disarray

Can we use the concept of 'energy density' to help explain time dilation. So as to avoid like a waffling amateur, I throw out this quote as an anchor:

Or this quote:

Can you calculate the entire time dilation by factoring in energy alone? Answer: Yes. I do not like the whole way this is framed but I think you are not even wrong. But how fast you are relatively is all that really matters. It is all you need to know and consideration of anything else is superfluous. Yet the relative effective energy density indeed corresponds to the clocking difference realized. I can get this more directly with fewer assumptions by adding a column for change in energy density and calculate the clocking rate difference for a unit size rest mass energy frequency h*m*c^2 of that density and the de Broglie relative frequency. This must be the same change as the time dilation since it corresponds directly to the mutual clocking of events between the systems. We cant say how fast does not matter but we can say that how fast matters because that effects the mutual clocking rate of the relative mass-energy densities. https://www.quora.com/Can-you-calculate-the-entire-time-dilation-by-factoring-in-energy-alone

No need to address this particular quote specifically....just wanted to know if I am going down a blind alley in thinking that there is some connection between time dilation and energy density.

I would suggest that the word "art" refers to ones intent, rather than to the object itself. Though whether one has succeeded to accomplish what one intended, e.g. write a poem that has artistic merit, is perhaps a subjective matter, and which critics/judges one relies upon for making such a call, is also a subjective matter.

As to whether reality can be artistic, something that comes into existence without the intention of being artistic, e.g., the Grand Canyon, a beautiful photograph taken by a two year old accidentally while playing with a camera, the opening or the Declaration of Independence, or a note left on a fridge, gets to the heart of the question.

My case in point is the following lines that I have found, to my surprise and a little dismay, in many a general book of collected poems:

I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand whichyou were probablysavingfor breakfastForgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold

by William Carlos Williams

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/just-say

Perhaps others won't agree, but though a little clever and a little original, one might easily have found these words on the fridge in just about any kitchen in the world.

So is it art? Is it reality? Is it reality not realizing that it is art? Is it an artistic psychological analysis of real people in real situations? Or is the line between art and non art so blurry that it is pointless to use the word? So let's take the two-year-old again, but this time let's say that he took a rather average photo of his goldfish with his digital camera, and then rushes to me to say, "Here is some art for your birthday"....who am I to disagree.

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned."

 

"It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways."

Buddha.

By way of contrast to your comment, Tar seems to be arguing that there is such a thing as cool, almost disinterested, intellectual anger.. If so, unless we are making up ad hoc definitions, this seems like something of an oxymoron, as a quick 'google' definition defines anger as "a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility."

Indeed, Tar seems to be suggesting some sort of eye-for-an-eye vigilante! justice; or, at best, suggesting the death penalty for either those who commit a hate crime, e.g., badgering and slapping a homosexual (which then seems an excessive legal punishment of the person doing the badgering), or else suggesting the death penalty for those who kill homosexuals (as a hate crime), in which case a death sentence (or, most likely, the quasi-equivalent of life imprisonment) would be the usual legal course of action anyway.

They key point here, it seems to me, is whether we would deal out punishment to those who committed hate crimes, in a similarly hateful and vindictive (aka revengeful) manner. If so, it seems to me that this, ironically, reflects the, imho, rather crude eye-for-an-eye vengeance found in the Old Testament and the Torah, as well as in the Qu'ran (lex talionis).

Even today, many people, particularly family members of someone who was attacked, feel that the legal system should dispense punishment for the sake of revenge. Sometimes one hears a family member saying "that's not good enough, he took the life of my brother and should die in return" when a murder has been committed.

Tar may be suggesting, on the other hand, that killing someone who kills a homosexual should be done swiftly and openly as a warning to others, but, in any case, it does sound a little like taking the law into ones own hand.

 

There are so many flavours of Buddhism that you'd be able to find some for which this is the case and others for which it is not.

 

(Buddhism doesn't actually teach reincarnation but rebirth - the difference being there is no permanent self, soul or mind which passes between lives.)

Interesting comments, but not sure I want to just accept them without some sort of evidence or qualification. Can you give me an example of a "flavour" of Buddhism, perhaps as practiced in the East, in which karma does not interface with the concept of reincarnation, if that were your point?

I am surprised that, having made your first statement, you then make the second generalized claim that (apparently no flavour of) Buddism does not accept reincarnation.

I take your point if you are referring to a certain flavour of Buddhism, of which we can say that,

Traditionally, Buddhism teaches the existence of the ten realms of being. At the top is Buddha and the scale descends as follows: Bodhisattva (an enlightened being destined to be a Buddha, but purposely remaining on earth to teach others), Pratyeka Buddha (a Buddha for himself), Sravka (direct disciple of Buddha), heavenly beings (superhuman [angels?]), human beings, Asura (fighting spirits), beasts, Preta (hungry ghosts), and depraved men (hellish beings)." http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/reincarnation.htm

So what we have in this flavour is that there is a sort of nonphysical 'reincarnation'.

