Philosophy Now Forum

DPMartin wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 4:31 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:57 pm

DPMartin wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 4:53 pm that's not really judgement though i can see how you see it that way, its acknowledgment. one can see or hear the truth and acknowledge or deny. one doesn't judge whether or not some thing is true or a fact, one acknowledges or denies the truth because the truth is the truth without judgement.

It's a judgment or assessment, and fairly vague at that, because meaning is not at all the same sort of thing as what we're assessing a "match" to. The cat being on the mat, and the observation of the same, isn't the same thing as the meaning of "The cat is on the mat," which is rather a unique sort of associative act that we perform.

why do you think that might be? for example, naming is a basic human function, that nothing else does. granted we might be able to teach some animals a limited scope but naming is needed function for mankind that animals can do without, and don't really seek to do.

Again, I'm skeptical of the claim that other animals can't do these sorts of things. It's something that brains like human brains can do, obviously--and it seems to have developed evolutionarily in conjunction with overall biological complexity that results in it not being so easy to survive purely on instinctual/reactive behavior. Animals that are similarly complex--apes, dolphins, elephants, etc. with brains that aren't too different than ours, can probably do similar mental functions to some extent. The sorts of associations that amount to meaning (as well as mental phenomena that amount to having caring/nurturing feelings towards offspring and so on) enable those sorts of animals to survive to a reproductive age.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:26 pm It's always interesting to me how, in retellings like this...

What is it a "retelling" of? I've simply suggested that the macro of the Universe could be like the observable micro.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:26 pmif it is true that all there is is "nature," then terms like "creative," "exploring," "experiencing," "sharing" and "working together," .../... An unintelligent and impersonal "nature" knows nothing of them, and does not have them inherent in it: it's not even capable of such rhapsodies.

But it does have those characteristics. Most people can see them. And what makes you think there's no intelligence in nature? Because it's not modeled after human intelligence?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:26 pm Human beings, who have a compulsion to see meaning where there is inherently none, are projecting this longing onto a universe that, in the "nature" narrative, has no interest whatsoever in it, and is not capable of being interested.

It's funny and ridiculous how you try to project your god narrative onto other viewpoints. You don't know what nature is capable of. It's clearly rather magnificent in all that it does, and we are surely only aware of a small fraction of that. Your ideas of "meaning" are unimportant beyond yourself.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:26 pmThe poetic language is apparently indeed a kind of attempt to "reassure" oneself that the abyss of "nature" is not so black and indifferent as might be expected, based on a merely Material universe, but is somehow magically purposive, directional, and even benevolent to human aspirations, in this telling of the story.

Again you try to project your god narrative onto other viewpoints. What story are you talking about? Observing nature is not a story. A god of one form or another depending on culture and time period is a story.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:26 pmIf all we are is Materials in a physical world, then our destiny is heat death, and all "meaning" is just a projection of human confusions on an inherently meaningless natural screen.

You seem intent on imprinting your idea of meaning onto everything... as if there is no value without it. Are you capable of explaining the value of all your supposed meaning? NOT what you claim things are like WITHOUT it, mind you, but what are things like WITH it? Are you filled with peace and fulfillment right here, right now... or are you waiting for a god to reward you for being a superior human being?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:26 pmLiving with the realization that nature is not loving or caring...

Many people can see an ecstatic dance all throughout nature. Many people can feel filled with overflowing love for/from nature, as well as gratitude, appreciation, belonging, fulfillment, beauty... a dance of joy. No god is needed. It appears that your god notions prevent you from seeing a profoundly sacred display right in front of you. Perhaps you're so busy polishing your god statue, that you can't fathom how vast and connected nature is -- and it does not need to be in man's image, as it is clearly much bigger than that.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:26 pmcreated inherently for relationship with their Creator; absent that, they must project something to fill that gap.

That's your story. I don't see or feel any gap.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:26 pmthat's evidence of a longing for God, for truth and for meaning that is basic to human constitution and ultimately cannot be denied.

There's more than what you see. Your ideas of truth and meaning are not a blueprint for the Universe.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 3:08 pm the story that nature is all there is, is also a "story."

