Based on physics, what insights do you make about reality?

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I used size 150 if I recall. I believe it is based on percentages of normal size, so 100 is normal and the maximum size is 300.


Here's the thing though, that simulated version of our universe would include simulated versions of you and I having this exact conversation. You would be just as insistent that the world you are standing on would be unaffected by the programmer's actions yet that version of you actually would be killed if the programmer decided to blow up the Earth. If we assume that there is only one real version of this universe and one simulated version of this universe then there is a 50% chance that we are the simulated version and not the real version.


Before we continue I am going to define a few terms here as I am using them in the context of my argument.

Design:
A process that is usually very calculation intensive in which a way of creating something which does an intended task within the limitations imposed my the laws of physics is devised.

Create:
To take a design and manifest it within the physical world.

Appear:
To come into existence without a design.

In your example, I would have both designed and created the paper but you would have just created it and stolen my design. In the case of universes though I believe we can agree that they were never designed, they just appeared. This would also mean that although a universe simulating program would have been designed the universes it simulates would not be created but would just appear based on your model.

tl;dr: that's a false analogy fallacy.


I have heard this concept referred to as the "ultimate multiverse" model, my problem is not that you take it seriously but that you believe it to be correct without observable evidence.


But it would effect the people in the simulation which for all we know we could be.


This is like the classic "atheists are 100% sure that there is no God" strawman. Yes, by your definition I am not a materialist but that is not the definition that myself or anyone else that I know uses. As I said before I am above and beyond all else an empiricist which means that every belief I have is subject to change if new information suggests that I'm wrong. I am a materialist because I believe that what I can see or otherwise measure exists and anything I can't see or otherwise measure by definition doesn't effect anything and therefore can safely be ignored. I don't believe that anything exists besides matter and energy because I have no empirical reason to, you could have all the explanatory power in the world but without predictive power a theory is worthless.


Sure, given that "if A then B" and "A is true" then I could conclude with 100% certainty that "B is true". Here's the problem: in the real world we never have premises that we can be 100% certain about. We can only be certain about things we imagine, such as the definitions of words that make all dogs classified as animals. That is something we made up which is the only reason we can be so sure about it. When it comes to reality outside of our minds we don't have this luxury, it's impossible to be 100% sure about anything.


So you are saying that if-then statements make up all of reality? That proposition has one fatal flaw: where do they start? There must be a first if-then statement or set of if-then statements, but then what would be the "if"? This is why math is based on axioms, which are assumed to be true and can't be supported mathematically without it becoming circular logic. These axioms are supported generally by things like common sense and real world experience which are things that are known to be fallible. Although we can be pretty darn sure that if A=B and B=C then A=C we can never truly be 100% sure, only arbitrarily close. You can prove it with math all you want, but since this is an assumption that math is based on it would be circular reasoning.

So tell me, if reality is based on logic then what are it's axioms?


Well, I admit that you can be sure about things that have been made up but I will modify my comment. The only way to be 100% sure about anything about reality outside of our made up definitions and hypothetical worlds is the Dunning-Kruger effect.


OK, then we have a different dilemma. Either an unmeasurable form of reincarnation happens that leaves no trace and is physically impossible to measure in any way, or there is another darn good reason who it can't be measured which is that it doesn't happen. Two models which predict the same thing, but one is unnecessarily complex and the other one is simple. Call me crazy, but I think physics is complex enough as is and if it can be made simpler without taking away from it's predictive power and usefulness in the slightest then that is what I will subscribe to.


Something that should be noted is that the only reason I am arguing against reincarnation is because you are arguing for it, if you were saying that you were 100% sure that reincarnation is impossible then I would be arguing against that too. This is the case for a lot of the things we are debating, for example recently in another thread I argued that this reality is likely not a simulation even though here I'm arguing that it might be. This is the case for every other person I know who calls themselves a materialist, the position I am arguing for is that we don't know a lot of this stuff.

Sure, I do lean towards one side on many things but it's always the model that is the most falsifiable and the simplest. That is why I can not believe in a God, not believe in an afterlife, not believe in a multiverse, and not believe that we are in a simulation. These are positions which I have a high level of uncertainty about and are highly subject to change given empirical evidence.


I am confused. So are you saying that just because you are alive in one instant and that you care about the future it means that it can't end in the next instant? That makes no sense. Neurology is no new field of study and they keep on finding evidence that everything about us from our memories to our personality is stored within the neural connections within that gray lump of matter in our heard. I don't like the analogy of comparing death to sleep because in sleep you are still experiencing things but in death you have no brain activity at all. The parts of your brain that determine everything about you turn to mush and decompose, including the parts responsible for perceiving and experiencing things. My belief that there is nothing after death is based on that.

By the way, I can agree that most religions are very authoritarian and have this tendency to get people's money by scaring them with eternal punishment but that's a discussion for another day and something which we seem to agree about anyway.


That's a bug, not a feature. A model that can explain literally anything is unfalsifiable and incapable of making any useful predictions. It's kind of like the classic Christian explanation of "God did it", it can explain literally anything and has no predictive power whatsoever making it useless but falsely satisfying.


Well, I still say that assuming additional stuff without it adding to your predictive power is a waste of time.


I just found myself here and I have no idea why, nobody does. Sure, life is pretty amazing but that is no excuse to start asserting things. We're all trying to figure out what's gong on and I have decided to use empiricism to do that, so I end up saying "I don't know" a lot but when I do know something I can demonstrate it.

I believe in a pseduo Chuck sort of god being the actual real god. That's the way I can easily see reality going.

One of the most striking quantum phenomena to me, and indicative of a possible simulation is that the same matter can be in two different positions at the same time.

" Quantum-mechanically, the atom would instead occupy a superposition of the two positions".
https://phys.org/physics-news/quantum-physics/

Thank you, Techstepgener8ion.

I've quoted you above, just so that this post will be officially displayed as a reply to you, and so that you'll be notified that you were quoted.

Directly below is my reply to your recent reply:

{I’d said}
1. (as mentioned above) Which statement, premise or conclusion of mine didn’t have empirical support that it needed?
{unquote}

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{You replied}
For as tough as it's been to read between the lines, it seems like you've bought into something like a model of panpsychism where each atom or subatomic particle is both consciousness and a physical artifact. {unquote}
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You’re reading too much between the lines.
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I meant only what I said.
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I’m saying something much simpler:
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Our 1st-person experience is exactly what one would expect it to be for an animal designed by natural selection, to purposefully respond to its (our) surroundings.
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Anyone who insists on a separate Consciousness, different from the body, is making it more complicated than it is.
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{You said}
You also seem to imply that emergence is all materialist hand-waiving…
{unquote}
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Not always Materialist, but yes, many Materialists do that handwaving.
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{You continued}
…or that suggesting that there's a separate mind/body is something that should be looked at as 'spiritualist'.
{unquote}
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Yes.
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{You said}
As far as I can tell, emergence doesn't necessarily need to be a blunt appearance of something so much as it can be a useful model for how such groupings collate to one another to form more advanced and versatile systems.
{unquote}
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Emergentism is supposedly needed to explain a completely different and new entity or metaphysical substance arising from something else. …something that I don’t accept as true anyway.
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Well, I say that “Emergentism” is mystical mumbo-jumbo intended to obfuscate one’s way out of a problem that doesn’t exist. …thereby validating the nonexistent problem.
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{You said}
My problem right now is seeing where you go with the esoteric side of this - ie. as if our ability to track our surroundings gets drawn and quartered as our bodies break down.
{unquote}
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Of course our knowledge and memory of our life and its details fades out as we shut down. How could it not?
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{You said}
I've seen too much evidence that very self-aware consciousness exists without physical embodiment as we'd usually think of it
{unquote}
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Yes, one can say that we, the Experiencer, are primary. After all, right at the end of lives, there’s no experience of, or knowledge of, a body, a physical world, a life in a world, time, or events. But it’s a reasonable presumption that there’s perception nevertheless, in Timelessness.
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So yes, that supports what you said in the above quote.
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So I don’t disagree.
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But I feel that there’s an “equivalence-principle”: There’s always a physical-body explanation for our experiences too. I’m not saying the physical surroundings and explanation is primary. I think that we’re primary. But that equivalence-principle still obtains, and you can find a physical-body “explanation” for us too (even though it isn’t primary).
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{You said{]/b]
and it seems like there's enough information out there with respect to NDE's and the like to suggest that most people aren't going through the sort of no-identity fog that you're suggesting.
[b]{unquote}
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No. NDEs happen at the beginning of the death process, long before the stage (I call it “stage 1”) when reincarnation would take place; and long before the later no-identity stage (I call it “stage 2”) when Timelessness is reached. (Incidentally, presumably if there’s reincarnation, very few people reach stage 2.)
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The NDEs could be the beginning of the temporary Heavens and Hells referred to by Hinduism and Buddhism.
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But, inevitably, just before complete shutdown, after which the person is quite dead, there must be as stage at which the person is still conscious, but without awareness of his/her previous life, or even that there ever were such things life, a body, identity, time, or events.
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…because, just before we completely lose consciousness, we surely will have lost awareness of all the details about our life that has ended.
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{I’d said}
2. What metaphysics has better empirical support than Skepticism (the metaphysics that I prose)?
{unquote}

{You said}
I'm still not even sure what you mean by that.
{unquote}
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Well, it’s a fairly straightforward question.
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Which part of it don’t you understand?
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(A metaphysics is a proposal regarding “what is”, or what Reality is. …a proposal such as Materialism, or Skepticism.)
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{You said}
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If you're talking about you're if-then structures we still need to hear more about what that breaks down to on a practical level.
{unquote}
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That isn’t a very specific question. As a practical matter, we just live our lives as well as possible.
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Things we like.
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Getting by.
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Ethically, caringly living right.
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If you’re asking about the consequences of Skepticism, then, though it’s difficult to put it in words, the following is my personal impression of some differences between Skepticism and Materialism:
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I’d say simplicity, openness. A certain openness and looseness, compared to the closed, straitlaced, circumscribed world of Materialism.
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But none of that discussion is necessary in regards to arguments for or against Skepticism.
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{You said}
I'm seeing too many veils here - particularly with respect to the notion of gaining a working knowledge of consciousness.
{unquote}
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Sorry, I can’t help you there. I don’t believe in the Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness.
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Anyway, you’re changing the subject to philosophy-of-mind. We were discussing metaphysics. Discussion isn’t possible when the subject gets changed.
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{You said}
I don't understand why that would have to be an inherently 'materialist' endeavor.
{unquote}
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I didn’t mean to say that it is. Materialists might not be the only people who struggle with the nonexistent Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness.
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For example, you aren’t a Materialist, and you seem to believe in the Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness.
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In any case, from your answer above, I take that as a statement that no, you can’t name a metaphysics that’s better supported than Skepticism.
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{You said}
I also got reminded, seeing a recent interview with Stuart Hameroff, that there are sound medical reasons for trying to understand consciousness - especially in the areas of treating mental illness.
{unquote}
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Now you’re confusing philosophy-of-mind with psychology. Two entirely different subjects.
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Philosophy-of-mind is about the (unnecessary, futile) search for a general explanation of Consciousness, as an entity separate from the body.
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{You said}
As far as trying to discuss culture or advancement that would probably be beyond the scope of this response
{unquote}
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Yes.
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{You said}
but I also think and understanding of consciousness is critical for us to make good decisions going forward
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Oh come on—Don’t use that executive-talk expression “going forward”
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Of course we’re all future-oriented to some degree, because we’re in life.
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(But of course we shouldn’t defer happiness to the future—but that’s a different philosophical topic.)
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{You said}
, especially knowing in what ways we can help ourselves better adapt to the environment that we're creating with the rapid pace of technological advancement and just how much that's changing how we interact and 'do' culture.
{unquote}
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Because I’m not interested in that topic, which is why I’m not on the political threads, then I won’t question your claim that philosophy-of-mind is important to that endeavor.
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I don’t question the validity or meaning of the experiences that you describe.
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{You said}
a purely logic-based system won't surprise you or throw you any curveballs the way a scientific experiment, or an occult magical experiment for that matter, could.
{unquote}
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So?
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Anyway, maybe that isn’t so. For example, the logic-based metaphysics that I’ve proposed is difficult for some people here to accept.
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The suggestion to give up the notion of objective existence and reality is very difficult for many people.