But again, that is not the only flavour of Buddhism, as you say:

“When Buddhism was established 2,500 years ago, it incorporated the Hindu belief in reincarnation. Although Buddhism has two major subdivisions and countless variations in regional practices, most Buddhists believe in samsara or the cycle of rebirth. Samsara is governed by the law of karma: Good conduct produces good karma and bad conduct produces evil karma. Buddhists believe that the soul's karma transmigrates between bodies and becomes a "germ of consciousness" in the womb. Periods of afterlife, sometimes called "the between," punctuate samsara, coming after death and before rebirth We suffer because we desire the transient. Only when we achieve a state of total passiveness and free ourselves from all desire can we escape samsara and achieve nirvana, or salvation.

http://people.howstuffworks.com/reincarnation2.htm

Underlining is mine.

However, perhaps you are just agreeing that some nonspecific 'je ne sais quoi' can be in and can pass between different stages of being, but that Buddhism doesn't strictly believe in reincarnation in the same sense as Hindi do because they have a different concept of self. I understand the idea that Buddhism does not think that we survive death in the same sense as, say, a Christian might. I understand that the the Buddhism concept of what exists in Nirvana is not our daily Joe-Blow personality who grumbles, laughs, likes cheeseburgers and beer, etc. I understand that some flavours of Buddhism do not think that we are reborn as a different animal. I understand that the Buddhist concept of a higher Self is more rarefied and ephemeral than usually found in most "religions." Point taken......but nevertheless, there is some ephemeral level of awareness that many flavors of Buddhism, if you like, believe in that needs to follow various paths (e.g., eightfold path), and/or that needs to overcome attachment and desire in order to escape from its present condition in the first place.

If our awareness is Completely! extinguished after death, why bother, one might ask, trying to escape. Something must remain:

"no matter which translation you pick, it is understood that to be in a state of Nirvana means to be free from those bonds that enslave us; It is a state of profound peace and great wisdom. It is the ultimate happiness that comes when we are liberated from finding pain or pleasure in impermanent (transitory) objects.

https://www.thebuddhagarden.com/nirvana-meaning.html

So no, we don't eat ice cream, or sing hymns, or play harps, or perhaps even experience either sorrow or pleasure, but there is some residue of consciousness (according to some flavours of Buddhism) that experiences peace and freedom.

I didn't say Nietzsche was wrong about "God is dead" when I said "not everything he said was gold", I simply meant I don't think he was right about some of the other things he wrote.

 

I said I believe in the concept of Karma, there is a difference; The actions of a person in this life if negative, has negative consequences, but if positive then so are the consequences; Smile and the world smiles back, frown and the world turns it's back.

Sounds like you were wandering from the discussion then....of course, not everything anyone says is gold.

Again, perhaps you can show me how the word "karma" is used by most, if any (substantial number of) practicing Buddhists in a way that only refers to "payback," for lack of another handy word, in this life and not in connection with reincarnation? In terms of "street language," yes, sometimes people use the word karma to suggest that crime does not pay in this lifetime, for example. But even then, most people on the street are aware, as they use this term, that the meaning of the term springs from the spiritual use of the word in connection with reincarnation. Perhaps a Christian would use a phrase such as "you sow what you reap," and a neutral phrase (in terms of "religions") is perhaps "what goes around, comes around," but if I had to choose, I would say that this phrase relates most closely to Hinduism.

In any case, I think it is fair that atheists (by definition) do not believe that there is some personal God that ensures that such justice in the world is taken care of by anything or anyone besides people's own fallible judicial system and their own efforts to get even?

It is controversial whether Buddhism is even a religion (in the usual sense of the word), but Hinduism generally is considered to be, and it is Hinduism that most fully embraces the word "karma" in terms of the way it is used on the street. So, I would suggest that many if not most atheists would not subscribe to the concept of some supernatural, or even natural, moral justice in the universe that ensures that people 'get what they deserve', even if we are just talking about this life on earth alone.

Without time nothing would move, so, it's not an illusion.

Is the converse true, viz." Without movement, time would not exist.

Some other relevant questions:

1. Is a soul dependent upon movement and time as we know it, i.e., in terms of mass and spacetime?
2. In what ways might science investigate the question as to whether there is a soul?
3. Also, does having a soul imply that ones consciousness survives physical death?
4. Does having a soul imply that we must believe in a personal God or in any other religious beliefs?

Not sure that I see the consistency in your remarks:

You state on the 24th of June that "Reincarnation/Karma is a pseudo god," but then state rather enigmatically in your last post that you believe in karma, but not in reincarnation.

Similarly, you state on the 23rd that "how was Nietzsche wrong when he declared "God is dead"; the idea seems prophetic." but in your last post you state that "God is dead", "not everything he said was gold" as if you did not think much of his claim.