You seem to see nature as some low-level knowable creation... despite its incredible vastness and mind-blowing functioning. Can you not fathom how extensive the network and power of nature apparently is? And can you not acknowledge that there is much to it that we do not know? Must everything be modeled after humans and their limited understanding (and ideas of gods)?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 3:08 pmWe should all opt to pick the "story" that seems most true, of course; and there's no actual value in a "belief" one doesn't actually "believe" is true.

You can pick a story to cater to ego or fear (and re-tell/refine it over and over). Another option is to continually observe anew in the present moment, because there is always more unfolding for those who welcome it. Future stories are not needed when the present is so full.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 3:08 pmI would only add this caveat: that there may well be reasons you have not yet encountered.

There are very likely countless things all of us have not encountered, do not understand, and may never know. Many people are at peace with that. Your religious warnings and claims sound like superstition, which is very limited/controlled thinking. Perhaps you are actually afraid of what you do not know and cannot control, so you choose a story you can claim to know as the end-all, be-all. If you ever decide to explore beyond that, love yourself for doing the best you knew how at the time. And then notice how funny it all was.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 2:48 am ...what makes you think there's no intelligence in nature?

Materialists. They think that. Pantheists think there is, though. As for Theists, we think that nature is a demonstration of God's intelligence, but not an intelligence of its own.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:26 pm Human beings, who have a compulsion to see meaning where there is inherently none, are projecting this longing onto a universe that, in the "nature" narrative, has no interest whatsoever in it, and is not capable of being interested.

It's funny and ridiculous how you try to project your god narrative onto other viewpoints.[/quote]
Not at all. It's not my view in view here...it's yours.

I'm just speaking about what appeals to "nature "can include, rationally. If "nature" has the sorts of qualities you attribute to it, such as wishes, intentions, direction, design and ends-in-view, then you're anthropomorphizing Nature...it's your new word for your "god." On the other hand, if it's an impersonal force, then it cannot have any of the qualities you claim it has.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:26 pmThe poetic language is apparently indeed a kind of attempt to "reassure" oneself that the abyss of "nature" is not so black and indifferent as might be expected, based on a merely Material universe, but is somehow magically purposive, directional, and even benevolent to human aspirations, in this telling of the story.

What story are you talking about? Observing nature is not a story.

You're not merely "observing" it. You're attributing to it all kinds of intelligence and intention. You've anthropomorphized it.

Many people can feel filled with overflowing love for/from nature, as well as gratitude, appreciation, belonging, fulfillment, beauty... a dance of joy. No god is needed.

And yet you say "dance" and "joy" and "all those other human qualities you list. You're anthropomorphizing again.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 3:08 pm the story that nature is all there is, is also a "story."

You seem to see nature as some low-level knowable creation... despite its incredible vastness and mind-blowing functioning.

And, if I can be honest, you seem starry-eyed, sentimental, anthropomorphizing, rhapsodizing, and unrealistic at the same time...and unconscious that you're even doing it.

You've got plenty of "worship" for "nature," that's for sure. But that feeling might be misdirected. As Romans 1 says,

"For even though [mankind] knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible mankind, of birds, four-footed animals, and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them up to vile impurity in the lusts of their hearts, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for falsehood, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever." (21-25)

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:13 am If "nature" has the sorts of qualities you attribute to it, such as wishes...

Wishes? I never said that. You're misrepresenting again.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:13 am You're not merely "observing" it. You're attributing to it all kinds of intelligence and intention.

I described the patterns and behaviors that can be observed. I do not think it's a person or a god. It's cooperatively creative and energetic, and it naturally weeds out weaknesses and failures. Don't you see that?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:13 am And yet you say "dance" and "joy" and "all those other human qualities you list. You're anthropomorphizing again.

Haven't you ever heard such words used to describe things in nature? It's artistic expression!

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:13 am And, if I can be honest, you seem starry-eyed, sentimental, anthropomorphizing, rhapsodizing, and unrealistic at the same time...and unconscious that you're even doing it.

I can be many things (but not typically those). As can you. We are not defined accurately by your self-serving bag of labels.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:13 am You've got plenty of "worship" for "nature," that's for sure.

I do not worship nature. Do you worship your heart? If you feel naturally a part of something, why worship it? I have appreciation and gratitude. Worship is for people who don't think they're as good as what they worship.

