak force...And as suns are born and die they create new elements within them that did not exist. This is pure speculation but is it totally naive to think that there might still be physical laws that don't exist yet that will?
Could be, yes.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on September 19, 2014, 02:52:38 am
Reality isn't self or other but the union of both.
As in relationship, yes? The impossibility of isolation, because that would be non-existent
Non-existence is the dark mother of creation, the total void the gives rise to the self generation of light & being.
er, this is humanities, not the religion forum. muh bad.
This is interesting though, how would you say "the void" gives rise to light and being?
For a crash course on this topic, look into the realms of "Ain", "Ain Soph", and "Ain Soph Aur"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Sof
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 01, 2014, 12:23:28 pm
When the water in the ocean moves around and makes waves and comes in and out with the tide, it isn't doing this by itself. There are various forces pushing and pulling it, making it dance. The same is true for anything we could define as alive. You are "alive" because of the various forces of the universe shaping you into what you are, pulling the strings and making you dance.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: RisiR on October 01, 2014, 12:28:48 pm
The oceans actually only ever moving up and down. The shore makes it look like it's going in and out and doing all kinds of crazy stuff.
I don't feel like explaining this and it's easy to look up, though.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 01, 2014, 12:33:33 pm
Then don't derail this thread. Try to post something on topic. Do you think being alive somehow makes you special and separate from the rest of the universe? Isn't everything that makes you alive determined by forces beyond your control?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Infinityshock on October 01, 2014, 01:43:54 pm
The oceans actually only ever moving up and down. The shore makes it look like it's going in and out and doing all kinds of crazy stuff.
I don't feel like explaining this and it's easy to look up, though.
That made no sense. Not that anything you post does anyway, but this stands out
The oceans are always moving and circulating
You clearly know nothing about physics but like I said. I don't feel like explaining it because you wouldn't understand it anyway.
More likely because you dont have a clue
Hurry up and go google it so you appear to have a clue
Run along
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on October 01, 2014, 11:33:22 pm
Are you trying to get into distinction of matter?
Because that's what it boils down to when you reduce "alive" to forces of the universe. Life is constituted by organic matter completing certain processes. A rock can contain the matter, but it doesn't complete the processes. A car may complete some processes, but it's not with the carbon based matter.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 01, 2014, 11:49:01 pm
Because that's what it boils down to when you reduce "alive" to forces of the universe. Life is constituted by organic matter completing certain processes. A rock can contain the matter, but it doesn't complete the processes. A car may complete some processes, but it's not with the carbon based matter.
Something like that. Say some dust is blowing in the wind. It might look like it's moving all by itself to someone who doesn't know what wind is. It might look like the dust has a will of it's own, when really it is being pushed around by another force. Couldn't something similar be said about life? A man might walk around and talk and make decisions. But isn't all of that, everything that makes him what he is, the result of forces which are beyond his control?
The phenomenon defined as "life" may behave differently then the environment we find it in, but doesn't it all come from the same source? The forces of the universe shape matter into various forms, but it's still all the same stuff. Everything you see around you, even the living stuff, is made from stardust. We are all just dust blowing in the wind, or dust that is shaped and molded by the forces of the universe.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on October 02, 2014, 05:08:28 am
Something like that. Say some dust is blowing in the wind. It might look like it's moving all by itself to someone who doesn't know what wind is. It might look like the dust has a will of it's own, when really it is being pushed around by another force. Couldn't something similar be said about life? A man might walk around and talk and make decisions. But isn't all of that, everything that makes him what he is, the result of forces which are beyond his control?
The phenomenon defined as "life" may behave differently then the environment we find it in, but doesn't it all come from the same source? The forces of the universe shape matter into various forms, but it's still all the same stuff. Everything you see around you, even the living stuff, is made from stardust. We are all just dust blowing in the wind, or dust that is shaped and molded by the forces of the universe.
Very pretty and all but useless beyond being amusing or maybe motivational. You're not telling us anything interesting, everyone who's been through elementary school understands enough to know the standard origins model is based on a common source of matter and energy and needs not extend beyond materialism.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 02, 2014, 12:43:30 pm
Very pretty and all but useless beyond being amusing or maybe motivational. You're not telling us anything interesting, everyone who's been through elementary school understands enough to know the standard origins model is based on a common source of matter and energy and needs not extend beyond materialism.
I have nothing to sell. I'm an entertainer. That is to say, in the same sense, that when you go to a concert and you listen to someone play Mozart, he has nothing to sell except the sound of the music. He doesn’t want to convert you to anything. He doesn’t want you to join an organization in favor of Mozart's music as opposed to, say, Beethoven's. And I approach you in the same spirit as a musician with his piano or a violinist with his violin. I just want you to enjoy a point of view that I enjoy.
The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East — in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction. We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe.
Just as no thing or organism exists on its own, it does not act on its own. Furthermore, every organism is a process: thus the organism is not other than its actions. To put it clumsily: it is what it does. More precisely, the organism, including its behavior, is a process which is to be understood only in relation to the larger and longer process of its environment. For what we mean by "understanding" or "comprehension" is seeing how parts fit into a whole, and then realizing that they don't compose the whole, as one assembles a jigsaw puzzle, but that the whole is a pattern, a complex wiggliness, which has no separate parts. Parts are fictions of language, of the calculus of looking at the world through a net which seems to chop it up into bits. Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time.
