Karma

[wigginhall]

Yeah, waffle could be part of wiffle.

[torridon]

A robot might wonder how intelligence could exist outside the microprocessor!  But it does exist. Similarly....intelligence and Consciousness could be fundamental properties of the life form that we  call spirit.

and if intelligence and consciousness can exist independently, what then is the point of having a body ?  Why don't we just exist as spirit beings ?  All those messy body parts ugh ...

[Alan Burns]

I would say the difference is one of aspect, or perspective.  We live in a relative cosmos in which all matter and all coordinates stand in Euclidian relationship with the rest of the cosmos, but there is no ultimate objective reference frame and so true objectivity is unattainable.  When we say we are being objective, what we are really saying is that we are minimising subjectivity. All this becomes pertinent when trying to understand mind - a mind is essentially a focussed nexus of subjectivity that procures a refined unique viewpoint on the rest of the cosmos for just one unique point in spacetime. Thus a mind is by definition a unique and subjective thing.

I must admire this thoughtful response Torri.  You appear to be using your considerable intelligence to shoehorn your perception of reality to fit in with the inherently lifeless deterministic activity derived from human scientific discovery.  But can you not see that there is much, much more to reality than this?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Yes, I was just thinking that.  You will hit the problem of induction.   You could search Ireland for leprechauns, but if you don't find any, would that confirm their non-existence?  Not really.

As Hillside will tell you the existence of leprechauns is probabilistic since they are tiny Irishmen found at rainbows with pots of Gold and since he is a rabid antichristian like yourself you would be confortable with that. But he and his little wizards are in trouble when suggesting a probability of God as you have suggested in the past but probably now accept the opposite.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Not to a neuroscientist studying the 'mass of electrochemical signals' in a person's brain, I agree.  But for the person who is that mass of electrochemical signals, that is subjective experience.  The only way to experience something subjectively is to be it; subjectivity arises out of being.  Cue solipsism.

So being is subjectivity?

[wigginhall]

As Hillside will tell you the existence of leprechauns is probabilistic since they are tiny Irishmen found at rainbows with pots of Gold and since he is a rabid antichristian like yourself you would be confortable with that. But he and his little wizards are in trouble when suggesting a probability of God as you have suggested in the past but probably now accept the opposite.

That's pretty good.  A giant non sequitur, with some mini ones tucked up inside, like Russian dolls.  Complimenti.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

That's pretty good.  A giant non sequitur, with some mini ones tucked up inside, like Russian dolls.  Complimenti.

Not really.....you could search the whole world and probably not find any Leprechauns.

[Nearly Sane]

Not really.....you could search the whole world and probably not find any Leprechauns.

What's the foolproof leprechaunometer?

[torridon]

So being is subjectivity?

Pretty much, yes.  Every point of matter has a subjective aspect upon the rest of the cosmos, and there are objective aspects upon it from other places in the cosmos. Every thing in the cosmos has its own unique subjective aspect.  The act of being something is to experience it's subjective aspect.  If you are a hydrogen atom in interstellar space, your subjective experience of the rest of the cosmos is simple, but unique, consisting mainly in the base forces of attraction and repulsion.  A brain is something that procures a highly enriched subjectivity for a local bounded system with the outcome that the experience of being a haddock or an estate agent is far richer than that of a hydrogen atom. Or something like that.  Thinking out loud here ....

[Alan Burns]

Pretty much, yes.  Every point of matter has a subjective aspect upon the rest of the cosmos, and there are objective aspects upon it from other places in the cosmos. Every thing in the cosmos has its own unique subjective aspect.  The act of being something is to experience it's subjective aspect.  If you are a hydrogen atom in interstellar space, your subjective experience of the rest of the cosmos is simple, but unique, consisting mainly in the base forces of attraction and repulsion.  A brain is something that procures a highly enriched subjectivity for a local bounded system with the outcome that the experience of being a haddock or an estate agent is far richer than that of a hydrogen atom. Or something like that.  Thinking out loud here ....

But can a hydrogen atom experience its own subjectivity?

And the human brain comprises lots of individual molecules - are they all subjective to themselves?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

What's the foolproof leprechaunometer?