I guess I would just suggest that you elaborate a little more rather than making vague allusions, e.g., such as asking if I am familiar with Nietzsche. Similarly, you might elaborate cryptic remarks, e.g., by explaining how it is that you believe in karma, but not in reincarnation, particularly since a rather standard definition of karma is "(in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences. In short, the concept of karma typically goes hand in hand with the concept of reincarnation as far as I can discern.

Tar....No, can't find anything on him. If you click on his name at the top of the original link I posted, you see a number of photos that have nothing to do with science, so I am guessing he is something of a freelance writer without much in terms of credentials.

Swansont: Sorry, I meant fast-moving muons age more slowly. But again, do they age more slowly because of some physical reason other than time slowing down? (I can't get over thinking of time as an abstraction...so am looking for some other explanation.) And of course, how could one say that it is an observational thing...I presume the muons would age more slowly even though no one is observing them.

(Thanks for taking a moment to answer questions).

Mordred: Thanks. Will wade through your links.

For now, I would just mention that I was under the impression that clocks actually slowed down, e.g. planes taking a clocks around the world to show Einstein's time dilation effect, and the results showing a tiny difference in what the clocks said.

The key problem I have with relativity is the notion of time slowing down:

Does time really slow down for the muons entering the atmosphere, or does the curvature of spacetime cause them to age more quickly, much like the skin of a person who stays out in the sun too long will age more quickly. In short, is there any way that time dilation can be seen as a physical process?

I reread the opening post. Perhaps what laypersons want to ask with respect to this thread is not so much a question as to what elusive things such as the curvature of spacetime really, really looks like (as if there were some ultimate reality), but rather how best to visualize it, such as the following passage attempts to help us do:

"In curved space-time, there are no straight lines - just as there are no straight lines on the surface of a sphere. The closest we can get to the notion of a straight line is a geodesic, a spacetime curve that is as straight as possible. Test particles in the vicinity of the massive sphere follow these geodesics. Gravity does not reflect them from their straight lines - it re-defines what it means to move on a straightest possible line." http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/geometry_force

I think most teachers would agree with the 'multiple intelligences' concept that students learn in various ways. Not everyone is mathematically minded, and, in any case, most all can benefit from visual approximations. (Perhaps a quick comment or footnote might be given that such models, be they visual or whatever, are just practical tools meant to help us understand what we can never really experience, much like we might tell a student that the Bohr atom is just a useful model, and is not meant to show what atoms actually look like if could see them 'in person' so to speak).

Markus, I take your point. I just mention this because I often read that the question of some ultimate reality is discussed even amongst physicists, and my pont is exactly the same as yours. (I have read, for example, that Einstein and Bohr argued as to whether the moon existed when no one was looking at it. I have read popular articles about quantum theory claiming that scientists ponder how anything could exist before humans were alive to experience it. I have also read that the 'shut up and measure' school of quantum theory supposedly dismisses the question as to what some ultimate reality is really like. )

I guess I bring it up in order to show why the questions you mentioned keep popping up, and, like you, to say that they are relevant:

And yes, Plato's Cave syndrome is a philosophical question about reality that affected philosophy for centuries: The idea that what we see is but a paltry, shadowy reflection of some absolute reality which one can experience outside the cave in the sunlight.

I guess the average person gets in the habit of thinking that there is always some reality (the modeled) beyond our models of it because our everyday life is filled with such models, not only because we are surrounded with visual images in the media (instagram, television, facebook, movies, posters, billboards, magazines, etc.) but because we learn before we can even walk that the words in our languages stand for "real" things in the world around us that we can point to ("car" represents the thing we drive around), and also we have an image-ination in which we think about how a person that has been described to us will "real-ly" be like when we meet them later in the day.

So no, I don't think that there are limits in the amount of knowledge that we can have about the world. However, speaking to public assumptions about some ultimate reality, I just wanted to point out that we cannot assume that we can always directly experience with our senses what models of reality suggest are there. Perhaps one might call this assumption the 'objective correlative fallacy'.

Yes, it seems this discussion is still focused on defining "art" and not whether reality recreates it (or what that is supposed to mean; Strange seemed to think that it meant that the viewer recreates it..p. 1).

The fiery pattern might be found at a student art exhibit and call it art, regardless of whether he used a computer to create it (which is not an unusual practice these days).

OR

One might find it on the floor of a some old Chicago dive, and a product of a tile craftsman with really bad taste in floor tiles.

That is why some people think that intentions matter (thought there is such a thing as the intentional fallacy).

Which brings me to the edge of the Grand Canyon...one might say, as some no doubt do, that God created it so beautiful in order to please humans (not to mention all the other beautiful things in nature. Though this is something of a fallacy for those not so religious or sentimental. For example, a scientific-minded person might point out that flowers aren't beautiful for our own pleasure (though we sometimes forget that), but rather to attract bees and the like.

In any case, it sounds like the original poster, marieltorkan, hasn't really formulated her question in her own mind very well, and indeed, her only opening comment was that

"I'm completely lost with what the truth is surrounding the meaning of art."