We define (and so come to feel) the individual in the light of our narrowed "spotlight" consciousness which largely ignores the field or environment in which he is found. "Individual" is the Latin form of the Greek "atom"—that which cannot be cut or divided any further into separate parts. We cannot chop off a person's head or remove his heart without killing him. But we can kill him just as effectively by separating him from his proper environment. This implies that the only true atom is the universe—that total system of interdependent "thing-events" which can be separated from each other only in name. For the human individual is not built as a car is built. He does not come into being by assembling parts, by screwing a head on to a neck, by wiring a brain to a set of lungs, or by welding veins to a heart. Head, neck, heart, lungs, brain, veins, muscles, and glands are separate names but not separate events, and these events grow into being simultaneously and interdependently. In precisely the same way, the individual is separate from his universal environment only in name. When this is not recognized, you have been fooled by your name. Confusing names with nature, you come to believe that having a separate name makes you a separate being. This is—rather literally—to be spellbound.
Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree. To manifest individuality, every branch must have a sensitive connection with the tree, just as our independently moving and differentiated fingers must have a sensitive connection with the whole body. The point, which can hardly be repeated too often, is that differentiation is not separation. The head and the feet are different, but not separate, and though man is not connected to the universe by exactly the same physical relation as branch to tree or feet to head, he is nonetheless connected—and by physical relations of fascinating complexity. The death of the individual is not disconnection but simply withdrawal. The corpse is like a footprint or an echo—the dissolving trace of something which the Self has ceased to do.
What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained—though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.
You do not ask what is the value, or what is the use, of this feeling. Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use—which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing—for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: RisiR on October 02, 2014, 12:57:26 pm
I'll just post this here. I guess it's relevant and on topic. Probably....
Quote
Too bad. And Mozart, not long after writing The Magic Flute, had died--in his thirties--of kidney disease. And had been buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.
Thinking this, he wondered if Mozart had any intuition that the future did not exist, that he had already used up his little time. Maybe I have too, Rick thought as he watched the rehearsal move along. This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of the music will be destroyed in one way or another; finally the name "Mozart" will vanish, the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another. We can evade it awhile. As the andys can evade me and exist a finite stretch longer. But I will get them or some other bounty hunter gets them. In a way, he realized, I'm part of the form-destroying process of entropy.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 02, 2014, 04:54:24 pm
I'll just post this here. I guess it's relevant and on topic. Probably....
Quote
Too bad. And Mozart, not long after writing The Magic Flute, had died--in his thirties--of kidney disease. And had been buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.
Thinking this, he wondered if Mozart had any intuition that the future did not exist, that he had already used up his little time. Maybe I have too, Rick thought as he watched the rehearsal move along. This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of the music will be destroyed in one way or another; finally the name "Mozart" will vanish, the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another. We can evade it awhile. As the andys can evade me and exist a finite stretch longer. But I will get them or some other bounty hunter gets them. In a way, he realized, I'm part of the form-destroying process of entropy.
... for dust you are and to dust you shall return.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on October 02, 2014, 06:53:13 pm
Because that's what it boils down to when you reduce "alive" to forces of the universe. Life is constituted by organic matter completing certain processes. A rock can contain the matter, but it doesn't complete the processes. A car may complete some processes, but it's not with the carbon based matter.
Something like that. Say some dust is blowing in the wind. It might look like it's moving all by itself to someone who doesn't know what wind is. It might look like the dust has a will of it's own, when really it is being pushed around by another force. Couldn't something similar be said about life? A man might walk around and talk and make decisions. But isn't all of that, everything that makes him what he is, the result of forces which are beyond his control?
The phenomenon defined as "life" may behave differently then the environment we find it in, but doesn't it all come from the same source? The forces of the universe shape matter into various forms, but it's still all the same stuff. Everything you see around you, even the living stuff, is made from stardust. We are all just dust blowing in the wind, or dust that is shaped and molded by the forces of the universe.
Well, yes originally, and that can be the basis for love, but in order to communicate, we use words, which have definitions that pertain to occurrences. Life is defined by 7 characteristics: growth, stimulus response, cellular composition, levels of organization, reproduction, energy utilization, and adaptation. Inherently completing these tasks with the use of organic matter classifies things that are alive.
Perhaps you could call the Earth alive, but reality...
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 03, 2014, 01:50:55 pm
I never said reality is alive. But I do think that, from a particular perspective, life could be said to be an activity which reality is performing. Or that you are an activity which reality is performing. Just as the wind blows the dust around, the forces of the universe, of reality itself, shape reality into what life is and shape you into what you are. "Montane" is an activity reality itself is performing, and when the performance ends reality doesn't end. It continues to perform activities, which other people will create names for.
How do you define yourself? Are you the performance or the performer?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: RisiR on October 03, 2014, 01:57:37 pm
Quote
When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Infinityshock on October 03, 2014, 02:02:22 pm
When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?
Brilliant post. I wholly agree
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on October 05, 2014, 01:13:34 am
I never said reality is alive. But I do think that, from a particular perspective, life could be said to be an activity which reality is performing. Or that you are an activity which reality is performing. Just as the wind blows the dust around, the forces of the universe, of reality itself, shape reality into what life is and shape you into what you are. "Montane" is an activity reality itself is performing, and when the performance ends reality doesn't end. It continues to perform activities, which other people will create names for.
How do you define yourself? Are you the performance or the performer?
