Discussions on Philosophy Group

[Guest [Kp...]]

Also, becksblue, when you gaze at the microscopic, you are gazing at the smallest subdivision being the Planck length. Anything after that is physically inaccessible because theorietically whatever is below it, if anything at all, has no meaning. So the limitation is not just physical.

 

Then arises the question how far can we see today down to that level? Exactly half from our current eye level. Beyond the half way mark things are not known because of purely physical constraints - we do not have the instruments to peer below half way down to Planck length  we can only imagine and theorize what could be going on below that.

 

And if you look above, at the sky, how far back in time can we see? We can see the cosmic rays that were released in the first few instants of the universe's history. But still, we can see only half way back. There is another half hidden in time behind the cosmic rays.

 

No matter which direction we gaze in, we cannot see more than half way (or perhaps even less if you include dark matter and energy). And it has always been this way in human history

[[Be...]]

There are experiments that can prove things that we cannot see.

[Guest [Kp...]]

QM, says time/space is an illusion and everything is consciousness according to Amit Goswami, so infinity and finite terms don't apply, I suppose.  Check out Alain Aspect's experiments.  This is sort of where I started in learning QM.  I'm not a math whiz or physicist, but read the experiments and understood them at a basic level.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Aspect

 

I just read up Alain. He was on the cutting edge of experiments in quantum mechanics. Impressive figure! Thanks for posting.

 

Physicists like to quip that if a colleague has gone crazy and abandoned his chosen field, it is likely because he tried to understand quantum mechanics.

 

But like I said earlier, if quantum mechanics is spooky, then it is our brain that is spooky. How can a haunted house find it weird that the universe that houses it is haunted?

 

Two months ago, when I was reading QM, I expressed surprise in a literary forum that man had written no fiction or even science fiction based on QM? There were movies about time travel, black holes and artificial intelligence but nothing about quantum mechanics? One lonely voice of a pedant whispered in the wilderness that Lewis Carol had. Of course she was right.

 

Much later I realized that all fiction from since Chaucer, Homer, Farididdin Attar, Rumi, Ved Vyas and Buddha were interpretations in quantum mechanics. Literature was being written about QM from before QM. Bach was playing Bach from before Bach was born. You want to change the universe so that there is only post rock in the air? You can. We have been doing it since time immemorial.

[Guest [Kp...]]

There are experiments that can prove things that we cannot see.

 

But why is that surprising Becks?

 

You cannot prove I exist. You have to make a leap of faith!

 

If I step three hundred kilometers away from where I sit, I will be back 1.5 million years ago in the land of the Jarawas. It's India but these natives do not look Indian. They do not look Oriental nor Occidental. How can they be in India and not be in it, for 1.5 million years? They look like pygmies. Of course! They were one of the tribes out of Africa long ago and they got trapped on these islands off the coast of India. That is why they look like African pygmies. But their genetic information says they have nothing in common with Africans of today or yesterday, or with Indians, or South Asians or Micronesians or Polynesians or with the Australoids. What the hell? The genetic information of Jarawas says -

 

That ten thousand years from today they will take to the waters and reach Japan. Because they share the genetic information most with the Japanese of today. Did I just travel back in time, space, mind or science lied to me as it keeps doing from time to time?

 

Do you know how many times science has kneaded our universe to be flat, round, flat, round again, flat, round and also flat? Can you prove when science was absolutely right?

 

We live and we die with incomplete information (so far).

 

QM is a mirror. It says nothing we did not already know.

 

But yeah, what we know keeps surprising us endlessly. Memories hurt infinitely simply because that time and place no longer exist and probably never will; but we insufferably will to keep lamenting it over and over, again and again.

 

Mathematically infinity can exist. Scientifically it cannot, even in even infinite time!. Because it is not possible. Because time makes infinity impossible. If you left this thread and returned after an infinite number of years, you would never know the difference and neither would we.

