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Post by alancalverd on Jan 15, 2014 16:53:34 GMT 1
I have already been through this. Sentient beings gradually evolved from simpler forms to induce the reality we experience today. But you previously asserted "no sentient being, no phenomenon". Now you are moving towards a rational statement "no sentient being, no experience of a phenomenon", with which even a philosopher would agree if he had the integrity of a gnat. Beware of naughty, seductive words like "induce". Philosophers misuse it to mean "infer from induction", which is a perfectly fine and agreeable procedure but misleadingly jargonised by that unworthy breed of parasites. Honest people use it only as a transitive verb - to persuade or cause to begin. Thus you may delude yourself by reading intellectual pornography into thinking that sentience has some transitive function. It doesn't.
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Post by fascinating on Jan 16, 2014 9:17:03 GMT 1
Only to observers. No observers, no space. So, now answer this one. How can there be an observer without space? No space, no observers (or anything else) - right? Abacus, I would be grateful if you would answer the question that mrsonde asked there (or, if you have answered it already, point out where the answer is). With regard to the Atlantic Ocean, you are stating that unless there were conscious observers there to see it, it did not exist in physical reality. Well, there are plant fossils on the sea bed that have been dated to millions of years ago. Also the rock that can be seen around the mid Atlantic ridge, from which new material forming the ocean bed has been exuded, can be dated (partly by viewing the orientation of magnetic particles within some of the rocks, and seeing how they have changed in tandem with the Earth's magnetic field) to millions of years. How do you view this evidence that seem to prove that the ocean was there thousands or millions of years prior to 1492?
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Post by alancalverd on Jan 16, 2014 9:36:16 GMT 1
Don't be naive, fascinating!
Everybody knows that the world was flat until 1492, when God created America to prevent His servant Columbus from falling off the edge.
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 16, 2014 15:33:18 GMT 1
You're merely using words to say nothing. You haven't the faintest clue what you mean by "things-in-themselves" nor "direct access to them". They do not, in fact, mean anything: they were mistakes, artefacts of an inadequate analysis of experience and knowledge; a better analysis has no need for these empty concepts, and they vanish, like phlogiston, and celestial spheres, and demonic possessions, and the four humours. Just mistakes. What there is, what we experience, and come to know about, is energy in spatio-temporal forms. Okay? You will find yourself unable to think of a single word that has a verifiable meaning that does not refer to energy in spatio-temporal arrangement - with only one very curious and interesting exception, which is the result of a structural explanation of them. Nothing else. Everything else you might say is meaningless - it refers to nothing, and there is no reason to say it. "You will find yourself unable to think of a single word that has a verifiable meaning that does not refer to energy in spatio-temporal arrangement...."This is very telling statement because what it shows is that we are simply unable to think of anything that does not appeal to our modes of perceiving, including imagination, and supports the idea that we are prisoners of our own subjective awareness of the universe. The reason you think this way is because you appear to reject the idea that there can exist anything outside of human perceptions. Just because we experience a universe that exhibits space and time and gravity, etc., does not mean that these things are equivalent to something which is not them and, through our interaction with such, makes them appear so. Once you have accepted, a priori, that humans' perceptions have been tailored to promote the interests of survival you will be compelled to take the view that there must exist realities we can never engage with directly, even though such realities initiate phenomena which we perceive. Answer me this: How can a black and white camera take pictures of a colourful scene and still maintain the colours present in the original image? It cannot, and in the same way our "human-based cameras" are incapable of capturing the nature of those parts of reality that we are not designed to capture. If no observers had ever developed, who or what would be about to perceive any primary qualities? Clearly, the answer to this is none and, therefore, your primary qualities argument falls flat in its face since things like colour, pressure, gravity, extension, heat and so forth, would not be able to be experienced by an "experiencer" leaving a universe devoid of primary qualities.
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 16, 2014 15:44:02 GMT 1
I have dealt with all of your questions but you continue to repeat yourself and, alas, in common with Fascinating, if you have not "got it" thus far, you never will.
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 16, 2014 15:51:42 GMT 1
I have already been through this. Sentient beings gradually evolved from simpler forms to induce the reality we experience today. But you previously asserted "no sentient being, no phenomenon". Now you are moving towards a rational statement "no sentient being, no experience of a phenomenon", with which even a philosopher would agree if he had the integrity of a gnat. Beware of naughty, seductive words like "induce". Philosophers misuse it to mean "infer from induction", which is a perfectly fine and agreeable procedure but misleadingly jargonised by that unworthy breed of parasites. Honest people use it only as a transitive verb - to persuade or cause to begin. Thus you may delude yourself by reading intellectual pornography into thinking that sentience has some transitive function. It doesn't. I think you've tied yourself up in knots by completely misunderstanding my use of the word "induce." Induce, in this context, means to bring into being increasingly more complex patterns of reality by the interaction of consciousness and the noumenal realm. I hope this is not too much for you to chew on, is it?