But this comment does narrow things down a little....it suggests that art should have meaning. My own view is that art should not necessarily have some sort of moral lesson to convey. On the other hand, it directs our attention towards something, if only the shiny porcelain of a urinal, as if things that deserve a "second take" are all around us (in reality). Indeed, according to Wiki, his biographer stated that, "it does not take much stretching of the imagination to see in the upside-down urinal's gently flowing curves the veiled head of a classic Renaissance madonna or a seated Buddha or, perhaps more to the point, one of Brancusi's"

But I think, the quality of "pleasing to the eye" alone merely reminds us of the fact that the human eye/mind naturally responds to certain gestalts, and thus might refer to "craft" as opposed to art, which for me is the quality of style appropriately echoing content. As for the urinal, I fail to see how the "gentle flowing curves" of the porcelain echoes the content (e.g., voiding ones bladder of fluid)...which leads me to think that Duchamp was either stating (if I may critique) that there is no such thing as art (and one can piss on anything that makes such a claim) or that anything can be art (even things one urinates on).

If the latter, I would suggest that the flowing curves of the urinal have nothing to do with urine, and Duchamp was perhaps making an allusion to the idea that people such as King Louis XIV could 'euphemistically' make everything seem lavish...as if creating a world that cosmeticizes even the

distasteful reality of urine. And indeed, that is what most if not all art tends to do...As G.B. Shaw remarked, ""Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable."

marieltrokan

Robbity: Yes, I got the 'bacteria to Buddha' phrase when I thought about how to talk about the range of living things in a way that expresses both physical and spiritual evolution.

So ending the phrase with the word "Buddha" was rather obvious. Then it because a question as to where to start at the lower end of the spectrum. I recalled reading a claim that certain a group of Buddhists (or could have been Hindi) had the saying that one should not step on even an ant, as all creatures are on the way to Nirvana, and you are just delaying their journey; and that, indeed, members of the group actively (so the story goes) watched where they stepped.

Instead of 'ants to Budhha', I opted for bacteria to Buddha as it was alliterative, bacteria were more primitive than ants, and viruses were too close to being inorganic.

I did find one hit on Google though, when I put in "bacteria to Buddha" with the quote marks, as it was apparently the heading some Hindu devotee put as the title of his forum page, so guess I am not the first person in the world who thought of the phrase and found it catchy.

Swansont: Don't mean to be contentious or uppity (I'm sure you know a thousand times more about physics than I do), but I thought I read that a photon always travelled at c (never more nor less), but just seemed to go slower through a medium, e.g., a sheet of plastic, because it had to bounce around while in the plastic, but nevertheless was still bouncing at c.

Also, do you agree that time-transformation (as Michel says) and thus time dilation are observational and thus in the eye of the 100 beholders mentioned in the anecdote above.

How can it be "observational" if even atomic (and perhaps photon??) clocks slow down under certain conditions (e.g., not only with reference to an inertial observer, but also within a gravitational field, when accelerating, or whatever?). And indeed, do we take the twin paradox literally....If I put a banana in an extremely fast centrifuge, is it going to spoil and develop spots more quickly after an hour of twirling around than the one I leave outside the centrifuge?

As for space curvature...If we only take space curvature in a metaphorical abstruse sense (i.e., as einstein apparently admitted, we can't visualize space curvature and it is only an 'expression' after all to talk about what the math tells us), why do we take it in a literal sense when we talk about light curving as it passes the sun owning to spacetime curvature?

Seems to be a some confusing misnomers in advanced physics...If "time" is just a fourth dimension of space (e.g., owing, I am guessing, to the expansion of the universe at around the speed of c),then why don't we use a different term that sound more like it refers to space, since even time in the popular sense is measured by the (comparative) movement of things (such as the hands on a clock) through space

disarray,

But here we are getting to what hate is about. You for instance have a certain feeling for gays or against them. You have decided being gay is OK and that only people who also feel being gay is OK are good people. Then you equate people in the U.S. who are uncomfortable with sexual confusion, with fundamentalist Muslims who are, recently, throwing gay people from the tops of buildings.

This all suggests that I am in error and need to be disciplined. And the correct way to be good is to be undogmatic, unreligious, tolerant, educated, open to discussion, in favor of compromise and unity and understanding, and aware of contradictions and conflicts in ones own thinking and moral code...which are all already considerations I have registered in my "good" column and things I already consider I am doing the right way.

So, there has been a certain thread in political discussions of the day of hate and fear belonging to conservatives and love and acceptance belonging to progressives.

I have not suggested that being gay was OK. For example, I would agree that our species would not last very long if 'gayness' ever got too popular. Nor have I said it was "good." However, I would point out that gays are extended the same rights under the law as other citizens.

