Consciousness and free will

[MaxWeiss]

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There remains the possibility that the basic element (quanta?) be a 'moment' which, like a moment of consciousness, cannot be precisely related to measurements of space.

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Oh yeah, I heard something about that many years ago; somebody was arguing that time was individual moments and we are traveling through them in a similar way we travel through space. This, again, seems more philosophical to me, unless there is some kind of data to add to the equation which necessitates this type of view.

You ask how we can define a moment in time. Well how can we define a piece of space either?? One foot (or other unit of measure) comprises the distance between point A and B. One minute comprises the time between events A and B. Conceptually that isn't hard for me to get, so I am having trouble understanding what your difficulty with it is.

The biggest problem I think there is in current physics is a need for many scientists, and people at large, to have a working theory which also conforms to our intuitive conceptual grasp of the world, but to me that just doesn't seem necessary. As you probably guessed, I am a fan of Dawkin's newest book, and he makes a point in it about how our brains are wired to understand the medium sized world in which we operate, and these odd things that happen in the very large and very small orders of magnitude are not odd in any way, they just seem odd to us, not having experienced life at those sizes. He proposed an idea where children's games which operate at a quantum mechanical level should be played and that hopefully those children will have a greater intuitive understanding of nature at that level and come up with brilliant new theories.

I also want to state that I think it is naive to assume we know enough about nature at large to encompass all our theories into one unified theory of everything. That seems silly. What cherished beliefs (in science) do we hold that we will laugh at in the (near??) future. A thousand years ago, it was reasonable to believe, based on evidence, that the earth was flat. Without the technology to see things at a different scale, all the evidence points to that being true. The ground does seem flat. But again, that is the beauty and indeed the nature of science, to self-correct. Though I personally don't understand/agree with the Nobel prize winning guy you are talking about, it is very important for scientists to challenge EVERYTHING and NOT to immediately accept or reject what seem like obvious ideas, because without deviating from the accepted norm, no progress in the way of self-correction can be made. His theory may turn out to be wrong and people may laugh at him, but even if one in a thousand like him are right, they are better serving the ultimate purpose of science.

The goal of science is not to provide answers, but to continually ask better questions. (oooohhhhhh, deep.)

[John21]

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The goal of science is not to provide answers, but to continually ask better questions. (oooohhhhhh, deep.)

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I think that's the problem a lot of people have with science. Whenever an answer is found two or more questions emerge. There seems to be a need for certainty that humans crave, and science is not the best appetizer.

As far as Dawkin's goes, I've read his books and I have problem with "The God Delusion." In my mind he's throwing the baby out with the bath-water, because to me the way I see it, the baby's 'god is love' and the bath-water is 'religion'. My problem with what he had to say is that I feel this deep affinity towards the baby (God), but I can't ignore his arguments and the conclusion he reached that the bath-water (religion) has become toxic.

My first reaction to reading his latest book was that the guy went on monkey-tilt. But after thinking about it for awhile, I can see what he means by saying that if we grant this blanket immunity in Western Civilization to religion we by necessity of the case must grant it to all cultures and their religions. And what is plenty obvious with radical Islam, the consequences of doing so are not good.

So in my desire to save this baby from the bath-water my thinking is Christianity should follow a similar path that the Eastern religions like Buddhism have trodden. How this will happen is another question, but I think it's one that will ultimately be settled internally.

[51cards]

If God is love and nothing more, like a sick sadistic bastard who gives people an excuse to commit more sick sadistic acts, then why do we need another word for love?

If you wanna say, "What's wrong with synonyms, lots of words have synomyms, go buy a thesaurus, etc, etc" then why is God capitalized?

'God is love' is crap. Stop using it as an excuse to cling to one last vestige of some ancient myths.

Throw the baby out.


Afterthought: I just realized you might not have meant God = love. If so, explain what you mean by is.

[51cards]

If you want to defend the baby I'm still listening.

[John21]

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If you want to defend the baby I'm still listening.

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I'll take a shot at it.

The way I see it, there are two ways of looking at absolute reality. We can look at it as a whole composed of parts or a bunch of parts that make up the whole. For simplicity sake, lets consider a house. We can say the house is made up of a bunch of parts or the parts make up what we call a house. This might seem like pure semantics, but I would argue it goes beyond that.

And the reason I'd say it extends beyond semantics is in how we ultimately end up describing the relationships among the parts. If we consider that the parts make up the whole, we are in a sense left with the task of explaining how or why a support pillar interacts in the way it does with a roof truss - with no context to place the interaction in.

However, when we look at it in the context of the 'whole' house, we can see the relevance or purpose of the interactions. And more to my point, we can see an inherent harmony that exists, that we could not deduce from looking at a sum of parts.

The reason I choose to look at ultimate reality from the perspective of the whole composed of parts, is because it allows me to deduce an inter-connectedness and harmony between the parts, I couldn't infer by simply looking at the parts alone.

It's that inter-connectedness and harmony I refer to as love, and I can't reach this conclusion following the other path, for me it's a spiritual dead-end.

Maybe you see all this a being illogical and irrational - I can understand that. Ultimately, science and religion come to an impasse, because spirituality is founded on an entirely subjective axiom that science rejects - namely, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

[madnak]

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spirituality is founded on an entirely subjective axiom that science rejects - namely, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

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Modern science is based on that axiom.

[John21]

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Modern science is based on that axiom. Do you see why?

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No.

"The scientist subconsciously, almost inadvertently, simplifies the problem of understanding Nature by disregarding or cutting out of the picture to be constructed, himself, his own personality, the subject of cognizance. That is exactly the reason why the scientific picture of the world does not itself contain any ethical values; nothing about esthetics, no word of our ultimate aims and destiny."
-Schrodinger

[madnak]

Schrodinger's right. That says nothing about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. The entire concept of emergence is basically the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, that based on the specific arrangement of its parts the whole can perform functions that none of its parts are able to perform, even in combination.

[John21]

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Schrodinger's right. That says nothing about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. The entire concept of emergence is basically the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, that based on the specific arrangement of its parts the whole can perform functions that none of its parts are able to perform, even in combination.

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I understand your point, but my question is can we get from emergence to meaning? Or phrased another way, can we find meaning without looking for it?

I'm just having a hard time grasping how a subjective experience can 'emerge'. How can the beauty I see in a painting be an emergent property of paint and canvas?