Perfection

[DHodges]

Here is a clue ...for you:

http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath540/kmath540.htm

Thanks!

That helped quite a bit.

[DHodges]

Yes, physical objects are in a state of flux, in that they change with time. Of course one can see that if time is also a dimension then the thing becomes a changeless in four dimensions. So the law of identity holds for the higher dimensional thing, when time is a dimension. [thing + flux] is timeless. Yet time as a dimension is only a provisional theory, not an absolute truth.

The law of identity holds whether you consider time to be a dimension or not. But, if you consider time to not be a dimension - what is it?

I think of 'dimension' as being anything that can be linearly measured; can be used as a metric. So for me, time is a dimension by definition.

So how is it possible to correlate a timeless analytic truth to our observed physical reality?

I suppose one can, and must, see the combination of mental and physical reality, however limited any "sensed" physical reality may be, as a form of absolute existence, and in that respect, it is necessarily a timeless truth.

It is a necessary truth that you are experiencing something, that you have some perceived reality in which you find yourself. But the content of that reality is, in some respect, arbitrary.

Do you mean that "I exist" is a timeless truth, since it must be true whenever it is thought?

I am forced to agree that there is some form of absolute existence and those who would say otherwise, are politically motivated?

What do you mean by "absolute existence"? Does that mean the same thing as "inherent existence"? Are you talking about the existence of an object, or the existence of absolutely true statements?

Of course, any thing that is changeless with respect to transformation is quintessentially a symmetry, and symmetry subsumes any form of absolutism.

You obviously think about symmetry quite a bit. Can you explain why you say that symmetry subsumes absolutism? It is not at all obvious to me.

[MKFaizi]

Analog,

Thank God. You are beginning to speak in clear language. There is hope! I just knew it.

It is absurd to think that I -- or anyone else here -- is on Quinn's team. That is not the case. Being is on Jesus's team, for example.

But I am proud of you, boy. Just look at you. By God, you CAN make some sense.

There was never any need for :) in my posts to you. There was never any humor or sarcasm.

I have written to you in earnest.

Allah Akhbar! I knew there was a human being in all that fog!

Faizi

[MKFaizi]

I do not speak math.

But, looking at the design you posted, could it not also be produced by someone who has no interest or theories about math?

I am retarded in math. But I love visual precision. I love exact-ness. I would love to find myself capable of reproducing the sharpest visual edge.

Do you believe achievement of such visual sharpness of edge to be impossible without use of math?

Faizi

[MKFaizi]

Being of One,

I cannot define either salvation or sin because I do not believe in salvation or sin.

I said that before. Why is that so hard for you to accept?

I do not believe in either sin or salvation.

Because I can define neither, I am plainly condemned by your standards.

Why, since you have asserted yourself as someone rather special -- because you have special understanding of sin and salvation -- do you refrain from condemning me?

I do not believe as you do. Since I do not believe as you do -- that Jesus must save me, if I would just surrender to him -- what is it that causes you to refrain from condemnation?

Given your beliefs -- that only a few people can define sin and salvation to your satisfaction -- why do you refrain from condemning me?

My guess is that you are very slick. You posit yourself as a thinking individual when you are not different from Jerry Falwell.

You are not different from a Roman soldier.

Faizi

[Leyla Shen]

Beingof1 wrote:

The reason none of the above mentioned walked on water is that, as far as we know, they did not. If Jesus did not walk on water then the entire lesson of his life is lost. The record of his life would be a meaningless diatribe, an exercise in the futile.
The reasoning behind this conclusion is exclusion. A universe where everything and anything is possible but it cannot happen. In a universe of all possibility - should be expectation of just that.

2000 odd years later and I am yet to see someone walk on water, no matter my expectations.