Forces and energies are within reality. Reality is simply everything right here as it is now. My conscious body controls reality as much as the forces within reality control me. The performer creates the performance. What if there were no performer?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 05, 2014, 09:31:08 pm
I don't know. If we're saying that reality is the performer, then if there was no performer there would be no reality. Reality is right now though, so obviously something is putting on the show. If you say your behavior is like a tug of war between you and the forces of nature, that would mean that there is something within you that has a will of its own, and I don't know if there is anything to actually suggest that. If everything is determined by the forces of nature there really is no individual will. You are simply an expression of the whole, an act being performed by reality itself. The feeling of being an individual with a consciousness may very well be a sort of illusion.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on October 05, 2014, 10:51:45 pm
I never said reality is alive. But I do think that, from a particular perspective, life could be said to be an activity which reality is performing. Or that you are an activity which reality is performing. Just as the wind blows the dust around, the forces of the universe, of reality itself, shape reality into what life is and shape you into what you are. "Montane" is an activity reality itself is performing, and when the performance ends reality doesn't end. It continues to perform activities, which other people will create names for.
How do you define yourself? Are you the performance or the performer?
lol ok bro. your life is just that reality dude putting on a performance maaan. fuck this mystical shit is retarded and pointless.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 05, 2014, 11:06:09 pm
What's mystical about this?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on October 05, 2014, 11:22:04 pm
you trying to sound deep.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 06, 2014, 02:32:28 am
I don't know. If we're saying that reality is the performer, then if there was no performer there would be no reality. Reality is right now though, so obviously something is putting on the show. If you say your behavior is like a tug of war between you and the forces of nature, that would mean that there is something within you that has a will of its own, and I don't know if there is anything to actually suggest that. If everything is determined by the forces of nature there really is no individual will. You are simply an expression of the whole, an act being performed by reality itself. The feeling of being an individual with a consciousness may very well be a sort of illusion.
How could reality be a performer? You asked me whether I perform or am merely a performance myself. Well, when an individual labels himself as such, there then arises that performer who can separate from "others" and label his "own" experiences as separate.
There is a tug of war, because we can be forces of our own. That is obvious in the abundant strife present in humanity.
If you spread ideas that individual conscious is illusion, then those that listen will forfeit the idea of the oh so necessary creative revolution of their minds. The ones with minds already made will continue their actions of self-interest and the evils in civilization will persist, leading to things I don't hope to see in my lifetime, yet work to thwart.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 08, 2014, 12:42:57 pm
How could reality be a performer? You asked me whether I perform or am merely a performance myself. Well, when an individual labels himself as such, there then arises that performer who can separate from "others" and label his "own" experiences as separate.
As I see it, that's how most people already think. Most people already see themselves as an individual something that is separate from "others". However, I think that's a sort of illusion.
There is a tug of war, because we can be forces of our own. That is obvious in the abundant strife present in humanity.
Maybe you are right about that, I don't know. I just don't see any reason to actually believe that. You could say that a person has a will of his own, but is that true? Or is everything you are ever going to do already determined by forces which are beyond your control? Is "the abundant strife present in humanity" the result of some sort of conflict between different peoples conflicting desires, or is it really just a part of the nature of our reality, like a chemical reaction that we don't actually have any control over? I suppose you could say it is both, depending on what your perspective is. But what's the truth? Is there any reason at all to believe an "individual" has a will of his own?
If you spread ideas that individual conscious is illusion, then those that listen will forfeit the idea of the oh so necessary creative revolution of their minds.
How so? What is this "oh so necessary creative revolution"?
The ones with minds already made will continue their actions of self-interest and the evils in civilization will persist, leading to things I don't hope to see in my lifetime, yet work to thwart.
What do you mean by this? Isn't this a little contradictory?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on October 09, 2014, 12:50:45 am
How could reality be a performer? You asked me whether I perform or am merely a performance myself. Well, when an individual labels himself as such, there then arises that performer who can separate from "others" and label his "own" experiences as separate.
As I see it, that's how most people already think. Most people already see themselves as an individual something that is separate from "others". However, I think that's a sort of illusion.
There is a tug of war, because we can be forces of our own. That is obvious in the abundant strife present in humanity.
Maybe you are right about that, I don't know. I just don't see any reason to actually believe that. You could say that a person has a will of his own, but is that true? Or is everything you are ever going to do already determined by forces which are beyond your control? Is "the abundant strife present in humanity" the result of some sort of conflict between different peoples conflicting desires, or is it really just a part of the nature of our reality, like a chemical reaction that we don't actually have any control over? I suppose you could say it is both, depending on what your perspective is. But what's the truth? Is there any reason at all to believe an "individual" has a will of his own?
If you spread ideas that individual conscious is illusion, then those that listen will forfeit the idea of the oh so necessary creative revolution of their minds.
How so? What is this "oh so necessary creative revolution"?
The ones with minds already made will continue their actions of self-interest and the evils in civilization will persist, leading to things I don't hope to see in my lifetime, yet work to thwart.
What do you mean by this? Isn't this a little contradictory?
The individual is an illusion depending on the perspective. Observations of the tree render people as leaves part of the whole, but those leaves can choose to change color in the fall, and you can watch each one of them.