I did point out that you seemed to be inconsistent in that you criticized the anti-gay attitudes found in countries with a high Muslim population, but then seemed to be against blaming anti-gay sentiment that was apparently rife in the shooter's life around the time of the shooting in this country. But no, it is misrepresenting the facts to suggest that there is not violent anti-gay crimes performed here in the U.S, many of which are indeed galvanized by fundamentalist thinking. Need I really site newspaper clippings or can you research that yourself?

In any case, I still think that your inconsistency on this point is curious...if you are already unaware of such contradictions in your thinking, I would think that you would not continue to make contradictory statements. But, as a contributor to this discussion, I find nothing egregious about pointing out what appears to me to be contradictory thinking, so I don't know why you would even mention it or find it objectionable. On the other hand, if you don't think you were being contradictory, you just point out your side of things......so, should be no problem. No one said anything about your being disciplined..I think you are overreacting, to be honest.

Similarly, my bulleted points about positive ways to deal with hatred was not targeted at you, as you seem to think, but rather just a typical textbook list one might find in a 101 psychology book.

I take your point that hatred is an extension of disapproval, and I take your point that people have different opinions as to what is right or wrong, and I take your point that people's ideas of what is right and wrong may vary from place to place, person to person, and time to time, and culture to culture, or whatever....but so what. I'm just against unnecessary violence...period. As to what I think is right or wrong...again, check the U.S. Constitution. As to my personal opinions, who cares...I am not going to get violent about anything that bugs me.

And no, I don't think conservatives are all full of fear and hate and progressives are all love and accepting. Indeed, when one looks at history, one finds that one finds unnecessary hatred and violence on all extremes of any particular spectrum you might like to set up. But with regards to the issue of the recent Orlando shooting, it would be my guess that if one did a survey of those who most aggravated the shooter with regards to anti-gay attitudes, I suspect that one would find a disproportionate number of what is called fundamentalists. Whether such fundamentalists could best be described as conservatives, liberals, progressives, environmentalists, zealots, visionaries, traditionalists, nationalists, etc., I will leave up to you.

I'm just against excessive and irrational dislike (i.e. hatred that results in violence)...would you agree on this?

I think that couched within the question is the issue as to whether psychological therapies are very effective. We know that medications are effective in that we can measure the impact that they have on a person's body, e.g., activity levels, pulse, etc., but they are not very efficacious in the sense that they don't very often affect the biological and/or psychological issues and behavior that a patient might still have when not on medication.

One reason why someone might be prompted to ask the question about the effectiveness of psychotherapy is that Freudian and Jungian therapies have had such mixed results and reviews over the years, a fact that is highlighted by the high expense that many patients paid for such treatment for decades.

But yes, we can use scientific methods to examine data, construct treatments, make predictions, and evaluate progress, even though we often or usually don't know exactly what we have done right or what exactly has happened in the person's mind/body when they positively responded to such treatment (but that is not a crucial issue in terms of whether or not we call it a science).

CharonY

I agree that arguing that something is or is not "art" as if something is either "beautiful" or it is not, is (Platonic) essentialism at its worse. However, we can use the word to denote the beliefs about what constitutes art held by those who try to appreciate such works.

Thus, we might define art as that which is crafted for the sole purpose of affecting some ones artistic sensibilities (e.g., to illustrate an idea in an appropriate manner where style echoes content). I throw this definition out there because I want to stress the idea that the general public often has to be persuaded that something is a work of art.

In Derrière la Gare Saint-Lazare, for example, the artistic effect (or poignancy, if you like) is largely reliant on the presumption that the photo was not staged, but was a moment of everyday life that somehow transcended its mundanity because of the happy or fortuitous (co)incidences portrayed in the photo, e.g, (as pointed out) the background poster (also its reflection in the water) echoes the actions of the man (who doesn't realize, as does the viewer) that he is being something of an acrobat, or that the poster mimics his actions in a rather carnivalesque manner.....which makes the man's lack of awareness even that more comical, as he doesn't realize (as does the viewer) that he, all dressed up in his suit, is being so untypically (and 'unbusinesseylike') comical, perhaps to the amusement of the person in the background.

But yes, what a happy coincidence that the camera just happened to be there at the right place at the right moment to capture such almost transcendentally serendipitous event, as if it were an example of synchronicity....hence we are virtually in the realm of Jungian spirituality...some universal 'interconnectedness' that every so often brings people and things together in such a transcendentally coincidental and artistic way....or so the public might feel, even though they might not put it into such words. Indeed, Cartier-Bresson himself underscored this sense of unity and interconnectedness when he stated that, ""Photography is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis. It's a way of life."

But again, the feeling that it is art would be vitiated, I think, were the artist to walk up to the viewer in a gallery and tell him or her that he staged the whole thing.

The public allows itself to be mesmerized by the artist's gift of meaningfulness, and ignores any sleight of hand tricks that went into wrapping it up in its magical trappings.

If you want something, you may well need to give something else up. Just the way the world works.

 

Drug test is more likely. Hard to accuse your pee of dishonesty.

