Ender

A testament (if i ever heard one) to the horseblinders you’ve got on, i.e. whatever was germane to your belief in God and nothing else.
No comment whatsoever on the quantum mechanics? Schrodigner’s cat? Proof of self-existent object/entity/thing? Do you know what a paralogism is? Why don’t you pretend we’re really talking to each other? One of the reasons why you’ve lost a lot of credibility in this forum is that you do not reciprocate well enough with your famous one liners that do nothing but reinforce your faith, much less address whatever you’re responding to.

Then where is the necessary connection? If you cannot come up strong in the clutch, then my demonstration stands. Stop dodging the issue with misdirection and non-sequitors!

Pretty much. If you admit the laws of nature are a posteriori knowledge, then you cannot ascertain any logical basis for grounding them in the least.

Hopefully the book cites the required passages in Aristotle’s works to supplement its claim, and you can simply list them here. Shouldn’t be too tough.

I came here to debate things with people, which invariably cover books and websites. FYI, you are under no obligation to waste my time with your ignorance and laziness. It takes some effort on your end as well.

You did with your assertion that the only certain knowledge we could have was of our existence. Is this where you portray your theistic disease with an ample display of buffalo shuffling?

Sorry, that is still observation. Study quantum mechanics and learn why its tenets are anathema to enlightenment philosophy. Observation isn’t as neutral as scientists once believed.

Remember your own statements:

*snorts*

~WiGGiN~

GunnerJ

He does it again!

This DIRECTLY AFTER telling ender to go read a book on the subject, and refusing to summerize the relevent portions.

Goddamned hypocrite.

Ed

Sorry, my response about QM was inadvertently deleted. Yes, at present it appears that QM doesnt have a cause and therefore violates that law of causality. However, it may have a cause and we just have not discovered it yet. No truly great scientist should throw up his hands and say "Well there must not be a cause!" None of the great scientists of the past ever did such a thing. Some causes of things in the past have taken hundreds of years to be accurately discovered. And if there truly are effects occuring in the universe without causes then science becomes impossible.

As far as Schrodinger's cat, he was demonstrating the serious problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of QM namely that human observation and measuring instruments have some supernatural power to control subatomic events. Again I believe it just appears that way and in fact is not that way. Our measuring instruments may be interfering with our obtaining knowledge of the causes. Einstein along with a few modern physicists believe that the Copenhagen interpretation is incorrect. I tend to side with them.

Quote:

Ed: You just violated the law of noncontradiction. Nothingness cannot DO anything. How can nothingness communicate with me over the internet? wig: Don’t be too hasty in your quick dismissals just yet! You just expressed a fixed definition of “nothing.” With this loyalty to platonic forms, you have no chance in understanding my intentions or purposes in using the word “nothingness” at all. That’s understandable since you are encumbered with these particularly colored glasses. What follows will be an expository on why I defined the consciousness as a “nothingness.” Man makes negative judgments, which exists only within man himself, not anywhere else. Existence, being, or reality (whatever you want to call it) is simply “IS” and any attempt to define this in a negatory way comes from man alone. The paralogical or ontic counterpoint of negative judgments is non-being. I want to illustrate 3 kinds of nothingness, how “non-being” manifests in a locality within the world or existence: the non-being in the questioner, that he cannot already know the answer to his question, and this implies negativity – “Do we have local DSL?” All questions implies that a negative answer is possible, that there is a “lack” in reality. “Where’s my last post?” a possible answer is “it’s not here.” Each question also presupposes a correct answer. “What discussion forum is this?” “an atheistic one, not a pro-theistic one.” Reality is demarcated, and broken up in segments. Since “being” or existence is positive, affirmative and solid, it cannot produce these kinds of nothingness. Nonbeing or any form of lack has absolutely NO objective status in reality. You may cite that they are merely psychological states, but they are far more than that- a question begs an answer from reality. Statements of negation indicate that the objects exist within the mind, within consciousness but are missing a “reality” do pose a problem, philosophically.

I am afraid I dont quite understand. What do you mean by statments of negation? What about a mind making positive statements and positive questions? Also just because something doesnt exist objectively doesnt necessarily mean that it doesnt exist. There are such things as subjective truths. An example is emotional states. I can be truly sad, but that cannot be objectively demonstrated.