Why did God only send down one son when, being God, he may have sent an army of them to not only walk on water, but to telepathically enlighten all beings before their insanity caused them to revolt (it’s a numbers game, you see)? What sick kind of game was this, exactly, whereby he created the heavens and the earth, good and evil, and then could not clean up the mess he made by sending down his only son? In fact, what the hell was he needing a martyr for in the first place? Does God understand the notion of all possibility?

The answer lies in metaphor, not literalism. Don’t you see?

You are appealing to a half hearted attempt at a cure. Mediocrity does not help anyone - that is what is wrong with fundamental Christian thinking. They appeal to mythological symbolism concerning Jesus and make the case that no one can "be like Jesus". He becomes the Santa Claus of the whole religion.

The true heart of God is an all or nothing proposition. Radical in its experience as well as thought. Pushing the envelope of conventional thinking until it breaks into the realm of 'all possibilities'.

I can’t believe you would have a go at Peter Pan, then.

"The world does not want to eliminate Christianity, it is not that straightforward, nor does it have that much character. No, it wants it proclaimed falsely, using eternity to give a flavour to the enjoyment of life."

- Soren Kierkegaard

Because Jesus was seen and heard by thousands of eyewitnesses.
The conversion of substantial regions of the Roman Empire before 100AD.

Based on the progress of our discussion so far and the above Kierkgaard quote, I can assume the following:

1. Christianity is being proclaimed falsely by Christians and the world alike by way of the fact that Christianity is not representative of a group of peoples who understand the true definitions of sin and salvation.

2. Christians, and the world, do not understand that they, too, can walk on water.

3. Christianity is not like Peter Pan because Jesus was real and really did walk on water; if this assumption is not made, the Bible means no more than the story of Peter Pan: men can no more walk on water than they can fly.

4. The first reason we know that Jesus existed and that the Bible is infallible -- an accurate and literal testimony of his life -- is because there were (according to the Dead Sea Scrolls?) thousands of eye witnesses.

5. The second reason we know that Jesus existed and that the Bible is…et cetera…is because some dude came along and said that Jesus was the Son of God, and that Mary was impregnated by God Himself, and many people are witness to this by virtue of the fact that Christianity notably expanded pre-100AD. (Tell me this is not the way you are interpreting it, because any other way would be metaphor. If Jesus‘s act of walking on water is to be taken literally, what is your take on the immaculate conception?)

Back to the Kierkgaard quote. Yes, I would have to agree, the world certainly does not have sufficient character to eliminate Christianity. I mean, who are the Christians kidding when they idolise statues and images of Jesus and justify doing so by claiming him to be the Son of God?

If his record is not true or believable, that would be akin to offering Tylenol to a terminally ill patient. Wonderful gesture but meaningless and powerless.

Well, yeah. I reckon the whole thing was sadly misdiagnosed. Especially since most Christians, at least according to your experience, do not know the definition of sin and salvation despite him.

I am appealing to honesty and integrity. Rather than admitting shortcomings and weaknesses, the attempt is made to reduce Christ to a victim. A victim of the state and history as his record is unreliable. What a legacy for a pure soul.

Christ was a victim. He was and continues to be a victim of mediocrity. He died there on the cross calling out, “Father, why have you forsaken me.” Remember?

The intended result of the denegration of the reality of Christ is to lower the requirement so one can live in apathy to pure potential.

After some consideration, I think Kierkgaard is closer to the truth in that one sentence you quoted above.

Why do not you believe you could resurrect?

Science is almost there, I reckon, and that has nothing to do with Christianity -- well, except for the fact that science arose as a direct consequence of Christianity's shortcomings. Bodies, at this stage of the game, are too fussy.

I am trying to imagine consciousness as a tin can, at the moment -- you know, baked beans with soul.

How do you get consciousness into a robot? Now that would be a divine resurrection. No end of spare parts. No war. No pain. No hunger.

Why do you not believe you can be a robot?

Hail the machine.

[Leyla Shen]

Analog:

I think there is far too little attention being paid to "ground zero."

