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

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{quote}
That's fascinating, because I'm pretty sure there was nothing wrong with either my word choice or grammar in expressing what I was trying to express. If you read an insult somewhere in that paragraph I can't help you.
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I did perceive it as insulting.

But, because I didn't know what you meant, then I probably shouldn't have jumped to conclusions that you meant something insulting.

I should have just said that I didn't know what you meant, and left it at that.

I should have abided by my standards of politeness.

I believe in being polite in a discussion for as long as possible.

But it's true that I don't know what you meant.

I invite disagreement and criticism, but I ask that it be specific and supported.

But, not knowing what you meant, I should give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't mean anything insulting.

So I apologize for the unfair, and maybe incorrect, assumption that you were being insulting, and for the unfairly critical reply.

Michael829

I just edited my post above. I was expressing that without empiricism, ie. experience of some type to verify the claims, it's all just spit-balling.

{quote}
That's fascinating, because I'm pretty sure there was nothing wrong with either my word choice or grammar in expressing what I was trying to express - ie. that speculation without experience to base it on like building philosophic card castles on sand, or really a stack of shifting 'should's (unless a person's really dead-set on keeping those stable by refusing to learn anything more once they build that card castle). If you read an insult somewhere in that paragraph I can't help you.

[...]

I just edited my post above. I was expressing that without empiricism, ie. experience of some type to verify the claims, it's all just spit-balling
{unquote}

I'll comment in a few days, after I reply to Lintar.

Michael829

Well, it was more a piece of advice than a requisition for philosophic rebuttal.

Exactly! That's my approach as well.

It doesn't appear to be working though.

When it comes to most things you are right to say this, but admittedly there are topics that one can discuss (ex. the existence or non-existence of God, the supernatural, the existence or non-existence of objective reality) where empiricism, as it is usually defined, is of not much use, and one has to resort to other methods (ex. personal, subjective experience, or philosophical argumentation) when one is trying to find answers to questions that would otherwise remain unasked. As I pointed out to someone else before, the question of whether or not God exists is one that science simply cannot address, because God would be - by definition - beyond the realm of the scientific method, a method that was only ever meant to be used to address very specific problems within the physical universe.

That last part is precisely what I mean though - personal, subjective experiences. Also, if it's 'supernatural' experiences we're talking about it's almost guaranteed that subjective experience are the only variety you'll get as that sort of thing tends to use your own nervous system like a keyboard. I consider that a form of empiricism because, even while you can't reach out and share it with someone, you can accrue enough of them to start comparing said experiences. If you work consistently at keeping your critical thinking sharp and can balance skepticism with open-mindedness, at worst you may conservatively throw out a lot of good stuff as a safety precaution (and perhaps journaling in the best safeguard here) but a lot of that as well can come back if it triangulates against something else in the future or becomes a recurring pattern.


Did you see the paragraph I wrote though, that he was responding to earlier?

I was stating that there are mystic/esoteric development systems where, if you're willing to put in the effort, you do get results over time. While I'm not one to spell out something specific as to what those results mean on a metaphysical level I would just suggest that they're more than a person's normal load of synchronicities, night-time visitations, symbolic dreams, etc. and sometimes - rarely enough - full blown visitations in your waking life. I will admit that the primary use of such systems tends to be self-cultivation, in the broader sense of personality traits, motivation, etc. and processing out what you find to be shortcomings a great deal of it involves occult/magical development. The languages, means, methods, and diagrams differ a little bit across regions of the world (as we're used to classically thinking of them as 'eastern' and 'western' systems) but generally these tend to be different approaches to what you'd consider the five yogas - Raja, Bhakti, Jnana, Karma, and Hatha; especially the first three.

That's what I meant though. Technically a person who lives near a farm could eat psilocybin mushrooms once a month and use that as a significant short-cut to certain kinds of insight but it's not as critical as actually doing the work - that is meditation, prayer, and working to build a solid relationship with your subconscious mind through active imagination, visualization, symbols, and any other devices you can think of to get an active dialog going across the different depths of your own processing.

It's important to do because, in a lot of ways, the conscious being that you think of as 'you' is a small piece of the real thing and it's like the exposed tip of a rather powerful alien-like iceberg. Some of that alienness could be due to how the forces that become our thoughts compile before they get loaded into the hypothalamus, frontal lobe, etc.. but all of it is important - particularly considering just how much gets filtered out before it reaches you and how much of that actually may hold a fair amount of what we're looking for with respect to answers to the big questions.

