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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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May 28, 2018 - 11:09pm PT
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Philosophical circle jerk.
Anastasia comes the closest to the truth.
Have any of your quoted great minds of Philosophy actually felt death? Held it their hands? Felt life leave a body?
Probably not as I would guess not many humans drop dead in a Professor's office.
Clamp your fingers around the severed carotid of a car accident victim hoping to hell you keep bloodflow until the Paramedics arrive when you feel their spirit let go - a wave of pure energy erupts through your hand, your arm, your body and they are gone.
The question should not be does Soul exist - but rather, where does it go when released.
Answer that one Newton.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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May 29, 2018 - 04:19am PT
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The question should not be does Soul exist - but rather, where does it go when released. Answer that one Newton
Life is fleeting, like a passing mist (the individual soul, that is) but energy is conserved. Not Newton's answer, mine (the local conservation of energy in quantum field theory is due to Emmy Noether and the rest is Ecclesiastes). If you wanna know what Newton thought, read here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newton
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 29, 2018 - 06:15am PT
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mb1: You know, it's pretty weak just posting links to hard thinking that somebody else did and then asking a question that itself reveals that you've done none of that hard thinking for yourself.
(Ho boy, if I had a nickel for every time this thought went through my head around here, . . . .)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 29, 2018 - 06:58am PT
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Probably not as I would guess not many humans drop dead in a Professor's office.
I shouldn't think so. But, I've been present at many deaths in my role of nurse in a nursing home, some expected and others not. It was usually peaceful, drugs or no drugs, but not always.
Earlier in my career I am pretty sure I saw a soul flicker up over Vassar Brothers Hospital in Poughkeepsie, NY, on my bike on my way to work early one morning. It looked like a small rapid change in the density of the air over the building. Then it was gone.
Could have been heat from a chimney, too.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 29, 2018 - 09:17am PT
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that Newton is mute on this question today might lead one to a particular conclusion.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 29, 2018 - 09:36am PT
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Ed, I really don't have time right now to go into detail. But, while I appreciate your shot at the two paragraphs, I find them both to be very superficial.
The problem of a GUT is not "recent," unless you mean "as called a 'GUT,'" and even then it's been motivated for many decades. The problems that motivate a GUT have been known for about a century.
You cast the state of affairs as, "We lack the experimental evidence...." But that's an almost trite dismissal of the problem(s). It could entirely accurately be said, "Physicists have recognized the problems motivating a GUT for about a century but have entirely failed to produce a GUT."
That's how you would cast the situation if it were a philosophical problem. And, indeed, that's how you cast the philosophical problem in your second paragraph.
You see, the vast difference between philosophy and physics (science in general) is that a "solution" in science only has to be "close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades." Even the celebrated Bell-type experiment that you tout has a confidence level of only 96%. And that's with PILES of presumptions about randomness and agency that you have thus far refused to discuss.
So, philosophers RIGHTLY address thorny issues by saying, "This is a harder problem than it initially appeared, and getting clear about the actual nature of the problem is itself really tough. We know that this approach isn't going to get it; this other approach is incoherent; this other approach depends upon such and such presumptions that are not correct; etc." By stark contrast, physicists smuggle in PILES of presumptions, don't want to talk about them, embrace conceptual ambiguity, and then treat 96% confidence as a "proof."
Then, when philosophers call them on such tactics, scientists retreat to the inevitable: "Well, at least science is productive, while philosophy is not." And you've repeated that old saw bunches of times on these threads.
The whole problem with "productive" is that you either presume that only empirical "proofs" (falsely so-called) count as "results," or you move the goal posts by ignoring your own failures to produce, while indicting philosophy's failures to produce. And if you want to claim, "Philosophy never produces anything," I would respond, "Well, philosophy produced the United State of America." Science didn't. Experiments didn't. And the principles that collectively ARE "the United States of America" are beyond the ken of science.
Philosophy has grappled with some questions for a very long time, but we learn more and more about HOW thorny the questions really are. So, we don't pretend to "know" the "truth," when we don't. In some cases, we can state with a "high degree of confidence" that some questions are unanswerable.
Physicists have known that something like a GUT was needed (by whatever name) for about a century. So, the question is pressing: How long is "too long," so that we can legitimately say, "Contemporary physics has touted two fundamentally incompatible theories as both true, when both cannot be true on the basis of what we know and can presume to ever know; and physicists have flatly failed to solve these problems?"
Interestingly, you cite the shortcoming as a lack of experimental evidence, while theoretical physicists (at least one I've talked to personally, and Kaku whom I've recently read) would not appear to agree with you. The guy I know believes that theory necessarily precedes experiment, and experiments can only be designed in the context of theories; the results can only be interpreted in the context of theories. You know from the Higgs boson that this is a correct assessment.
