PeterJ

Fair enough Alan. In my opinion ACIM is authoritative. We don't have to argue about it. I didn't understand the word 'disgusting' either, but I don't think stating our opinions as facts helps much in a philosophy discussion.

To see Hitler as inexplicable in terms of karma is to fail to understand the whole idea. Karma would be a painfully naïve idea if it couldn't even explain a human being. Karma does not entail the passage of our ego from one life to the next. It is more common that the sages use words like 'impressions'. It is also impossible to know whether Hitler's life was an outcome of good or bad karma. It would all depend on his trajectory. Also, karma allows for happenstance. It is our experience of existence that it would determine, not all the details, which would be largely down to blind luck and material causation. I'm afraid I have to agree with Phi that stating that God exists is not helpful. Fair enough to note that this is your opinion. In my opinion it would be naïve to imagine that the Ultimate Phenomenon must obey the existence/non-existence contradiction, regardless of whether we call it God. It would be this naïve idea that stands between us and a solution for origins. Cosmology needs this idea and cannot succeed without it. This is not another dogmatic 'God exists' statement, but logically demonstrable. If we stick to what is demonstrable in logic or by empiricism then we can't go far wrong. Trouble is folks tend to ignore one or the other. I'm not going to say a lot more ( I hope) since my views are expressed better elsewhere. But I would urge you not to dismiss karma as nonsense until you have understood the philosophical foundation on which it rests. Otherwise it will be misunderstood and utterly implausible. It is a highly difficult issue about which even Buddhists may disagree when it comes to the details. We can at least state that karma requires no breaches of the laws of causation but, rather, insists that there never can be one. So, it is perfectly consistent with naturalism and determinism while being perfectly inconsistent with materialism and most forms of theism. This reflects just how subtle an issue it is. It is worth noting that for the Jesus of A Course in Miracles, 'Choice is meaningless'. This would be the 'nondual' view, or way of explaining the universe. So, we have to reconcile the laws of karma with an absence of freewill. Good luck. When we have done this we will be finally getting to grips with what the theory actually states.

Tar - As usual I find what you say well thought out but slightly adrift from my perspective. For a start let's agree about reincarnation. It doesn't work. As for the rest I'm not quite sure exactly what you're saying but it seems sensible. Note, however, that this idea that we are just puny mortals is the very opposite of the nondual or 'perennial' view, i.e. the view that endorses karma. Karma will not work without the rest of the package. Karma simply is cause and effect so 'auto-pilot' would be a fair metaphor. The crucial issue would be that it includes mental causation, thus conditioning and habit of thought. Thus to transcend karma would be possible and this is the goal of the mystic. In Christianity this would be the 'Atonement' or the healing of our separation from Reality. The relevant point would be that the theory of karma cannot be separated from the general theory in which it sits. Hence I believe that it is not much use thinking about it much prior to researching the metaphysical basis of the wider theory.

Yep. No magic or pretend individuals. Just the operation of the universe. As ye sow so shall ye reap. No judgemental God required. Karma depends on the whole thing being on autopilot.

Karma is not a simple mechanism. Hell, even physical causation is not a simple mechanism. Opponents of karma here seem to share a lack of interest in finding our what the theory actually states. It is actually very difficult to discern this, since it requires a grasp of the wider cosmology within which the theory of karma sits. Karma only makes sense in the context of nodualism. It makes no sense within ordinary theism.

Tar - I think you have hit on the problem of reincarnation. It doesn't work. The Buddhist idea of rebirth is not reincarnation, and Karma does not require reincarnation but something very different. As lightmeow has said, these issues are complex. It would be vital to distinguish between reincarnation and rebirth for some understanding of the mechanisms of karma. It would be just cause and effect, no divine agency required. One key aspect is that on our death what remains would be entirely subject to blind causal forces, no freewill or agency would be involved. Only while we are alive can we improve our situation. It would be a kind of purification process, like an industrial production process with an automatic rejection and recycling of faulty goods. As for evidence, it is ambiguous. I have been able to establish a sound logical basis and supporting argument for Buddhist teachings in all areas except this one. Karma seems a little like a 'lemma'. But it seems to be the most minimal mechanism for making some sense of the idea of progress towards 'heaven' and away from this mortal coil. That is, of theories that endorse a continuation that transcends life and death this one seems to be the most parsimonious.