Quote:

wig: Since I have no desire to suffer from transcendental idealism, ‘nothing’ is not transcendent, that ‘non-being’ cannot exist with reality, given the definition that existence is “filled within itself.”

Yes, I think I agree those statements.

Quote:

Ed: Empirically demonstrate the existence of perceptions and emotions. wig: I am observing a miasma of color through a thin translucent material. I surmise that these individual perceptions of shades of color are what constitute as empirical data.

No, you are just describing the mechanics of sight, that is not perception. I notice you did not even attempt to empirically demonstrate the existence of emotions.

Quote:

Ed: I dont think Decartes has been demolished. wig: Then read Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument or Hume’s analysis of the self or Kant’s Critique of Pure reason before mouthing off next time.

I am not mouthing off, I am just stating a belief. No need to get so defensive.

Quote:

Ed: No, everything does not have a cause only every effect. wig: You really didn’t bother responding to what I wrote at all. It does take two to generate meaningful conversation, and I posited several questions in good faith that went ignored. What is the difference between “everything” and “effect”? In that matter, what about “effect” and “event”?

An effect is something has a beginning, something that changes, in motion, or etc.

Quote:

Ed, earlier: logically there could be something that is uncaused. ed, later: I didn't say that an effect could be uncaused, that would be a logical impossibility. Ed: See above about non-contradiction. wig: Sorry, this fails to cover your contradiction, so your pithy one-liners don’t count. The law of identity or non-contradiction does not entail causality without presupposing certain elements such as temporality or spatiality, which aren’t derivable from anything other than experience.

No, causality does not require temporality or spatiality.

Quote:

Ed: Since generally human thought is linguistic in nature there is a logic built into all human knowledge, other than very simple instincts sensory input means nothing without processing by linguistic logic. wig: Thoughts are encapsulated in the symbols of language. If you concede that logic is an in-built tool of language, of understanding, then you lose the metaphysical significance of logic as a foundation of laws of reality, of nature, and a springboard of God. Logic as an formalized system of language merely paints how our instincts work at a fundamental level.

No, logic is founded on the most certain knowledge we have, our own existence.

Quote:

Ed: Man did not create the laws of logic they are built in as I stated above. The mind operates linguistically. Of course they did not become formalized until the Greeks. wig: You presume they’re built in, since you operate in the subject-object dichotomy. By assuming everything has a cause (i.e. the laws of logic) the rational inference that a creator of logic is inevitable. Since this assumption rests on experience alone, you have no logical basis.

No, their existence is self evident. Thought is impossible without the laws of logic and yet we think therefore the laws of logic exist a priori.
BTW, if you deny a subject-object dichotomy science becomes impossible.

Quote:

wig: How the mind operates is a different story- and your picture isn’t too shabby. This link illustrates how logic works – facts of the world must be established with regularity, and give rise to the belief in causality (or uniform theory of nature). Repeated perception helps forms a fact, and by a chain of reasoning we arrive at certain conclusions. A chain of reasoning combines facts in a logical way. Ergo, experience precedes logic in a certain model of epistemology.

While experience confirms and strengthens confidence in causality, it does not precede it, logic is necessary for any thought even any type of rational perception.


[b] How can one have some view of nothing? Nothing IS nothing no matter what view. But as you have shown in your above explanation, plainly your view of nothing is not really nothing.

Ender

Ed, after this I will no longer be replying to your comments or any further posts. Since they have long expired any license to amuse and titillate I will seek elsewhere for entertainment.

Einstein’s not omnipotent. He was a hard determinist who could not believe that there was such underlying “chance” that was the very fabric of the cosmos, which was the ultimate implication of quantum mechanics. FYI, the basic difference between Relativity and quantum mechanics is this- Relativity describes physics of the very massive and the very quick objects (as opposed to Newtonian mechanics that was strictly at man’s approximate level) while QM describes the physics of the very small.

Both theories are counter-intuitive since they both contradict the mechanistic universe Newton painted. But the amazing trick is that both of these 20th century physics model produce Newtonian results when applied to the “everyday world.”