I’d said:
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{I’d said}
As Michael Faraday, in 1844, first pointed out (at least he was probably the first Westerner to say it), our physical world is completely described by mathematical and logical relational facts.
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Abstract logical and mathematical facts, about hypotheticals, aren’t in doubt. They’re facts.
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{unquote}
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{You replied}
Yes, I agree, they describe our world. Mathematics is useful for that purpose, which is why we value it so highly, but as the old saying goes, "One should not mistake the map for the territory".
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Facts are more than descriptions of something else. Hypothetical facts are still facts even without an objectively-existent “something else” to “describe”.
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What Faraday, Tippler and Tegmark pointed was that hypothetical facts, and if-then facts about them, have the same consequences, results, relation and events as the supposed objectively existent physical world that they “describe”.
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Remember, I’m not saying that any of this has or needs any objective reality, existence, meaning, or factualness. It doesn’t have or need any reality, existence, factualness or reference outside of its own inter-referring context.
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Our lives are in that context.
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It isn’t at all in doubt that there are these infinitely-many systems of inter-referring if-thens.
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There’s no particular reason to believe that our physical world consists of anything else, other than one such hypothetical inter-referring system.
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To put it another way, of course we’re used to saying things in declarative grammar. Declarative grammar is useful and practical for stating facts. But we have a tendency to start believing our grammar. Things that can be said in declarative grammar can be said in conditional grammar.
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There’s no particular reason to believe in the objectively-existent “Stuff” and “Things” of declarative grammar, and of Materialism.
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Objectively-existent “Stuff” and “Things” could just as easily be fictions of declarative grammar.
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Materialism posits a brute-fact. …an objectively-existent physical world.
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The metaphysics suggested by Faraday; and Tippler’s version of it; and Tegmark’s version of it; and my version of it, don’t make any assumptions or posit any brute-facts.
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{I’d said}
Likewise an inter-referring system of such facts. I don’t claim that such a system has any meaning, reality, existence or factualness other than in its own context.
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{You replied}
"...no meaning, reality, existence or factual basis other than in its own context" - Then why bother with it?
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What other choice do we have? We’re in this life. …this life-experience possibility-story. It’s the context in which we live.
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The metaphysical explanation for it doesn’t bear on our involvement in our lives.
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{You continued}
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What purpose could it possibly serve?
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Who says there has to be a purpose? Life is for play, exploration. …Lila, as they refer to it in Vedanta.
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Why and how did it happen? Why and how is there this life?
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How could it not? All the hypothetical if-thens are indisputably, undeniabley “there”, as are the infinity of systems of inter-referring hypotheticals.
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But of course that explanation doesn’t in the least diminish the remarkableness and surprisingness of the fact
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{I’d said}
Anyway, such a system of hypotheticals can completely describe our physical world. Therefore, our physical world needn’t be anything other than that. That’s a fact, not a hypothesis.
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{You replied}
Perhaps, but even so they only describe it. There is a big difference between how one goes about describing something, and the actual thing in question that is being described.
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…assuming that there really is that objectively-existent “Thing Described”.
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I used the word “describe”, and that was an unfortunate word for me to use. I didn’t mean that facts are only a description. As I said above in this reply, hypothetical if-then facts are still facts even without “describing” something objectively-existent.
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That goes without saying, and is undisputed.
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You speak of the “thing described”. That could just as easily be a fiction of declarative grammar. There’s no particular reason to believe in it.
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{You continued}
Different people will have their different approaches to how they go about describing what they encounter, whatever that thing may be. It's just language, and everyone uses it differently.
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…and the objectively-existent “Thing Described” could just as easily be an artifact of declarative grammar.
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{I’d said}
Sure, I can’t prove that Materialism isn’t true. I can’t prove that Materialism’s objectively, fundamentally existent “stuff” and “things” don’t objectively exist. But, if they do, they’re superfluous, because they aren’t needed to explain our experiences, observations and experiments in this physical world. That, too, isn’t a hypothesis.