Hi AoT - What a good question. I'd say this. First, hang on to your logical approach. Logical analysis would be vital in religion. Without it we might end up believing any old nonsense, as any survey of religion will show. If one approaches religion as a matter of logic one is bound to end up in metaphysics. Then sooner or later we will stumble across people like Kant, Bradley and Nagarjuna, who show that logic leads us to the conclusion that the ontological structure of Reality extends beyond the categories of thought. Accordingly, in Nagarjuna's logical proof of Buddhism's Middle Way philosophy God does not appear and is in fact refuted. So here we have a religion without theism that is perfectly consistent with logical analysis and science. If you really are a logical thinker this is where you are bound to end up when investigating religion or metaphysics. It is the only view that solves the logical conundrums that arise for metaphysics, and it will leave you free to be an atheist. . . . .

I'd agree with most of that, XVBXRPL, except for your idea that religion is necessarily illogical and always just a superstition. A little logical thinking shows that this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It would be precisely our tendency to think emotionally rather than logically that leads to the incomprehension of religion that is so widespread. This incomprehension seems to stem from a failure to take metaphysics seriously, thus a failure to understand how it works, and thus a failure to understand the philosophical basis of religion or even the need for it. We are left with no religion and no metaphysical theory. Not enough logical analysis would be my diagnosis, and too much emotional thinking.

Hang on. I did not suggest that 'Nothing' is a metaphysically empty concept. Quite the opposite.

Bignose writes - "But I keep reading from Unity and Peter that there is a pattern that can speed up calculations and predict primes. But despite many months of repeated claims, neither can actually demonstrate it. So I just don't get why they insist on posting to this thread that there are patterns when that does not represent our current knowledge." Sorry, BG, I saw no request. But I do now. Would you consider the falling density of the primes as we go higher up the number line to be an example? If this were instances of polio in a population we would call it a pattern. I hope I've never suggested that there is a discernable pattern that would allow us to predict the next prime. I do believe that there might be a way to do this, but it would certainly not be by examing the pattern of the primes. This would be a huge red herring and dead end as far as I can tell. The pattern would be found not in the primes but in the behaviour of their products. It would be the products that make the crazy music and the primes would be the missing spectral lines in the noise. This is a dynamic process that creates an evolving combination wave that has some predictable characteristics. It has a pattern. This may not be what everybody here means by 'pattern', and perhaps not Unity, but it's what I mean by it.

Saying that there is 'nothing' in cupboard is a different use of the term than saying that the world began with 'nothing'. One is an everyday convenient word meaning 'nothing of relevance', the other is an absolute metaphysical concept. If there really were nothing in your cupboard then physics would have to rewritten.

Quite so, Unity. You did not suggest there is an algorithm for finding the next prime. Yet this is the idea being objected to regularly. Seems to be a miscommunication.

Damn. I keep being caught getting serious, and it never works here.

Ha. That's actually quite funny. It goes to show how careful we have to be with language in metaphysics to avoid this sort of thing.

Hi DevilSolution. I get what you're saying and think it is important. You've hit on one of my favourite topics. Consider this solution. Something and Nothing are conceptual constructs. This is not an issue in everyday life where these are useful relative terms, but it is a fundamental issue in metaphysics where these are supposed to be absolute terms. If we reify either of them we have departed from logic and started speculating. When we ask (for instance) whether the world began with Something or Nothing we are making a very grand assumption. Over the centuries it has become clear that neither idea works or makes sense, and thus that this assumption is not plausible. So, this means we need to look beyond these conceptual distinctions for a (logical) solution. Many folk think that there can be no third option on the grounds that Something-Nothing is a dialectic contradiction such that it is subject to Aristotle's laws and the tertium non datur rule. This is a mistake. The laws of dialectical logic cannot decide whether the world began with Something or Nothing. The definition for a true contradictory pair of propositions states that one must be true and the other must be false. If we cannot show that this is the case then logic cannot decide between them. It's a tricky area of thinking. Paul Davies is very good in The Mind of God but does not find the solution. I have a directly relevant essay here: http://theworldknot.com/do-we-regularly-make-a-mistake-in-metaphysics You would be exactly correct. Creation and Creator would be illogical constructs. But these words can be used to mean something rather different from our usual meaning, more in the sense that 'fire creates smoke and is its creator'. Natural processes iow. Try reading Chuang-tsu, Lao-tsu or other 'non-dual' philosophers, and you'll see that they avoid digging a logical hole for themselves by avoiding the reification of a distinction between Something and Nothing. There would be a third option, and it would be perfectly in keeping with the laws of dialectic logic.