 

There is nothing that the universe can do that can surprise the human brain.

 

The brain has to invent surprises for itself when it is bored. It does not seem to be difficult.

 

Rushdie was once fond of quoting Saul Bellow. A dog howls at the universe and Bellow seems to hear it lament - for God's sake, open up the limits of my experience a bit more!

 

Sex revulses me because it does not match the one i see in my mind. In my mind the woman wears no make up, carries no artifice. Such a woman does not exist. Such a woman is a platonic form. The women in reality are different - they wear no make up and carry no artifice. And when I die, i will see that i am dying inside the biggest womb i have seen, the universe. And i won't know if the universe is in my mind or outside it because both images look the same, and, to be honest, never looked different.

 

The Buddha's last words, I had thought, were that every man has to seek his own salvation and not go by Buddha's words. Is this a figment of my imagination? For I cannot Google these words now.

 

[Guest [Kp...]]

And I stand at the door, the door of her room, rocking, thinking, rocking. I go inside for the door is ajar. I turn a corner in the darkness and I see her lying on the bed, head towards the ceiling, sheilding her eyes with one hand, covering them with her arm. Her room is cool. She wears clothes, same stuff she wore during the day – salwar and it’s kameez. Parts of it got drenched in her sweat during the course of the day and are dry no doubt. Her duppata lies discarded on the bed, the same duppata that she had worn around her head that night when I had seen her in my dream, and

 

admist Urdu salutations executed with a cupped hand, bowing, smiling, bowing she had smiled and whispered, … huzoor aap aur nisf shab mere makaan par? The AC blares in the darkness. Perhaps she doesn’t sleep, perhaps she just lies. I make a quick retreat. But there are dacoits outside. I hurry back panic stricken...

[[az...]]

Rushdie was once fond of quoting Saul Bellow. A dog Howls at the universe and Bellow seems to hear it lament - for God's sake, open up the limits of my experience a bit more!

 

Sex revulses me because it does not match the one i see in my mind. In my mind the woman wears no make up, carries no artifice. Such a woman does not exist. Such a woman is a platonic form. The women in reality are different - they wear no make up and carry no artifice. And when I die, i will see that i am dying inside the biggest womb i have seen, the universe. And i won't know if the universe is in my mind or outside it because both images look the same and to be honest, never looked different.

 

The Buddha's last words, I had thought, were that every man has to seek his own salvation and not go by Buddha's words. Is this a figment of my imagination? For I cannot Google these words now.

 

Kpin99, it (sex) only repulsed me whenever I feared either death or separation too fierce. Remember the beasts of the field, we are also made of bone and blood.

 

___

 

Though I feel what you are saying, I stand corrected. Fiercely! Woah, amazement. Great.

[[az...]]

And I stand at the door, the door of her room, rocking, thinking, rocking. I go inside for the door is ajar. I turn a corner in the darkness and I see her lying on the bed, head towards the ceiling, sheilding her eyes with one hand, covering them with her arm. Her room is cool. She wears clothes, same stuff she wore during the day – salwar and it’s kameez. Parts of it got drenched in her sweat during the course of the day and are dry no doubt. Her duppata lies discarded on the bed, the same duppata that she had worn around her head that night when I had seen her in my dream, and

 

admist Urdu salutations executed with a cupped hand, bowing, smiling, bowing she had smiled and whispered, … huzoor aap aur nisf shab mere makaan par? The AC blares in the darkness. Perhaps she doesn’t sleep, perhaps she just lies. I make a quick retreat. But there are dacoits outside. I hurry back panic stricken...

 

And this is Love, this is so piercing. If it’s you, oh what a soul you are and what indescribable beauty there is in you. Way to grow, you must know things we all need to remember. God with us, and bless you.

[[az...]]

As in Love, this that we can all access through you. I am no expert, thank you for teaching me as well!

[[az...]]