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That could be called a “curveball” that you reject.
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{I’d said}
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4. What would be an example of a philosophical conclusion that you’ve reached from empirical evidence?
{unquote}

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{You answered}

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Admittedly I have no idea whether these experiences are exactly what they present as but most of this suggests to me that conscious systems can swim through one another, join and separate, when one joins you can't even really tell once that happens unless that merge is broken (in that last example by a profound enough disagreement on something - and even there I think it was more just pushed to an extreme hyphenation),
{unquote}
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Though it isn’t what I’d say, I don’t have an argument with that. Things can be discussed and described from different points of view, and with regard to different matters.
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{You continued}
and none of that really squares away for me with the suggestion that we're locked in to our subatomic particles
{unquote}
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I agree that we’re primary, but I suggest that that “principle-of-equivalence” that I described obtains too.
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{You said}
or that we'd diffuse into a sort of vague I AM-ness with no memory, basking in eternity, until we re-embody.
{unquote}
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That’s sounds a lot like what I said. …except that, when we reach Timelessness, we don’t re-embody.
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Reincarnation would be from an earlier stage of shutdown, in which we still have identity, and our subconscious life-inclinations and future-orientation.
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{You said}
What it suggests to me is that consciousness is either in dynamic systems themselves, or free to move through them at will. Either way I don't see the tethering.
{unquote}
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The “teathering” is the equivalence-principle that I spoke of.
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If you’re right, and a person remains fully conscious of all the life-details that they’re conscious of in life, and that will always endure, even after death, at the end of lives, then eventually you’ll know that you were right, and that I was wrong.
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But, if I’m right, then by the time that makes a difference, you won’t know that this discussion took place.
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But I could ask you: Why would you want to remember all the life-details, at the end of lives? Aren’t the life-details, such things as the fact that there was a life, identity, time, events, etc. irrelevant at the end of lives?

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{You said}

IMHO it's [Materialism] too incoherent to even be looked at as a thing to be avoided.
{unquote}
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Yes.
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But I still discuss it, because there are still people who believe in it, and there are some at this forum.
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{I’d said}
My metaphysics is founded on a system of inter-referring if-then facts, which are about hypothetical facts.
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(It’s true that a “hypothetical fact” isn’t, strictly-speaking, a fact. But an if-then fact can be a valid, inevitably-true fact, though its “if” clause (and therefore its “then” clause) is hypothetical. The if-then fact’s relation between those two hypotheticals can be a genuine fact.)
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I emphasize that if-then facts relating hypotheticals can be inevitable and indisputable facts. “If it rains tomorrow, the ground will get wet.” The rain tomorrow is hypothetical. So is the wetting of the ground, which might not happen (if it doesn’t rain tomorrow). But the overall if-then fact that relates those two hypotheticals is a certainty (assuming that no one has covered all the ground with a tarp).
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Likewise abstract logical facts and mathematical theorems. No empirical evidence needed.
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Not all if-then facts are surely-true facts. Some are hypothetical, and are part of the “if” clause of other if-then facts.
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Such are physical laws.
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But the point is that all of this is founded upon hypotheticals, and if-then facts that relate those hypotheticals.
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In other words, none of it needs “empirical evidence”.
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To demand “empirical evidence” for abstract facts is inappropriate and ridiculous.

{unquote}
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{You replied}
If the universe were as uncomplicated and easy to understand as any Joe on the internet, or any in history, would have thought - science would be redundant to philosophy and wouldn't be needed.
{unquote}
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No, even if the laws of physics were simpler than they are, physics would still be needed. Philosophy (such as metaphysics) isn’t intended as, and wouldn’t be, a substitute for science. They’re entirely different subjects, with entirely separate and different areas of applicability.
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{You said}

As it stands there may be competing theories in philosophy, scientific experiment comes to bear on that topic…
{unquote}
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No, it doesn’t. Physics and its experiments don’t bear on metaphysics. As I said above, they’re two entirely separate topics.
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There is one notable exception:
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In a book by a Physics professor, a recognized authority on quantum-mechanics (The author was probably named Mullen), the author said that quantum mechanics has laid to rest the belief in an objectively-existent physical world.
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That’s a rare (unique?) instance of physics saying something about metaphysics.
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{you continued}
and either edifies one at the expense of the other or may even crush all of the competing hypotheses with something which was too odd to be expected.
{unquote}
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No, science can’t do that (though I mentioned an evidently unique exception above). They’re different topics.
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{You said{
That's where I think philosophy really can't be a stand-in for science.
{unquote}
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Did anyone say that philosophy is a stand-in for science?
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{You said}
Philosophy has no place for projecting or anticipating the truly counter-intuitive
{unquote}]/b]
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Well, giving up the notion of the universe’s objective existence and reality is very counter-intuitive, so much so that you don’t accept it.
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[b]{You said}
and anytime you'd run into the truly counter-intuitive, reflexively by its nature, you'd have no reason to surmise it - rather any person, without knowing facts that are yet to be known, would pave right over the paradoxes with what seem to be perfectly sound and reasonable expectations. Expectations and actualities rarely quite map the way we think they would - hence, I think for good reason,
{unquote}
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I don’t know what you mean by that.
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{You said}
I don't trust any theory advancing toward a TOE because they're almost always drastic overreaches.
{unquote}
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I doubt that physicists will ever find the elusive theory of everything (physical) (TOE).
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{You said}
This is also why I don't like throwing wall-texts up, they're almost never worth the effort and even when you think the effort might be justified you're taking a gamble as to whether anyone will even read it.
{unquote}
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Sorry, Techstepgener8ion, but I don’t just do soundbites.
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Forgive me for taking the time to reply to what you say.
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If you don’t like that, then of course I won’t do it again. I promise.
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(…but is it alright if I finish this reply?)
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I take the time to support what I say. I take the time to fully reply to people (but I refer you to what I just now said above).
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If you prefer soundbites, then maybe you’d be happier with tv news.
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But, if my replies to you have to be soundbites, then I might not reply to you, because I’m not into soundbites.
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{You said}

As far as skepticism though, I'm still not sure what you're getting out of it.
{unquote}

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Not at all sure what you’re asking.
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What do you want to get from a metaphysics???
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{You said}
I understand skepticism in the usual sense of the word.
{unquote}
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Good. But see below.
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{You said}
To try and say that you mean skepticism as 'if-then statements are the bread and butter of reality' - I don't feel like you've walked through what that means well enough to even make a particularly educated comment on it.
{unquote}
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Educate yourself to this:
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Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary:
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Skepticism:
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1. An attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity, either in general or toward a particular object.
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Incredulity:
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The quality or state of being incredulous.
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Incredulous:
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Unwilling to admit or accept what is offered as true. Not credulous.
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Credulous:
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Ready to believe, especially on slight or uncertain evidence.
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[end of definitions]
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My metaphysics rejects and avoids assumptions and brute-facts.
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That’s skepticism, as define above.
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In fact, that’s skepticism itself.
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That’s why I call my metaphysics Skepticism.
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But, note that I capitalize Skepticism, as the name of a metaphysics.
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Uncapitalized, skepticism, is a common noun, the one whose definition I quoted above.
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Michael829

Except that's vacuous. A good car is exactly what it's designed to be, an IPhone is exactly what it's designed to be. Galaxies, solar systems, suns, planets, moons, mountains, clouds, biomes, or individual lifeforms - these are remnants or surviving remainders of natural processes. When it comes to living systems they are a consequence of the forces of the universe. Also, being that we probably started from RNA, RNA ribozymes pulled into lipid bubbles to form the first cells, cells teamed with other cells for survival, and thus the potter's wheel spun itself with no sign of a potter.

What we have, from the earliest twitches of an enzyme or protein, and I think this is what you're seeing, was an inkling of kinetic structures, based on the intrinsic properties of their structure, to do whatever they did. That amplified as said structures enlarged. As they enlarged they specialized. New systems came online as these structures specialized their function, and really the apogee of this - at least that we have historical reference for - is the human prefrontal cortex, if an earlier race of beings more advanced than us didn't either blow themselves up or get wiped out by asteroid impact or whatever else - we're pretty much the current apex for inductive reasoning. Some animals, certain apes for example, have been shown to dwarf us on short-term memory, I'm sure there'll be more research done into other animals and I'm sure quite a few of them have stunning cognitive powers, just that we evolved the capacity to leverage a lot more out of what we had - a lot of that probably was situational.

While the whole might be greater than the sum of its parts with respect to the human brains (yes, we have multiple dense nerve centers in our bodies that have been shown to even have significant count of brain cells), and I think that can be said with most data-processing systems, it's still the sum of parts. I think that's where the term emergence is helpful - ie. with enough resources a new order of affairs is able to commence. That new order is an energy economy that couldn't happen previously because the specializations required for it to happen would have been too costly. That instance of change and 'change into what?' isn't even a decision, it's a shifting of natural laws as a system engages a new energy plateau. The human brain, or even animal brain, is not the beginning of awareness necessarily, just that there clearly seem to be certain thresholds at which new things come online.


That's what's often termed 'strong emergence'.


Easy enough - it simply wouldn't, and we'd have to figure out why.


Except that you've been making a case all this time that when atoms lose their order for conducting a dynamic system, in our case neurons, it all dissolves. In that sense I've been forced to - largely by my own experiences and that of a lot practicing magicians and mystics. The way I phrased it - I can't tell you that other people's word, or mine, seals the deal, just to say that there are tools that you could use if you really wanted to put your own ideas to the test.


It's probably not perfectly pure and tidy, and in human debates we seem to love absolutes. I think the equivalence principle you're mentioning, which the technical term for in most people's parlance is panpsychism, doesn't bear out when you see how conscious systems interact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3aP905vW-c

What the guy above is talking about seems to offer a pretty good explanation of complex systems, emergence, and essentially he's pointing the way toward functionalism - which I suggested is complete with mutliple realizability, in that my stomach is a stomach but it's also my stomach, I'm me but I'm also an American who lives in a city. Ant colonies of more than three ants self-organize. Biomes self-organize. Societies by and large tend to self-organize. The little bit extra that seems to intuitively prompt us toward certain behavior, give us strange coincidences or what Jung called 'synchronicities', is really our membership in a society and that society being something like a wireless brain - not a dominant or overriding brain, the way my brain enslaves my own neurons, but a much more loosely knit brain that deals more in subtle suggestion, influences dreams, can even cause religious or mystical experiences at the right times, and you see it perhaps at its most coercive or dominant in the case of crowd/mob hysteria, but it's essentially the brain of a culture, a continent sometimes, its tight nervous system, rather than being us, is accelerated or supported by the internet (a good analogy - the internet is its white matter).

Any which way systems stack - the individual component of the system communicates with the system as a whole and the system as a whole communicates with the individual unit. My pain receptors tell me things, I do things in response. I behave in a certain way in human culture, i get a sort of response back from culture as do we all and it shapes how we behave in the world.

Larger systems actually can't really exist until the components of those systems do. Where that can happen in reverse is mass destruction or explosions, such as the big bang, but generally the sum total of forces on the large level tends to have a returning downward effect on its constituents that gives it shape. This is part of why clouds look the way they do perhaps, and the likeness of galactic clusters to neural tissue seems to also suggest that we aren't a fluke and that neurons aren't a fluke either - such structures are tied into the laws of nature. There's an exciting possibility - being that the only places that we see neuron-like structure, aside from neurons, are in certain slime molds, traffic systems, and telecom networks. If that is the case the galactic clusters seem to be working on some type of model of efficiency based on that inherent sort of consciousness in matter.


Are you sourcing this from Hinduism and Buddhism or other places as well?


I highlighted the 'must'. I see a lot of that in your writings but not a lot in the way of explanation as to why aside from that they must fit your models.


Your conflation of the dictionary meaning of Skepticism and your private definition of Skepticism - which as far as I can tell are completely orthogonal. I think antirealism might fit what you're saying better and that seems to map back to the idea that you can only know the whole in terms of its smallest parts - working from reductionism first and then trying to map everything back up.

My fundamental disagreement with that right now is that I don't see where granular if-then interactions (which has nothing to do with 'Skepticism - it's something I'm sure but clearly something else) by itself tells us much of anything unless we're paying attention to how those if-thens bundle into large currents, paying attention to the laws of those currents, and it seems like the more we look at living systems or even geological natural systems like rivers, we see patterns such as bifurcation. A particular Robert Sapolsky lecture I was watching went into how the bifurcation of neurons, of blood vessels, of pathways in our lungs, etc.. etc.. aren't even genetically coded - that most of what our bodies do leverage certain natural laws when bringing their complexity about, and somewhat shockingly he started talking about Julia sets, Mandelbrot, etc.. There's no one-off tool to understand that, rather we have to be able to flip between many points of reference, almost simultaneously, to try and get any circumspect understanding of what things like this tell us.


If you can't give really practical examples of what seeing the world as a stack of if-then reactions means the idea's in serious trouble as far as it's utility. I'm not saying you yourself can't find it beautiful, just that to most onlookers it'll be like trying to raise people's awareness that a Luna-centric understanding of the universe where all bodies oscillate around our moon is the best way to measure and predict the universe.