Well, the primes are bound to make local 'patterns' by serendipity, just like the digits of pi, but they are meaningless. It's only the predictable patterns that are interesting. There are predictable aspects of prime behaviour and very clear patterns. This would be why Fourier analysis is relevant. No?

Hmm. That's not a similar case. By 'pattern' I would mean a pattern that is predictable and explicable.

Oh okay. I thought the comment was aimed at me. It's not an assumption but a fact that there are detectable patterns. I did say that there can never be an overall (comprehensive) pattern, but there are certainly patterns that can be detected. The prime number theorem describes one of them.

Hi Unity. What assumption was that? I didn't think I made any.

I cannot see how there could ever be an overall pattern given the mechanism that creates the primes. But there is some pattern. The density falls as the numbers grow, and the primes always occur next to 6n. This is surely a pattern. But that's about it. The combination wave of the prime products is eternally evolving so the details of the pattern are never settled. All the same, it seems wrong to say there is no pattern at all.

No. I don't understand what's going on either. But I am well used to it. There is a vast chasm that divides our two different ways of thinking, and in my experience it is quite impossible to cross it from my side, only from yours. That is, nothing I say will help much unless you are seriously interested in the issues and a lot more than most people. The trouble is that you're asking only about the scientific issues, and from my side of the fence these are not even important, and cannot be grasped without some understanding of metaphysics and the meaning of Nagarjuna's argument. I cannot convey this on an internet forum, I have learnt over time. The only way any of this will ever makes sense if you do your own research. So it's best to leave it. It's not Nagarjuna you would need to understand, it's metaphysics. To someone who understands metaphysics it is easy to explain Nagarjuna and the implications of his philosophy. But to explain him to someone with no such understanding would be like explaining physics to someone who knows no mathematics. This is something I've only just fully realised, although the evidence of past discussions should have made it obvious long ago. I should have complained about Dan Dennett's ignorance of metaphysics and the education system that caused it, and not Buddhism. That would have saved us both a lot of trouble. I'd like to stop here if that's okay. I'll just say a few words about your final question and disappear. It's a question I would like to be able answer. I have an opinion,. but there are some technical issues involved. The space-time continuum would be a conceptual fiction, and the mathematical continuum we use for physics would not be the real thing. Hermann Weyl, no slouch as a physicist, discusses this topic at length in Das Kontiinuum and arrives at Nagarjuna;s view. Space and time would be not really real, nor, by implication, any phenomenon subject to it. Is this a prediction for physics? It would mean that it would be impossible to empirically demonstrate or discover that any extended phenomenon is real, substantial, self-subsistent. This would include galaxies, human bodies and Higgs bosons. What would be real would be what Weyl calls the 'intuitive' continuum, the empirical continuum of experience. Most of the implications are negative, and I don't know if negative implications are allowed. It would be impossible to demonstrate that materialism is true, and this seems like it might count as a testable prediction. Or is it just a hostage to fortune? Materialism is metaphysical theory anyway, and refutable as such, so logic has always predicted the impossibility of proving it. Nagarjuna just made this more clear. One prediction would be that physics, which is to say empirical observation, can never falsify the Buddhist worldview. Whatever the Buddha and Nagarjuna say about the world, and they said a great deal, the evidence will be consistent with it. This would mean that no competing theory or worldview can be proved or verified, since no fact could ever contradict it and logic already endorses it. Is that a prediction? Or can it be dismissed as meaning only that Buddhist doctrine is metaphysical? These things are complicated, and I could not just write of shopping list of predictions. Thanks for the chat and sorry it didn't go well. Let's call it a misunderstanding. I didn't come here to advertise so I won't put up a link. But I could suggest visiting Ulrich Mohrhoff's blog or site for an example of how physics and Nagarjuna can be reconciled. His book on the topic is readable online, and the relevant stuff is mostly contained in just one chapter. He refers to the Upanishadic view, but it's the same thing. Schrodinger is also good on this relationship, My blog is called the World Knot if you can track it down, but I say little about this particular issue since I'm still exploring it. Cheers Pete . . .