‘

 

And I stand at the door, the door of her room, rocking, thinking, rocking. I go inside for the door is ajar. I turn a corner in the darkness and I see her lying on the bed, head towards the ceiling, sheilding her eyes with one hand, covering them with her arm. Her room is cool. She wears clothes, same stuff she wore during the day – salwar and it’s kameez. Parts of it got drenched in her sweat during the course of the day and are dry no doubt. Her duppata lies discarded on the bed, the same duppata that she had worn around her head that night when I had seen her in my dream, and

 

admist Urdu salutations executed with a cupped hand, bowing, smiling, bowing she had smiled and whispered, … huzoor aap aur nisf shab mere makaan par? The AC blares in the darkness. Perhaps she doesn’t sleep, perhaps she just lies. I make a quick retreat. But there are dacoits outside. I hurry back panic stricken...

 

‘

[Guest [Kp...]]

The Buddha's last words, I had thought, were that every man has to seek his own salvation and not go by Buddha's words. Is this a figment of my imagination? For I cannot Google these words now.

 

https://www.phrases.org.uk/quotes/last-words/buddha.html

 

He [buddha] continued as a teacher for many years, gathering a group of followers. On the day of his death he gave them his final teaching. The precise English translation of these final words, like all Buddhist teachings, is open to interpretation as it was spoken in Pali and passed on orally, not being written down for some centuries after Buddha's death. One such interpretation is:

 

 

"Behold, O monks, this is my advice to you. All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your own salvation."

[[Be...]]

Kpin, are you Indian?  And is that you in your avatar?  Don't need to answer if you don't want to.  I respect Indian people and find them to be superior and very intelligent human beings.  My docs were all from India and I was always so relieved that they were because I knew they had sound and good minds and would make a good diagnosis for me.  My doc now is Indian, Dr. Patel, and she is very smart.

[[al...]]

I don't think we have Free Will.

 

I think that choice is an illusion. All choices are determined by everything that has happened to us prior to the point at which we make a choice - all of the billiosn of tiny moments that make up a life to that point.

 

In a sense every choice is subject to a barage of over-determination.

 

We have to phenomenologically believe that we act freely though.

 

This makes a lot of sense. I suspect we do not have free will. Here is the concept of free will in different religions.

 

Fee will doesn't exit. Everything that we do elicits a price (or consequence) that must be paid by us or those around us. In some cases, the price may be very small but it is not free

 

[[al...]]

Quantum physics theories says everything is infinite, I believe.

 

If our universe is the product of a big bang, then there is a finite distance in which the expansion has progressed. However, the nothingness that defines the expanding somethingness could very well be infinite. That has to make you wonder how many other big bangs have occured, are occuring or will occur within this infinite void. Could there be an infinite number of universes? Suppose that this also occurs on an infinitly contracting inward scale within the molecular building blocks that we are able to detect. Time will speed up in these planes, when compared to what is experienced in ours. A very little bang and the universe that it creates would only apear as the briefest of flashes if we were able to detect it.

 

[Guest [Kp...]]

Kpin, are you Indian?  And is that you in your avatar?  Don't need to answer if you don't want to.  I respect Indian people and find them to be superior and very intelligent human beings.  My docs were all from India and I was always so relieved that they were because I knew they had sound and good minds and would make a good diagnosis for me.  My doc now is Indian, Dr. Patel, and she is very smart.

 

I don't get ruffled by personal questions. Yes, I am Indian. That is my son in my profile's display picture. He is 24. His name is Siddharth. I had my pic. in the display but I pulled it down when I entered opiate withdrawals last fortnight. I'll put my pic up again tomorrow (for a few days).

 

Buddha's name was Siddharth Gautama Buddha. "Buddha" was an appellation he earned later; it means "the enlightened one." There is a pithy novel called Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse which is a nice introduction to the life of prince Gautama (but not Buddhism per se) for Buddha had been a prince before he became Buddha.