If you stop projecting so much religious limitation and darkness on the world, you might discover its natural beauty and perfection.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:23 am I do not think it's a person or a god. It's cooperatively creative and energetic, and it naturally weeds out weaknesses and failures. Don't you see that?

"Cooperative." Only an intelligent agent can be that. Otherwise, it's no more than "lucky." "Creative." Only an intelligent agent can be that. Otherwise, you're just speaking of reproduction. "Naturally weeds out weaknesses and failures?" Nature actually kills all sorts of creatures, and even whole species...especially if one regards "humans" as part of "nature." In that case, "nature" does all kinds of bad things. So much for the wonders of nature: it's "red in tooth and claw," as Tennyson said.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:13 am And yet you say "dance" and "joy" and "all those other human qualities you list. You're anthropomorphizing again.

Haven't you ever heard such words used to describe things in nature? It's artistic expression!

Well, figurative language is one thing: and one thing it's not is scientific. It's imaginative, rather than descriptive. So what that would really imply is that nature neither "dances" nor knows "joy," but people like speak of it anthropomorphically that way.

Sentimental, but not truthful.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:37 am "Cooperative." Only an intelligent agent can be that. Otherwise, it's no more than "lucky." "Creative." Only an intelligent agent can be that.

Why don't you think there's intelligence?

# 1 a personal truth
I am a hedonistic psychopathic drug addict. I live to get high and mighty. When I was finished with the dizzy heights brought about by suckling on my mothers tits, I then invented a new high to take it's place, and called it God. I've been a sucker my whole life.


# 2 a personal truth
Not every one is a sucker.
Some learn the actual truth and deal with it quite admirably without ever flinching, not even once.

.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:18 pm
Unlike in a maths equation, they don't literally "negate" the claim that Edison invented the light bulb, reducing it to zero, because the fact remains that if Edison invented the light bulb, then Edison will have invented it no matter what those claims say. So, in that sense, they are not capable of "negating" that claim, because if the claim is true then it will be true regardless of the content of the contrary claims.

You'd say that in math and/or some other domain(s) that something isn't the case regardless of contrary claims?

Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:41 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:37 am "Cooperative." Only an intelligent agent can be that. Otherwise, it's no more than "lucky." "Creative." Only an intelligent agent can be that.

Why don't you think there's intelligence?

I think there is intelligence behind the Creation. I just look around, and it seems the most obvious hypothesis. That's why, I think, people are so often and so naturally drawn to poetic language and rhapsodies when they consider the creation. Heck, even Richard Dawkins, who hates God and calls him a "delusion" observes that one has to work very hard to resist the evidence of design in nature. But then, I believe in God, as you know: so the hypothesis that's obvious is not one I have to resist. And I often marvel that anyone else works so hard to any the obvious, actually.

But things only "co-operate" if they are capable of a mental operation called "deciding to cooperate." Otherwise, the fact that they work out okay is just "lucky," if it happens. And "creative" implies a faculty of "creativity." But if "nature" is impersonal, it has no such faculties. It "just happens," we might say, that we decide to call the world "beautiful": but that's just a subjective reaction, with no objective reality behind it, if "nature" is impersonal. In other words, it's a mere sentiment with no truth behind it. Nothing is really "beautiful." Rather, we are trying to say, "The objective world, for no good reasons, causes me to have feelings of 'beautful,' " and that's all.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 11:19 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:18 pm
Unlike in a maths equation, they don't literally "negate" the claim that Edison invented the light bulb, reducing it to zero, because the fact remains that if Edison invented the light bulb, then Edison will have invented it no matter what those claims say. So, in that sense, they are not capable of "negating" that claim, because if the claim is true then it will be true regardless of the content of the contrary claims.

You'd say that in math and/or some other domain(s) that something isn't the case regardless of contrary claims?

No. I'm saying that if something IS the case in physical reality, then any number of contrary claims do not factually "negate" the claim that it is the case. They may "deny" it, they may "contradict" it: but those resistant claims actually change nothing and "negate" nothing.

The term "negate," when we use it in reference to language, is a figurative term, drawing on maths only as a metaphor; and for that reason, like all analogies, it's only partly apt. What we are saying is, "Your contrary claim resembles a mathematical negation," not "Your denial actually makes my truth claim false or null."

