Goetic "Demons"
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again with this. I admit that language forms an semantic network where all words are inter-related an in a sense circular.
The tie down points of language are to the direct response or the nervous system. The automatic reactions of the body, which words only seek to define and explain. Those automatic responses are a direct cause and effect relation between the physical body and whatever physical entity bumps into it.
The "power" of words and symbols is also the interaction of physical matter with the physical brain. A word is a vibration in physical air, or a set of shapes drown with physical ink on physical paper, etc.
Those physical patters reflect light (entities called photons) which physically contact the cells in the eye, causing them to physically emit chemicals and electrical signals, that transmit through the physical brain, which physically sends a pulse to the muscles, which physically contract and move bones, which physically manipulate pens, and produce more ink shapes.
These physical entities (words, symbols, etc) change the physical structure of the brain, just as typing letters on a PC changes its processor state. These changes have nothing to do with genetic evolution across generations, as the brain has evolved to the point where it is sensitive to symbols and words, already.
The gene expression in individual neurons comes into play, as each synaptic fire alters the cell to add or remove receptor sites, which is a gene controlled process. But the cell DNA does not change, just which bits of DNA it uses.
And Enough of the probability fields, that only matters in Quantum mechanics, and its obvious you don't really understand it.
Here is a hint The probability field is a result of squaring the wave function that one gets by applying Schroedinger's equations to the evolution of quantum superposition prior to measurement. Thus it starts with an unknown and ends with an unknown. Until the actual measurement is made the best one can do is predict the possible out comes of a measurement at a particular time, with in an uncertain field of probability.
Just because quantum parts are weird and act as if this uncertainty is actually the case, rather than a mathematical guess, has no bearing on large scale physical events. Maybe they will find a better mathematics sometime, but the math we have now makes predictions, but can't explain what is actually going on.
Its not as if just because I can't see whats going on in my fridge with the door shut, that means jack frost is in these getting it on with my lasagna. Or some such supernatural bullshit.
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93,
Froclown, you wrote:
"And Enough of the probability fields, that only matters in Quantum mechanics, and its obvious you don't really understand it. "
Quantum mechanics is something I see cited often by people who want to impress others that those others understand nothing, or close to nothing. I wouldn't argue the point, since not only do I understand little about it, I don't particularly care to. Anything I have read indicates that at present it is a field of scientific study that is in an intermediate state, fascinating and frustrating to physicists in equal measure. Drawing firm conclusions regarding human consciousness around the ideas of quantum mechanics is just as dubious as somebody citing their dream material as evidence of a disaster or triumph to come.
You expound at great length, yet over-simplify so much. To cite just one example, on Wednesday you gave us your brief overview of philosophical evolution through the 20th Century. Among other arguable statements, you cited Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (the name of which you mangled as "Tracticus"), stating it was the text "In which he first develops logical positivism". Wittgenstein was critical of most of the logical positivists, and refused to attend their meetings when he lived in Vienna. Unlike them he was, in fact, quite willing to accept the notion of the "supernatural bullshit" you so desperately dismiss, simply seeing it as beyond his ability (and anyone else's) to analyze.
He would clearly have agreed that, "There is a factor infinite and unknown; and all their words are skew-wise." You can insist all you want that this unknown factor doesn't exist, but the people drawn to this discussion are here because most of us feel compelled to agree that it does.
Reducing everything to the measurable impulses of the central nervous system and other observable physical phenomena presents what you would like to be so. But denying the possibility that these phenomena might stem from something lying beyond their own apparent nature is not scientific, rational, or useful.
93 93/93,
EM
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It's funny when people try to convince you of something you know is incorrect. Reminds me of door-to-door preachers. By converting others, the proselytizer attempts to confirm and secure his insecure views. Otherwise, why not just shut the fuck up?
Oh, and as far as "not really understanding," things, the materialist projected a straw man to beat into the ground. On the other hand, it can definitely be seen that the materialist doesn't really understand 0=2 at all. I don't need to make anything up about lasagna in the fridge to assert this fact, either.
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Did I say there is no "unknown" factor(s).
I said that all factors are physical factors, because there simply is not anything that is not physical.
To claim that an unknown factor exists, is not the same as to claim that because it is unknown (at this time) that it must be spiritual, ghosts, Gods, ill defined energies/powers, etc.
Just because the early Greeks could not understand lightning, that was not grounds to conclude Zeus a large bearded man, wielded thunder bolts which are a kind of weapon forged by cyclopes in the depths of the earth, thus lightning indicates Zeus is angry or at war.