Do you have any reason to agree with Einstein that Quantum Mechanics is incorrect outside of the defense of your pet belief? If so, are you a physicist? If not, then I rest my case.

Thank you for being honest. I was displaying how a phenomenological analysis of the ontology of existence was done.

a negative judgment. Statements of negation do not have objective existence, so they must come from somewhere “subjective” and that is from the consciousness. Consciousness defined as the human capability to ask question and receive negative answers. And I just outlined how questions (every one of them) require three different kinds of non-being, or nothingness.

statements such as “that is a tree” only serves an indicator of consciousness, which actively attaches labels, thanks to the law of identity, and differentiates the object from its environment. To be aware of an object is to separate it from its ground, as the person becomes aware of a computer rather than an undifferentiated, blurred landscape. Here I could explain how the object is not the awareness but I’ll leave it at that.

Which is why I said consciousness is the only medium that produces these three kinds of nothingness. I think you are confusing abstract negations or abstract nothings such as illogical arbitraries like square triangles. The statements of negation are indicators of “concrete nothings,” e.g. absence, destruction, change, lack. Imagine a typical episodes of the Three stooges where one of the characters went AWOL. The “non-being” of the missing dude is ‘real,’ not a mere figment of the imagination, but a concrete evidence of absence. This “empty” position is not a vacuous act, since the rest of the gang is affected. The remaining two stooges had to pull their weight, since there were less yuks to go around! This neatly formulates how absence is “expected,” that it is real and the relation between consciousness and existence confirms its lack of reality!

I’m not worried about objective or subjective truths. You can study Kierkegaard on how these differ, and why objective truths are indifferent to the individual, and how “truth is subjectivity.”

Since you seem to be working with an alien definition of perception, I do perceive a galaxy of colors that float behind a solid but transparent material. It is my inference that these individual pictures of shapes, of colors, of illumination build a coherent image of a computer screen, and those individual perceptions or information or sensory data are pure empirical knowledge. if I were describing the mechanics of sight, I’d be listing the exact light rays that struck the irises of my eyes and became inverted through the lenses, and splashes against the retina of my eyeball wall…

As for emotions, they are one of the primary passions, which are “impressions” I experience. I already covered emotions in the definition of “impressions,” in the likely case you forgot.

No, you misconstrue my surprise at such naivety for defense. If you are going to be this willfully ignorant, and I haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary over 20 posts, you are only wasting my time with these pedantic statements.

Fuzzy definition. How does that differ from “everything” much less “event?” By whimsically conjuring up a definition that doesn’t really show how it differs from the other terms only demonstrates how shiftless your intellect really is.

Why not o genius? You’re the second theist to make such a ludicrous claim. I very much doubt you are capable of sustaining such a claim with rigorous arguments, given your reputation as the god emperor of bad one-liners.
False. Logic is founded upon the structures of our language, not by a Cartesian self. It took philosophy about 300 years to overcome this epistemological roadblock.

Indulge me, and show how ‘existence’ is self-evident, without resorting to Descartes’ long discarded datum. Postmodernism has demolished the subject to a figment of language. Where have you been hiding for the past 50 years?

False. The forms of man’s intuition comes before the logical de rigeuer, that with every sensory input the mind presupposes temporality and spatiality. In other words, the mind consigns certain limits upon reality in order to make the experience intelligible. Only after the possibility of intelligible experience is accomplished, does the “understanding” (reason, logic, etc) comes in effect and organizes the sensations. (sensory data, information) This is where man derives his custom beliefs in causality, in logic, in mathematics, and etcetera. With this kind of epistemological approach it is easy to understand why man has longed for God, and has constantly conflated many forms of intuition or understanding in order to validate this longing.

Did you even bother to read the link I supplied? If you did not you will understand well why I no longer wish to talk to you.

It’s all part of a greater ontology. But I’m afraid that wouldn’t register with you in the slightest.

~WiGGiN~

((ubb )))

[ March 14, 2002: Message edited by: Ender the Theothanatologist ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

&lt; Waves frantically &gt; Coo-eee! Ed!

Since you've been here since you last posted there, just to remind you that your presence is still required in <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000275&p=4" target="_blank">this E/C thread</a>. There are some answered questions awaiting...