I agree with Marsha: you really are beginning to speak now. I hope to reply more to what I have found to be your most genuine, thoughtful and unguarded post yet.

[MKFaizi]

Analog,

How do you separate math from art? Can you?

Have you ever seen reproductions of the qualities of flesh? Not in print or in books but in an actual painting?

Faizi

[sevens]

Leyla,

Jimi wasn't lying when he let loose, 'With the power, of soul, anything is possible.'

[MKFaizi]

Log,

I read all that was written by David Quinn and others on the forum.

There are always two sides to a story.

What is your side? In English, of course.

Faizi

[analog57]

Log,

I read all that was written by David Quinn and others on the forum.

There are always two sides to a story.

What is your side? In English, of course.

Faizi

My side is that I would like to see a REAL DEBATE between David Quinn and ONE of the three main NPU opponents: Plato, Kitten, or rwill9955 - on neutral territory, of course.

[analog57]

The law of identity holds whether you consider time to be a dimension or not. But, if you consider time to not be a dimension - what is it?

I think of 'dimension' as being anything that can be linearly measured; can be used as a metric. So for me, time is a dimension by definition.

Relativity speaks of time as being somewhat, but not exactly like a real physical "length" dimension, when multiplied by the speed of light and the square root of negative one. It is empirically verified through experiment. But empirical verification[inductive] is not the same as a truth that follows from the analytic[first principles].

Symmetry subsumes absolutism because a simple truth table becomes an invariant symmetry rotation:

X__|__not-X|__X_or_not-X

T______F________T

F______T________T

[Blair]

Yeah, that's really fascinating. Not

What value does it have? Who gives a shit if "Symmetry subsumes absolutism because a simple truth table becomes an invariant symmetry rotation." ?

[analog57]

Yeah, that's really fascinating. Not

What value does it have? Who gives a shit if "Symmetry subsumes absolutism because a simple truth table becomes an invariant symmetry rotation." ?

Anything that is radically at odds with our tidy consensus view of the
universe, is labeled as crankishly absurd by defenders of the
intellectual status quo[defenders of the faith?] . Consequently,
"non-absurdity" and the verification/elimination for all possible
existant beliefs, would by necessity entail complete truth, and
therefore, complete knowledge. Thus it seems that in order for any
semblance of true rationality to hold, one must argue that it is not
necessary to have complete truth and knowledge, but to only ask for a
"reasonable assurance", which is bound by a "reasonable probability",
in that our sense perceptions are good guides in the quantitative
verification of the manifest, and ultimately unmanifest landscape of
the perceptual universe. Strangely enough, probability itself is
entirely beholden to tautologies of logic. We find ourselves rotating
on a merry-go-round of ostensibly rational interpretation. Hence, this
entails a qualitative understanding and acceptance of our obvious human
limitations.


On the other hand we shall not go gently into that twilight of human
existence without a fight. Even if we ourselves, are totally deluded
and confused about the specific objects of our sense perception, and
even if our mathematical models of manifest reality are merely all
tautological - which cannot objectively prove themselves true within
themselves [as Godel aptly demonstrated], it is equally true, that it
does not follow that "all is lost" in the search for the actual truth.


Justifiable belief, must be more than merely consensus alone.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

ana,

Justifiable belief, must be more than merely consensus alone.

Bullshit. You don't need absolute truth to be "truly" rational. In your quest for precision, you seem to have completely forgotten that ethics, which is the most important part of philosophy, is rational even though it barely deals with knowledge or truth at all.

[DHodges]

What value does it have? Who gives a shit if "Symmetry subsumes absolutism because a simple truth table becomes an invariant symmetry rotation." ?

Well, I think he may well be on to something. If you don't care, then don't read it.

[DHodges]

In your quest for precision, you seem to have completely forgotten that ethics, which is the most important part of philosophy, is rational even though it barely deals with knowledge or truth at all.

Why do you say that ethics is the most important part of philosophy?