Again, these are gray areas. Police give random drug tests when they set up "booze buses" to test drivers at random, so it sees reasonable that such tests might be conducted in the workplace if there is a situation in which safety is involved, e.g., someone who is running a fork lift around other people, or someone whose behavior suggests that they are under the influence. As a rule of thumb, one might suggest that the rights one has in the workplace should be the same as one has in, say, a university. Are we to suggest that students can't criticize the university that he/she attends, or perhaps a professor?

When it comes to giving something up, we should draw the line at the Bill of Rights.

Private businesses have a right to hire whom they want (or if you like, to ask people to give things up), but, as things stand now, it seems that the federal government claims the right to draw the line at such things as race, religious belief or worship, sex, and color, as well as infringing on personal rights with any actions that detract on citizens being secure in their persons, their houses, their papers, and their other property from all unreasonable searches, or that abridge their freedom of speech.

As an aside, I gather that, by a very narrow margin, the legislature recently voted against including 'sexual orientation' to the list...guess corporations want to have the right to not hire people on that basis (though one wonders just how they go about determining people's orientation?).

Again, one need not assume that corporations want to restrict people's freedoms for valid reasons, and, I would suggest, in most cases they are either worried about whether they will arouse the prejudices of their present employees (e.g., against colored people), that they are hiding something (corrupt or questionable), or that they are worried about their public image, and thus, about losing revenue...When it comes to unnecessarily restricting people's freedoms, the buck often ends on the boss's desk.

Kant too, as I recall, thought we could get closer and closer to reality, the noumena, as opposed to our "phenomena", without ever being able to experience "it." given current ideas about the ephemerality of an electron, for example, with it's "superposition" and wave/particle states, etc., that should not surprise us. But whatever is beyond the reach of our senses and sensory aids (e.g. particle accelerators and electron microscopes)is still as real and "physical" as the "things" we assume we experience directly, or rather, as physical as our mental images, which is , in the final analysis, all we ever have. But perhaps one limit will be that our aiding tools use (or rather"are")similar subatomic or submolecular things as the things we are attempting to describe and measure, e.g., trying to see an electron with electron microscope or "measure/observe" electrons in double slit experiment without our instrument disturbing the electron.

It is a tautology that we can't see, hear (etc.) that which we can't.

Nor can we assume that it would be possible for some animal or creature to experience things that we can't now. For example, we might assume that because a dog can hear higher pitched sounds than we can, or that if only we were like some snakes or bats or deep ocean creatures we could detect infrared heat. Perhaps, we then assume that some living creature (or perhaps a hypothetical god) could experience anything that exists, even though our senses only allow us to experience a slice....about a trillionth (I have read, can't find quote right now) of the electromagnetic spectrum.

But even if we could experience every possible wave buzzing around in the universe, we still would not experience more than our senses allow us to....and as Kant seminally pointed out, our brain reorganizes and projects information on to what we experience anyway so that there is always the sunglasses (my example) between us and what we are trying to experience (e.g., there is no color 'pink' in nature...our mind constructs it, as does it the other colors it experiences).

So the question about some ultimate reality becomes what things look like, or sound like or smell like, etc. to some hypothetical God who has no filters and sees things as they really are because he is pure spirit and thus not limited by physical eyes and ears and noses, etc, or that can see everything from all possible directions at once. The answer is that the question is meaningless confabulation....What we cannot experience (be it with our eyes, or through our microscopes, or with our various measuring tools) we cannot experience...end of story.

Most people, even those who understand and embrace evolution, don't realise just how influential evolution has been and continues to be. It is nature in the making. As such it should always be the first point of reference whenever anything regarding those disciplines are being considered. Let me put it this way, your personality and whatever you think when you read this, whatever you decide next, do next, say or write next are likely determined by a unique interaction between your genetic make-up and your environment.

Yes, I think that people instinctively feel that they are making decisions independent of biological influences (e.g., instincts). Pinker has a lot to say about this, but suffice to say that religion, parental upbringing, our legal system, etc. all contribute towards this rather illusory feeling. All the more reason to teach not only evolution, but also evolutionary psychology. The two (obviously generalized) scientific estimates I have heard were 50/50 or 40% environment and 60% genetic with reference to the development of personality. Of course, these are just rough figures presented to make a point, namely, that genetics does indeed have a huge impact on personality

Freud may have gone down a lot of dead ends, but his basic vision that people need to be more aware of the influence of biology on their behavior is timeless.

 

 

Reincarnation/Karma is a pseudo god, by which I mean it seeks to provide succour to those that don't

understand the benefits of forgiveness but are happy to be told.

Your atoms can survive physical death but you can't.

 

May I suggest, with all due respect, you revisit our previous correspondence and Nietzsche.