Er, Bluehillside.....they love him....If you are hunting Leprechauns, take Bluehillside with you and they will stick to him like shit and a blanket.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Pretty much, yes.  Every point of matter has a subjective aspect upon the rest of the cosmos, and there are objective aspects upon it from other places in the cosmos. Every thing in the cosmos has its own unique subjective aspect.  The act of being something is to experience it's subjective aspect.  If you are a hydrogen atom in interstellar space, your subjective experience of the rest of the cosmos is simple, but unique, consisting mainly in the base forces of attraction and repulsion.  A brain is something that procures a highly enriched subjectivity for a local bounded system with the outcome that the experience of being a haddock or an estate agent is far richer than that of a hydrogen atom. Or something like that.  Thinking out loud here ....

Don't you think this is a bit reductionist though, investing a kind of consciousness into the atomic level?

[Udayana]

and if intelligence and consciousness can exist independently, what then is the point of having a body ?  Why don't we just exist as spirit beings ?  All those messy body parts ugh ...

You have not been paying attention ... no bodies no animal passions to overcome so not much fun

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spoof,

As Hillside will tell you the existence of leprechauns is probabilistic since they are tiny Irishmen found at rainbows with pots of Gold and since he is a rabid antichristian…

That “hence” is quite some non sequitur, and the “he is a rabid antichristian” is a lie you’ve tried several times here. I’m not “rabidly” anything, and nor am I “antichristian” – I merely argue against Christians who overreach into demanding special privileges for their private faith beliefs.

…like yourself…

And nor of course is Wiggs “rabidly antichristian” ether.

… you would be confortable with that. But he and his little wizards are in trouble when suggesting a probability of God as you have suggested in the past but probably now accept the opposite.

Random word selection noted. What are you even trying to say here?

Not really.....you could search the whole world and probably not find any Leprechauns.

That’s probably true. Now then – about that falsification of leprechauns you claimed to be able to do, but now seem to have resiled from?

[Sriram]

and if intelligence and consciousness can exist independently, what then is the point of having a body ?  Why don't we just exist as spirit beings ?  All those messy body parts ugh ...

torridon,

That is what spiritual philosophy is all about.  We really are free independent beings. We DO exist as spirit beings. That is the point.  NDE's are clear on that....as also most spiritual and religious texts.

Now...the question... WHY are we living in this body... is relevant...and that's the question most sages, philosophers have asked for thousands of years.

To find an answer for this you may have to study some spiritual philosophies, secret teachings of religions etc. You may have to meditate and live in seclusion for some time. The answers are all inside you.   

To give you a simple outline....

1. Spirits have for some reason become tarnished, ignorant and unclean.  They are enveloped by some form of 'dirt' which makes them individualistic and selfish.

2. The spirits are therefore born in bodies of various kinds beginning with the most ignorant lower level organisms.

3. Then through the process of evolution, the erosion of the 'dirt' begins and the inner consciousness slowly awakens. This obviously has several levels.

4. As we reach the human level, self awareness becomes more pronounced. This helps further in the process of spiritual development by consciously removing the 'dirt' and awakening the inner Self.  Religious processes are also a part of this.

5. As we develop, we become more and more selfless, loving, universal which are the true qualities of the Spirit. It would be more correct to say that these qualities that are latent within us ...start surfacing.

6. Once we are cleansed of the 'dirt', we become free and are not born again. We then exist as spirit beings.


I know there are lots of questions and doubts and if's and but's. But this is only a simplistic and sketchy outline of the spiritual philosophy. If our understanding of the physical world of atoms, cosmos and genes can be so complicated that we have several questions that cannot be answered...it is bound to be only more so in the case of spiritual ideas.

No one will be able to give you  a complete and comprehensive explanation of all this...all neatly tied up. As I said...each of us has to seek the answers inside ourselves. That is why introspection and inner development are considered so important in spiritual matters.

Cheers.

Sriram

[torridon]

Don't you think this is a bit reductionist though, investing a kind of consciousness into the atomic level?

I don't buy into panpsychism if that is what you are thinking, it smacks of woo to me. Rather I would think that exotic emergent phenomena like consciousness and qualia must derive from the base laws of nature that we already know about, the same laws that describe the behaviour of fundamental particles. How do we get from particles to politics ? It's a real big story to be unfolded.

[torridon]

torridon,

That is what spiritual philosophy is all about.  We really are free independent beings. We DO exist as spirit beings. That is the point.  NDE's are clear on that....as also most spiritual and religious texts.