There are patterns in the nature of forces and energies of which we are subject, because we are nature ourselves. It is necessarily determined, but to an extent, after which it becomes theory, because I see a conscious energy and there is just no way to quantify and physical measure it. The other energies we utilize (i.e. metabolic chemical, nervous electrical, and muscular kinetic) can be rationed and used according to this central station of consciousness activity, which is such a web, it is easy to get caught. Simply following trains of thought can help us understand ourselves. Each individual must do it. That is a sign that there is such a thing as the single unit: each individual must understand themselves, it can't be given to them. When that understanding has happened, the source of desire and beliefs, knowledge, all the mess of our centre is revealed. It is sky-- desires, clouds passing by...
However, that understanding is quite rare... so rare. So many leaves starting to wither simply because they see their petiole...
Many people feel so self understood, like they really KNOW themselves, but all they've done is set standards-- beliefs and visions of what 'should.' Naturally, conflict will be created. They have their reasons, justifications (excuses,) but so much is wrong. It is based on self-interest, which can only be enclosing and isolating, inherently evil. Gain and attainment are selfish, even for groups and organizations, religions. Conflict with people elsewhere is inevitable when a self is identified separately, especially in righteous ways, judgmental and critical.
Seeing all of this is quite the revolution, because when one really sees what is, then one will understand reality. Unfortunately, the foundation of our present dominant civilization goes against this unfiltered perception-- this perception that discerns such a unity... receives and can emit such love...
This industrial civilization that lives off the poor can bring decimation to a once beautiful planet (it's already brought some.) I work to fight against this in anyway, be it through 'green' technologies, being a candle, or simply reduction of a carbon footprint.
Perceiving leads to realization to understanding to freedom and love and truth and light and disappointment and "God" to a constant revolution of the mind that perpetually transforms to this present moment, greeting it all anew, fresh, and the mind itself fresh, full of energy ready to earnestly approach the problems in society, that relationship between you and me.
Our discordant symphony is the song of our ability to act freely. Desires are controlled by beliefs which are formed by labeled experiences, which are biased segregations of reality's whole: a total pink noise orchestra of each player playing his heart out.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 20, 2014, 05:50:40 pm
Do individuals really have a will of their own? Or is your will determined by forces beyond your control?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on October 20, 2014, 08:46:38 pm
was that a question ogge?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 21, 2014, 12:53:59 pm
Do you believe individuals really have a will of their own? Or is your will actually determined by forces beyond your control?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on October 21, 2014, 03:47:24 pm
I remember we actually had a pretty long running thread about free will and compatibilism. In case you don't remember my answers would be no and yes respectively.
The real question, however, is how would you pronounce "ogge"? Like "oh-gy" (kinda like the bear)? Or maybe "oh-gee" as in gangster. What do you think?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: RisiR on October 21, 2014, 03:50:48 pm
I'd pronounce it Ogge like Oggay without the -ay but the eh sound of meh. Ogge.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: starvingniglet on October 21, 2014, 03:55:33 pm
.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 21, 2014, 04:09:19 pm
My username actually has nothing to do with the upside down eggo logo, other than resemblance. I explained this in the "explain your name and avatar" thread.
I remember we actually had a pretty long running thread about free will and compatibilism. In case you don't remember my answers would be no and yes respectively.
Therefore couldn't we say that life, or more specifically your own behavior, is an activity which reality is performing? Is an individual not an expression of the greater whole?
What exactly makes an someone an individual anyways?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on October 21, 2014, 04:20:06 pm
Do individuals really have a will of their own? Or is your will determined by forces beyond your control?
Quote from: Montane
There are patterns in the nature of forces and energies of which we are subject, because we are nature ourselves. It is necessarily determined, but to an extent, after which it becomes theory, because I see a conscious energy and there is just no way to quantify and physical measure it. The other energies we utilize (i.e. metabolic chemical, nervous electrical, and muscular kinetic) can be rationed and used according to this central station of consciousness activity, which is such a web, it is easy to get caught.
Why are you trying to separate the individual from the whole of natural forces and energies? It's like... we have a set of hand tools, and made from the same tools, with which we can only do so much.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 21, 2014, 04:24:20 pm
Why are you trying to separate the individual from the whole of natural forces and energies? It's like... we have a set of hand tools, and made from the same tools, with which we can only do so much.
I don't think individuals are separate from the whole of nature.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 21, 2014, 04:52:27 pm
I remember we actually had a pretty long running thread about free will and compatibilism. In case you don't remember my answers would be no and yes respectively.
Therefore couldn't we say that life, or more specifically your own behavior, is an activity which reality is performing? Is an individual not an expression of the greater whole?
What exactly makes an someone an individual anyways?
I guess I have to answer this myself. Yes, based on the idea that an individuals will is determind by forces of nature, we can say an individual is an expression of the greater whole, an activity that nature itself is performing.
So what makes someone an individual? I guess that's a matter of perspective.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: AstralPlane on October 21, 2014, 06:57:23 pm
I believe individuals have free will to determine what they want and need but all that you want and need is controlled by outside forces.
I assume you meant that individuals have free will to pursue what they want, because as it stands that sentence is a contradiction. If that's the case then I've got to ask the usual question aimed at compatibilists: if our actions are a consequence of will, and our will is determined by outside forces, does not the causal chain follow through such that our actions are determined by external forces though nothing more than a proxy? How is that meaningfully different than determinism beyond a different nomenclature?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: AstralPlane on October 21, 2014, 08:00:12 pm
I believe individuals have free will to determine what they want and need but all that you want and need is controlled by outside forces.