Oolon the patient

Ed

I am sorry to hear that, I was just starting to enjoy our discussion and I thought we were starting to make some progress.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: Sorry, my response about QM was inadvertently deleted. Yes, at present it appears that QM doesnt have a cause and therefore violates that law of causality. However, it may have a cause and we just have not discovered it yet. No truly great scientist should throw up his hands and say "Well there must not be a cause!" None of the great scientists of the past ever did such a thing. Some causes of things in the past have taken hundreds of years to be accurately discovered. And if there truly are effects occuring in the universe without causes then science becomes impossible. As far as Schrodinger's cat, he was demonstrating the serious problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of QM namely that human observation and measuring instruments have some supernatural power to control subatomic events. Again I believe it just appears that way and in fact is not that way. Our measuring instruments may be interfering with our obtaining knowledge of the causes. Einstein along with a few modern physicists believe that the Copenhagen interpretation is incorrect. I tend to side with them. wig: Einstein’s not omnipotent. He was a hard determinist who could not believe that there was such underlying “chance” that was the very fabric of the cosmos, which was the ultimate implication of quantum mechanics. FYI, the basic difference between Relativity and quantum mechanics is this- Relativity describes physics of the very massive and the very quick objects (as opposed to Newtonian mechanics that was strictly at man’s approximate level) while QM describes the physics of the very small. Both theories are counter-intuitive since they both contradict the mechanistic universe Newton painted. But the amazing trick is that both of these 20th century physics model produce Newtonian results when applied to the “everyday world.” Do you have any reason to agree with Einstein that Quantum Mechanics is incorrect outside of the defense of your pet belief? If so, are you a physicist? If not, then I rest my case.

Yes, because if effects can occur without causes then science becomes impossible and is effectively destroyed. But even if QM is correct it still does not provide a cause for the universe, because a quantum event still requires an interval of time to occur. But since the universe began at time=0 then no quantum event can occur. So the univese still requires a cause and the most logical cause of the universe is the Christian God.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: I am afraid I dont quite understand. wig: Thank you for being honest. I was displaying how a phenomenological analysis of the ontology of existence was done.

You need to go over it again defining your terms. I am not a professional philosopher.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: What do you mean by statments of negation? wig: a negative judgment. Statements of negation do not have objective existence, so they must come from somewhere “subjective” and that is from the consciousness. Consciousness defined as the human capability to ask question and receive negative answers. And I just outlined how questions (every one of them) require three different kinds of non-being, or nothingness.

Your terminology is confusing. How can there be kinds of nothingness? You seem to have your own "private language". Please define your understanding of nothingness. It obviously is not the standard definition.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: What about a mind making positive statements and positive questions? wig: statements such as “that is a tree” only serves an indicator of consciousness, which actively attaches labels, thanks to the law of identity, and differentiates the object from its environment. To be aware of an object is to separate it from its ground, as the person becomes aware of a computer rather than an undifferentiated, blurred landscape. Here I could explain how the object is not the awareness but I’ll leave it at that.

I agree that the object is not the awareness but the awareness does actually reveal the object but of course not exhaustively.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: Also just because something doesnt exist objectively doesnt necessarily mean that it doesnt exist. wig: Which is why I said consciousness is the only medium that produces these three kinds of nothingness. I think you are confusing abstract negations or abstract nothings such as illogical arbitraries like square triangles. The statements of negation are indicators of “concrete nothings,” e.g. absence, destruction, change, lack. Imagine a typical episodes of the Three stooges where one of the characters went AWOL. The “non-being” of the missing dude is ‘real,’ not a mere figment of the imagination, but a concrete evidence of absence. This “empty” position is not a vacuous act, since the rest of the gang is affected. The remaining two stooges had to pull their weight, since there were less yuks to go around! This neatly formulates how absence is “expected,” that it is real and the relation between consciousness and existence confirms its lack of reality!

Your conclusion doesnt seem to follow your statements leading up to your conclusion.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: There are such things as subjective truths. An example is emotional states. I can be truly sad, but that cannot be objectively demonstrated. wig: I’m not worried about objective or subjective truths. You can study Kierkegaard on how these differ, and why objective truths are indifferent to the individual, and how “truth is subjectivity.”