 

My younger son is 22 and he is named Gautam. I did not name them -- my sister did. Neither my sister nor I were into Buddhism then. I would not set out to discover Buddha till five years after my younger was born. If I was interested in Indian history, specifically the greatest emperor mankind has seen, forgotten and rediscovered, Ashoka, and his Buddha, my sister wasn't interested in history a single whit, save the period when she was a rich daughter of rich parents who fell out of fortune when she grew up.

 

Of course, sometimes I wonder if it was just a coincidence that my kids would be named such?

 

There is no race or creed or community that is genetically the brightest. There are only two people in the universe who are the most beautiful and the most bright -- you and me. : ) If Dr. Patel looks smart, it is only because she gets entranced by our shadows when we meet her. The universe conspires to stop you meeting me for the universe does not have the resources to handle so much beauty were we to stand together in the same space and time. : ) So God brought us into this world two poles apart.

[Guest [Kp...]]

Amrapali was strikingly beautiful. She was the royal courtesan of the Licchavi clan in India in around 500 BCE. The neighbouring kingdom of Magadh was ruled by Bimbisara and, unlike the clannish Licchavis, it was a republic (the monarch Bimbisara was a titular head in practice). Bimbisara, once, while campaigning in Licchavi territory to annex their land, had to seek refuge in a hut in Vaishali, the capital of the Licchavis. The hut was the house of Amrapali. Bimbisara professed his love for the mesmerizingly beautiful Amrapali, who had given him shelter, and went on to disclose, after a few days of refuge, that he was actually Bimbisara. Amrapali, disillusioned, requested Bimbisara to call off the campaign and promised to return with him to the capital of his Magadh kingdom, Patna, as recompense for the wager Bimbisara sought from her. The war ended.

 

Amrapali became Bimbisara's queen and begat him a son. However, Amrapali's abiding desire had been to feed the Buddha with her hands, and as luck would have it, he was sermonizing in Vaishali once. She traveled with her entourage to hostile Vaishali and accomplished her wish.

 

But after feeding Buddha, Amrapali did not return to Magadh. She joined Buddha and became the first nun of the Buddhist order in the monastery Buddha set up after her (in Vaishali). Her son, when he would turn adult, too would forsake the royal palaces to join her. They would both become arahants, or acclaimed disciples of Buddha, as history would later teach us.

 

Not much is known about Amrapali because India would not develop a tradition of writing history till the Brahmi script got introduced to her from Syria in 300 CE in the reign of Ashoka. If we know of Ashoka and Buddha today, it is because of a few Orientalists (they were not all vile as Edward Said once painted them out to be).

 

Amrapali is also known as Azalea sometimes.

[[Be...]]

From my Essene teachings, Jesus studied Buddhism, too.  He was also very enlightened.  I like Essene teachings because they are very practical. Kpin, did you have an arranged marriage?  I took a class in college one time called Intro to the Middle East and my teacher was Indian, I believe, and said she had an arranged marriage.  You seem to be very wise.  Why did you start taking benzo's and opiates, if I might ask?

[Guest [Kp...]]

Are you Jewish? Or is Essene a part of Christian theology too?

 

Yes, I believe Jesus was exposed to Buddhist thought, and that it is also possible that he met the Buddha for he visited Kashmir as per one archaeological excavation. The subject is most fascinating but it is also long and complicated. I am not sure if I can condense it here, but I will try in my next post. (Google Mithraism to understand how close Rome was to Vedic thought then.) Ancient India history (and Buddhism within it) seized my interest for several years when I was 35. I also did the Buddhist circuit tour back then (tour of all Buddhist historical sites in India, with Japanese, Sri Lankans, Burmese and Thai tourists for company).

 

Yeah, I wed my wife's photo before I wed her. : ) We never met because our parents did not consider it important -- we just got married. So ya, it was arranged and in a very orthodox way. I think my parents fell in love with her parents. : ) And then they died... abandoning us with each other for company.