That makes a good allegory, great for literature class or art works. But its not what is really going on, it is not science.
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why not just shut up?
maybe because human progress requires that the TRUTH become common knowledge and be put into practice in place of superstitious untruths.
Why didn't Gallileo or Newton just shut up? Well because maybe if they did just shut up we would not have light, telephones, television, internet, satellite navigation, automobiles, etc!
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"The fact that each experience points beyond itself and can therfore not be defined or limited as something that exists in itself, but only in relationship to other experiences; this fact is circumscribed in the concept of sunyata, the emptiness of all determinations, the non-absoluteness, the infinite relationship of all experience. And this 'super-relativity' contains at the same time the unifying element of a living universe, because infinite relationship becomes all-relationship and therewith a physical magnitude, which can neither be described as 'being' nor as 'non-being,' neither as movement nor as non-movement.
Here we have reached the boundary of thought, the end of all that is thinkable and conceivable. Like movement, which in its ultimate extreme in its highest form, cannot be distinguished from perfect rest and immobility, thus relativity in the highest sense of universal relationship is indistinguishable from the 'absolute'. 'The eternally constant can only be represented in the changeable; the eternally changeable only in the constant, the whole, the present moment.' (Novalis)
For this reason sunyata (emptiness) and tathata (suchness) are identical in their nature. The former characterizes the negative, the latter the positive side of the same reality. The realization of the former starts from the experiences of transitoriness, momentariness, temporal and spatial relativity â the latter from the experience of timelessness, of completeness, of the whole, the absolute. This, however, does not mean that sunyata exhausts itself in the quality of relativity, nor that tathata is to be identified with the absolute. We use these expressions only as a bridge leading from the Western to the Eastern, or, more correctly, from the logical-philosophical to the intuitive-metaphysical mode of thinking.
...Speaking strictly logically, there is a gap between relativity and Emptiness. Relativity does not make us jump over the gap; as long as we stay with relativity we are within a circle; to realize that we are in a circle and that therefore we must get out of it in order to see its entire aspect presupposes our once having gone beyond it... we burst the boundaries of this circle and of our egohood in the ecstatic thrust toward the realization of totality. In this thrust, all worldly fetters, all prejudices and illusions are destroyed, all conventional concepts are swept away, all craving and clinging is cut off at the root, past and future are extinguished and the power of karma is broken, and the Great Void is experienced as the eternal present and ultimate Reality and Suchness."
Suck on that.
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@Froclown said
"why not just shut up?
maybe because human progress requires that the TRUTH become common knowledge and be put into practice in place of superstitious untruths.
Why didn't Gallileo or Newton just shut up? Well because maybe if they did just shut up we would not have light, telephones, television, internet, satellite navigation, automobiles, etc!"
Right, because you're the next Einstein.
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yes an all that suchness and emptiness are found in the reason, that is in the information of the mind.
but where is the mind? all thoughts and experiences are information in the mind, the mind itself is just the sum of the information.
Where is the mind? where is the suchness the emptiness?
Lo and behold it is in the physical brain!
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93
Froclown wrote:
"Just because the early Greeks could not understand lightning, that was not grounds to conclude Zeus a large bearded man, wielded thunder bolts which are a kind of weapon forged by cyclopes in the depths of the earth, thus lightning indicates Zeus is angry or at war.
"Who says that this is what they believed? You poor fellow. Yet again, you fail to understand that the image of "a large bearded man, wielded thunder bolts" was never meant to be seen as the reality, but a symbol.
One wonders that if in a thousand years someone with your level of understanding looked back at the Easter Rabbit as a reality and condemned the lot of humanity for believing in such ridiculous assertions.
Are you unable to recognize, for example, that there is archeological evidence that our ancestors were able to chart the skies, or make practical calculations which resulted in the construction of enormous public works that still can't be wholly explained.
It is your closedmindedness that is responsible for your inability to see that others are not as ignorant as you, and instead of seeing this, you keep projecting your ignorance outward to see it in everyone but you.
Just how closed off to reality are you?
93, 93/93
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93,
"Did I say there is no "unknown" factor(s).
I said that all factors are physical factors, because there simply is not anything that is not physical. "
I suggest re-reading the quote above. It is gloriously self-contradictory.
93 93/93,
EM
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reality = total of all actual aka physical happenings.
The physical world is a space that contains all substances of which anything must be made. If a thing is not made up of a substance in is not a thing at all, there is nothing, where their is no substance.