Now...the question... WHY are we living in this body... is relevant...and that's the question most sages, philosophers have asked for thousands of years.

To find an answer for this you may have to study some spiritual philosophies, secret teachings of religions etc. You may have to meditate and live in seclusion for some time. The answers are all inside you.   

To give you a simple outline....

1. Spirits have for some reason become tarnished, ignorant and unclean.  They are enveloped by some form of 'dirt' which makes them individualistic and selfish.

2. The spirits are therefore born in bodies of various kinds beginning with the most ignorant lower level organisms.

3. Then through the process of evolution, the erosion of the 'dirt' begins and the inner consciousness slowly awakens. This obviously has several levels.

4. As we reach the human level, self awareness becomes more pronounced. This helps further in the process of spiritual development by consciously removing the 'dirt' and awakening the inner Self.  Religious processes are also a part of this.

5. As we develop, we become more and more selfless, loving, universal which are the true qualities of the Spirit. It would be more correct to say that these qualities that are latent within us ...start surfacing.

6. Once we are cleansed of the 'dirt', we become free and are not born again. We then exist as spirit beings.


I know there are lots of questions and doubts and if's and but's. But this is only a simplistic and sketchy outline of the spiritual philosophy. If our understanding of the physical world of atoms, cosmos and genes can be so complicated that we have several questions that cannot be answered...it is bound to be only more so in the case of spiritual ideas.

No one will be able to give you  a complete and comprehensive explanation of all this...all neatly tied up. As I said...each of us has to seek the answers inside ourselves. That is why introspection and inner development are considered so important in spiritual matters.

Cheers.

Sriram

That's all very nice, but I think it creates more unanswered questions than it solves.  It says nothing about what a spirit is, about where they came from, what their properties are, how many are there, are these spirits discreet and unique or are they all part of a greater whole, is the number of spirits constant over time, does each e-coli bacterium have a spirit of its own, do spirits exist in spacetime or do they transcend it in some way, would we expect there to be spirits on Mars and Europa ?

Could go on but you get the picture - I see this sort of top down rationale as creating more unexplained things than it explains, and for evidential support in the modern sense you end up having to rely on fragmentary and anecdotal claims of exotic aberrant phenomena like out of body experiences whilst ignoring the overwhelming bulk of insights accrued through mainstream research into the nature of life.

It's an interesting contrast to western traditional ways of thinking, but at the end of the day it seems to me to fly in the face of evidence more than it explains the evidence, and furthermore, like western judeochristian traditions, it is anthropocentric at heart, it starts from our human experience and extrapolates a universe from that.  In contrast, modern research shows us a cosmos in which we are very much an exotic extreme rarity rather than the centre of things; and it is telling that your philosophy depends much on introspection paralleling the western traditions of meditation and prayer - by focussing on what is inside us we end up seeing the cosmos through a highly personalised human-centric lens rather than an objective view.  These ways of thinking appeal to our narcissism, so they become popular.  They also act to support our denial of mortality, again, an immensely seductive power.

[Gordon]

We really are free independent beings. We DO exist as spirit beings. That is the point.  NDE's are clear on that....as also most spiritual and religious texts.

Depends on what you mean by 'spirit' but if this is analogous with 'souls' then 'spirit' seems like wishful thinking dressed up in cultural clothing, such as the dogmas and routines of the various religions our species has come up with to date.

Now...the question... WHY are we living in this body... is relevant...and that's the question most sages, philosophers have asked for thousands of years.

'Why', in the context you are using, seems like an invalid question since it assumes there is an answer: it seems like an instance of begging the question (a fallacy).

To find an answer for this you may have to study some spiritual philosophies, secret teachings of religions etc. You may have to meditate and live in seclusion for some time. The answers are all inside you.

Aside from being a mix of confirmation bias and special pleading this again presumes a valid answer.   

To give you a simple outline....

1. Spirits have for some reason become tarnished, ignorant and unclean.  They are enveloped by some form of 'dirt' which makes them individualistic and selfish.

2. The spirits are therefore born in bodies of various kinds beginning with the most ignorant lower level organisms.

3. Then through the process of evolution, the erosion of the 'dirt' begins and the inner consciousness slowly awakens. This obviously has several levels.

4. As we reach the human level, self awareness becomes more pronounced. This helps further in the process of spiritual development by consciously removing the 'dirt' and awakening the inner Self.  Religious processes are also a part of this.