I assume you meant that individuals have free will to pursue what they want, because as it stands that sentence is a contradiction. If that's the case then I've got to ask the usual question aimed at compatibilists: if our actions are a consequence of will, and our will is determined by outside forces, does not the causal chain follow through such that our actions are determined by external forces though nothing more than a proxy? How is that meaningfully different than determinism beyond a different nomenclature?
Your right I did mean pursue. To be honest I haven't really ever thought of it like that though. It would make sense. I guess what I meant by my comment is that although outside forces do help to determine our will that we still have to our own will to choose what we want within the confinement of our outside forces. I think I was thinking on a smaller level.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on October 21, 2014, 08:40:47 pm
Your right I did mean pursue. To be honest I haven't really ever thought of it like that though. It would make sense. I guess what I meant by my comment is that although outside forces do help to determine our will that we still have to our own will to choose what we want within the confinement of our outside forces. I think I was thinking on a smaller level.
So this seems to what we would call a librarian position: circumstances may constrain what we can do but we're still fundamentally "free" to choose between what's presented to us. I reject that sort of position and you should too. We can look at the physical world and argue about whether it's deterministic or indeterministic but really it has to be one or that other and neither admits for libertarian free will. If we really think about it the concept is inherently inconsistent.
Consider if we could rewind time and set up the universe exactly how it was at some point in the past and start playing it forward again. Either it would play out exactly the same and we'd arrive back to an unaltered present, or it wouldn't. In the first case free will is obviously impossible because in that case our actions are determined exclusively by the state of the universe most of which is external to us, and the part which is external is directly and deterministically caused by, again, the external (inb4 obbe jerking off about "there is no internal/external", there is and you can fuck off and go read a dictionary if you don't understand that).
If the universe wouldn't replay deterministically then we have a more complicated situation but equally adverse to libertarian free will. The source of indeterminism in our universe can not be internal to any part of the universe. If it was then it'd be what is called a "hidden variable" in quantum mechanics and there would be no indeterminism at all (since sources of indeterminism would be reset as parts of the universe and thus produce the same "indeterminism" (determinism with unseen variables) the same way). So if we accept a truly indeterministic universe then sources of indeterminism must be external to us since we are clearly part of the universe. Thus nothing internal to us is altering the course of history, we're just slaves to indeterminism here like we were slaves to universe-state in a deterministic model.
Also I'm going to try mixing off topic shit posting with a "productive" post to see what happens this time: If we flip ogge upside down what does it become? ebbo? 3bbo? I like ebbo. Like ebony. Maybe this is a sign that good ole' ogge is actually black.
leggo my ebbo
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on October 21, 2014, 09:43:09 pm
Chaos never died
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: AstralPlane on October 21, 2014, 09:43:09 pm
I can't sit here and say I do or don't agree with you so to keep it simple....to each their own on the idea...
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on October 21, 2014, 09:55:29 pm
It's not really a matter of opinion.
Life is the result of processes, creating individuals that can form opinions. These opinions are formed through various things, mostly experiences, and they control our action, along with the physical constraints of patterns we term 'forces.' Individuals have their own minds and that necessarily implies an individual will, but putting the word 'free' in front of it just confuses things.
We have our own will and it can change on the drop of a dime.
Quote from: Obbe
I guess I have to answer this myself. Yes, based on the idea that an individuals will is determind by forces of nature, we can say an individual is an expression of the greater whole, an activity that nature itself is performing.
So what makes someone an individual? I guess that's a matter of perspective.
You can see either the tree or the leaves. Those leaves do have choices, however. Not very broad, but choices nonetheless. We express nature as nature expresses us. Reality, though, is a moment in which we are all co-creators.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: constantinople on October 21, 2014, 09:58:11 pm
They are scientific parameters regarding what constitutes life, they are very specific.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on October 21, 2014, 10:13:24 pm
This, jesus, I can hardly imagine a more boring response in this kind of thread than "to each their own". Like damn dude, at least engage with the ideas even if you don't want try and refute them. Or alternatively make comment on Obbe's handle, that's the productive alternative.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: starvingniglet on October 21, 2014, 10:20:03 pm
Compatibilists often define an instance of "free will" as one in which the agent had freedom to act according to his own motivation. That is, the agent was not coerced or restrained. Arthur Schopenhauer famously said "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."
I think this definition of freewill makes more sense than other definitions, which are in my experience somewhat vague.
We have our own will and it can change on the drop of a dime.
So what are we?
Some would say there is no specific center of consciousness, that "you" are the unity of several different circuits that may or may not be activated at different times, changing who "you" are at these times, and that "will" is the drive to reduce dissonance between each of our active neural circuits.
dont do this, he will report you because he is a spineless faggot. You don't notice the twenty or so posts that were removed because he reported them?
Please stay on topic.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on October 23, 2014, 02:39:13 am
Man can will what he wills, once he understands what he is. Obviously this present moment is always new and our frontal lobes adapt to that, but we have this memory of our experiences that controls much of our action. Understanding past experience as the past can instantaneously change will. Choiceless awareness.
Yet, in that awareness there is sudden change in perspective, rendering good and bad clear as day; and will a thing to be thrown around out of either evil or love. The self that we identify, sculpt out of experience, in which we take pride-- that self is the centre of our action, from where we judge and label, from where our external interaction stems.