That's why I'm asking you - really for the best examples of why the cosmology you're describing is the best case. Without persuasive examples, or being able to point toward persuasive examples, you'd be putting a lot of effort into a non-starter.


This is a massive red-herring, partly that I'm still trying to deal with Skepticism and then Michael829 'Skepticism'. They seem to be getting used interchangeably. The other problem with the question 'What's better than Skepticism' can be seen in questions like 'What's better than Capitalism?' or 'What's better than Socialism?' - they're management tools for handling certain kinds of terrain. When people think that the whole world can be boiled down to one thing they turn into nutjobs. When they think it's economics they break out the hammer and sickle. When they think it's power they become postmodernists, SJW's, and intersectionalists. When they think it's all about acceptance or rejection by Allah or Yahweh they do other strange things.

There are plenty of systems that need skepticism for the subterfuge to be untangled for further analysis. There are plenty of places where reductionism helps us figure things out, such as understanding germs and disease. As far as philosophy and metaphysics - they're big systems of educated guess. The reason why I say that they play second-fiddle to science is that they occupy a zone that science can't operate in (*provisionally* - which is key), until science can operate in that zone, and they retreat - not because philosophy or metaphysics are somehow bad, it's just that there's never any assurance that they tell us anything about reality. Moral philosophy is probably the closest thing to a true zone of operation, ie. how to be in the world, that science really can't do much with and as it stands when you think of it there is a structural stacking, zones we don't seem to be able to cross well, but at each level higher our science is softer and more flimsy - physics (lowest and strongest), chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology. At the level of quarks and leptons there's hardly any complexity, at the level of nations our brains are ash.


I'm starting to worry that you're the type of guy who gets in an airplane, flies over Illinois, but doesn't believe it's Illinois because Illinois is pink on your globe at home.

Mental illness is conscious suffering and it's suffering directly related to certain ways that consciousness is placed in duress by genetic patterns. Looking at the first definition googles for 'philosophy of mind':


I fail to see why or how the aims of psychiatry and the study of neurological diseases doesn't at least take a significant role in that definition.


In other words more terms that I can find on Google in a few seconds that you're adding your own double-meanings to. I'm sorry but that's a really bad habit and I can't say it more gently. It's great if all you care about is laying down debate gauntlets but its not something you want to do if you're seeking truth at all because you won't be able to have clear conversations with people. You mentioned not liking politics - contorting language is what that stuff's all about.


Except that there's nothing curveball about it - it's a hypothetical universe built on an assumption. I don't agree with it for the same reason I don't agree with Communism or intersectionalism - its too dumbed down and oversimplistic to be true. I don't mean 'dumbed' as a personal insult - I mean it from the standpoint that about the only matured science we have is physics, the absolute bottom of our world's complexities, and even that's twisting our best scientific and philosophic minds up. There's just no way one or two philosophic tools or models has us coveredWe've been believing things this simple, dogmatically, for thousands of years. If you're right - it'll probably the first time that the truths of the universe have ever opened themselves to a metaphysical speculation, full-stop, in recorded history.


If we're really agreeing on almost everything but hung up on semantics I think we need to clarify what it is you're saying about tethering. At first you're that we're tethered to our subatomic particles, and then you're saying there's more but not giving any clear rules as to what that means.


As far as I've read of Buddhist philosophy nirvana and paranirvana aren't dissolution or selflessness. They are, however, places so alien in their function that all language used to try describing them breaks down.


Really my interest in those questions goes like this:

1) If I hear someone speaking with certainty on what happens when we die (or at least certainty for if consciousness continues). I want to either know where they get that certainty, or, get them to admit at least to themselves that they're declaring something to be certain on what they believe to be a cogent explanation - which is two very different things.

2) If I had some databank of every life I ever lived? That would probably suck, it might inform my subconscious impulses to some degree, and yes - I am glad that I don't remember all my (hypothetical) past lives because I'm sure most of them were miserable. I'd also hate to see all of my future lives and I think most people, if they knew they had truly grueling trials ahead, would want to know - above all else - how they could give themselves a true atheist's funeral, whether by nuke or something else, which would run the chance of scrambling their substrate so intensely that they would be - as Dawkins or Dennett would suggest - gone for good at death. Otherwise there could also be a point where a person has hit such a degree of resignation to the universe that such vistas do open up and such people are ready to see it without looking for means to self-terminate.

All of that is hypothetical, I'd admit that I don't know for certain that people keep memory in any cohesive way or keep it in a self-conscious ready-to-access way with any consistency. My experiences do suggest that we're surrounded by a lot of critters, not far from the way Robert Bruce often describes it, which aren't embodied in the way we'd think of the term and our closest analogy to such embodiement might be an analogy of electromagnetic structure. Maybe that's the aether that Blavatsky et. al. talked about or the astral light that Eliphas Levi had so much to say about? Tough to say. That has a strong flavor of independence though, which makes me doubt that I'd be spending most of my conscious time after death tethered to my rotting body or my ashes.

I suppose also, if I had to remember everything, there'd probably be certain things I'd do differently - mostly for the sake of minimizing suffering at a different date.


Do you have any examples of philosophic topics that would be permanently closed to scientific inquiry and refutation?


I don't know who this 'you' is that you're referring to on that (unless your contact brackets to someone else were missing). We can call the universe a dream, we can call it a mirage, we can say that there's very little we feel comfortable about in detailing the outside world past the idea that there are relationships, or if we want to go Decarte on this we can suggest that the only thing we know is that we experience. None of that changes the consequences for falling off of a tall building, sticking a knife in an electric socket, or catching a bullet. Certain patterns hold together with such certainty that we know the consequences. That such things hold together so consistently is what the whole pragmatic label 'physical' means - ie. that the world we live in seems to hold together and barely changes in any noticeable way that we don't orchestrate through our own physical efforts (there might be something to the idea of talking to mass-mind and having things happen but again that's my emergentism and functionalism). The Secret is BS. Even the Seth of Jane Roberts, after talking about all kinds of crazy parallel universes, alternate universes of different structure, etc. insists that if you break the physical laws here, or anywhere else, the reprisal is immediate and summary regardless of what you believe.

That's where saying there's no objective universe seems meaningless, unless it's specifically intended as a delivery model to someone who really believes that everything around us is this dead unconscious stuff and that neurons make things that don't otherwise exist.


Guesses made about the universe, based on today's knowledge, will almost always be wrong in one or two hundred years - usually sooner. It's like that because we discover things, regularly, that are game-changers. People say that reality is stranger than fiction, the main reason why it probably always will be is that it's not beholden to our imaginations. Philosophy, unfortunately, is. That doesn't mean its bad or weak, again, but it does mean that it's a very limited tool for inquiry and the best philosophy can usually do is good, clear, or solid philosophy tearing down bad or sloppy philosophy.


I meant that about philosophy but sure - both.


We're already into that pattern so we should probably finish the conversation - at least on this topic. It's not that I have anything strictly against wall-texts, it's just that over time I've come to learn that I actually learn more from being here, from other people, etc. when I interact with the larger environment and that usually happens in smaller snippets. When we speak in wall texts we get to live in our heads, almost entirely, and we don't get to see how we're interfacing with the practical - other than perhaps when such a post gets completely ignored or 'tl:dr'd unanimously.


I think I primarily changed my mode because I felt like I was throwing myself out there a lot but not learning nearly as much as I could by being more transactional.


Except that most of what we've been talking about here really has been filler and largely meaningless.

You could boil the conversation down to the explanations and examples, as I suggested further up, as to why seeing the universe the way you're recommending that we see it is the best, most logical, or most pragmatic way to see it. That would be an interesting conversation.

I tried writing size=150 in the quote-brackets, after the word "quote". It didn't work. It isn't clear how or where it would be necessary to write "size=150".

Below, I tried that unsuccessful format. It would be better if I'd just continued using my { } method. But it wouldn't be feasible to go through and replace all the unsuccessful brackets.

I'll resume in my next post, unless I somehow find out how to size-adjust the bracket quote-boxes.

(I always use a box-quote to identify whom I'm replying to, and so that they'll be notified that they've been quoted.)