5. As we develop, we become more and more selfless, loving, universal which are the true qualities of the Spirit. It would be more correct to say that these qualities that are latent within us ...start surfacing.

6. Once we are cleansed of the 'dirt', we become free and are not born again. We then exist as spirit beings.

There are probably a variety of fallacies in this little lot given the amount of undefined terms involved and how these are being used: but most of all it reads like an exercise in very loose wishful thinking.   

I know there are lots of questions and doubts and if's and but's. But this is only a simplistic and sketchy outline of the spiritual philosophy. If our understanding of the physical world of atoms, cosmos and genes can be so complicated that we have several questions that cannot be answered...it is bound to be only more so in the case of spiritual ideas.

Which this time reads like an argument from personal incredulity. 

No one will be able to give you  a complete and comprehensive explanation of all this...all neatly tied up.

I don't think, though, that you've set out anything that is education-apt.

As I said...each of us has to seek the answers inside ourselves. That is why introspection and inner development are considered so important in spiritual matters.

If all you mean is that each of us has the capacity, thanks to our biology, to think abstractly then fine: we also have the capacity for imagination, and I suspect that what you deem as being 'spiritual' is an example of that.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

That is what spiritual philosophy is all about.  We really are free independent beings. We DO exist as spirit beings. That is the point.  NDE's are clear on that....as also most spiritual and religious texts.

Using capital letters does not make something true. This’ll bounce off you because you’re so heavily invested in your beliefs, but your problem is that there’s no evidence of any kind to suggest that there is such a thing as “spirit”, let alone that we are “spirit beings”.

Torri makes a good point when he says:

“…like western judeochristian traditions, it is anthropocentric at heart, it starts from our human experience and extrapolates a universe from that.”

That’s true of most mystic traditions I think, yours included. To explain the universe, people started with themselves and looked for narratives to fit around their experiences. The genius of rational enquiry on the other hand is that it starts with the Universe, and as s footnote tries to work out where we happen to fit within it.   

Now...the question... WHY are we living in this body... is relevant...and that's the question most sages, philosophers have asked for thousands of years.

“Sages” maybe, but not philosophers. Philosophy has long since moved on from pre-rationalist mythicism.   

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

#267

re the poster Hope and the NPF:

Yes.....but did he actually say it....or is it your inference?

Sppof,

He said it – often in fact, as have various others who come here. It’s an old trope too – which is why back in the day Russell came up with his celestial teapot as a counter to it.

Then you will have no problem providing citations of where it has been used.

[bluehillside Retd.]

SOTS,

Then you will have no problem providing citations of where it has been used.

My problem would be trawling through his posts for your benefit. He's been called on it many times - if you're that interested, look for it yourself.

It's a secondary issue in any case: you (and Vlad) tried to critique the rebuttal of the NPF by complaining that leprechauns, the celestial teapot etc are obviously made up. You've had it explained to you several times now that that's irrelevant to the force of the rebuttal, so you seem now to have resiled to a position of, "Oh well, no-one uses the NPF anyway". Actually they do - a lot in fact - but even if no-one did, the rebuttal of it would stand regardless.   

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

My problem would be trawling through his posts for your benefit. He's been called on it many times - if you're that interested, look for it yourself.

Your problem? You accuse someone of something and cannot even be bothered to cite a single example?

It's a secondary issue in any case: you (and Vlad) tried to critique the rebuttal of the NPF by complaining that leprechauns, the celestial teapot etc are obviously made up. You've had it explained to you several times now that that's irrelevant to the force of the rebuttal,

It is not a secondary issue as you are accusing people of using it when they are not. It therefore allows you to hide behind having to account for your own position.

[Gordon]

Your problem? You accuse someone of something and cannot even be bothered to cite a single example?
It is not a secondary issue as you are accusing people of using it when they are not. It therefore allows you to hide behind having to account for your own position.

Utter nonsense: there are numerous instances of fallacy-peddling, including from your good self.

Do your own homework!

[SusanDoris]

Utter nonsense: there are numerous instances of fallacy-peddling, including from your good self.

Do your own homework!

I'm so glad to read your post - I was in imminent danger of breaking my own  rule of never being sarcastic!!

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

Do your own homework!

Your failure to provide any evidence to back up your point is duly noted...

Numerous instances eh? So numerous, you can't even find one