Is the evil within not obviously projected outwardly?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: constantinople on October 23, 2014, 12:54:25 pm
Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, the current understanding is descriptive. Life is considered a characteristic of something that exhibits all or most of the following traits:[36][39][40] Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature. Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells — the basic units of life. Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.,[36] Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. Adaptation: The ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors. Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion; for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis. Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.[41][42] or "with an error rate below the sustainability threshold."[42]
So, now that we have established that parameters for what constitutes a living thing, do any of these apply to the stimulus of "reality".
Reality is static. Changes in the perception of reality are just that, a change in the viewers perception, not in reality. A pair of blue scissors will ALWAYS be blue, based on the science of reflected and absorbed light of various wavelengths. Any other color perceived by a viewer signifies a change in their processing of the stimulus, not a change in the stimulus itself.
1. Homeostasis - no. reality does not have any control over itself, therefore it cannot have homeostasis. it does not seek to maintain any sort of biological balance of function.
2. Organization. Nope. It is not composed of cells, in fact, it has no concrete composition.
3. Metabolism. Reality does not metabolize or create energy.
4. Growth. reality is static. it doesn't grow or shrink, only our perception of it and our awareness of it's individual components.
5.
I could go on to do all 7, but there's no point. If it fails to meet the criteria for one it fails them all.
Reality is not alive. /thread.
PS - Free will doesn't exist. With sophisticated enough mathematics and computation technology you could quantify every factor at work on a person influencing their decision making process and pick their decision before they did. We are all at the mercy of ourselves.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on October 23, 2014, 12:56:35 pm
Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, the current understanding is descriptive. Life is considered a characteristic of something that exhibits all or most of the following traits:[36][39][40] Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature. Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells — the basic units of life. Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.,[36] Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. Adaptation: The ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors. Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion; for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis. Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.[41][42] or "with an error rate below the sustainability threshold."[42]
So, now that we have established that parameters for what constitutes a living thing, do any of these apply to the stimulus of "reality".
Reality is static. Changes in the perception of reality are just that, a change in the viewers perception, not in reality. A pair of blue scissors will ALWAYS be blue, based on the science of reflected and absorbed light of various wavelengths. Any other color perceived by a viewer signifies a change in their processing of the stimulus, not a change in the stimulus itself.
1. Homeostasis - no. reality does not have any control over itself, therefore it cannot have homeostasis. it does not seek to maintain any sort of biological balance of function.
2. Organization. Nope. It is not composed of cells, in fact, it has no concrete composition.
3. Metabolism. Reality does not metabolize or create energy.
4. Growth. reality is static. it doesn't grow or shrink, only our perception of it and our awareness of it's individual components.
5.
I could go on to do all 7, but there's no point. If it fails to meet the criteria for one it fails them all.
Reality is not alive. /thread.
I stated all this many posts ago and we have since moved on to discussing the relationship between ourselves, our minds, the universe, reality, and energy.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: constantinople on October 23, 2014, 12:58:54 pm
Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, the current understanding is descriptive. Life is considered a characteristic of something that exhibits all or most of the following traits:[36][39][40] Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature. Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells — the basic units of life. Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.,[36] Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. Adaptation: The ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors. Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion; for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis. Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.[41][42] or "with an error rate below the sustainability threshold."[42]
So, now that we have established that parameters for what constitutes a living thing, do any of these apply to the stimulus of "reality".
Reality is static. Changes in the perception of reality are just that, a change in the viewers perception, not in reality. A pair of blue scissors will ALWAYS be blue, based on the science of reflected and absorbed light of various wavelengths. Any other color perceived by a viewer signifies a change in their processing of the stimulus, not a change in the stimulus itself.
1. Homeostasis - no. reality does not have any control over itself, therefore it cannot have homeostasis. it does not seek to maintain any sort of biological balance of function.
2. Organization. Nope. It is not composed of cells, in fact, it has no concrete composition.
3. Metabolism. Reality does not metabolize or create energy.
4. Growth. reality is static. it doesn't grow or shrink, only our perception of it and our awareness of it's individual components.
5.
I could go on to do all 7, but there's no point. If it fails to meet the criteria for one it fails them all.
Reality is not alive. /thread.
I stated all this many posts ago and we have since moved on to discussing the relationship between ourselves, our minds, the universe, reality, and energy.
I hope you have some master's level or better Chemists and Physicists to help chime in on this discussion or we will be chasing our tails for a long time :(
Einstein couldn't even get those relationships right man.
PS - Free will doesn't exist. With sophisticated enough mathematics and computation technology you could quantify every factor at work on a person influencing their decision making process and pick their decision before they did. We are all at the mercy of ourselves.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 23, 2014, 03:00:38 pm
Constantinople, I don't think anyone here is claiming that reality is alive. But I do think that life, individual behavior, etc, can be seen as an activity that reality is performing. What are your thoughts on that?
Also I would like to see how you define free will, and would like to see what you think of the definition I mentioned above.
Also you claim that reality is static. What do you mean by that and why do you think that? Consider this post:
One might say reality is more of a process than a static fact.
For instance, in the beginning stages of our universe physics was quite different and physical laws came into being one after another (I'm no expert here so someone correct me if I'm wrong) like gravity and electromagnetism and the strong & weak force...And as suns are born and die they create new elements within them that did not exist. This is pure speculation but is it totally naive to think that there might still be physical laws that don't exist yet that will?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: constantinople on October 23, 2014, 05:47:18 pm
Reality encompasses the actions and individuals within it; the actions of the individuals are not a function of reality, they are an aspect of it. Reality doesn't do anything. It just is.