Speaking of which, have you seen this?
Against Ethics

[Trevor Salyzyn]

DHodges

Why do you say that ethics is the most important part of philosophy?

Simple: ethics is the only part of philosophy that non-philosophers care to listen to. :)

That book looks interesting... is the title intentionally ironic? Being 'against' something is itself an ethical position.

[DHodges]

Thus it seems that in order for any
semblance of true rationality to hold, one must argue that it is not
necessary to have complete truth and knowledge, but to only ask for a
"reasonable assurance", which is bound by a "reasonable probability",
in that our sense perceptions are good guides in the quantitative
verification of the manifest, and ultimately unmanifest landscape of
the perceptual universe.

That's true enough, within the realm of science. If you are asking questions about what a particular state of affairs is, how something works, then that is the way to proceed.

However, philosophical questions are usually not questions about whether a particular set of statements about the world are true or not.

Philosophical questions have to be addressed before scientific ones. In order to investigate a question of fact, like, "Is that car red?", you must have in mind some definition of car, red, and is.

Strangely enough, probability itself is
entirely beholden to tautologies of logic.

I think probability theory has a problem in the idea of "random". Probability revolves around random variables. It treats randomness as if it were something tangible, when "randomness" is really a lack of information. Probability theory arose directly out of gambling. The roll of dice can not be determined ahead of time, although strictly speaking it is completely deterministic. Probability takes over where the deterministic model is incomplete.

Even if we ourselves, are totally deluded
and confused about the specific objects of our sense perception, and
even if our mathematical models of manifest reality are merely all
tautological - which cannot objectively prove themselves true within
themselves [as Godel aptly demonstrated], it is equally true, that it
does not follow that "all is lost" in the search for the actual truth.

On the one hand, you have some model of the world; this is how you think it works; a hypothesis or theory. On the other hand, you have how the world actually works. The model seems to predict actual events fairly well. But, is there any necessary connection between the model and the reality?

Paricularly in mathematics, the model is an abstraction. We model actual things by treating them as if they were not physical objects, but mathematical ones (points, lines, functions, spaces and so on).

Thus there is always an underlying assumption that physical objects act like mathematical ones. And that seems to work pretty well.

It works well because mathematics is NOT purely tautological. It can be represented as a purely abstract system of axioms and so on - but that's not where it actually came from, how it developed historically.

Mathematics was abstracted from physical reality. That I can add one apple to another apple and then have two apples, and the same idea works with sheep, bananas, or whatever is the underlying observed physical reality. The mathematics came from that observation.

So, mathematics can not be proven from within itself. But that's okay. If the physical world worked differently, mathematics would have developed differently. Geometry developed the way it did because Euclidean "flat" geometry is a pretty good approximation. Algebra and so on developed because real objects can (generally) be treated in a simple, degenerate way - rather, than, say, the way matrices interact, where addition and multiplication are not so straightforward.

But then cases come up where the simple math does not apply, and something else needs to be developed - abstract algebra, calculus, and so on.

Math can be studies as "pure" math - apart from any physical reality. But that was abstracted from "applied" math. The applied math was not derived from the "pure" math (although it is taught that way).

And the pure math - if taken far enough - can be abstracted to a point where it applies to any possible world.

[sevens]

Analog,

Do you have an interest in first-hand experiences of the 'spirit'?

We need Buddhas with computers.

Imagine that.

[MKFaizi]

I have a lot of problem with Derrida. Everything I have ever read from him or about him makes me literally nauseated. I have never been sure whether this is simply an allergic reaction to most things French or if it has more to do with Derrida himself.

Anything to do with Derrida or Batille makes me ill.

I am interested in ethics and I would love to read some interesting works in that area but the John Caputo book is heavily into Derrida. Can't do it.

The reviewers on Amazon also mention Nietzsche. In my experience, those who laud Derrida are only interested in the romantic aspects of Nietzsche.