Preliminary Comment 1:
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The reason why these posts are so long is that they discuss 3 topics:
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1. Metaphysics
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2. Reincarnation
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3. Computer-Simulated Universe
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I think it would greatly improve brevity and clarity to use separate posts for those separate topics.
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***This post will be about the metaphysics issue.***
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(Anyway, the other two topics depend on metaphysics, are about consequences of metaphysics, and couldn’t be discussed without it.)
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Preliminary Comment 2:
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Sometimes, to avoid burying it in the middle of a long post, I move one or more
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comments or subtopic-replies to the beginning of a reply post.
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…after which, I always reply inline to (almost) the entire post.
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Metaphysics Reply to Mikeman:
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[quote size=150]
…my problem is not that you take it seriously but that you believe it to be correct without observable evidence.
[/quote]
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I firmly believe that the following statement is true, even though there’s no observational evidence for it:
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If all slithytoves are jaberwockies, and if all jaberwokies are brilig, then all slithtoves are brilig.
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…and I believe that without a shred of empirical evidence!
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Likewise with proved mathematical theorems. If a mathematical theorem is proved, I believe it without any experimental evidence.
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Scientific American once showed several interesting proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. Having seen those proofs, I believe the Pythagorean Theorem, without actually taking a ruler and testing the theorem by measuring the sides of a right triangle.
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But you don’t, because you’re an empiricist
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Some number definitions:
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Let 1 refer to the multiplicative identity element of the real numbers.
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Let 2 mean 1 + 1
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Let 3 mean 2 + 1
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Let 4 mean 3 + 1
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Based on those definitions, and the additive associative axiom of the real numbers, it can easily be proved that 2 + 2 = 4.
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In other words, if the additive associative axiom of the real numbers (and of the rational numbers, and of the integers) is true, then 2 + 2 = 4.
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I don’t know about you, because you’re very scientific, but I believe that if-then fact, due to its easy provability in terms of its premise, the additive associative axiom, and the definitions stated above.
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…and I believe that without any experimental evidence!
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Physical quantity-values, and hypothetical relations between them, called “physical laws” are “if” premises of some if-then facts.
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Given, as an “if” premise, some of those quantity-values, and a hypothetical relation between them (a physical law), taken together as an “if “ premise, and given other “if “ premises called arithmetical and geometrical axioms, and with if-then facts called “mathematical theorems” that include those axioms among their “if “ premises,…
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… then certain others of the quantity-values related by that physical law have certain values.
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And yes, I believe that, too, without “empirical evidence”.
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And some of those if-thens can be true even if none of those things objectively exist or are real. They can be true even if all of the “if” premises are false. They can be true even if it’s all “made up” (to use your words).
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I never said that the “if “ premises are true.
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(I give a more specific example somewhere below in this reply)
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I never said that the inter-referring logical system that is our possibility-world has any reality or existence outside of its own inter-referring context. Of course it’s real for you, because it’s the context of your life.
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Now, as for the physicist’s job of finding out what physical laws obtain, of course that does require empirical, experimental, evidence. …and that’s an entirely different endeavor, and an entirely different topic (for a different sub-forum, like the one that discusses science).
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As I’ve been saying all along, there are facts that don’t need observational evidence. There are facts that are inevitable. My metaphysics is about a system of such facts. …a complex inter-referring system of them.
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…of which systems there are infinitely many.
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That metaphysics is empirically consistent with experience, observation and experiment.
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An unfalsifiable proposition? What metaphysics isn’t? Materialism, observationally indistinguishable from Skepticism, is likewise an unfalsifiable proposition.
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There’s no empirical evidence that Materialism is true instead of Skepticism.
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But Skepticism is more than unfalsifiable. It’s also inevitable…because the abstract logical facts on which it’s based are inevitable…as described above.
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Are you willing to take a closer look at Materialism?
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Materialism says that material “Stuff “ is objectively existent, and that this physical world exists objectively, as the fundamental, primary, existent. …and says, in fact, that it’s all that’s real or existent.
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So, to start with, let’s admit that, thereby, Materialism posits a big brute fact
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What’s that? You say that this physical world is an empirically-observed fact?
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No one’s saying otherwise. But Materialism doesn’t just say that we live in a physical world, does it.
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Materialism says that our physical world is objectively real, the fundamentally real, primary existent. …and, in fact, that it’s all of Reality.
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Do you think that, too, is empirically verified? It isn’t.
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You believe in a metaphysical claim that has no empirical support (or any other support). The difference is that, not only is Materialism not empirically-supported, but it isn’t supported in any other way either. It’s purely a faith-based belief.
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If everything we observe can be explained by structural, logical relation, without any reference to objectively-real “Stuff”, then our observable physical universe needn’t be objectively real or existent, and neither must its contents.
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So, your belief that this physical world is objectively existent, and that there’s objectively-existent “Stuff “, instead of just logical relation, is an unsupported belief. There’s no empirical evidence to support that belief.
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In other words, the fact that we live in a physical world, doesn’t constitute empirical evidence for Materialism.
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In fact, if a structure of logical relation can explain our observations and experiments, then what would it even mean for Materialism’s “Stuff “ to be objectively real? As I said, it would be completely superfluous, and the notion of is existence has no meaning.
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And, for that matter, what would it mean for this universe to be objectively existent? All that we observe is that it’s existent in the context of our lives. That’s the only context in which we observe it to be existent. So what would it mean to say that it’s existent in some absolute “objective” sense? In what other context do you want to say that our universe is objectively existent?
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…other than its existence in its own context and the context of our lives?
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…as one of the hypothetical logical relational inter-referring systems that I spoke of.
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So the notion of Materialism doesn’t even have meaning.
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You might have heard the familiar philosophical question:
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“Why is there something instead of nothing?
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If physical reality consists only of a system of if-thens, then there’s nothing puzzling about why there’s something instead of nothing.
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(But there’s no reason to believe that there is anything other than what a Materialist would call “nothing”)
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This universe is a predictable consequence of Skepticism.
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Skepticism predicts, from fundamental principles, the observation that there’s a universe.
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Materialism doesn’t.
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You said:
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[quote size=150]
As I said before I am above and beyond all else an empiricist which means that every belief I have is subject to change if new information suggests that I'm wrong.
[/quote]
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Then consider yourself to have been informed that there are inevitable abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals.
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You’re crudely, sloppily, mis-applying science’s empiricism, like someone trying to clean up a water-spill with a lawn-rake.
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[quote size=150]
I am a materialist because I believe that what I can see or otherwise measure exists
[/quote]
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Certainly our physical universe exists in its own context, and in the context of our lives. You’re right to believe in its existence in that context, as do we all.
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But, without any empirical evidence, or other reason, you believe in the objective, fundamental and exclusive existence of Materialism’s “Stuff “.
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Without any empirical evidence, or other reason, you believe that this physical universe is objectively existent.
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(…whatever that would even mean.)
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You aren’t being a very good empiricist.
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[quote size=150]
…and anything I can't see or otherwise measure by definition doesn't effect anything and therefore can safely be ignored.
[/quote]
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Then ignore philosophy, and study physics.
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Are you aware that this subforum is for philosophy (and religion & politics), and isn’t about physical science?
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[quote size=150]
I don't believe that anything exists besides matter and energy
[/quote]
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…except that you said this physical universe might be nothing other than a figment of someone’s computer-simulation. If it is, then this universe and its matter and energy don’t objectively exist, and something other than this universe’s matter and energy exists.
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Your belief quoted above is a faith-based belief without any empirical support.
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You continued:
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[quote size=150]
…because I have no empirical reason to.
[/quote]
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Given the axioms of geometry and arithmetic (as “if “ premises), the Pythagorean Theorem, and the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 are provable, and thoroughly verifiable without any experimental measurement.
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Such conclusions are inevitable if-then facts.
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But you won’t believe the Pythagorean Theorem unless you get a ruler and measure the sides of every right triangle.
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Skepticism predicts our universe, from fundamental principles.
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As I said, Materialism doesn’t.
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You said:
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[quote size=150]
, you could have all the explanatory power in the world but without predictive power a theory is worthless.
[/quote]
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As I said, Skepticism predicts our physical universe, from fundamental principles.
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But, as for predictions within this universe, most metaphysicses (including Materialism & Skepticism) are empirically indistinguishable from eachother. You’re confused about the difference between metaphysics and science.
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All or most metaphysicses, given the existence of this universe, “predict” the same observations, and experimental results. (…otherwise they wouldn’t be proposed.) You can’t distinguish or adjudicate between metaphysicses by comparing their intra-universe physical predictions or doing physics experiments.
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That’s why I said that, though Skepticism’s abstract facts are inevitable, there’s no empirical evidence that Materialism’s unparsimoniously-added “Stuff “, is objectively existent or real. …making it superfluous even if true.
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Likewise, there’s no empirical evidence for Materialism’s belief that this physical universe has “objective” existence, whatever that would mean.
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Yes, when an engineer designs a bridge, he doesn’t use metaphysics to predict how the bridge will react to the stresses on its materials.
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So, stick with science. You can discuss it at the sub-forum that includes “Science” in is title.
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[quote size=150]
Here's the problem: in the real world we never have premises that we can be 100% certain about.
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Irrelevant. I didn’t say that the premises, the “if” clauses, are inevitably true. I said that there are inevitably-true if-then statements, about hypotheticals.
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Instead of one world of “is”—infinitely-many worlds of “if”.
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…and worlds of “if “ don’t need any empirical verification.
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No one’s saying that they’re objectively existent.
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[quote size=150]
We can only be certain about things we imagine, such as the definitions of words that make all dogs classified as animals. That is something we made up which is the only reason we can be so sure about it. When it comes to reality outside of our minds we don't have this luxury, it's impossible to be 100% sure about anything.
[/quote]
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…as regards the details within our physical world. Of course.
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But we can be completely sure about mathematical theorems—as if-then facts with “if “ premises--and various other logical facts, including if-then facts …and therefore about complicated systems of them, including one that is identical to our physical world.
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It’s certain that there is such a logical-relational system.
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Yes, the details of any complicated physical system can’t all be known with certainty.
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Here’s a simple example:
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“If “ Premise:
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If there’s a 3-dimensional spatial continuum (and for any un-accelerated non-rotating coordinate system by which position in that continuum is defined or measured) and a time variable “t”. …and the variable “a” is defined as the time rate of change of a particle’s velocity vector, and velocity, v, is defined as the time rate of change of the particle's position vector...
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…and if the physical quantities corresponding to a particle’s vector-velocity and mass, and a vector-force exerted on that mass, and the value of t , have certain specified initial values.
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…and if the physical law “a = F/M” obtains, where “F” and “a” are vectors,
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”Then” Conclusion:
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When the variable “t” has a some greater value, the particle’s new velocity will have a certain specifiable vector value, determined by the abovementioned physical law and above-described physical quantity-values.
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Its new velocity will be the vector sum:
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Vi + (F/M) * (t – ti),
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…where the “i”subscript means “initial”.
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[end of example]
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I believe that if-then statement without any experimental evidence!
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Obviously a universe is more intricate than that. This is just a simplified example of one physical law.
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That “if-then” statement is true, regardless of whether F=Ma really applies, and regardless of whether or not the particle, the force, or the space in which it moves really objectively exist.
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And yes, that if-then statement would be true even if none of its “if “ premises are true.
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Regarding the complicated hypothetical systems I refer to, I make no claim that they, or any of their hypothetical components have any existence, reality, or factualness outside that system’s own local inter-referring context. …but that local context is the context of our lives.
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So, you’re mistaken if you say that I’m sure about the truth of the “if” premises.
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What about the fact that Newton’s laws aren’t the last word? Alright, then it’s other physical laws instead, including, of course, some that we don’t know yet.
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From our perspective, the perspective of our experience, it can be said that Newton’s laws are approximately accurate in certain specific domains. For these purposes, the relevant thing about our experience is that the things that we experience are mutually-consistent. The physical laws reported to us by physicists are tentatively accepted by them if their predictions agree with observation. So, our own personal physical observations, and the explanations and laws we hear from the physicists, are consistent, and that’s because the physicists write their laws with the goal of making them consistent with their observations.
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You keep saying that I’m too sure that all this is real. No so. I make no claim that the premises are true, or that that logical-relational system has any objective reality, existence or factualness ouside of its own inter-referring context.
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You said:
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[quote size=150]
So you are saying that if-then statements make up all of reality?
[/quote]
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Physical experience, observation and experiment are consistent with this physical world being only a system of inter-referring if-then facts. I emphasize that, as abstract facts about hypotheticals, those facts, and that system, aren’t in doubt, and are inevitable.
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I can’t prove that Materialism’s “Stuff “ doesn’t objectively, fundamentally exist. But, if it does, it’s superfluous.
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In fact, as I asked before, what would it even mean, for Materialism’s “Stuff “ to superfluously “exist”? It’s a meaningless notion.
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Similarly, obviously our universe exists in the context of our lives, and in its own context. In what other context need this universe exist? In what other context do you think it exists?
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(By “this universe”, I mean our Big-Bang Universe (BBU), and any physically-inter-related multiverse of which our BBU is a sub-universe.—In other words, everything that’s physically related to us and our surroundings.)
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What would it even mean for our universe to exist in any other context? …for it to be objectively-existent, instead of only existent in its own context and in the context of our lives?
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Materialism is a meaningless notion.
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You said:
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[quote size=150]
That proposition has one fatal flaw: where do they start? There must be a first if-then statement or set of if-then statements, but then what would be the [first]"if"?
[/quote]
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There’d be a definite set of first “if”s, if physics is finite in its extent, with a limited, finite set of laws.
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Immediately after the big-bang, there were physical variable values, and (unknown) physical laws.
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The details of the physical laws and other facts immediately after the big bang aren’t known,.
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Though physicists don’t seem to know about this for sure, some say that the sequence of physical laws and explanations is open-ended, infinite. …and that whatever physics is known at any future time won’t be explained, except by new physical laws and other physical facts, discovered later—and likewise needing as-yet undiscovered physical laws and facts for their explanation.
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The more, the deeper, explanations, explanatory-levels, and laws that physicists discover, the more (tentatively) basic physical quantities and “if “s are found , with if-then statements about them. …in other words, quantities, their values, and laws relating those quantity-values.
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You seem to want it to be fixed, and completely known. Physicists can’t deliver that …at least not yet, and (according to some) probably not ever.
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It isn’t a fatal flaw, unless you reject physics because of it.
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As I said, a mathematical theorem is an if-then statement whose “if” premise includes (but isn’t limited to) a set of axioms (arithmetical or geometrical)
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You asked:
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[quote size=150]

So tell me, if reality is based on logic then what are its axioms?
[/quote]
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The hypotheticals, the “if “ premises, at whatever most-basic, undermost, explanatory-level the physicists have good theories about, are physical quantities, their values, and the physical laws that relate those quantity-values. …at that (currently) most basic explanatory-level.
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…and of course the complete-ordered-field axioms of the real number-system with respect to its two binary operations. …and the axioms of geometry (though the nature of this universe’s large-scale geometry isn’t known yet).
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(I should add that there’s a different, maybe briefer, set of axioms, from which the real-number axioms can be derived. So evidently the choice of axioms can be arbitrary.)
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[quote size=150]
Well, I admit that you can be sure about things that have been made up
[/quote]
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Not quite sure what you mean by “made up”, in reference to inevitable abstract if-then facts.
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[quote size=150]
…but I will modify my comment. The only way to be 100% sure about anything about reality outside of our made up definitions and hypothetical worlds is the Dunning-Kruger effect.
[/quote]
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Who, other than you, says that there’s any physical reality outside of hypothetical possibility-worlds?
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In fact (…though I shouldn’t have to say it again) I don’t claim that the hypothetical universe-system that I propose has any reality, existence or factualness outside of its own local inter-referring context.
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Does the Dunning-Kruger arrogance effect explain why you’re so sure of Materialism, without any empirical evidence , and why you just keep repeating the same already-answered dogma? …and why you’re so sure of your inappropriate blanket-misapplication of scientific empiricism to philosophy?
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You need to stop the assertions for long enough to give fresh consideration to what you’re saying—unless you’re 100% sure that you want to keep on demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect.
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Michael829

Last edited by Michael829 on 15 Sep 2017, 4:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I edited my post (the one that replies to mikeman) to add the definition of velocity as the time rate of change of the particle's position vector, and to specify that the particle's position is defined in a 3D coordinate-system in the 3D spatial continuum specified in the premise.

Additionally, regarding the F = Ma example, the "then" conclusion should specify that the conclusion is true regardless of what un-accelerated non-rotating coordinate-system is used. ...because of course this is Newtonian mechanics.

Michael829

Right. Both the evidence (lack of provable past-life reports) and what I'd expect, are in agreement about people not having memory of a past-life.

That being so, then obviously reincarnation can't be verified or falsified.

(I used the box-quote to identify whom I'm replying to, and now I'll return to my preferred { } format, because it doesn't reduce the text-size.)

{You said}

..., but one is unnecessarily complex and the other one is simple.
{unquote}

The Principle of Parsimony is relevant for merit-comparison of metaphysicses. ...proposals about what really is. Reincarnation isn't a metaphysics. It's a possible phenomenon that could be implied by some metaphysicses and not by others.

If you want to apply the Principle of Parsimony, you can start by throwing-out Materialism, with its brute-fact.