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Post by fascinating on Jan 16, 2014 16:03:05 GMT 1
So, Abacus, your theory cannot explain the existence of fossils and and ancient rocks in the Atlantic ocean sea bed. Interesting.
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 16, 2014 16:36:49 GMT 1
So, Abacus, your theory cannot explain the existence of fossils and and ancient rocks in the Atlantic ocean sea bed. Interesting. Yes, the fact that living things have interacted with them brings them into existence. It's really not that difficult.
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Post by fascinating on Jan 16, 2014 17:11:49 GMT 1
So, Abacus, your theory cannot explain the existence of fossils and and ancient rocks in the Atlantic ocean sea bed. Interesting. Yes, the fact that living things have interacted with them brings them into existence. It's really not that difficult. You are saying that there were plants in the sea millions of years ago, and that they brought about the existence of the Atlantic Ocean? Is that right?
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 16, 2014 17:18:35 GMT 1
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 16, 2014 17:26:40 GMT 1
Yes, the fact that living things have interacted with them brings them into existence. It's really not that difficult. You are saying that there were plants in the sea millions of years ago, and that they brought about the existence of the Atlantic Ocean? Is that right? It's a bit more complicated. The Atlantic Ocean has always had some existence, even before the appearance of life, however, when life arose, the Atlantic Ocean began to increase its reality from the noumenal realm, very imperceptibly at first and then much more quickly as life became more and more advanced until it reached its full reality as we see it today.
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 16, 2014 17:32:56 GMT 1
How could an organism without any eyes observe the hydrogen spectrum? You are assuming all intelligent life in the universe is broadly similar to us but you have no evidence of this and therefore should not assume we all observe the same thing. I've answered this facile point three times already. The "assumption" is that primary qualities exist, in the real world: they comprise the existent universe that applies to everything, including any life, and must perforce share (and if life has managed to develop and survive, must be able to adequately "observe".) And it's not an assumption - it's a well-verified hypothesis that all so far observed evidence confirms. The evidence that all intelligent life does in fact observe and adequately respond to primary qualities is overwhelming, and has never in the history of observations been contradicted. Of course - if they didn't, they'd have long died out. It is you who have not a shred of evidence for your claim: that in some unimaginable manner there's some creature who does not observe the primary qualities in the universe. But, even if some sense could be made of this claim, it still wouldn't be evidence for your overall point. If there was indeed some creature who did not observe the hydrogen spectrum - that was somehow composed of matter that did not, against all our experience and knowledge, respond to heat, for example - then that would merely be another extraordinary discovery about the universe that demanded explanation - using the language of primary qualities! This animal is composed of a hitherto novel form of matter that does not absorb light, whose molecular bonds if it has any do not vibrate, whose sensory apparatus if it has any does not register photons, or phonons, or any energetic vibration of any sort! Yet somehow it is able to function in the world! It would be the greatest discovery and profoundest mystery in the history of science, abacus, not least because it would be the very first hint of evidence that your philosophical view just might have some validity to it. Indeed, and there may well be such lifeforms that exist in other dimensions or in places in our universe we have no knowledge of. Haven't you realized yet that science is still learning about reality?
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Post by fascinating on Jan 16, 2014 18:02:50 GMT 1
You now seem to be declaring that the Atlantic Ocean did come into existence (ie was actualised and as real as it is now) well before the first human measured it. I am left wondering why you did not make that clear when I asked about that a couple of pages back, and all I got in reply was a rather cryptic comment.
Your position seems to be that the living beings that existed at the time of the Pangea super-continent did bring into actualisation a new sea, which then would have been smaller than the Atlantic is now, but succeeding generations of sea-dwelling sentient beings caused the sea to increase in size, and in time became the size of the Atlantic Ocean. Presumably at the time of Pangea there were sufficient living beings around to cause this to happen. And presumably you believe that the Earth, with its own ocean and continent , came into existence as a result of actualisation by God, making the environment that living things could arise in. Is that right?
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 16, 2014 18:13:26 GMT 1
You see, this shows how utterly confused you are about Kant. Kant's ideas about the noumenal have absolutely nothing to do with experience. Once again, an a priori statement is not about experience but about what must self-evidently pre-exist as a condition. Somebody could never get up from their sofa and make a priori statements. If I said: I think, therefore I am, that would be a a priori statement because it is a blindingly obvious pre-condition in order to be able to be self-aware and aware of the world in general. Not many dead people are aware of themselves, I wouldn't think.
In any case, since I agree with Kant's ideas how am I being any different from him?
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 16, 2014 18:22:28 GMT 1
You now seem to be declaring that the Atlantic Ocean did come into existence (ie was actualised and as real as it is now) well before the first human measured it. I am left wondering why you did not make that clear when I asked about that a couple of pages back, and all I got in reply was a rather cryptic comment. If my answers seemed cryptic it's because it's a very cryptic subject and you have to play your part in making a reasonable effort to understand. I have maintained the same position throughout, although I have had to re-phrase somewhat in order to clarify. Who said anything about God?
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