Just a hint, when you understand why god is irrelevant, you understand why it's needed.

dimreepr: So let me get this straight: On the one hand you are arguing against the (Eastern) religious concept of reincarnation/karma as if it were a "pseudo God, and, in the same breath, hinting about the need for god. Do you see a contradiction here? I don't recall having any dialogue with you regarding Nietzsche as you say, but would prefer that you would just state what is on your mind with regards to him, rather than just beating around some (apparently Mosaic) bush.

Secondly, I stated that my view of reincarnation, though originally taken from Eastern religions, was shorn of any religious connotations (much like Jefferson took ideas from Christianity and rejected the religious connotations such as the miracles) . For example, I stated that my view did not include "karma" which is, in my and Weber's opinion, an attempt to keep the masses in line in an ethical sense. Moreover, there is no room for a personal god in my view, and indeed, Buddhism (unlike Hinduism) generally has no personal god per se, and indeed, many would not even classify it as a religion. (And no, I am not a Buddhist apart from endorsing a few of its tenets; nor do I believe in Karma or anything like it).

Yes, people are atoms, but the atoms (or, perhaps more specifically, the molecules) do not disappear upon physical death....rather they are more or less recycled. Similarly, it is not scientifically inconceivable that something similar happens to "consciouosness" (I put the word in inverted commas to signify that scientists do not have much of a grasp on what consciousness is or what it entails anyway):

"According to the two scientists [renowned physicists, Roger Penrose and Dr. Stuart Hameroff], our brain is a biological computer and the consciousness is a program run by the quantum computer found in the brain that continues to exist after we die. They argue that what people perceive as consciousness is actually the result of quantum gravity effects inside these microtubules. This process is named by the two scientists "Orchestrated Objective Reduction" (Orch-OR)....the "Orch-OR theory" ...remains a controversial theory among the scientific community."

Although, this is not the exact scientific approach I had in mind as far as what happens with regards to any residual mental activity after physical death, the quote above illustrates that it is not ridiculous to take a scientific approach (e.g., non-religious, non-spiritual) the issue of life after death, especially when one does not invoke faith, God, divinely inspired scriptures, divine rewards and punishments, penance, rituals such as baptism, the supernatural, etc.

I had a look at the link you posted re evolution and supports Intelligent Design, the darling anti-evolution theory of Christians in general and (covert) Creationists in particular. I could engage in a discussion as to the points made in the article, and there are plenty of books on the shelf written by scientists far brighter than me who engage in such discussions far better than I can, but it seems to me that you are rather quick to glibly dismiss anything is not in line with your own religious views, judging from the manner in which you apparently skimmed over my post (as you disagreed with statements that I did not even make or when I had actually said the opposite of what you accused me of saying!). Moreover, the thrust of this thread is why religious people continue to 'invent conflicts' with scientists, not to re hash old arguments.

But since you mentioned it, the 'odd' (pun intended) religious article aside, the theory of evolution is the backbone of biology and related sciences:

"Evolution is so interwoven into the fabric of modern life that it is almost impossible to imagine the world without it....Darwin’s legacy to posterity lies as much in revolutionizing the methodology of the life sciences as in offering particular views about evolution...Historians generally shy away from engaging in “what if” stories, but most would agree that had “On the Origin of Species” not been published, we would still believe in evolution, but the development of modern biology would have unfolded much differently, and with less striking success."

from https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/darwin/textonly/darwin_essay1.jsp

Raider 5678, you say "Quick question, is sentience a trait or, according to some(memaammals link), something that can't be real becuase all animals are the same. Exactly the same."

In a nutshell, I consider physical evolution to be a fact. I do, however, speculatively entertain, from a scientific rather than religious standpoint, the idea that consciousness may survive physical death, as well as the idea of reincarnation (sans Karma). I say scientifically with reference to the likes of physicists such as Roger Penrose.

Bottom line though, is that I observe that modern homo sapiens are vastly superior on an intellectual level than other animals, though of course every animal has its fortes.

Given that I embrace evolution, I don't think there is a distinct line, or rather any line at all, between people and the rest of the animal kingdom whatsoever. So no, I think that your are going around in circles with semantics regarding the meaning of "sentient," particularly if one starts making ad hoc definitions of the word as one goes.

My main recollection of this word is in connection with my readings of Eastern religions, which, for example, say that eventually all sentient creatures will be saved (i.e., reach a state of Nirvana).

Moreover, I think that it is generally conceded in the scientific community that all animals are sentient. It used to be that many if not most people thought that animals, not only did not have souls, but barely experienced consciousness or pain. The following quote is from a webpage that directly addresses the issue:

"A strong and rapidly growing database on animal sentience supports the acceptance of the fact that other animals are sentient beings. We know that individuals of a wide variety of species experience emotions ranging from joy and happiness to deep sadness, grief, and PTSD, along with empathy, jealousy and resentment. There is no reason to embellish them because science is showing how fascinating they are (for example, mice, rats, and chickens display empathy) and countless other "surprises" are rapidly emerging....Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors"

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201306/universal-declaration-animal-sentience-no-pretending

So, in terms of evolution, whatever you think humans have, be it free will or consciousness or sentience or emotions or instincts or a soul or whatever, other species in the animal kingdom have it or at least the 'rudiments' of it on some level and to some degree.