Reading Derrida is something like -- in feeling -- to falling into a vat of very dark and overly sweet wine and drinking a great deal of it.

A very sickening drunk.

Faizi

[David Quinn]

Analog wrote:

My side is that I would like to see a REAL DEBATE between David Quinn and ONE of the three main NPU opponents: Plato, Kitten, or rwill9955 - on neutral territory, of course.

What about? The nature of Reality? The limitations of science? The psychology of women?

I'm game, but not with Plato- he's too much of a bore. And not with Kitten - she's too unstable. Dr Beckworth would be my choice.

Symmetry subsumes absolutism because a simple truth table becomes an invariant symmetry rotation.

But not the absolutism of symmetry, it would seem.

prince: What value does it have? Who gives a shit if "Symmetry subsumes absolutism because a simple truth table becomes an invariant symmetry rotation." ?

analog: Anything that is radically at odds with our tidy consensus view of the
universe, is labeled as crankishly absurd by defenders of the
intellectual status quo[defenders of the faith?].

I think he was trying to point out that you are focusing on an an irrelevant side-issue. Your attempt to use a truth-value table to undermine the concept of absolute truth strikes him as comical. And I agree.

Consequently, "non-absurdity" and the verification/elimination for all possible
existant beliefs, would by necessity entail complete truth, and
therefore, complete knowledge. Thus it seems that in order for any
semblance of true rationality to hold, one must argue that it is not
necessary to have complete truth and knowledge, but to only ask for a
"reasonable assurance", which is bound by a "reasonable probability",
in that our sense perceptions are good guides in the quantitative
verification of the manifest, and ultimately unmanifest landscape of
the perceptual universe.

As David Hodges points out, that is only true (gasp!) for those forms of knowledge which try to describe the details of what appears to exist in the empirical world. It doesn't apply to those other forms of knowledge which are entirely logical in nature and refer to underlying universal principles.

As always, you are focusing too much on a limited subset of knowledge, which is severly distorting your philosophical outlook.

Strangely enough, probability itself is
entirely beholden to tautologies of logic. We find ourselves rotating on a merry-go-round of ostensibly rational interpretation. Hence, this entails a qualitative understanding and acceptance of our obvious human limitations.

Not so. It is your obsession with the empirical subset of knowledge, and your complete disregard of all other forms of knowledge, which is causing you to remain on this merry-go-round. It has nothing to do with "human limitations". They are merely your limitations.

-

[David Quinn]

Mookestink wrote:

You don't need absolute truth to be "truly" rational.

You do, actually. To the degree that a person does not know the absolute truth (of Nature), he is still under the grip of an irrational belief of some kind.

In your quest for precision, you seem to have completely forgotten that ethics, which is the most important part of philosophy, is rational even though it barely deals with knowledge or truth at all.

If you do not know what is ultimately real in life, then how can you know what is the wisest and most rational thing to do?

-

[MKFaizi]

Oh, yes. The exquisite taste of real meat. God knows, that is what has been needed here for quite some time. Blood. Substance. Reality.

The privacy of this forum compared to the one on EZboard -- well, there is no comparison. How pleasant it is to be free of idiotic drifters.

If you ask me -- and no one did -- I think this should be a united forum -- no Brothel. Ho's should have the same rights as philosophers.

No wonder my happy heart sings.

Volare!

Faizi

[analog57]

Symmetry subsumes absolutism because a simple truth table becomes an invariant symmetry rotation.

But not the absolutism of symmetry, it would seem.

An absolute truth is a necessary truth - due to the fact that if it did not exist, then all other truths that follow from it would also not exist.


If there were no invariants then identity could not be defined. Also, any absolute is required to be invariant[unchangable] under all possible scrutiny. That is basically the definition of symmetry, where symmetry is an invariance under transformation.


An absolute truth must be invariant.

An invariance is a symmetry.

Symmetry forms the basis of truth.

All absolutes must be invariants, therefore symmetries.

All symmetries need not be absolute.