JLNobody wrote:Hi, Rosborne. Psychological anthropologists have considered the problem of "a common world". There is, of course, no way of proving that we, or people of the same culture, have the same experience that we describe with the same words.
What if we make the same challenge to the commonality which needs no words, like getting burned or jumping off a cliff and dying. Those things seem pretty solid even without words.
ha! yall need to check out my different reality topic.
Rosborne, I assume that getting burned feels the same for everyone, but I can't "know" that in any precise epistemological way. But I don't feel the need to live with such precision. I feel quite confident in that assumption. AND it does not matter if it is right or wrong: we will always live as if it were true.
The question is which is most useful (a) what IS or (b) what IS AGREED.
If we go for (a) despite there being no test of "ultimate reality" then we allow for the plethora of religious nonsense which Weinberg has called "An insult to the dignity of man". If we go for (b) we allow for the realization that "reality" is a function of "common goals" and that these are in constant flux.
...that brings in consideration of PERSISTANCE OF IDENTITY of parties to an agreement.
Fresco, I agree that for the purpose of our species' survival all that is needed is AGREEMENT (culture does that). But I would still not cast aside the condition of what IS, even if that means "the state of agreement". And I do not think that the mystic or even the metaphysician in their efforts have insulted, as Weinberg would have it, the "dignity of man." Indeed, even if the lonely individual's quest for the "Absolute" or "Ultimate Reality" (or even the unapproachable "thing-in-itself) is quixotic intellectual or mystical "nonsense", it can be characterized as heroic and dignified as in the image of Don Quixote himself.
JLN,
There is a distinct difference between "a mystical search for the ultimate" and the claim by religionists to have found "it" to be " a deity". The first can be intellectually productive, the second is usually intellectually repressive. However, on consideration, perhaps I should withdraw the "dignity of man" comment which although being "counter-deistic" may be too anthropocentric to support my compromise postition.
Yes Fresco, now I understand. The "persistance of identity of parties" is clearly another useful fiction, not quite the same as the "thingness" of the ego but, as "identity", clearly a necessary working assumption in interactions. I presume my altera to be constant so that they can be "calculable" and they presume the same about me. This fiction belies the reality of our multiple and continually changing (and as Twyvel might remind us, essentially non-existent) natures.
...or as Gurdjieff put it, we spend our time fulfilling promisary notes issued by somebody else !.
Did he mean living up to the identities ascribed to us by others?
No....self1 makes a promise....self2 later shakes head in disbelief....
Yes, gasp.
Nietzsche would agree that that describes the internal plural conflictual ("political") world of every psyche.
Universe: "All matter and energy, including the earth, the galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole."
Something came from nothing. The universe, which is that that is physical, had a beginning. i believe that it came about as a spark of energy (the big bang) caused by "God" which exists outside of the universe.
i don't think the universe is infinite. i think it is finite with the ability to expand infinitely. Similar to a balloon which came into being in the creation of the universe and expands as it grows (such growth being caused by the conversion of energy into matter).
i also don't think that the entity that is us "spiritually" is created from this universe but apart from it in that realm of Gods existence. It is only our bodies that are made from matter within this universe.
Gods existence is outside of the universal plane. It is the cause of the universal plane. It established the rules and requirements for existing within the universal plane.
Why? Because God wanted to gain in knowledge and experience which could only be gained through the physical experience (the universe).
As we complete the evolutions/incarnations necessary for our journey to become complete, we gravitate back into the Oneness of God completing our purpose and adding to the fulfillment of God.
Ethmer wrote:Universe: "All matter and energy, including the earth, the galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole."
Something came from nothing. The universe, which is that that is physical, had a beginning. i believe that it came about as a spark of energy (the big bang) caused by "God" which exists outside of the universe.
The Universe is more than just physical stuff. Time itself is part of our Universe. So, I'm not sure you can say that the Universe came from "nothing" because we don't really have any way of conceptualizing anything outside of time.
Yes, Rosborne, it seems that we must conceptualize time, space, and perhaps causality before we can proceed to conceptualing other things.
JLNobody wrote:Yes, Rosborne, it seems that we must conceptualize time, space, and perhaps causality before we can proceed to conceptualing other things.
I can picture emptiness, and I can imagine that it's a vacuum of nothing, but only in comparison to something. And I can't even come close to imagining something outside of time.
I agree. All is in varying degrees dynamic: changing, impermanent and in flux. This IS time. But I do not see anywhere a non-changing static "thing" sitting in, or surrounded by, "time." The cosmic situation seems to be a condition of interconnected "processes" rather than a collection of "beings".
Sorry if this has been mentioned already....but if we can imagine all of space-time eventually collapsing into a singularity, surely looking at the process in reverse seems credible?
Wasn't that the basis of Stephen Hawking's maths?
Who knows from such higher levels of math? But is the reverse of "space-time collapsing into a singularity" the same thing as the Big Bang?