Reincarnation is ruled-out by Materialism. Reincarnation is implied by Skepticism.

So, if you want to argue about reincarnation, then you'd need to argue about metaphysics. ...a topic on which I've already answered you.

What makes reincarnation "complicated" for you is that it's something added that isn't already present in Materialism. No argument there. The default, natural, presumption for a Materialist is the "Not" answer.

Again, I'm not arguing to advocate belief in reincarnation. I'm just answering some "anti-" arguments, merely for the sake some arguments.


{You said}

Call me crazy, but I think physics is complex enough as is and if it can be made simpler without taking away from it's predictive power and usefulness in the slightest

{unquote}

Hello? This isn't about physics, and doesn't make physics more or less complicated, or affect physics's predictive-power.

{I'd said}

Now, for the usual “skeptical” debunker, Materialism, Exclusive-Materialism, is the default dogma, and therefore the non-existence of reincarnation is the default position.
{unquote}

{You said}
Something that should be noted is that the only reason I am arguing against reincarnation is because you are arguing for it
{unquote}

I commented about it in relation to my metaphysics, and then began answering arguments about it. But it hasn't been my intention to argue for or advocate belief on that matter.

{You said}

Sure, I do lean towards one side on many things but it's always the model that is the most falsifiable and the simplest.
{unquote}

No, you don't. I've told why Materialism is unparsimonious, not free of unnecessary unsupported added assumption.

I'm not going to debate religion with you, and I've already answered you about the matter of possibility-worlds, and so I'm skipping much of what you said.


{You said}

I am confused. So are you saying that just because you are alive in one instant and that you care about the future it means that it can't end in the next instant?

{unquote}

I'm saying that it would be better if you didn't reply to what you obviously haven't read.

{I'd said}

In fact, there’s no experience, observation or experiment that isn’t consistent with that.
{unquote}

{You replied}

That's a bug, not a feature. A model that can explain literally anything is unfalsifiable
{unquote}

Incorrect. Not being contradicted by experience, observation or experiment isn't a fault of a "bug"

Yes, there's no experiment that can determine whether Materialism's "Stuff" is objectively, fundamentally existent. There's no experiment that can determine whether our universe is objectively existent, or existent in some context other than its own.

Materialism is an unfalsifiable proposition.

As I've already explained, at least most of the metaphysicses that are proposed are experimentally indistinguishable, and don't contradict observation and experiment, because otherwise they wouldn't be proposed.

So it's really silly to single out one metaphysics as "unfalsifiable"

But Skepticism isn't just unfalsifiable. It's also inevitable, because the abstract logical if-thens on which it's based are inevitable and not in doubt.

Sure, you could ask whether Materialism's "Stuff" superfluously objectively exists too. That "Stuff", and the (meaningless) notion that our phyisical universe is objectively existent, or existent in some (??) context other than its own, are both unfalsifiable propositions--and they're without any support or reason to believe them. ...aside from being without meaning.

And Skepticism, unlike Materialism, doesn't need or make any assumptions, and doesn't posit a brute-fact.


{You said}

... and incapable of making any useful predictions.
{unquote}

As I've said before, Skepticism predicts our physical universe from fundamental principles.

Materialism just posits it as a brute-fact.

{You said}

[referring to reincarnation]

Well, I still say that assuming additional stuff without it adding to your predictive power is a waste of time.
{unquote}

I won't ask what you were wanting reincarnation to predict

...but do me a favor, and don't explain it.

I'm not advocating about reincarnation, or promoting a belief about it.

I've just been answering some of your arguments, merely for the purpose of evaluating those arguments themselves.

Michael829

Let me repeat, for you, what I already said:

As I said, I'm talking about a time when you don't know that you were previously in a life, but you have your subsconscious drives, feelings, inclinations, habits, etc., and they include an orientation toward the future.

Now, you were in that life, the one that you've just finished, because you're someone about who there's a life-experience possibility-story.

...and that's still so, at that time when you don't remember that you've just finished a life.

Therefore, there is still a life-experience story about you. ...not the same one, because you're not exactly the same person, with all the same subconscious influences, that you were at the beginning of the finished life.

Because there's a life-experience story about you, then you're in a life-experience story...because there's one that begins just like the state you're in at the stage that I'm speaking of for someone with the subconscious inclinations and attributes that you have.

You might say that it sounds most implausible that a dying person can be in a life-story that's starting. ...when that person is physically in a body of a life that's finished.

But remember that I also claim that your previous life was, itself, only a story anyway. ...and therefore has no more status or reality than new story that you're in, the one that's starting.

One is as real as the other, since they're both just possibility-stories. And one of them matches the you that you now are, in terms of your subconscious inclinations, feelings, etc.

That transition would seem rather sci-fi, except that you don't experience a transition. You don't know that there was a life before.

Quite unverifiable, sure.

But implied by the parsimonious metaphyisics, a metaphysics that holds up under discussion a lot better than Materialism does, and a metaphysics which, I've argued, is inevitable. (for reasons that I've already discussed).

And its unverifiability removes the implausibility. There's no time when you say, "Hey, that transition was too fantastic!"

Unverifiable and unfalsifiable, but, as I said, implied by the parsimonious metaphysics.

I'm not saying you should believe anything. Just clarifying what I'm referring to, and how it's implied by that metaphysics.

Michael829

I'm actually going to take a momentary step back try to inject something that I just posted somewhere else:

I made a subtle tweak to my definition of consciousness from my other post 'whose value alignments overlap to achieve outcomes deemed optimal by the overlapping set in common'.

I think I may have put that matter to rest now at least for my own satisfaction although binding between sets gets interesting. Not sure how well all of it translates but I think in principle it's correct.

I'd like to add a few clarifications:

Though i'm sure about the inevitability of the metaphysics that I propose, and call "Skepticism", I don' mean to sound completely certain about reincarnation.

After all, it is unverifiable and unfalsifiable, and, when referring to its theoretical support, I usually say that reincarnation is consistent with or implied by Skepicism", and emphasize that I can't prove that there's reincarnation.

That said, something must happen at the end of a life, even if it's just "uneventfully going to sleep". I've told why the "uneventfully going to sleep" assumption doesn't sound more likely than the other possibilities, especially in view of the metaphysics that I propose (which has much in common with that of India's millennia-old Vedanta)....making the life-outcomes described in India for thousands of years more likely.

I'd like to comment on a few of mikeman's "anti-" arguments, in which he mis-applies some principles of science:

When the difference between explanations for the way things are, such as metaphysicses, is unverifiable and unfalsifiable, and has no observable differences, then the difference can rightly be said to be meaningless.
But reincarnation isn't an explanation or a metaphysics. It's a suggested possible outcome, and so the objection doesn't apply. In spite of the undecidability between the proposals, their implications aren't really identical.

Obviously, when any choice between two claims is unverifiable and unfalsifiable, and if neither claim has any support of any kind, then of course nothing can be said. But, though unverifiable and unfalsifiable, reincarnation has metaphysical support. ...if not proven, at least supported or suggested.

Anyway, no-one here has said that reincarnation is absolutely ruled out, or is certain. So it's a meaningless and unnecessary argument.

I claim that the possibility of reincarnation is supported by being implied by or consistent with Skepticism. It comes down to a question of which metaphysics you want to argue for, if you want to argue for one.

...and whether it's defensible.

Michael829

The above boxquote is just to identify this post as a reply to mikeman.

Computer-Simulated Universe, reply to Mikeman’s Post:
.
First, as I often do, I’d like to make a few comments before starting the inline reply:
.
Though I don’t believe that it would be possible for a computer-simulation to create a universe, because you can’t create what’s already there, I like it that people are open to the computer-simulated universe theory.
.
I like that because it means that those people aren’t Materialists. I like it because the computer-simulated universe theory is about halfway to my own metaphysics. If you accept the possibility of a computer-simulated universe, then you’re close to accepting my metaphysics, which just take things a step farther.
.
Suppose that you believe that our universe might be a computer-simulation. …a computer program running in a computer (in some other universe).
.
Well, note the words, “…a computer program…”
.
…as distinct from “…a computer”.
.
A computer program is a computer program, without the help of a computer.
.
So, if our universe is a computer program, does its existence really depend on transistor switching operations in a computer? Is it the electrical current running through the computer’s circuits what makes our universe? Or is it the program itself? What possible difference could electric current in a circuit have, for the existence of a universe?
.
It’s the program, not the transistor-switching. The transistors could be demonstrating, displaying, the program to the programmers, but the transistors don’t make the program.
.
That’s why physicist Frank Tippler once wrote that our universe is program that doesn’t need a computer.
.
(Unfortunately, later Tippler was advocating the position that our universe is a simulation being run on a computer, and even spoke of the desirability of eventually converting this universe’s matter into one big computer that would simulate a continuation of the lives of everyone who has ever lived (presumably including the people who were destroyed when they and their planet were converted into computer-building material) ).
.
Anyway, if you accept that our universe might be a running computer program, then it’s a small distance to consider that it’s the computer program itself, not the fact that some computer is physically running the program.
.
And a hypothetical if-then possibility-story, a world of “if “, is like a computer-program. …really just another way of saying the same thing.
.
Hence, if you feel that there might be something to the computer-simulated universe theory, then you’d also consider that there might be something to Skepticism, which is really saying the same thing—minus the need for the computer-hardware physically running the program.
.
Now, for my inline reply:
.
Mikeman:
.
You said:
.
{You said}
Here's the thing though, that simulated version of our universe would include simulated versions of you and I having this exact conversation. You would be just as insistent that the world you are standing on would be unaffected by the programmer's actions yet that version of you actually would be killed if the programmer decided to blow up the Earth.
{unquote}
.
Suppose that a computer-programmer in some universe has decided to program a simulation of a universe, and his simulation just happens to match our own possibility-world universe:
.
Two possibilities:
.
1. This possibility-world universe of ours isn’t, by its physical laws, isn’t going to self-destruct on September 18th, 2017:
.
In that case, when your programmer either changes or contravene’s his simulated universe’s physical laws, to cause his simulated universe to self-destruct n September 18th, 2017.
.
All that means is that he’s no longer simulating our universe possibility-world. Our universe is quite unaffected by his change.
.
2. This possibility-world universe of ours is, by its physical laws, is going to self-destruct on September 18, 2017:
.
In that case, when your programmer needn’t make any change in his simulation of our universe, to make that happen. It’s just the way he initially wrote his simulation that just happens to match our universe. And, when our own universe self-destructs, it was going to anyway, quite without the help of your programmer and his simulation.
-------------------
In either case, our universe is quite unaffected by your programmer, and his playing with his computer-simulation.
.
{You said}
If we assume that there is only one real version of this universe and one simulated version of this universe then there is a 50% chance that we are the simulated version and not the real version.
{unquote}
.
If they’re identical, then of course we’re “in” both.
.
…but if your programmer has contravened or changed his simulation’s physical laws, then his old one, and his new one, can’t be simulations of the same possibility-world, because that would be a self-inconsistent “possibility-world”, which would really be an “impossibility-world”. … because, being self-inconsistent, it isn’t a possibility-world. He can do whatever he wants with his “simulation”, but when he contravenes or changes its physical laws, he’s no longer simulating the same possibility-world.
.
Who knows—Maybe our universe was already going to self-destruct on September 18th, 2017, and maybe when he changes his simulation’s physical laws to make it self-destruct on that day, he has just happened to begin simulating our universe. But, as I said before, since or universe was already going to self-destruct on Sepetember 18, 2017, your programmer hasn’t affected us.
.
But a universe whose physical laws are contravened or externally changed isn’t a possibility-world. Our possibility world couldn’t be his simulation both before and after he changes or contravenes its physical laws, because our universe is a possibility-world, not an impossibility-world.
.
I didn’t intend my term-paper Xeroxing and plagiarism as a close analogy.

.
{I’d said}

But, all of these versions of Eliminative Ontic Structuralism propose the same possibility-world.
.
I don’t agree with Tippler’s belief in computer simulations creating universes.
{unquote}

.
{You replied}

I have heard this concept referred to as the "ultimate multiverse" model
{unquote}
.
It can be called by any name you like. Tegmark’s version is called the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH). My proposal differs because its told from the individual-experience point of view (which I consider more valid) instead of the system-wide point of view.
.
…and because I call it an inevitability rather than a hypothesis.
.
{You said}
, my problem is not that you take it seriously but that you believe it to be correct without observable evidence.
{unquote}
.
I answered that in my metaphysics reply to your post. So this takes us to the completion of my inline reply to your comments about the computer-simulated universe theory.
.
I won’t quibble about the definition of Materialism. You’re free to look it up if you want to (or not).
.
If you aren’t really a Materialist, as ordinarily metaphysically defined, then my comments about Materialism aren’t really addressed to you. That’s fine.
.
Maybe you’re someone who doesn’t really advocate Materialism, but leans toward it.
.
But, from much of what you say, you aren’t even that much of a Materialist. Rather, you’re just someone who just likes science and isn’t interested in philosophy.
.
There’s nothing wrong with that! As you probably already know, this forum website’s Topical Discussion region includes a forum that includes Science in its topics. I recommend that forum to you.
.
Have fun there!
.
Michael829

Shifting my criticisms earlier to something more profitable:

Instead of categorizing universal motion in terms of 'if-then', I might play with categorizing the universe into varying sized droplets of 'I can ____'. There's an if-then math that's clearly going on when comparing all of the various 'I can' models but the if-then is probably related to reconciling those models based on accrued historical data.