However, the phenomenon of sapience has allowed mankind to have a perception of itself on a per-individual basis as being "outside" of reality.
Free will doesn't exist (for most people) because most people are not capable of objectively approaching every decision in their life entirely separate from the totality of their experience leading up to that point.
Free will would be the ability of an individual to approach every aspect of their life free from the bias of self or ego.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Obbe on October 23, 2014, 06:20:56 pm
Reality encompasses the actions and individuals within it; the actions of the individuals are not a function of reality, they are an aspect of it. Reality doesn't do anything. It just is.
However, the phenomenon of sapience has allowed mankind to have a perception of itself on a per-individual basis as being "outside" of reality.
That's a very good way of stating it, thank you for being so concise and putting it so eloquently.
Quote
Free will doesn't exist (for most people) because most people are not capable of objectively approaching every decision in their life entirely separate from the totality of their experience leading up to that point.
Free will would be the ability of an individual to approach every aspect of their life free from the bias of self or ego.
You say "most people". What people do you believe can approach life free from self/ego bias? How do you think a person accomplishes this?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Montane on October 30, 2014, 08:58:52 am
Your actions can be quantified and measured, but it's because you perceive and choose which routes to take. We are always weighing our options. Change your perception, changes your choices, changes your action.
But
don't just change your structure of perception, that is mere substitution of one filter for another. Free your perception by seeing the falseness of your filters. Your beliefs, experience, and knowledge, all that conditioning, the past projecting into the present, it prevents seeing what is. Right here, right now, reality, that moment in which we are all co-creators.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: constantinople on October 30, 2014, 07:53:21 pm
Reality encompasses the actions and individuals within it; the actions of the individuals are not a function of reality, they are an aspect of it. Reality doesn't do anything. It just is.
However, the phenomenon of sapience has allowed mankind to have a perception of itself on a per-individual basis as being "outside" of reality.
That's a very good way of stating it, thank you for being so concise and putting it so eloquently.
Quote
Free will doesn't exist (for most people) because most people are not capable of objectively approaching every decision in their life entirely separate from the totality of their experience leading up to that point.
Free will would be the ability of an individual to approach every aspect of their life free from the bias of self or ego.
You say "most people". What people do you believe can approach life free from self/ego bias? How do you think a person accomplishes this?
I don't know. :-\
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on November 11, 2014, 03:59:26 am
Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, the current understanding is descriptive. Life is considered a characteristic of something that exhibits all or most of the following traits:[36][39][40] Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature. Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells — the basic units of life. Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.,[36] Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. Adaptation: The ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors. Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion; for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis. Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.[41][42] or "with an error rate below the sustainability threshold."[42]
So, now that we have established that parameters for what constitutes a living thing, do any of these apply to the stimulus of "reality".
Reality is static. Changes in the perception of reality are just that, a change in the viewers perception, not in reality. A pair of blue scissors will ALWAYS be blue, based on the science of reflected and absorbed light of various wavelengths. Any other color perceived by a viewer signifies a change in their processing of the stimulus, not a change in the stimulus itself.
1. Homeostasis - no. reality does not have any control over itself, therefore it cannot have homeostasis. it does not seek to maintain any sort of biological balance of function.
2. Organization. Nope. It is not composed of cells, in fact, it has no concrete composition.
3. Metabolism. Reality does not metabolize or create energy.
4. Growth. reality is static. it doesn't grow or shrink, only our perception of it and our awareness of it's individual components.
5.
I could go on to do all 7, but there's no point. If it fails to meet the criteria for one it fails them all.
Reality is not alive. /thread.
I stated all this many posts ago and we have since moved on to discussing the relationship between ourselves, our minds, the universe, reality, and energy.
I hope you have some master's level or better Chemists and Physicists to help chime in on this discussion or we will be chasing our tails for a long time :(
Einstein couldn't even get those relationships right man.
PS - Free will doesn't exist. With sophisticated enough mathematics and computation technology you could quantify every factor at work on a person influencing their decision making process and pick their decision before they did. We are all at the mercy of ourselves.
How do you explain away quantum randomness in a deterministic universe? Some argue that it has no effect at the macro level but I seem to recall reading numerous articles that refuted this claim.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: constantinople on November 11, 2014, 04:12:25 am
How do you explain away quantum randomness in a deterministic universe? Some argue that it has no effect at the macro level but I seem to recall reading numerous articles that refuted this claim.
I don't know. At the macro level there's enough observers that The Great Quantum Soup is becoming reality at some speed which is faster than light or our perception? So I guess if you could move faster than that you could predict the future IDK, but it wouldn't matter anyway because the future would be just a mess of quantum probabilities and things that hadn't even became a thing yet. Would you even exist at that point? What the fuck am I talking about
When I made that addendum, I was thinking more along the lines of being able to quantify personal experience via memory into a way to judge how someone will react to a given situation. Just much, much more sophisticated than what I understand is possible now.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on November 11, 2014, 04:14:55 am
Ah, gotcha...i think
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: constantinople on November 11, 2014, 04:16:44 am
I've been chain smoking fat joints.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on November 11, 2014, 04:17:43 am
And I'm starved for marijuana. Will read again later when I get baked.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on November 11, 2014, 04:35:22 am
How do you explain away quantum randomness in a deterministic universe? Some argue that it has no effect at the macro level but I seem to recall reading numerous articles that refuted this claim.