So, his assessment of the current state of affairs regarding a GUT is (I hope a charitable paraphrase): "Exotic theories like string theories appear at present to be motivated only by mathematical elegance, and most of us despair of experiments that could provide any actual evidence for them, particularly for any particular one. At present, there just are not productive directions to take on the problem of a GUT."
That's just one guy's assessment, for what it's worth, and it's second-hand through me, which further reduces its worth. But I am confident that physics really is in a state of "failure" regarding a GUT. I'm further confident that the failing is not the product of insufficient experimental evidence!
Your reply to the qualia vs identity theory is even more superficial, leaving out literally a book's worth of salient points, while actually being confused. Such are the limitations of doing a Cliff's Notes of some quick reading you did on the Stanford philosophy pages. (BTW, Stanford is not God's gift to all things philosophical, and they post all sorts of things there that do not reflect the mainstream thinking.)
Really, I highly recommend reading Minds, Brains, and Science by Searle. It's unfair to request even that short book to be condensed into paragraph! But genuine understanding on the subject of "mind" or "soul" is a huge project that is neither for the faint of heart nor for superficial/ambiguous thinkers.
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, A sailboat, or some time zone
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May 29, 2018 - 09:51am PT
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^^^^^
Ed, I really don't have time right now to go into detail.
Oh. Dang. ;-)
Susan
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 29, 2018 - 10:54am PT
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^^^ Yeah, sorry to disappoint.
;-)
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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May 29, 2018 - 10:58am PT
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Mine got sucked out when they took my high school yearbook picture. You should have heard the little fella shriek!
Well lucky you.
Now when a religious fundamentalists says your soul is going to go to hell you can tell them, nope, that's just not happening.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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May 29, 2018 - 12:50pm PT
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Almost everything. However, take away the biological sensors that respond when you are dehydrated. Would you still have the experience of thirst?
You're back to regarding phenomenological reality as a causal question. You spin in the same circle as Ed does. Not only unable to bust free, but apparently heaping virtue on being stuck.
Take Ed's confessing that a 3rd person breakdown of mechanical functioning is not missing anything per his phenomenological life. Or the implication that those of us positing experience as a phenomenon above and beyond said mechanics are preaching fairy dust.
Bottom line: There is more involved in being an internal state of a conscious organism that what is merely captured by abstract physical mapping.
Per rigid designators (in modal logic), they designate (pick out, denote, refer to) the same THING in all possible worlds.
The assumption when applying RD's to phenomenological reality is that we are referring to THINGS, which are objects. The mistake in getting wrapped up in qualia arguments is that language can lead us to consider internal states as objective things, not subjective reality, allowing some to rake them into the same beaker, so to speak. Except you'll find no thing inside. Leibniz's mill argument made that clear centuries ago.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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May 29, 2018 - 12:57pm PT
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Sigh...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 29, 2018 - 03:15pm PT
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Sigh. . . .
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 29, 2018 - 03:19pm PT
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According to Hillman, a depth psychologist, soul can be distinguished from spirit.
Here are some attributes or characteristics that could help to distinguish the two ideas.
“Soul” or that which is “soulful,” is that which is or can be found in:
--Dark, muddy, moody, mundane, everyday being, being “in the thick of things,” feelings; emotions, passions, subjectivities, the “messes of life”, the low-lying terrains or valleys of experience; deep waters, movements downward, psyche, fantasies, guile, “the dark side,” masks, fixations, repressions, aggressions, traumas, depression, perceptions, the shadow (psychologically), natural urges, cryptic puzzles, symbolisms, rituals, cultures, blood
--Elaborations, ornaments, slow-paced; poetic distortions; experiences that seem sticky, feminine, and left-handed; passivity, chaos
--Matter and materialism,
--Fecundity, sex, creative destructions, sufferings, vulnerabilities, ambiguities, pathologies, illnesses, pain, confusion, subconscious or the collective unconsciousness, memories, images, labyrinths
--Personal relationships, death, anima, family,
--Imagination, “the blues”; expressionism, hyperboles, polytheism, and night dreams
These elements or descriptions of soul can be found throughout renditions of history, religion, philosophy, and literature—especially in the places of troubles, sorrows, woes, and weeping.
That which produces the “salt” in life is what is soulful: in other words, the human condition . . . .