Someone somewhere else rightly pointed out that consciousness, as we experience it, can't happen without memory, sensory recognition, and at least two 'things' in relationship to one another. Theoretically an 'I can ___' by itself would would still exist but it would be interacting with nothing, which would cause it to cease operation as an 'I can' and become an 'I am' statement - simply because there's nothing to lever. It's theoretical because such experiences in the universe, without memory and without sensing apparatus, don't make it to our own memory records. Sometimes we might have analogous feelings of 'I am' when we're in situations of absolute futility and where all we can do is just exist through said circumstances, in that sense our engagement is subordinated to the larger environment. That's about our only touchstone to point in the direction of that sort of state.

What's important to me though is understanding living and dynamic systems as systems - with awareness - that work to keep a resting equilibrium, and that desire to keep said equilibrium is their guidepost to survival. It also stands to reason, much more so, that we shouldn't be surprised when we see in fossil records that a type of animal or type of human showed up in several unconnected places, or that several inventors came up with the idea at the same time. If an idea is important enough that idea will be expedited up the hierarchy of cognition and redistributed outward to insure that said innovation stays around. Pretty much anything you can provide that's useful to greasing the wheels of the universe will find a way of surviving, being rediscovered if previously snuffed out, and also - if revolutionary enough - stands the chance of being distributed back out across the broader population and causing 'eureka' moments for other people chewing on the same problems.

@Michael829

There is way too much stuff for me to respond to everything individually so I will just do what you have been doing and respond to things in categories.

First of all, [quote size=150] doesn't work because size is supposed to be a separate tag, so it would have to be [*quote][*size=150] (but without asterisks) and then of course then need to be ended with their own [*/size] and [*/quote] tags.


-Reincarnation-

I guess we are in agreement that it's impossible to know. I still can't make any sense of your explanation of why it's suggested because that thought experiment provides no measurable way to discern between that person entering another life or "possibility story" and them just ceasing to experience anything. In fact if the personality, memories, and even genetics are all erased then there is no objective way to say that they even are the same person after reincarnation assuming that model of it is correct.


-Materialism-

Most of what you have said about what materialists are is a strawman. I agree that by your definition I am not a materialist and materialists are idiots but I don't know anyone who actually fits into that definition of "materialist" even though I know a lot of people (including me) who call themselves materialists.

I will agree with the definition of "materialist" being "One who believed that matter and energy is all that exists" as long as I can be a bit more specific of that "belief" and "exist" mean in this context.

Just because I don't believe in X doesn't mean that I believe in the exact opposite of X. For example, I don't believe in a God but I will freely admit that I am open to the idea of one existing as long as it can be experimentally demonstrated. Religious people who have a problem with the existence of atheists often make the strawman that atheists make the claim that for sure no God exists and debunks that because quite frankly that isn't a hard position to debunk. You are doing the same thing, taking "I do not believe that anything besides matter and energy exists" to mean "I am 100% sure that matter and energy are the only things in all of reality observable and otherwise". So my definition of "belief" is most "being 100% sure of X" but "considering X to be most likely".

Also, I will be defining "real" as "observable" because as an empiricist you will never catch me calling something "real" that isn't observably verified. I consider matter and energy to be real because I can observe them, and even if reality were a simulation I would still consider matter and energy real because I can still observe them. This also means that something may make up reality but it will still not be considered real until evidence of it is observed because unless that happens it can never be any more then blind speculation.

So when I say that I believe that matter and energy are all that exist I am not saying that I am 100% sure that matter and energy make up the entirety of reality, I am saying that I consider it most likely that matter and energy are all that exists because they are observable and nothing beyond matter and energy has ever been observed, so assuming that matter and energy are all that exists makes the simplest model.


-if-then-

When I say "If X then Y" then what I'm really saying is "In a hypothetical world where you can be 100% sure about X you can also be 100% sure about Y". As great as it would be for math to reveal objective truth it is really just based on observation.

Math is built on axioms which were chosen because they seem to be true when we observe the world through our senses, and then from there we can determine that given those axioms a bunch of predictions can be made like 2+2 being equal to 4. Lo and behold, these predictions hold up when tested and have proven to be useful. In essence we have come up with a hypothetical world and as far as we can tell it matches up with the real world pretty well, but we are far from being 100% certain that math and logic exist objectively beyond our own minds.

I can be 100% sure that in a world where we can be 100% sure that all sheep are white and that Dolly is a sheep then Dolly is white for the same reason why I am 100% sure that there is a conspiracy in the solar alliance in my science fiction universe; I made both of those scenarios up. In the real world we can never know anything with such certainty for example in the real world there are black sheep and there is a non-zero chance that I am mistaken about Dolly being a sheep.

My point is, you can't be as sure as you seem to be about reality being entirely based on logic. For all I know you may be right but without a way to test it it's just blind speculation. There are theoretically infinite ways of explaining why physics are the way they are so your particular brand of metaphysics is infinitely unlikely to be the right one.


-Empiricism-

Yes, not contradicting reality is a good start but that's not really impressive when you have a model that is logically impossible to contradict. As I've heard it put, it's not even wrong. It's just like the Christian proposition that God did everything, literally anything that happens can be explained by "I guess God decided to make that happen", and that hypothesis has just as much merit as yours because it explains everything and is impossible to contradict. It's not hard to make a model that does this and there are theoretically infinite such models that are all equal in their explanatory power. What's hard is making a prediction that can be falsified, that way it can be tested and it's actually possible to gain a degree of certainty that it's correct.

My claim is that metaphysics is pseudoscience and has as much merit as the thousands of different religions in the world. Without observable evidence it is for all intents and purposes not real. You seem to be so sure about your particular brand of it even though being that sure about a part of reality outside your own mind can only be a result of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Oh, and contrary to your claim according to the Dunning-Kruger effect I actually do know what I'm talking about because I have said and keep saying that I am not 100% sure about anything, not even that non-strawman version of materialism which is not to be mistaken for your strawman materialism which I disagree with.


-Simulated universe-

Disagreement about semantics and what is technically "creation" aside, any simulated universe just like ours would have it's own sentient beings which think they are real and for all we know we could be in such a simulation. Not to mention I am still unsure about how you can be so sure that every possible universe exists. It's not like you have any more experience with other universes then I do, we are both very stuck in this one.


-Conclusion-

The biggest problem I have with your argument is how sure you are about something that is completely untestable. My claim is that there is no way you can know what you claim to know. Metaphysics is untestable and by extension unknowable, this is because the moment it becomes testable then it becomes regular physics and without that experimental evidence it is on equal grounds with religion.

{I’d said}
Of course our knowledge and memory of our life and its details fades out as we shut down. How could it not?
{unquote{
.
{You replied}
Easy enough - it simply wouldn't, and we'd have to figure out why.
{unquote}
.
Well maybe figure out why before you hypothesize it without any evidence.
.
Anyway, when this life is thoroughly over, to the point of the body being shut down, why would you need to remember its details?
.
{I’d said}
So I don’t disagree.
{unquote}
.
{You replied:}
Except that you've been making a case all this time that when atoms lose their order for conducting a dynamic system, in our case neurons, it all dissolves.
{unquote}
.
Yes, the body shuts down eventually. No one denies that. You don’t deny that.
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But I’ve never said that that’s the end for us. But of course that’s the end of this life. You don’t deny that either.
.
You’re making a disagreement where there isn’t one.
.
{You said}
there are tools that you could use if you really wanted to put your own ideas to the test.
{unquote}
.
I don’t agree that the matter is testable or determinable. Not during this life, and not later. And when you’re in a next life, you won’t have any knowledge or memory of a previous one, and so reincarnation won’t be verifiable even then.
.
{You said}
I think the equivalence principle you're mentioning, which the technical term for in most people's parlance is panpsychism
{unquote}
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No, what I said certainly isn’t Panpsychism. You’re reading between the lines again.

.
{I’d said}
No. NDEs happen at the beginning of the death process, long before the stage (I call it “stage 1”) when reincarnation would take place; and long before the later no-identity stage (I call it “stage 2”) when Timelessness is reached. (Incidentally, if there’s reincarnation, very few people reach stage 2.)
.
The NDEs could be the beginning of the temporary Heavens and Hells referred to by Hinduism and Buddhism.
{unquote}
.
{You replied:}
Are you sourcing this from Hinduism and Buddhism or other places as well?
{unquote}
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Hinduism, Buddhism, and reports of NDEs.
.
{I’d said}
But, inevitably, just before complete shutdown, after which the person is quite dead, there must be as stage at which the person is still conscious, but without awareness of his/her previous life, or even that there ever were such things life, a body, identity, time, or events.
{unquote
.
{You replied}
I highlighted the 'must'. I see a lot of that in your writings but not a lot in the way of explanation as to why aside from that they must fit your models.
{unquote}
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So you you’re saying that a person remembers the details of their life, right up to the time when their body is entirely shut down.
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That seems dubious.
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Even in sleep, we don’t remember the details of our lives. For example, even in dreams, we don’t remember the details of our lives (maybe a few details, once in a while), and we usually fully believe the reality of the dream. In dreams, we don’t know that there’s a life different from the one in the dream.
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So what makes you think that we’d remember the details of our life, when we’re so far into the shutdown that we’re barely before the time of complete shutdown and being quite dead?
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Also it isn’t clear why you’d need to always remember the details of a life that has ended.
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{You said}
Your conflation of the dictionary meaning of Skepticism and your private definition of Skepticism…
{unquote}
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I don’t know what you’re talking about, and neither do you.
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First, Skepticism isn’t in the dictionary, and doesn’t have a dictionary definition. Capitalized, Skepticism is the name that I’ve given to my metaphysics, and is not a word in the dictionary. When, in that instance, you said Skepticism, you meant skepticism, a common noun in the dictionary.
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Until you can make that distinction, it might be better for you to not try to discuss the matter.
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The metaphysics that I call Skepticism is skeptical. Complete rejection and avoidance of assumptions and assumed unsupported brute-facts is skeptical.
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Therefore, Skepticism is a good name for my skeptical metaphysics.
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I’ve explained that for you several times. This will have to do. I won’t keep repeating that explanation for you.
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{You said}
I think antirealism might fit what you're saying better…
{unquote}
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My metaphysics, Skepticism, is an Anti-Realism. I use the term “Non-Realism”.
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Eliminative Ontic Structural Non-Realism.
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…as opposed to MUH which has been called Elminative Ontic Structural Realism.
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{You said}
My fundamental disagreement with that right now is that I don't see where granular if-then interactions (which has nothing to do with 'Skepticism - it's something I'm sure but clearly something else)
{unquote}
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It has something to do with Skepticism, because Skepticism is my name for it.
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…for the metaphysics based on fundamental abstract logical if-thens
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It also has something to do with skepticism, because it’s a skeptical metaphysical basis that doesn’t make or need any assumptions.
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As I said, complete rejection and avoidance of assumptions is skeptical.
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{You said}
If you can't give really practical examples of what seeing the world as a stack of if-then reactions means the idea's in serious trouble as far as it's utility.
{unquote}
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What was it that you were wanting to use it for?
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You want to use it to engineer the building of a bridge?
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An advantage of Skepticism is that it’s inevitable, because it’s based on inevitable abstract if-then facts.
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Another advantage that it’s completely parsimonious and (yes) skeptical, not using or needing any assumptions or brute-facts.
.
If that isn’t enough, then what can I say?
.
{You said}
That's why I'm asking you - really for the best examples of why the cosmology you're describing is the best case.
{unquote}
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See above.
.
{You said}
This is a massive red-herring, partly that I'm still trying to deal with Skepticism and then Michael829 'Skepticism'.
{unquote}
.
What is this Skepticism that you’re referring to, that’s different from my Skepticism? If you’re referring to skepticism, a common noun in the dictionary, then why do you insist on capitalizing it? My Skepticism is distinguished from the dictionary’s skepticism by the capitalization of my Skepticism.
.
Above in this reply, I explained how Skepticism is skeptical, and embodies skepticism. …justifying its name, Skepticism.
.
If you still don’t understand that, then I can’t help you, and I won’t explain it to you again.
.
{You said}
They seem to be getting used interchangeably.
{unquote}
.
No, I distinguish my Skepticism by capitalizing it.
.
My Skepticism is a metaphysics. Uncapitalized dictionary skepticism is a common noun.
.
Are we done with that issue yet?
.
You criticized Skepticism by some standard. I asked you what metaphysics does better by that standard.
.
From what you said in reply, evidently you can’t name one.
.
And, by the way, as I said, my question wasn’t a completely general one. You criticized Skepticism by one particular standard, and my question was in regards to that one particular standard.
.
{You said}
Mental illness is conscious suffering and it's suffering directly related to certain ways that consciousness is placed in duress by genetic patterns. Looking at the first definition googles for 'philosophy of mind':
Quote:
Philosophy of Mind is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind (mental events, mental functions, mental properties and consciousness) and its relationship to the physical body.
.
I fail to see why or how the aims of psychiatry and the study of neurological diseases doesn't at least take a significant role in that definition.
{unquote}
.
In philosophy, the philosophy of mind is a general philosophy. It isn’t a study of specifics, like the problems that medicine or psychiatry studies.
.
But that’s a matter of definitions, and it’s pointless to quibble about which definition we prefer for a word.
:
{You said}
a purely logic-based system won't surprise you or throw you any curveballs the way a scientific experiment, or an occult magical experiment for that matter, could.
[b[{unquote}[/b]

.
{I replied}
So?
.
Anyway, maybe that isn’t so. For example, the logic-based metaphysics that I’ve proposed is difficult for some people here to accept.
.
The suggestion to give up the notion of objective existence and reality is very difficult for many people.