If "truth IS subjectivity" then why are you here formulating arguments on these boards as if you are conveying some type of objective truth? Debating over subjectivity seems irrational, but of course if truth is subjectivity then in actuality there is no such thing as rationality or irrationality.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: No, you are just describing the mechanics of sight, that is not perception. I notice you did not even attempt to empirically demonstrate the existence of emotions. wig: Since you seem to be working with an alien definition of perception, I do perceive a galaxy of colors that float behind a solid but transparent material. It is my inference that these individual pictures of shapes, of colors, of illumination build a coherent image of a computer screen, and those individual perceptions or information or sensory data are pure empirical knowledge. if I were describing the mechanics of sight, I’d be listing the exact light rays that struck the irises of my eyes and became inverted through the lenses, and splashes against the retina of my eyeball wall…

How do you know this if all truth is subjective?

Quote:

wig: As for emotions, they are one of the primary passions, which are “impressions” I experience. I already covered emotions in the definition of “impressions,” in the likely case you forgot.

But you never said how they can be empirically shown to exist.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: I am not mouthing off, I am just stating a belief. No need to get so defensive. wig: No, you misconstrue my surprise at such naivety for defense. If you are going to be this willfully ignorant, and I haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary over 20 posts, you are only wasting my time with these pedantic statements.

I am not being willfully ignorant, I am just stating how your comment was received and perceived.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: An effect is something has a beginning, something that changes, in motion, or etc. wig: Fuzzy definition. How does that differ from “everything” much less “event?” By whimsically conjuring up a definition that doesn’t really show how it differs from the other terms only demonstrates how shiftless your intellect really is.

The term "everything" includes things that do not have a beginning, are not in motion, or do not change, ie not effects. The term "event" could be interchangeable with "effect". I did not conjure up this definition, it came from a philosophy book.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: No, causality does not require temporality or spatiality. wig: Why not o genius? You’re the second theist to make such a ludicrous claim. I very much doubt you are capable of sustaining such a claim with rigorous arguments, given your reputation as the god emperor of bad one-liners.

Because causality can also be understood just as what it takes for something to exist without any reference to a cause and effect chain of events or spatiality.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: No, logic is founded on the most certain knowledge we have, our own existence. wig: False. Logic is founded upon the structures of our language, not by a Cartesian self. It took philosophy about 300 years to overcome this epistemological roadblock.

So are you saying you as a person dont exist?

Quote:

Ed mumbled: No, their existence is self evident. Thought is impossible without the laws of logic and yet we think therefore the laws of logic exist a priori. BTW, if you deny a subject-object dichotomy science becomes impossible. wig: Indulge me, and show how ‘existence’ is self-evident, without resorting to Descartes’ long discarded datum. Postmodernism has demolished the subject to a figment of language. Where have you been hiding for the past 50 years?

Oh so you are a postmodernist? That explains your strange private language. Many articles written by postmodernist scholars are basically unintelligible. You say the subject is a figment of language? How is that possible when only subjects can even USE language? Language presupposes the existence of subjects.

Quote:

Ed mumbled: While experience confirms and strengthens confidence in causality, it does not precede it, logic is necessary for any thought even any type of rational perception. wig: False. The forms of man’s intuition comes before the logical de rigeuer, that with every sensory input the mind presupposes temporality and spatiality. In other words, the mind consigns certain limits upon reality in order to make the experience intelligible. Only after the possibility of intelligible experience is accomplished, does the “understanding” (reason, logic, etc) comes in effect and organizes the sensations. (sensory data, information) This is where man derives his custom beliefs in causality, in logic, in mathematics, and etcetera. With this kind of epistemological approach it is easy to understand why man has longed for God, and has constantly conflated many forms of intuition or understanding in order to validate this longing.

Actually you inadvertently showed where logic comes into play. Your statement "the mind consigns certain limits upon reality in order to make the experience intelligible" is explaining basically what logic does. Later on however, once we gain more knowledge thru experience we can discover whether our "limits" on reality are real or not.

Quote:

wig: Did you even bother to read the link I supplied? If you did not you will understand well why I no longer wish to talk to you.

Yes. And I agree with it, it is good site explaining the basics of logic.

[b] Why dont you explain to me your entire metaphysical system?

[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>