Your Natural Theology

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Perception and gullibility are intimately interconnected. Considering what a rather large contingent of humanity does accept as reality there seems to be a reasonably large number of people who would accept floating thumbs without question. The "third man" illusion is even more easily falsifiable than a firm belief in floating thumbs as the internal mechanisms of judging acceptable reality are as malleable as the most plastic substance dependent upon all sorts of accepted social traditions and odd cultural concepts. Only a community which has rigid standards of determining and validating reality is worthwhile and even here much reconsideration is necessary and common practice.

What I am indicating is that acceptable reality differs markedly from person to person. Each of us lives in a different reality with a great many similarities and these realities are very much determines by very different thresholds of acceptance. A good magician can convince a naive audience of a radically different reality from one produced by a familiarity with magical tricks and the same is true with politics, philosophy, religion, and even science.

Let me recall an incident that occurred to me just yesterday to illustrate my point. I decided to make some soup and peeled and cubed and boiled some potatoes, boiled up a head of broccoli, chopped up a fresh onion and blended the onion, a couple of cubes of bouillon, several stalks of celery and dash of oregano and a handful of caraway seeds with a couple of cups of milk. I chopped up the cooked broccoli and blended the potatoes into the milk mix and set the whole thing to simmer for half an hour to blend the flavors. I tasted the result and decided it definitely needed garlic and I knew I had bought a package of garlic the day before but could not find it. I searched all my storage places and tabletops including the sink and it definitely was not there. OK. The soup was pretty edible and I let it go at that.

This morning as I was making coffee I saw the package of garlic I plain sight on the sink that I had cleaned the evening before and had looked carefully at that precise spot and there was no garlic there. So what are my possibilities?

1. I am aware of how I see things and frequently when I visualize something for a search I have a particular picture in my mind and, as happened before, if the object of my search is not a very close match to the view I have in my mind I simply make no connection and do not see it.

2. We live in a multi-dimensional universe and are aware of only four of them at a time. It is vaguely possible that closely aligned universes are indistinguishable and small differences such as having or not having garlic are usually not noticed. Consciousness as a dynamic may have the capability of slipping back and forth between similar universes without our knowing it, and that might have happened during the night.

3. God is a scientist and likes to see what his experimental animals do when confronted with strange “miracles” and playing with the placement of garlic packages is his favorite ploy.

4. Humans are not aware that there are aliens among us that can disguise themselves as flying saucers, capable politicians, streetwalkers or packages of garlic that can sneak away in the night and reappear in the morning.

5. I am totally insane.

Take your pick. I know which one I prefer but I live in my own reality.

There is a technical term for those who feel they are not alone when in fact they are alone. It is, let me think....ah yes. Delusion.

ruveyn

Well, given the notion of disembodied minds has no apparent logical contradiction I would have to say that the "third man phenomenon" is less falsifiable than a floating thumb.


Standards does not mean "Whatever Sand believes is proper", but rather standards ultimately refer to methodologies, and ultimately, no matter how rigid this methodology must be, the methodology must make sense.


After seeing you for so long, I have been edging towards this hypothesis for awhile now.

I appreciate the confession. It permits me to evaluate your judgmental quality rather well.

I like this one. Although, whenever things like this happen to me, I always say the minute men did it. It reminds me of an episode of The Twilight Zone, which I cannot recall the episode title, where it is discovered there are men working ahead of us in the future...setting the stage for us as we move through time. So the glass I am drinking from at the moment, will be a different one a minute into the future. The minute men have so many items to perfectly place, sometimes they makes mistakes and then have to correct them.

Please forgive me if I misread your opening post AG; I got the impression that you were looking for an alternative to the nilhism that you have so often professed. If you are just playing, I will bow out and leave you to your game in the hope that you will understand that I am a little to old for that.

But for my own interest: can you either acknowelage or disavow your own existence? It seems to me that if you do exist,as a single entity, it would have to be a spiritual entity; there are too many physical entities composing your brain that direct the kinetic energy that are expended in your fingers when your posts are created to be thought of as an individual.