.
That could be called a “curveball” that you reject.
{unquote}
.
{You replied}

.
Except that there's nothing curveball about it - it's a hypothetical universe built on an assumption.
{unquote}
.
…and what assumption would that be?
.
{You said}
“[It’s too] oversimplistic to be true.”
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
So you want to complicate things, by adding unsupported assumptions and brute-facts.
.
To each their own.
.
I don’t know or care what you mean by “a curveball”.
.
Skepticism is difficult for you because your early education, your habit, culture, language, make you intutitively-wedded to the belief in an objectively existent universe that’s globally (in all contexts) real, whatever that would mean.
.
… and in the objectively-existent “Stuff ” of Materialism.
.
And no, Skepticism isn’t a speculation.
.
.
{I’d said}
I agree that we’re primary, but I suggest that that “principle-of-equivalence” that I described obtains too.
{unquote}
.
{You said{
If we're really agreeing on almost everything but hung up on semantics I think we need to clarify what it is you're saying about tethering.
{unquote}
.
No, “tethering” was your word.
.
I mentioned a principle-of-equivalence that says that nothing about us, when viewed from a clinical 3rd-person point-of-view, contradicts the notion of a physical body. Maybe that’s the same as philosophy-of-mind Physicalism.
.
{You said}
At first you're saying that we're tethered to our subatomic particles
{unquote}
.
No, that was your wording. Your re-wording of that principle-of-equivalence.
.
{You said}
, and then you're saying there's more but not giving any clear rules as to what that means.
{unquote}
.
Of course there’s more than the clinical point-of-view. The individual hirself (himself/herself) and hir experience is primary.
.
That’s why I agreed that Skepticism is an “Anti-Realism”, told from the individual-experience point of view.
.
{You said}
…or that we'd diffuse into a sort of vague I AM-ness with no memory, basking in eternity, until we re-embody.
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
{I replied}
That’s sounds a lot like what I said. …except that, when we reach Timelessness, we don’t re-embody.
.
Reincarnation would be from an earlier stage of shutdown, in which we still have identity, and our subconscious life-inclinations and future-orientation.
{unquote}
.
{You replied}
As far as I've read of Buddhist philosophy nirvana and paranirvana aren't dissolution or selflessness. They are, however, places so alien in their function that all language used to try describing them breaks down.
{unquote}
.
Nirvana (in Buddhism) or Moksha (in Hinduism) sometimes refer to something achieved during a lifetime, also referred to Enlightenment. I don’t know what Enlightenment is. Buddhism, and genuine traditional Hinduism/Vedanta agree that very, very few people will achieve it in this lifetime. So, at this point, or probably at any time in this lifetime, it would be pointless to discuss it. Don’t worry about it. I don’t.
.
But I’m not aware of Buddhism or Hinduism saying that we retain our identity as the person that we now are, or any invidual identity at all at the end of lives--or that we’ll, then, remember details of this or any life, or that, at the end of lives there will still be time and events for us.
.
But, as I said, according to traditional Hinduism and Buddhism (and I suggest that they’re right), the end of lives is very, very far off, many lifetimes away, for nearly all of us, so it isn’t something that we need to be concerned about in this lifetime.
.
(Yes, I’ve said that I can’t prove that there’s reincarnation, but you don’t believe that we ever cease our identification as an embodied being in a life, so, in the context of this conversation, we can dispense with the notion that everything ends at the end of this life.)
.
{I’d said}
But I could ask you: Why would you want to remember all the life-details, at the end of lives? Aren’t the life-details, such things as the fact that there was a life, identity, time, events, etc. irrelevant at the end of lives?
{unquote}
.
{You replied}
Really my interest in those questions goes like this:

.
1) If I hear someone speaking with certainty on what happens when we die (or at least certainty for if consciousness continues).
{unquote}
.
Well, you can stop right there, because I don’t claim to know with certainty what it’s like to die. If I have died before, I don’t remember that I did--and that’s to be expected in any case.
.
I’ve been repeating that, in regards to what it’s like to die, I’m not speaking with certainty.
.
The end-of-a-life experiences that I’ve been speaking of are things that are consistent with my metaphysics, or implied by it.
.
But I make no claim to be speaking with certainty about what it will be like for someone to die, or what comes next. …because, if that has ever happened to me, I don’t remember it (but I wouldn’t expect to).
.
{You said}
2) If I had some databank of every life I ever lived? That would probably suck
{unquote}
.
You don’t and won’t. You know that you don’t remember any previous lives.
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{You said}
, it might inform my subconscious impulses to some degree, and yes - I am glad that I don't remember all my (hypothetical) past lives because I'm sure most of them were miserable. I'd also hate to see all of my future lives and I think most people, if they knew they had truly grueling trials ahead, would want to know - above all else - how they could give themselves a true atheist's funeral, whether by nuke or something else, which would run the chance of scrambling their substrate so intensely that they would be - as Dawkins or Dennett would suggest - gone for good at death.
{unquote}
.
I wouldn’t recommend trying that. Likely, it can’t work, but most likely the effort would really mess things up for you.
.
If reincarnation is true, and I feel that it probably is true, then you might as well accept that you’re in life because you aren’t done with life. If you come back, it’s because you want or need to.
.
{You said}
Otherwise there could also be a point where a person has hit such a degree of resignation to the universe that such vistas do open up and such people are ready to see it without looking for means to self-terminate.
[/b]{unquote}[/b]
.
Desiring a premature end to lives would be pointless and unproductive. As for not having that desire, I don’t think it’s about resignation. It seems to me that it’s more about recognizing that (as I said) you’re in a life because you want or need to. …because you aren’t done with life.
.
I don’t know if anyone can have a vista about future lives. Probably not. Certainly not from where we are. And almost certainly not, ever, in any detail.
.
{You said}
I doubt that I'd be spending most of my conscious time after death tethered to my rotting body or my ashes.
{unquote}
.
Of course not. No one believes that.
.
{You said}
…there'd probably be certain things I'd do differently - mostly for the sake of minimizing suffering at a different date.
{unquote}
.
Of course.
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As I was saying, memories of details don’t remain, but deep or subconscious impressions, inclinations, inborn and habitual, are retained.
.
{You asked}
.
Do you have any examples of philosophic topics that would be permanently closed to scientific inquiry and refutation?
{unquote}
.
Science is about the workings of the physical universe, and the relation and interactions among its contents. Period.
.
It doesn’t apply to metaphysics, the kind of philosophy we’ve been talking about.
.
{I’d said}
Well, giving up the notion of the universe’s objective existence and reality is very counter-intuitive, so much so that you don’t accept it.
{unquote}
.
{You said}
I don't know who this 'you' is that you're referring to on that
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
The “you” that I was referring to was Techstepgener8tion.
.
{You said}
Even the Seth of Jane Roberts, after talking about all kinds of crazy parallel universes, alternate universes of different structure, etc. insists that if you break the physical laws here, or anywhere else, the reprisal is immediate and summary regardless of what you believe.
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
You can’t “break the physical laws”. The physical consequences of physical mistakes, like falling off a building obtain no matter what metaphysics you subscribe to.
.
{You said}
That's where saying there's no objective universe seems meaningless…
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
This universe is real and existent in its own context. That context is the context or your life.
.
I don’t claim that this universe is real or existent in any other context—some maybe-presumed larger context. Some absolute context.
.
I’ve been speaking of this universe being a hypothetical possibility-world, a system of inter-referring if-thens, real and existent only in its own local inter-referring context.
.
When someone objects “What makes you think that’s real?”, I answer that I make no claim that it’s objectively real. …by which I mean I make no claim that it’s real or existent other than in its own inter-referring context.
.
Yes, the adjective “objective” has various meanings, and so it isn’t sufficient by itself.
.
{You said}
I don't trust any theory advancing toward a TOE because they're almost always drastic overreaches.]
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
{I replied}
I doubt that physicists will ever find the elusive theory of everything (physical) (TOE).
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
{You said}
I meant that about philosophy but sure - both.
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
I don’t claim a philosophical “theory of everything”. My metaphysics is only a metaphysics. I don’t claim that verbally-expressible metaphysics is everything.
.
{You said}
It's not that I have anything strictly against wall-texts, it's just that over time I've come to learn that I actually learn more from being here, from other people, etc. when I interact with the larger environment and that usually happens in smaller snippets. When we speak in wall texts we get to live in our heads, almost entirely, and we don't get to see how we're interfacing with the practical - other than perhaps when such a post gets completely ignored or 'tl:dr'd unanimously.
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
Then why do you post such long wall-texts?
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My replies to you are long because they’re replies to long posts.
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I try to make my replies briefer by deleting much of your wall-text, and only replying to some of it.
.
.
{I’d said}
If you prefer soundbites, then maybe you’d be happier with tv news.
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
{You replied}
Except that most of what we've been talking about here really has been filler and largely meaningless.
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
Yes, that’s why I delete most of what you post, and only reply to some of it.

{You said}
You could boil the conversation down to the explanations and examples, as I suggested further up, as to why seeing the universe the way you're recommending that we see it is the best, most logical, or most pragmatic way to see it.
[b[{unquote}[/b]
.
Alright, are you ready for it?:
My metaphyisics doesn’t make or need any assumptions, or post any brute-facts.
…is the parsimonious metaphysics.
…is inevitable, because it consists of a system of inter-referring inevitable logical if-then facts.
…........and because, among the infinity of such complex systems, there’s inevitably one that matches our ..........universe.
.
Oh wait…I’d already said that
Michael829

This is a reply to mikeman:
.
{You said}
First of all, [quote size=150] doesn't work because size is supposed to be a separate tag, so it would have to be [*quote][*size=150] (but without asterisks) and then of course then need to be ended with their own [*/size] and [*/quote] tags.
{unquote}
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That doesn’t seem any more convenient than my { } format.
.
The { } format has the advantage of, in every quote, telling who is being quoted.
.
{You said}
-Reincarnation-

.
I guess we are in agreement that it's impossible to know. I still can't make any sense of your explanation of why it's suggested because that thought experiment provides no measurable way to discern between that person entering another life or "possibility story" and them just ceasing to experience anything.
{unquote}
.
Yes, it wouldn’t be measureable to an observer with all sorts of measuring-instruments and a clipboard.
.
So of course you can’t make sense of it
.
In fact, any 1st-person experience of that person would be undectectable by that observer’s instruments.
.
So of course you likewise can’t make sense of a suggestion that you have 1st-person experience.
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{You said}
In fact if the personality, memories, and even genetics are all erased then there is no objective way to say that they even are the same person after reincarnation assuming that model of it is correct.
{unquote}
.
I told you that you shouldn’t reply to what you haven’t read, but evidently you didn’t get the message.
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I said that, if there’s reincarnation, it would happen at a time when subconscious feelings, inclinations, and various acquired and hereditary subconscious attributes remain. …and when there doesn’t remain a knowledge that the person had been in a life.
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That’s plausible, because, for example, in dreams, obviously feelings and inclinations remain, without knowledge of your waking life.
.
It shouldn’t be necessary for me to keep repeating things for you, and I won’t continue doing so.
.
{You said}
-Materialism-

Most of what you have said about what materialists are is a strawman.
{unquote}
.
…in addition to being the accepted philosophical definition of Materialism
.
But I’m not interested in a quibble about definitions.
.
{You said}
I agree that by your definition I am not a materialist and materialists are idiots but I don't know anyone who actually fits into that definition of "materialist" even though I know a lot of people (including me) who call themselves materialists.
{unquote}
.
A Materialist is someone who subscribes to the metaphysical position of Materialism. Maybe you mean that you only tentatively subscribe to it, and that’s fine. If you’re saying that you don’t know, that’s fine.
.
But below in your post, you say that you consider metaphysics to be on par with religion. You subscribe (at least tentatively) to a metaphysics. So you’re saying that you subscribe to something that you consider to be like a religion.
.
{You said}
I will agree with the definition of "materialist" being "One who believed that matter and energy is all that exists" as long as I can be a bit more specific of that "belief" and "exist" mean in this context.
[…]
{unquote}
.
Fine. You’re only tentatively a Materialist.