{You replied}

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I see. You have a problem with the underlying basis upon which materialism rests
{unquote}
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No, Materialism has a problem consisting of its brute-fact, and its superflousness.
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{You continued}
- i.e. the presumption that objective reality, upon which modern-day science and its theories, rest is actually "out there".
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I have no disagreement with science. But yes: 1) Materialism’s objectively-existent physical world is a brute-fact; and 2) Even if it did exist, it would be superfluous. Yes, that objectively-existent physical world is an assumption, an assumed brute-fact.
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{You continued}
If that's not the case, then ideas within science rest upon a delusion.
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Not at all.
Science is valid, because it only describes our physical world, and the interaction and relation among its component-parts. I don’t doubt science’s validity in its range of applicability.
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Materialism isn’t a valid “idea of science”. Materialism is only an idea of Materialists
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{You continued}
I don't accept the materialist's position either, but like you I also can't prove them wrong about it (I just don't think it [Materialism] makes any sense to me, that's all).
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{I’d said}
So, have I made an assumption or a controversial assertion?
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{You replied}
Not so far within this particular post, but my impression is that you are perhaps confusing how we go about describing our world, via language, with the world
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As I said, hypothetical if-then facts are still facts, regardless of whether there’s something objectively-existent that they “describe”.
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Confuse them? I emphasize and assert the distinction between them.
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A hypothetical if-then fact is a fact, regardless of whether it refers to something objectively existent.
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There’s a popular confusion between those things, an incorrect belief that a fact has to be a “description” of something objectively-existent.
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{You continued}
…as it is commonly appreciated by the vast majority of us (which then goes on to form the basis for our beliefs about "objective reality").
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Yes, I fully admit that what I’m saying (and what Michael Faraday, Frank Tippler and Max Tegmark have been saying) is different from popular belief.
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{I’d said}
There’s no evidence that could distinguish or adjudicate between Materialism and Skepticism. In fact, that’s just another way of saying the reason why Materialism would be superfluous even if true.
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{You replied}
I'm not so sure the consequences of materialism being true would be "superfluous". Somehow I think it would matter a great deal to most of us
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What would it change? What difference would it make?
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{You continued}
…if such a thing really could be established for certain.
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But it’s quite impossible to distinguish between a universe with or without Materialism being true.
I emphasize that the superflousness of Materialism doesn’t only refer to within this physical world—but additionally outside it too.
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I mean that the infinity of possibility-worlds would still be there, even if Materialism’s objectively-existent stuff and things existed in this world. Presumably Materialism says that this universe (consisting of our Big-Bang Universe and any multiverse of which it’s a part) is the only one that’s objectively existent. Alright, even if that were true, all the infinity of other possibility-worlds would still be there.
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Michael829

Call it what you want. I still didn't know what you were talking about. So you later (vaguely)explained what you meant.

As I said, I'll comment in a few days.

Michael829

{You said}

Exactly! That's my approach as well.

{unquote}

Then I refer you to my answer to mikeman7918.

Michael829

{I'd said}
I've also told why I prefer to use the {quote}...{unquote} method.

I prefer it because I like the larger text.
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{You replied}
It doesn't appear to be working though.
{unquote}

On the contrary, it's working perfectly.

When I quote with the {You said}...{unquote} format, the quoted text is as large as the rest of the message's text.

The {You said}...{unquote} format demarcates quotes. That's all it's intended to do.

Obviously there many ways the quotes could be demarcated. This is just the one that I've chosen.

Michael829

Please, could you Bold the {quote}...{unquote} ?

Claradoon--

Yes, that's a good idea, and I'll start doing that.

Thanks for the suggestion,.

Michael829

If something is hypothetical it's a possibility, not a fact. What am I missing here?



I entered the terms "Faraday, Tippler and Tegmark, hypothetical facts", and found this.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... physics/p1

Written by you? I'll readily admit to not being as familiar with these ideas as I perhaps should be, and I'm probably misunderstanding quite a bit of it simply because we seem to be using some common terms (like 'hypothetical', and 'facts') differently.



So it forms what one could call it's own reference frame, the internal consistency being all that is required. Correct?



I think that perhaps I should read that article I linked to in order to find out more about these ideas that, admittedly, are rather new to me. Whilst I have an interest in philosophical questions (among many, many other things - I'm almost the opposite to the stereotypical "Aspie" when it comes to my profound lack of having any "obsessions"), there is still a great deal that I find hard to accept (like your dismissal of the concept of consciousness), which may simply be due to my current inability to appreciate your perspective.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that you are 100% correct about the claims you present here, what are the consequences for all of us personally?



The implication(s) being... ?



Yes.



Yes, the belief in an objective reality of "things" that exist "out there" in some kind of real world, is actually little more than a working assumption, one that many of us just accept because it is, for our purposes, useful to do so.



That's a possibility.



Precisely!

Like you, I am always deeply suspicious of anyone who resorts to the useless cop out of "oh, it (whatever "it" may happen to be) is just a brute fact". The belief in brute facts is based entirely upon blind faith.



Yes, I'll have to look at that document, as soon as I finish typing this, which will be...

now.

Okay, that clears things up a bit.



It's entirely possible that I didn't see it. It happens to me sometimes that something that is staring me in the face will be overlooked. I don't know why this happens.



Yes, I agree with the above.



I've never practiced meditation, nor taken any mind-altering substances of any kind, so I won't comment on this.



Within the context of the above paragraph, what do you mean by "alien", and "alienness"?