By virtue of being a substance rather than nothing a thing is physical. That is it possesses the properties of the substance(s) from which it is constructed upon.
One property of substances is that they are effected and changed by interaction with other substances. (There are physical interactions).
Sometimes substances form systems where one substance effects another, and produce effects together. A wheel turns a belt, for example. Or the dynamic equilibrium between algae and fungi in a lichen colony, is another.
Now some systems of interaction between substances become very complex, such as a calculator, where the substances in the semiconductors are set up such that they represent the numbers printed on the keys, and display results on it terms of those numbers. The electrical pulses are not numbers, they represent numbers in the workings of the computer chips, only so much as the results on the screen change the pules back into numbers.
computers are very complex versions of the same, one type of substance stands in for ani represents another.
In the human brain, brain substance stands for, but is not the thing the brain thinks about. The signifier is not the thing it signifies, however the signifier must also be constructed of a substance or else it is nothing, and thus not there to signify anything.
To say that the physical world is a projection of the mind, is to say that mind has no substance and yet persists, and that it some how lends substance to other things which persist in some way that lacks substance.
This is totally irrational, and contrary to any evidence. If this where the case, we could call anything into physical being at WILL. I want an apple pie, poof there is an apple pie. (not how it works, the very fact that things "work" in one way rather that some other way, is evidence against this sort of solipsist Idealism.)Now, the fact that all we know and experience are representation of the physical substance (just as a computer only experiences electrical pulses in its processors) means that we have some room to play with those symbols. Those symbols are also substance in the brain, and the brain is a system that can manipulate those symbols. The brain is effected by the physical environment, the body, chemical drugs, and many other things as to what symbols it uses, in what ways, and how it deals with the symbols it receives and has stored away.
By study of the correspondences of Kabbalah, and other elements of the system, the brain changes is its physical systems. Then in ritual we alter an environment to include those symbols, and induce certain brain activity.
This includes activity that creates the symbolic representation of environmentally stimulated sensory information, as a personalized spirit. As a means of entering into a feed-back relation (communication) between that physical event and a sub-system of the brain.
We also enter into feed-back with other people, because our brains represent the changes they make in response to what we do to them as meaningful.
One can communicate with at ant farm, if you find the way they rearrange their tunnels when you poke at them, meaningful.
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@Froclown said
"yes an all that suchness and emptiness are found in the reason, that is in the information of the mind.
but where is the mind? all thoughts and experiences are information in the mind, the mind itself is just the sum of the information.
Where is the mind? where is the suchness the emptiness?
Lo and behold it is in the physical brain!"
Such is your experience.
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yes, such is my experience.
and why do I experience at all?
What is it that I experience, and what are tho causes of these experiences?
And just what am I?
If the answer to all of those questions is not Physical substances with properties which interact with eachother mechanistically in space-time, what then perchance is the answer?
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@Froclown said
"yes, such is my experience.
and why do I experience at all?
What is it that I experience, and what are tho causes of these experiences?
And just what am I?
If the answer to all of those questions is not Physical substances with properties which interact with eachother mechanistically in space-time, what then perchance is the answer?"
The answer is the 'constant' which is not really much of a 'constant' at all, not physical (but is, expressively) and is not measurable by our instruments (directly). The constant is nothing which is not a literal nothing but a No-Thing described as sunyata, bodhicitta and 'suchness.' Read "The Law Is For All" to get a better assessment of Crowley's cosmology featuring Nuit, Hadit and... well, you know... (or do you? No, I guess not, eh?)
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Yes that is a great cosmology, of how impressions arise in our minds.
The neutral state in the mind is nothing, that is lock of perception.
That is in any particular dimension we can detect. All perception is between 2 opposite poles in our perception.
We feel HOT or COLD to some degree, but if the temperature does not push our sensory limit in the direction of HOT or COLD, we feel no temperature. If we feel hot and cold in equal measure, the cancel out to no sensation of heat also.
Ever possible property that we can perceive exists in thin dualistic way. Because that is how the nervous system detects the world. It has thresholds, if heat is greater than the thresh hold we feel hotness, if less than the thresh hold for cold we feel cold. If right in the threshold we have no awareness of hot or cold.
Same with pleasure-pain, movement in direction, Big or small, oder good or bad. Sweet or sour, etc.
These are limits of the human physiology. No actual object has flavor, color, scent, etc. Those are elements of the mind. But the actual object exists with the physical properties to effect the equilibrium of the sense organs.