.
{You said}
Also, I will be defining "real" as "observable" because as an empiricist you will never catch me calling something "real" that isn't observably verified. I consider matter and energy to be real because I can observe them, and even if reality were a simulation I would still consider matter and energy real because I can still observe them. This also means that something may make up reality but it will still not be considered real until evidence of it is observed because unless that happens it can never be any more then blind speculation.

So when I say that I believe that matter and energy are all that exist I am not saying that I am 100% sure that matter and energy make up the entirety of reality, I am saying that I consider it most likely that matter and energy are all that exists because they are observable and nothing beyond matter and energy has ever been observed, so assuming that matter and energy are all that exists makes the simplest model.
{unquote}
.
We and our measuring instruments are physical. Only physical things can be measured. You can define “real” to mean “measureable” and therefore physical, if you want to. I’m not interested a quibble about definitions.
.
I’ll remind you that I’ve repeatedly emphasized that our physical universe, as a hypothetical possiblity-world, and like the infinitely-many such hypothetical worlds, isn’t and needn’t be objectively real, existent or factual (by which I mean real, existent or factual other than in its own local inter-referring context).
.
But, along with some others, I define, as a metaphysical term, “actual for us” as “part of our physical world”.
.
{You said}

-if-then-

When I say "If X then Y" then what I'm really saying is "In a hypothetical world where you can be 100% sure about X you can also be 100% sure about Y".
{unquote}
.
Word it how you want. The meaning of “if……then….” is self-evident.
.
{You said}
Math is built on axioms which were chosen because they seem to be true when we observe the world through our senses, and then from there we can determine that given those axioms a bunch of predictions can be made like 2+2 being equal to 4. Lo and behold, these predictions hold up when tested and have proven to be useful. In essence we have come up with a hypothetical world and as far as we can tell it matches up with the real world pretty well, but we are far from being 100% certain that math and logic exist objectively beyond our own minds.
{unquote}
.
It isn’t clear what you’re trying to say when you say that maybe logic and math don’t exist other than in the mind.
.
I’ve been saying all along that the individual and hir (his/her) experience is primary. Everything exists in our experience. Your life-experience possibility story can only be a life-experience possibility-story because it has a protagonist. So the protagonist, who experiences the life-experience possibility-story, is primary to that story, and is its central and essential component.
.
So, what you said in the above-quoted passage doesn’t contradict what I’ve been saying.
.
The basic requirement for a possibility-story is that it be self-consistent. …and of course that it have a protagonist.
.
{You said}

My point is, you can't be as sure as you seem to be about reality being entirely based on logic.
{unquote}
.
For one thing, I don’t claim that metaphysics is all of Reality.
.
My metaphysics describes this physical universe as a complex system of inter-referring inevitable logical facts.
.
Among the infinitely-many such systems, there must be one that exactly duplicates the events and relations in our physical world. There’s no reason to believe that our physical world is other than that hypothetical system.
.
If you believe that it probably is more than that, than you believe in an assumption with no empirical support.
.
As I said, you aren’t a very good empiricist.
.
But we’ve already been over this. You’re repeating exactly the same dogma that you said before, and which I’ve already answered. I’m not going to keep answering it every time you repeat it. I refer you to my reply before this one.
.
{You said}
For all I know you may be right but without a way to test it it's just blind speculation.
{unquote}
.
No. The inter-referring system of logical if-thens, about hypotheticals, isn’t speculative. It’s valid and it’s so, in its own local inter-referring context. …which is also the context or our lives.
.
What would need testing (but is un-testable) would be your (tentative but favored) belief that this physical universe is (in some vaguely-implied way) more than what I said in the above paragraph.
.
{You said}
There are theoretically infinite ways of explaining why physics are [he means “is”] the way they are [it is] so your particular brand of metaphysics is infinitely unlikely to be the right one.
{unquote}
.
And nearly all of those infinitely-many explanations, including the Materialism that you tentatively prefer, assume and posit a brute-fact. …an assumption with no empirical support (or any other kind of support).
.
My metaphysics differs from than by not making or needing any assumptions or brute-facts.
/
…and by being inevitable, for the reasons that I’ve already stated.
.
Empiricism disfavors Materialism, but not Skepticism.
.
As I said before, your “empiricism” is a sloppy and crude mis-application of science’s (perfectly valid) empiricism.
.
{You said}
-Empiricism-

Yes, not contradicting reality is a good start but that's not really impressive when you have a model that is logically impossible to contradict.
{unquote}
.
Yes, the belief in Materialism’s objectively-existent “Stuff”, and whatever way that you think this physical universe exists (other than as the hypothetical system that I’ve described) is a “model” that is impossible to contradict. …an unfalsifiable proposition. …unverifiable too, of course.
.
But you believe in it anyway.
.
(…even though you’re unable to be clear about the way in which you believe this physical universe exists, other than as the hypothetical system that I’ve described.)
.
{You said}
What's hard is making a prediction that can be falsified, that way it can be tested and it's actually possible to gain a degree of certainty that it's correct.
{unquote}
.
Materialism is an unfalsifiable , untestable, and unverifiable proposition, with no empirical (or other) support.
.
Likewise for your belief that this physical universe exists in some way other than as the hypothetical system that I’ve described (except that you aren’t able to say what in what other way you think it exists).
.
{You said}
My claim is that metaphysics is pseudoscience…
{unquote}
.
Pseudoscience is something presented as, pretended to be, science, when it isn’t really science.
.
Metaphysics isn’t presented as science.
.
Metaphysics and science are entirely different subjects. Neither competes with or impersonates the other.
.
…while your pseudoscience does impersonate science.
.
You’re thoroughly confused about the difference between metaphysics and physics. You’ve demonstrated that confusion again and again.
.
You persistent mis-application of science’s empiricism is pseudoscience.
.
You obviously like science, but you need to study it with more humility and conscientiousness. …instead of making it up as you go along.
.
{You said}
and has as much merit as the thousands of different religions in the world.
{unquote}
.
I can’t speak to your personal impression or valuation of “merit”. But metaphysics isn’t a faith-based subject—at least not until we get to Materialism
.
The relation between metaphysics and religion?
.
Every religion has a metaphysics.
.
The metaphysics of the Science-Worship religion is Materialism.
.
A Science-Worshipper is someone who insists on mis-applying science (or mis-applying its principles or methods) outside of the appropriate range of applicability.
.
{You said}
Without observable evidence it is for all intents and purposes not real.
{unquote}
.
…by your funny personal definition of real.
.
In any case (and it shouldn’t be necessary to keep repeating this for you), I’ve been emphasizing that I make no claim that the hypothetical system that is our physical universe is real or existent, other than in its own local inter-referring context.
.
Maybe you think it is (or probably is) real and existent in some other way, but you haven’t been able to specify what way that would be.
.
As for observable evidence, Skepticism has support, where Materialism has none. My metaphysics is supported by the inevitability of the system of inter-referring logical facts about hypotheticals, of which it consists.
.
Materialism has no such support, and is unverifiable, as well as unfalsifiable and un-testable. That’s a problem for a metaphysics like Materialism, that has no other support.
.
For someone who doesn’t like metaphysics, you certainly have a lot to say about it, butting into a metaphysical discussion. I didn’t ask for your opinion on what I was saying.
.
This forum is for discussion of philosophy, and that includes metaphysics, a long-recognized branch of philosophy. So, if you don’t like it, then it would be better if you butted back out, and did your posting to the forum that includes “Science” in its topics-list.
.
You evidently like science. That’s good.
.
However, I don’t want to sound mean, but you need to study science before you start explaining it to us at these forums.
.
{You said}
You seem to be so sure about your particular brand of it even though being that sure about a part of reality outside your own mind…
{unquote}
.
I’ve already explained that there are logical certainties.
.
But I don’t know what you mean by your above-quoted line, and neither do you.
.
I’ve also repeatedly (in answer to the same repeated comments from you) clarified that I make no claim that the hypothetical system that I describe is real or existent other than in its own local inter-referring context.
.
{You said}
Oh, and contrary to your claim according to the Dunning-Kruger effect I actually do know what I'm talking about…
{unquote}
.
No, you don’t.
.
Yes, you think you know what you’re talking about, but that’s the Dunning-Kruger effect.
.
Maybe you should read its definition again.
.
{You said}
…because I have said and keep saying that I am not 100% sure about anything…
{unquote}
.
But regrettably you’re sure enough to butt in and spout off at great length, on a topic (metaphysics) that you say you don’t like, and which you seem to be confusing with physics.
.
You aren’t 100% sure about anything? Well, you’re 100% sure that your position on, and beliefs about, metaphysics are better. And you’re 100% sure that you know what you’re talking about…the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
.
{You said}
-Simulated universe-

Disagreement about semantics and what is technically "creation" aside, any simulated universe just like ours would have it's own sentient beings which think they are real and for all we know we could be in such a simulation.
{unquote}
.
You need to assert less, and listen more. And, as I said, you need to not reply to what you haven’t read.
.
Whatever self-consistent possibility-world is being simulated, that possibility world was already there, as a possibility-world, without the help of the simulation.
.
The simulation can’t affect it. If your programmer changes the physical laws or configuration of his simulated universe, then he’s merely no longer simulating the universe that he was previously simulating.
.
If his change destroys the simulated universe, that has no effect on the universe that he’s no longer simulating.
.
If the new universe that he’s changed his simulated universe to self-destructs as a result, well maybe that new universe simulates some possibility-world too. But that possibility-world universe was going to self-destruct anyway.
.
As for his computer-simulation itself, when he changes or contravenes its physical laws, then speaking of it, before and after the simulation, as one “world”, that “world” isn’t a possibility-world, because it isn’t consistent with itself.
.
Due to its inconsistency, it lacks validity and factualness, even in its own context.
.
Aside from that, do you really believe that some transistor-switching makes, or is, a universe?
.
That’s a small step from believing that a sorcerer chanting an incantation can work magic.
.
Weren’t you the scientific one?
.
Possibility-worlds are already there.
.
{You said}
Not to mention I am still unsure about how you can be so sure that every possible universe exists.
{unquote}
.
Another example of replying to what you haven’t read.
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I said that each of the infinitely many hypothetical systems of inter-referring logical facts about hypotheticals doesn’t and needn’t have any existence, reality or factualness other than in its own local inter-referring context.
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{You said}
-Conclusion-

The biggest problem I have with your argument is how sure you are about something that is completely untestable.
{unquote}
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I’ve answered that many times. The Materialism that you consider more likely to be valid is just as un-testable, unfalsifiable, and unverifiable. The difference is that Materialism doesn’t have the logical support that Skepticism has.
You might want to ask yourself in what way you think that this physical universe is (might be? Probably is?) existent other than as the hypothetical system by which I describe it.
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{You said}
My claim is that there is no way you can know what you claim to know.
{unquote}
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…and of course you know that
…or you know (courtesy of Dunning-Kruger) that you know better.
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In any case, we’ve been over that matter many times now, and I’m not going to answer it again.
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{You said}
Metaphysics is untestable and by extension unknowable
{unquote}
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Physical tests are for physics. You’re all confused, conflating physics with metaphysics.
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Your Materialism (that you aren’t 100% sure of) is every bit as un-testable, unfalsifiable and experimentally unverifiable as is Skepticism.
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The difference is that Skepticism has logical support, and Materialism has no support of any kind.
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Look, I don’t have time for this.
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I’m sorry, but there’s no nicer way to say it.
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I don’t have time to reply to any more of your messages.
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I won’t be replying to mikeman anymore. When I don’t reply to what he says, that doesn’t mean that he’s said something irrefutable. It just means that I don’t have time to continue replying to him.
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Michael829
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