 

I started smoking and drinking the day I landed in college. But I never had a problem with drinking. Later in life, I would switch to chewing tobacco for smoking was not allowed in my orthodox surroundings. I would start taking benzos for my father had been prescribed them for COPD. I'd quit benzos and get hooked again in 2000. I would take to using cough syrup (codeine) daily, for a year after that and give it up after another year when I'd get smashed by crushing depression (I did not know about benzo tolerance-withdrawals or opiate withdrawals then). I'd turn alcoholic after stopping codeine (I had entered benzo tolerance-withdrawal and I did not know). I started taking codeine again last year, when I was tapering, for I was reading philosophy and feeling that I was losing my grip on reality. I wasn't losing anything really -- I am mentally and physically more fit today than I have ever been and I am not on benzos or opiates. But addicts need excuses I think.

[Guest [Kp...]]

I am wondering if I am making a mistake not believing in God.

 

Why do you ask if it would be a mistake? Just wondering.

 

BlueRose, the reason I started doubting myself is because I realized there was no logical (or even mathematical, perhaps) reason to doubt the existence of God. As Estee states above, the argument is better known as Pascal's Wager :

 

--------------------

Pascal's Wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal (1623–62).[1] It posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not.

 

Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas they stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).[2]

--------------------

 

Do you base your belief that God exists on Pascal's reasoning alone?

 

No.

 

But, we realized we think after we learnt how to think. Could we have continued thinking without realizing that we have started thinking?

 

What I mean is that it is human nature to ascribe causality after the event occurs. So if I believe in God, there must be a logical reason for it -- I only have to find it. It is not necessary that the reason we find will always be right (or will ever be right).

[[Bl...]]

What I mean is that it is human nature to ascribe causality after the event occurs. So if I believe in God, there must be a logical reason for it -- I only have to find it. It is not necessary that the reason we find will always be right (or will ever be right).

 

Thank you for explaining Kpin. Can you expound on what you mean by it is not necessary that the reason we find will always be right(or will ever be right)?

[Guest [Kp...]]

Thank you for explaining Kpin. Can you expound on what you mean by it is not necessary that the reason we find will always be right(or will ever be right)?

 

Of course I can "expound." : )

 

The best way to explain would be with an example -- assume I find myself in horrid benzo CT withdrawals. Confused, misdiagnosed, ill treated by doctors, I stumble on BB after 2 months of acute and learn what is happening to me. I read Parker's essay called, "What is happening in your brain?" and realize that my GABA receptors are damaged. I realize it will take a long, long time for the receptors to fix -- imagine rebuilding WTC without closing down any of the offices in it. The cause of my irrational fear, I learn, is excess glutamate flooding my brain because there isn't enough GABA to play the balance of yin and yang in my brain. After a year of participation in BB, I heal, write my success story, which includes what helped expedite my GABA regeneration, and then go on to live my life and ultimately I die, lol.

 

Now imagine scientists discover, several years after I am dead, that some people get benzo withdrawals but not all. And that they get it because benzos change gene expression in some people, but not all. These changes revert overnight in six to ten months in a typical withdrawal. And that withdrawal has nothing to do with the healing of GABA receptors in the brain for they never get damaged by benzos.

 

The truth is that for me it does not matter which scientist is right. That's because I did feel -- and strongly felt -- my GABA gradually heal and I did take care of my GABA receptors for the rest of my life by avoiding alcohol, benzos and leading a healthy lifestyle.

 

From this point onwards, if you probe deeper, scientifically (not philosophically or semantically), you will arrive at QM where it seems that there isn't any difference between causation and correlation (which is a slightly longer explanation... let me know if interested).

[[Es...]]

I would actually apply Pascal’s Wager to all areas of our thinking. It makes more sense to hold constructive beliefs than the destructive ones. So I suppose that it is more sensible to be an optimist than a pessimist. I arrived at this conclusion after years of being a pessimist. When I did those philosophy studies.