“Spirit,” or that which is spiritual, can be associated with the following descriptions and references . . . that which is:
--Pure, white, bright, ascetic, dry, fast, asexual, right-handed, transpersonal, trans-individual, transcendence beyond human fragilities and weaknesses, on high or lofty mountain tops, “the garden of Eden,” heaven, directed or omega-point developments / growths / evolutions, movements upward, light, fire, infinity, the indescribability, un-findability, unresolvability of being; that which is form-making; order, nondual, the abyss, absolutism, monotheism, clarity, lucidity, equanimity, joy, ecstasy, equanimity, loving-kindness or absolute Bodhichitta, unelaborated or pristine awareness, clear distinctions, sublimations to higher and more abstract disciplines, intellectualisms, refinements, purifications, and unifications;
--Phallic, masculine, active, vertically directional, arrow-straight, knife-sharp, impersonal, integrated, centered, balanced, holistic, powder-dry, rationality, dogma, creed, beliefs, rigidity, certainty, analysis, sperm, Eros;
--That which is transparent or translucent;
--Spontaneity, animus, creativity.
I’m not sure that either categorization is quite real. I wouldn’t say that objective things in the world are quite real either.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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May 29, 2018 - 03:32pm PT
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Leibniz's mill argument made that clear centuries ago. EVERY time a question like this comes up, SOMEBODY's got to bring up Leibnitz's mill argument! (I'll be here for the week).
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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May 29, 2018 - 04:23pm PT
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Do I need to go to the Wizard of Oz to be told that I had a soul all along, by way of my actions, my deeds and the things I love?
Why do people protest so vehemently, the mere notion of the extinguishment of their life energy upon death.
These are questions of course- to make assertions or to claim extra knowledge on topics such as this smack of sawing through the very branch you're perched upon.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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May 29, 2018 - 04:34pm PT
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EVERY time a question like this comes up, SOMEBODY's got to bring up Leibnitz's mill argument!
--
Sometimes I have to chuckle at what comes down on this list. It often feels like we're arguing with the "revolutionaries" who pimp socialism. When it fails to deliver as promised, it's always someone else's fault. Instead of looking around and saying, "This approach simply ain't delivering the goods," you try even harder to square the circle, saying the subjective IS the objective, that objective processing IS sentience (once we understand the brain a little better), and all the rest.
If you're gonna take issue with the Mill Argument, sighs won't do. You're obliged to locate subjectivity IN the mill, point it out, measure it, and translate those figures into numerical models for further analysis. Have fun.
Instead we have rascals insisting that just because we can't SEE it now, doesn't mean we won't once more data is in. Or some version of same, the weakest, most logically incoherent being identity theory.
This kind of cultish fealty to the imagined 3rd person perspective, what Nagel called "the view from nowhere," has become a blinkered kind of dogma that people defend like they defend socialism. It's become a false God in this case, a perspective that zealots proclaim has no limitations. It's just another perspective that has given us technology. But every perspective is limited.
Why not simply go with reality: you cannot see Ed's phenomenological experience. Diverting attention to causal arguments (we don't see what's going on under the hood) betrays an inability to hear the questions asked. When Nagel said that questions about experience are not questions about causation, what about this so throws people?
If Sam Harris and others have shown us anything it's that a two-pronged approach is required to study mind. We look at both objectivity and subjectivity straight up. It's know in the trade as interdisciplinary studies. As is, we have people trying to lyback a face climb, so to speak.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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May 29, 2018 - 05:38pm PT
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You're obliged to locate subjectivity IN the mill
Please give us a quote from Leibniz that uses the word 'subjectivity.'
Unfortunately Leibniz does not say explicitly why exactly he thinks there cannot be a mechanical explanation of perception.
from
http://www.iep.utm.edu/lei-mind/#H3
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WBraun
climber
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May 29, 2018 - 06:18pm PT
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Ghost are living entities in limbo.
They lost their gross physical material bodies and are in their subtle material bodies.
They can't go back or forward and suffer due to no gross material body to work in and suffer to not being able to go forward into another body according to the consciousness they've developed.
Suicide will cause you to become ghost or too much over attachment materially ......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 29, 2018 - 08:54pm PT
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I was hoping you'd attempt to answer your own questions with a paragraph each, apparently no such luck.
Having had discussions with "physicists I know" via Largo, I will not assume you could reliably convey the conversation you had with your own house physicist.
Physics is an interplay between theory and experiment as we practice it today. Sometimes the theorists are out in front, sometimes the experimentalist. You characterization lacks any understanding of how this happens. And you seem to have glossed over the larger issue as it relates to Grand Unified Theories, GUTs as you refer to them. In fact, that term is already outdated by a couple of decades, though the idea persists. There are a large number of theoretical physicists who would argue that no such theory is necessary.
You seem to make it a requirement that one exists, and argue as Largo often does, that the fact that it does not exist is a failure of the idea.