Preter-natural theology topic

Sounds Wiccan.

Nope, not actually trying to find anything. That would undercut the nihilism, wouldn't it??


Hmm.... well, depends on what we say.

Am I a legal entity? Of course, as there is a social security number out there that corresponds to my person, and so on, and within these systems, I am not considered dead.

Am I an entity that exists like a chair (or pet) exists? Well, it seems that way. People can describe me. People can use that description to find me. There are ongoing relations between myself and other beings, such as the legal relation pointed to earlier, and so on. Is that the same as a chair? Sure! Chairs can be described, found using the description, and have ongoing relations between them and other beings. For example, I can own a chair, I can sit on a chair and so on. Is this more complex given that chairs do not replace their substance? Sure, so let's go to pets. I can do the exact same thing with pets as I can with chairs. Do we have to say that there is a spiritual entity for chairs? No. Does it follow that then there is one for animals? Not really. Let's say that we have a chair where a little part of it gets slowly replaced, is there is a point in time when this chair ceases to be the chair you knew? Not so much, but one can argue otherwise.

Should we instead focus upon my consciousness rather than my bodily attributes? Perhaps, so let's go there.

Can I say that my consciousness is an ongoing entity? Well, on that I am less certain. After all, what makes a past me the same as me, and what makes a future me the same as me? I actually don't know, as some past mes and some future mes will probably hate the current me for one reason or another and refuse to identify with me. It also does not seem to stretch the imagination to point to a past self or a future self as a different entity as the current self, perhaps even making some sense. So, am I entirely sure of a continuity here? Well, no. Do I think I need an ongoing self to make sense of the world? Not entirely. After all, am I myself if my brain is altered to an extent where my personality and thought patterns are radically different than my current self? Well... I would think not, but if I exist spiritually, then I would have to be that radically altered self. Generally speaking, I am not sure if a theory of identity is really correct in the philosophical sense, because in many cases, it seems as if identity is just a matter of labeling an entity for convenience rather than any talk about a substantive essence. (I would think that historical relations, while holding human interests, would not really count for substantive essences given the need for tying the past, future, and present from our perspective)

Interestingly enough, Daniel Dennett actually writes about the self as a narrative fiction held by the person. http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/selfctr.htm It is mildly interesting.

Additionally speaking, Capgras Delusion is a delusion where people do not identify familiar people through pictures, and this also includes familiar objects as well. It is caused by an emotional impairment. Because of the fact that some significant aspects of identification is considered to be part of the human emotions and affected by human brain physiology, I am not sure that some objective element that can be identified by reason is the real reason why we actually do see continuity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capgras_delusion However, one can argue that I am misinterpreting the psychological evidence, however, even if I am, I would still bet that most issues of identity are strongly related to the emotions more so than any other element of the intellect, partially given the pervasive need for emotions to function.

Insofar as continuity is concerned a deception on that score is a daily phenomenon. Any series of flashing lights deceives the eye that a bright spot is moving and any movie is merely a series of still pictures with the deception that the components are moving. Our minds could work the same way.

I have to agree with you on this point. In fact, there may be hope that in a couple of lifetimes (as you would currently reckon them) not only will your body be a lot older but you will become a lot wiser. At that point you might very well be really anoyed by egotistical adolesents. Will you then deny that you ever were one? Perhaps, I don't know that even God knows (if there is one), you could lie to youself (I know people who do that) you might even belive it (I know people who do that too), my point is, someone is going to have to make the decision.

If you then do lie to yourself and you do belive it would you then be a diferent person then you are now? I don't think so, though you might disagee at that point.

I think it would be nature-based, showing only the good in things, places, and people.

I.e. no eternal damnation crap.

I think this post might have been a little premature. ^That sounds Wiccan.

I naturally reject Theology.

ruveyn

Can I hold to the existence of yours?

Maybe I didn't put that question clearly enough before, but I would like to know whom I am talking to.

You can hold to the existence of a lot of things in this exercise.

People like to know a lot of things. I don't get your question.