Simply put: no amount of denial changes a literal truth into a falsehood or nullifies it. Truth is truth.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 2:56 pm No. I'm saying that if something IS the case in physical reality, then any number of contrary claims do not factually "negate" the claim that it is the case. They may "deny" it, they may "contradict" it: but those resistant claims actually change nothing and "negate" nothing.

The term "negate," when we use it in reference to language, is a figurative term, drawing on maths only as a metaphor; and for that reason, like all analogies, it's only partly apt. What we are saying is, "Your contrary claim resembles a mathematical negation," not "Your denial actually makes my truth claim false or null."

Simply put: no amount of denial changes a literal truth into a falsehood or nullifies it. Truth is truth.

So on your view is a mathematical negation not a linguistic phenomenon?

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:10 pm So on your view is a mathematical negation not a linguistic phenomenon?

It depends on how you're using the word "linguistic." Do you mean merely "symbolic"? Or do you mean, "Can somebody say 'two' instead of writing '2'?"

Linguistics are not reducible to mathematics. What's your equation for, "In two weeks, I expect that the wool on these sheep will be ready to be made into an excellent, water-resistant coat for my girlfriend"?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:23 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:10 pm So on your view is a mathematical negation not a linguistic phenomenon?

It depends on how you're using the word "linguistic." Do you mean merely "symbolic"? Or do you mean, "Can somebody say 'two' instead of writing '2'?"

Linguistics are not reducible to mathematics. What's your equation for, "In two weeks, I expect that the wool on these sheep will be ready to be made into an excellent, water-resistant coat for my girlfriend"?

I'm just wondering if it's a linguistic phenomenon in your view.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:13 pm I'm just wondering if it's a linguistic phenomenon in your view.

You can call mathematics a "language" if you want. Some people do, and it's not entirely wrong. But you can't call language "a mathematics."

So you'd have to say that, at most, mathematical symbols are a subset of linguistics, not coextensive with linguistics. That's a mathematical/philosophical way to put the situation.

In other words, there are lots of things that can be done linguistically that are not mathematical. Think of my "sheep" example, given earlier.

I can tell you're itching to make some point, and you need me to say something in order to allow you to make it. But I'm not sure what it is.

Why not just say what's on your mind?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 2:50 pm

Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:41 am Why don't you think there's intelligence?

I think there is intelligence behind the Creation. I just look around, and it seems the most obvious hypothesis.

Why can't intelligence be within the creative manifestation/flow? Why do you think there must be something behind it, rather than within it?

You do not think a creative force can evolve and/or propel itself? The way nature moves, interacts, creates, destroys, and corrects itself -- as part of a vast system of interplay -- you do not think there's intelligence all throughout? Exploring and experiencing?

That is what I observe, and that is what makes sense to me. The idea that there must be someone who created all of it, (of course) sounds like the human need to model everything on their OWN terms and for their own needs. Beginnings... control... rewards... good and bad... reassurance... etc.

Perhaps it is hard for the ego in humans to imagine anything powerful or creative without characteristics like their own. But nature can wipe out whole populations of egos in a second. And where is their god then? Nature is much bigger than man. Humans like to think that nature is under their feet, and that the humans are the masters. In that way, humans foolishly separate themselves from a system that they are a part of, not the rulers of!

It's important not to think that intelligence is only as humans think it is. Does a god have a brain? Doesn't need one? Why would nature? No, nature is not a god (and all that implies). The god notion is a human creation, which humans try to apply to everything. The notion is employed to deal out comfort, retribution, control, and to credit/excuse both good and bad behaviors/results. Yet, there are no sensible answers (just shallow excuses) for why such a notion does not consistently provide anything. It is whatever man wants it to be.

Nature includes humans while expanding vastly beyond them. Humans roll and tumble with the tide. Civilizations come and go with all their dreams and beliefs. Heaven and hell... rewards and punishment... are human concepts. There is no need for such things. And there is no need to cling. Rather, sing and dance while you can experience doing so, then let go. Just like the tide in nature, coming and going. Stories are fine, but they're the creation of a human who can only imagine what the expanse beyond themselves might be. Spinning too much in stories... one can become like a bug wrapped in its own creation, bouncing about blindly and uncontrollably in the wind. That's one way to exist briefly. But some would rather be free to fly and see more of the landscape while they can.