But remember also that the first "GUT" was Newton's recognition that the force that made apples fall to the ground is the same force that binds the planets in orbit around the Sun. It was the "Universal Theory of Gravity" (UTG if you like).
You might also remember that Newton famously demurred from trying to explain how the force was transmitted.
The more recently acknowledged unification was Maxwell's, and you could argue it started our modern era. However, Maxwell synthesized the British heavily empirical physics of Faraday with the Continental heavily theoretical physics.
While Maxwell was a theorist (though he would not have recognized the distinction), Faraday was an arch experimentalist, and was not facile with mathematics. Yet it was Faraday's innovation of the field which Maxwell fused with the vector calculus approach in Europe that ended up being successful.
Fields are the answer to Newton's gravitation force too, and quantum fields are at the very foundation of modern physics, attributed to an experimentalist who made them up so as to avoid any heavy analysis, it's quite ironic.
Maxwell's theory is a unification of the magnetic and electrical forces, and is a dynamical theory, though many of the consequences of that theory were hidden from Maxwell. He did recognize, however, that his theory was "larger" than reality, allowing for a dual transformation between electric and magnetic charges. Our universe seems to be missing magnetic charges...
I date the interest in unified theories back to this time, as physicists certainly wondered if gravitation could be a manifestation of electrodynamics.
Progress along these lines waited until after Einstein's work on Special and General relativity, and though many really good theorists and mathematicians worked on the problem (Weyl for one) the program was considered a failure by mid 20th century.
Note, however, it is only in the last two years that we have experimental observations of dynamical gravity, and with a few as 5 event observations a tremendous amount of progress has been made on understanding gravity. More progress will happen, and with that a better understanding of General Relativity.
In the same time we have the discovery of radioactivity, and of nuclei and nuclear forces and all that. The quantum theory of electrodynamics and then electro-weak dynamics.
But the existence of a GUT is not necessary for physics, the data tells us what is necessary, at the level of the uncertainty of the data.
In many ways, our theories are already "too good," the expectation that we'd see violations of the theory predictions was not born out. CERN/LHC expected to see supersymmetry, it has not, and that is a profound "discovery."
The theorists were wrong.
In physics the ideas of the theorists must correspond to actual things in the universe, at least well enough to make precise calculations. It doesn't matter how well thought out and logical the idea is, if it doesn't agree with data it isn't correct.
This works both ways, experimentalists often find things not anticipated by theorists. An experiment might start out looking at some physics, but find something astonishing and unanticipated. It is an experience I had at the start of my career.
The second paragraph refers to many EOP articles both because they are accessible and concise. Reading those articles is much more efficient than wading through one of you WOTs on the SuperTopo, word for word the EOP is a better investment in time, and they at least provide references.
The idea of "rigid designator" being an example of logical rigor with no practical connection to the world. The ideal of a "mind state" and of a "brain state" is irrelevant to the discussion, and even the philosophical idea of "identity theory" seems an example guaranteed to be impractical. So the formal logical argument regarding the identity of the two doesn't really have anything to do with the practical considerations of mind and brain.
It might well be that we find perfectly good, empirical explanations not covered by the current philosophical discussions.
That happens time and again in philosophy as science expands the boundaries of knowledge both by experimental and theoretical work. It is true that the work is contingent on the limits of certainty, which are quantifiable, this is a virtue, not a sin as you seem to put it.
Can we say now that Aristotle's physics is irrelevant to physics? I think so. Can you prove, in a short paragraph, why? without resorting to any empirical evidence? I think not. Philosophy abandons Aristotle's physics largely as a fashion of the time rather than based on any philosophical argument, because there is no possible way in philosophy to do such a thing.
There is a body of religious cosmology which seems to have fallen out of fashion too. Could it be that has something to do with physical cosmology? as imperfect and provisional as it is?
thanks for the opportunity and the challenge to learn a bit new and to try to convey it.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 29, 2018 - 10:10pm PT
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You can learn a lot by reading these threads. Thankful am I that mathematics doesn't have to correlate with aspects of physical reality, although at times it certainly does.
I pose a question I brought up before, then deleted: can a recognized philosopher of physics, say, fail to be a physicist (or have substantial course work in that subject)? My experience in math is that most modern philosophers of mathematics are mathematicians of one sort or another, or analytic philosophers who work in set theory and foundations and are thus mathematicians.
Hilary Putnam has this to say:
"I do not think that the difficulties that philosophy finds with classical mathematics today are genuine difficulties; and I think that the philosophical interpretations of mathematics that we are being offered on every hand are wrong, and that "philosophical interpretation" is just what mathematics doesn't need."
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