........................................................

John L-G: I can't help throwing in my 2 cents on your question about Freud and Jung. Their relationship was indeed one of the great intellectual quarrels in history, with Freud being the atheistic and deterministic scientist (with ironic Jewish background) who objected to Jung's alleged 'contamination' of his version own understanding of human psychology with the sort of "occult mysticism" that Freud thought was perhaps not much better than voodoo.

As the question as to whether we have a subconscious in the manner in which Freud outlined it is perhaps still in the "not sure" box as far as the "scientific community" is concerned, though it seems to me that Jung offered, apart from anthropological evidence (much as Frazer had done in his Golden Bough, or J. Campbell in his work on mythology) for the existence of some collective unconscious....which is central to his depth psychology.

In recent years, I have read a few articles claiming that neurologists had vindicated the much maligned field of psychoanalysis (and thus Freud himself), by pointing out that many of the mechanisms (e.g., the defense mechanisms) outlined by Freud and his daughter could be matched up with certain neurological functions. I have never read anything suggesting that Jung's ideas could be defended from a scientific standpoint. Indeed, though he expressed reverence for science, he had a great affinity for Eastern Religions. In that regard, here is an interesting Christian website entitled, Carl Jung: Man of Science or Shaman, that concludes that Paul warned against the sort of "deceptive influences" that Jung represented: http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/nathan/jung.htm

Endy0816:

There are a lot of gray areas with regards to this issue, but I fail to understand why anyone would lean towards corporate rights to restrict private behavior. I think, in this regard, that using the military as if it provides, perhaps, some sort of standard for the rest of us, is such an obvious red herring that I can't help wondering why you brought it up in the first place.

My point about the neighbor is that the situation should never arise where one is placed in the position of not being able to smoke in ones home if one wants to get a job. Please read the section about Big Brother from my last post, if you haven't already, as I posted it a while after my I posted the rest of it.

I guess my main point is that institutions found in civilian life (be they schools, churches, companies, etc.) seem to be in the habit of restricting personal freedoms with such a degree of audacity and confidence, that few people question it, even though they would bulk if even a personal friend imposed on their freedoms in the same way. In general, people in the general public are often bamboozled and fleeced by white collar professionals who can rather easily create an aura of impeccable virtue and unquestionable authority, e.g., doctors, dentists, lawyers, and even professional blue collar workers such as plumbers, electricians, etc.

As I agree with those who point out that there is something of an erosion of personal freedoms, e.g., free speech as well as perhaps ever increasing corporate and governmental corruption and manipulation, I tend to lean towards restricting encroachments on individual rights.

In any case, I think that there are few generalizations here, and one has to judge things on a case by case basis, or even secret by secret basis, as even the issue of Edward Snowden is not a black or white issue when it comes to legal and moral assessments.

Strange...what? The arguments between Einstein were tooth and nail about fundamental issues of science. I fail how you interpret my post as listing personal opinion..as far as scientists are concerned, they were making very definite claims. Yes I mentioned someone has an opinion about other scientists re schrodinger, but even that is with reference to matters of scientific judgment. I don't see what distinction you are trying to make.

Tar

But in your 2nd to last post, didn't you object to blaming Republicans and their anti-gay stance, and now you say that it is okay to object to Muslim anti-Gay attitude? Again, I don't see how you can say that others are being biased, when it seems to be the case, as you yourself acknowledge, that you are biased in that your are "leaning toward 'hating' ISIS'.

You say, "is one of the reasons fundamentalist Muslims hate the U.S. because we don't hate gays?"

Again, that seems rather biased....as you assume that there are not plenty of people who hate gays in the U.S., a fact which, again, you seem to overlook in your effort to blame ISIS, as opposed to fundamentalists or anti-gay people in the U.S.

The obvious attitude should be that people shouldn't hate people because they are "gay", nor should we hate people who hate "gays," and certainly it is not OK to "ok to try and eliminate people that want to eliminate you" as you stated. Indeed, this sounds something that the shooter himself would have said.

In general, hate is not very productive (sarcasm), and there are alternatives, e.g.,

• Reduce dogmatism and religious elitism
• Encourage tolerance through education, the media, legislation, discussions, etc.
• Try to find common ground between people and give them common tasks and goals that encourage bonding and understanding
• Identify and expose hypocrisy

John Jones stated that "The validity of every verse of Scripture hinges on exactly one truth in Scripture: Genesis 1:1-"

This seems to me to be something of a circular argument, wouldn't you say? (Logic 101).

Perhaps an equally relevant passage is " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." from John 1:1.

But hey, we can see the same sort of claim in other religious, allegedly divinely inspired scriptures, e.g., "And Allah by His words [kalimati] doth prove and establish His truth, however much the sinners may hate it!"