At the natural rest state all the senses are neutral, no awareness of anything. The instant they are effected by another physical substance, that 0 state is disturbed and the whole universe of sensory awareness springs forth.
but to derive that the world outside your awareness dissolves into a state of non-being, just because that is the limit of your sensory system is solipsism.
This is to claim that oneself is the only Star, the only Hadit, and all non-stars and all other stars are part of ones psyche.
This is to confuse Hadit with Nuit, It is to say Nuit is projected from Hadit. As if your own Khu is the collective Khu of everyone, which you then falsely assume can be usurped by Hadit. (The very formula of the black brotherhood)
Further it is an insult to the other stars who have existence in their own right outside of your Khu, treated as if they are mere components of your solipsist reality, created by you to be used by you in any way you see fit.
Contrary to what you may believe, Crowley does not advocate solipsism, but the view that natural phenomena exist that are outside of our sensory perception, and a means by which these natural (physical phenomena) can be detected and worked with on a sensory level.
Also that new ways of understanding and relating to normally available sensory data can reveal hidden ways of using natural phenomena.
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@Froclown said
"Did I say there is no "unknown" factor(s).
I said that all factors are physical factors, because there simply is not anything that is not physical."
I'm sorry to add to the criticism of your statements, Froclown. I think you have a good point which I've thought of a lot. During a few of the latest posts in this thread I find the above and similar statements from you, though, and to me it seems meaningful to answer the Zen koan "how does a hand that claps sound?", and I apologize for possibly being cryptic, so let me elaborate:
My answer to that koan is that neither of the hands (physical objects) makes a sound in themselves, because the phenomenon of the sound is a product of the combination of two hands making it. Physical factors are coagulated from possibly non-physical factors, and the factor of perceiving physical factors is also a combination of factor A and B, but neither A nor B. The combination, being a transcendental factor as it is perceived, is thusly not something that can be determined with certainty as an A or a B.To claim that an unknown factor exists, is not the same as to claim that because it is unknown (at this time) that it must be spiritual, ghosts, Gods, ill defined energies/powers, etc."
No, but the possibility still exists, and your statement indicates that you're in the Know<tm>. As soon as we begin to make claims to something of absoluteness we digress from the objectivity of the Present Moment of things simply being the way they are into things being aligned along a specific order of being, which, in being a definition, excludes everything it distinguishes itself from by coming into existence as a definition, and thusly by logical reasoning can't be True.
@Froclown said
"Just because the early Greeks could not understand lightning, that was not grounds to conclude Zeus a large bearded man, wielded thunder bolts which are a kind of weapon forged by cyclopes in the depths of the earth, thus lightning indicates Zeus is angry or at war.
That makes a good allegory, great for literature class or art works. But its not what is really going on, it is not science."
Huh? That sounds to me like you're merely explaining away theology with semantics. If we have two concepts which correlate to each other in a specific way, then it doesn't matter if we call them "God & the Devil" or "1 & -1". I totally disagree with seeing science as The Teaching instead of just another teaching.
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Physical = pertaining to "things" which exist and how they interact with one another.
thing = that which has some set of manifest properties and lacks other properties, A thing can not be said to both have and lack the same property. Some properties are actually the lack of another. Dark is without light, Cold is without hot. etc. These are relative to some other thing as having more or less (heat) that the hand determines hot or cold, in a thing. Anyway a Thing is limited by its properties.
Exists - to be, that which has properties that potentially interact with other properties. the quality of being a thing.
Not exist - to have no properties or potential interaction with other properties, the quality of not being a thing.
Ok, so a spirit is a thing, this we know by virtue that a word exists to describe it, it has limits and properties which define what it is. And it interacts with other things via its properties and its nature.
Thus a spirit to a thing that exists and interacts with other things, thus it is the proper subject of physics.
If you propose that a spirit is not a physical thing, Then either it is not a thing at all (does not exist) or it is a thing that does not interact with other things in anyway. (in which case we would have to notion of it)
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@Froclown said
"
If you propose that a spirit is not a physical thing, Then either it is not a thing at all (does not exist) or it is a thing that does not interact with other things in anyway. (in which case we would have to notion of it)"In other words... if you cannot see it (measure it, touch it etc.) it doesn't exist.
In my opinion you are being blinded by this.
Science in itself cannot explain much because it is just one part of the equation. Even scientists know that if they only rely on pure facts, they would be stuck. You need something completely revolutionary... intuition.
Albert Einstein, Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.Albert Einstein
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