I'd be interested to read those articles if you have links.
Regardless though, indeterminism doesn't allow for libertarian free will any more than determinism does. I posted about this better somewhere but fuck if I'm going to look it up. Basically the logic is this: Accepting physical indeterminism means rejecting a hidden variable interpretation of quantum mechanics. Naturalism holds that everything we are is emergent from physical parts. If there is no hidden variable then the source of determinism is non-physical (if it wasn't it'd just be a hidden variable). Thus the source of indeterminism is non-us (since we're physical), thus we have no free will because we can no more alter the future in this proposed indeterministic world than a deterministic one.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: RestStop on November 11, 2014, 04:52:29 am
I don't know about reality being a living thing per say. I do believe there is some type of veil or mirrored reality and only a select few of us can see the world the way it really is. Ever feel like everyone else is delusional and your the only one seeing anything how true reality is?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on November 11, 2014, 05:07:39 am
I don't know about reality being a living thing per say. I do believe there is some type of veil or mirrored reality and only a select few of us can see the world the way it really is. Ever feel like everyone else is delusional and your the only one seeing anything how true reality is?
Hey, it's like a poorly paraphrased version of the cave. Gratz or rehashing 3000 year old egomania.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on November 12, 2014, 11:59:54 am
How do you explain away quantum randomness in a deterministic universe? Some argue that it has no effect at the macro level but I seem to recall reading numerous articles that refuted this claim.
I'd be interested to read those articles if you have links.
I don't, but I found them through a pretty basic google search.
Quote
Regardless though, indeterminism doesn't allow for libertarian free will any more than determinism does. I posted about this better somewhere but fuck if I'm going to look it up. Basically the logic is this: Accepting physical indeterminism means rejecting a hidden variable interpretation of quantum mechanics. Naturalism holds that everything we are is emergent from physical parts. If there is no hidden variable then the source of determinism is non-physical (if it wasn't it'd just be a hidden variable). Thus the source of indeterminism is non-us (since we're physical), thus we have no free will because we can no more alter the future in this proposed indeterministic world than a deterministic one.
Did you mean "the source of indeterminism is non-physical"? I'm not quite sure I follow this part. Thought I did but smoked a cone and read it again, now I don't.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on November 12, 2014, 08:48:35 pm
Did you mean "the source of indeterminism is non-physical"? I'm not quite sure I follow this part. Thought I did but smoked a cone and read it again, now I don't.
So indeterminism is when something behaves in a way that isn't caused by the past. So like whether a radioactive element has decayed or not, quantum mechanics predicts a probabilistic timeline for its decay but until we observe it somehow, it's said to be in a super state. When we observe it, it takes on either the decayed or non-decayed state. If we accept an indeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics (not all are) then we're also committed to saying which state it takes on is not dependent on the past beyond some probability distribution. Like if we knew absolutely everything about the universe now, we still couldn't say for certain which state a decaying element will be the next time we observe it.
But when observation happens and a concrete state is realized is the only juncture where the future can be changed, because everything else is deterministic (this is actually a tautology, put differently "all things which are not indeterministic are deterministic"). So what is it that decides which state is realized? I don't know, I'm not a quantum physicist, maybe the question is malformed. But one thing we can say isn't the answer with certainty (based on our assumption of indeterminism) is anything in the past (the physical world). If the state a decaying atom is in depends on something I did then the world is deterministic, if it doesn't then I can't have any effect on it. Thus indeterminism gives us no more of a possibility of free will than determinism does.
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: FON on November 13, 2014, 11:44:46 am
Did you mean "the source of indeterminism is non-physical"? I'm not quite sure I follow this part. Thought I did but smoked a cone and read it again, now I don't.
So indeterminism is when something behaves in a way that isn't caused by the past. So like whether a radioactive element has decayed or not, quantum mechanics predicts a probabilistic timeline for its decay but until we observe it somehow, it's said to be in a super state. When we observe it, it takes on either the decayed or non-decayed state. If we accept an indeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics (not all are) then we're also committed to saying which state it takes on is not dependent on the past beyond some probability distribution. Like if we knew absolutely everything about the universe now, we still couldn't say for certain which state a decaying element will be the next time we observe it.
But when observation happens and a concrete state is realized is the only juncture where the future can be changed, because everything else is deterministic (this is actually a tautology, put differently "all things which are not indeterministic are deterministic"). So what is it that decides which state is realized? I don't know, I'm not a quantum physicist, maybe the question is malformed. But one thing we can say isn't the answer with certainty (based on our assumption of indeterminism) is anything in the past (the physical world). If the state a decaying atom is in depends on something I did then the world is deterministic, if it doesn't then I can't have any effect on it. Thus indeterminism gives us no more of a possibility of free will than determinism does.
Sort of like, as the decay of the radiation (or events in an indeterministic world) is based on a probability it can't be said that we have any real control?
Title: Re: Living Reality
Post by: Lanny on November 13, 2014, 04:01:00 pm
Sort of like, as the decay of the radiation (or events in an indeterministic world) is based on a probability it can't be said that we have any real control?
Right, fundamentally nothing we call "us" can affect indeterministic outcomes, and those outcomes are the only place where the future can be changed (which is a prerequisite for libertarian free will), thus even in a indeterministic universe we can't have free will.