 

We lose nothing by being optimistic. Holding destructive beliefs, on the other hand, influences our self-talk. I mean a negative self-talk and destructive beliefs reinforce each other. Which brings about disastrous consequences IRL. In fact, our negative beliefs are only the result of screwed brain chemistry and bad life experience which followed. Brain chemistry is determined by our genes, but we can really work on changing it if we want to.

 

I’m very much interested in the concept I call "metaphysical pessimism." Why are some people so obstinate in believing that God doesn’t exist. I always prefer to call God a Higher Power. To avoid religious connotations.

 

Okay, so I was one of those people. An atheist. Now I certainly am an agnostic. I guess I had fallen into the trap of "metaphysical pessimism." It makes more sense to believe that a loving and powerful Higher Power exists. It may influence our life in a positive way. So we gain not only an eternal happiness in the afterlife, as Pascal stated in his Wager. But also a reasonably good life here and now.

[Guest [Kp...]]

It makes more sense to hold constructive beliefs than the destructive ones.

 

Wouldn't that makes sense if you "believed" you had free will? : )

 

(I wonder what the definition of free will is? I'm suddenly finding it very hard to define it! It cannot just be intentionality!  Let me go to Wikipedia. And Oh, I'm yet to read your Kant and free will in diff. religions link.)

[[Es...]]

Yeah, this free will issue is complex. I’m afraid to start thinking obsessively about it again. I guess the best approach to everything would be a golden mean, maybe... So it could be compatibilism for me.

 

 

 

[[Bl...]]

It makes more sense to hold constructive beliefs than the destructive ones.

 

Wouldn't that makes sense if you "believed" you had free will? : )

 

(I wonder what the definition of free will is? I'm suddenly finding it very hard to define it! It cannot just be intentionality!  Let me go to Wikipedia. And Oh, I'm yet to read your Kant and free will in diff. religions link.)

 

One way to define free will would be to think about what it would mean/be like to live a life without the ability to choose. We could imagine in our mind's eye a living thing that has been strictly programmed. This "being" only functions based on what it has been told/programmed.

 

In other words....remove the thought of free will from the human equation and what is the result====a robot. It makes no sense that an all wise and loving Creator would create humans to function based on the robot design.

 

edited....put in bold Kpin's question on definition of free will.

[Guest [Kp...]]

BlueRose.  ;D

 

It is not as simple as it looks at first glance. : )

 

A lot of things about humans are predictable. The field of modern medicine thrives on this assumption. People live in houses, eat in cafeterias, sleep in beds, wear shoes and chew gum. If you start compiling the "predictable" things, then you start wondering why at all do we consider ourselves unpredictable?

 

Well, OK, one way to tackle this answer is by saying -- the body is predictable and so is the brain, but the mind is not predictable.

 

And that is true. Let me return to my pet example here -- the stock market.

 

The stock market, which is a social gathering of human minds (that are in a speculative mood, betting on the future, the tangible future), is purely unpredictable, or random, and obeys a rigorous mathematical definition of randomness. Yet it is predictable! For proof you and I can engage in insider trading and surely our company's shares will tank tomorrow if our clandestine "insider" information about it is correct.

 

So a stock market, like the human mind, needs, to get metaphorical, food, shelter and company (the predictable facet) and when these are met, it gets high on its free will (the unpredictable facet).

 

We have to, here, allow the stock market a "free will" and concede that it is the collective expression of "free will" of humans gathered to speculate.

 

And it is with that one single concession that the dam bursts. : ) If the stock market has free will simply because it is a reflection of a gathering of human minds, then when physics says that we live in a participatory universe, where matter crystallizes only when we "observe" it, then the universe too has to be allowed degrees of free will because its will is sutured to the human "free will." Every thing in the universe then becomes both at once, like the stock market: predictable and unpredictable, or, robotic and emancipated.