I find this quite confusing. I've tried to explain, which of course I cannot do all at once, and you come back at me with line-by-line counter-arguments. I spend a long time writing posts and then you tell that you have no interest in the topic ("to 'to put it mildly"). This tells me I'm wasting my time. It is common to find physicists saying that distance is arbitrary. It is a profound claim, so it seemed worth putting this in the list of implications. Yet you reject this as too vague to mean anything. If it is, and perhaps you're right, then one has to wonder why physicists bother saying it. I can't explain anything if every sentence is questioned. And of course I'm struggling to clearly identity these implications myself. , I was hoping to get some help here. I know the implications, but it would be debatable which ones are relevant to physics, and it may depend on which physicist we ask and where they place their boundaries. . . I'm happy to call this all my fault, but even so I see no way forward. Let's go about our business and put it down to experience. If you want the full story and a less off-the-cuff explanation then I can PM a link or two, but I don't think you'll be able to grasp what I'm saying without more of a grounding in philosophy, and I cannot write a book on the forum. Much of what I'm saying is uncontentious in philosophy and well discussed. I suspect that the idea that all extreme metaphysical theories are false can mean nothing, or must seem ad hoc, unless we have already established that none of them work. Then we see what the problem is and thus the need for such a bold solution. So maybe this discussion can only work where a person has an interest in both physics and metaphysics. That would seem very likely. Anyway, sorry I couldn't finds a way to communicate. No point in us getting any more riled up. I feel my point about Dennett has been made and he was supposed to be the topic, so thanks for the chat and let's agree to differ. . .

There you go. This is what I meant by a hostile reception. I'm sure you think you're being quite friendly, Strange, but from here it looks like you're just trying to waste my time. Do you want to talk about this or not. Never mind our English understatement. Either you're interested or you're not. . Do you not see that if you know nothing about metaphysics you can know nothing about its implications for physics? Do you read my words? It appears from your comments that you do not. I am extremely careful with them. If you cannot follow me up to this point then I can only suggest googllng some of the words. I'm not being unfriendly, just practical. We haven't even got to first base yet.

Yeah, quite right. Maybe I saw hostility when it wasn't meant, The problem here is that you 're asking me to explain things that take a long time. It's a bit like someone came here and asked for an explanation of entanglement. You'd send them off to read a proper explanation. But the point about implications is a bit different. Here goes. Nondualism, which is the 'ism' used to describe the doctrine of the late Upanishads and mysticism generally (Taoism, Sufism, The American transcendentalists etc) is the claim that both dualism and monism is false. By reduction the world would be a unity such that all distinctions would be emergent of epiphenomenal. Strange calls this 'not realistic' but I don't yet know why. It is a claim about what is real and what is not. Francis Bradley, who argues for the same view, calls his famous essay 'Appearance and Reality', which is good clue as to what it claims. Usually it is considered unlikely or even impossible that a metaphysical theory could have testable implications for physics, but the issues are subtle. One question would be, where does physics stop and metaphysic begin? Another would be, what would qualify as a scientific test? For instance, we now have something called 'scientific consciousness studies', and yet there is no scientific test for consciousness. The discipline studies a phenomenon whose existence cannot be tested. Of course it can be tested, but not for anyone who takes a strict view of what constitutes a scientific test. Still, we have a myriad of first-person reports, and statistical evidence of this kind is often considered scientific. So is consciousness studies scientific or not? Many people feel it is not. But some feel it is. So whether a theory of consciousness, or a theory that includes consciousness, could ever be scientifically testable may be a matter of opinion or definitions. I do not care about this technicality, since common sense and some knowledge of experimental work is usually enough for judging whether a test is believable or useful, but some people think this really matters, and I image some of them are here. . What we see in consciousness studies is a complete lack of progress on the central problem. This would be because a fundamental theory MUST be metaphysical. Accordingly, it has proved impossible to explain consciousness with a non-reductive theory. The idea that it must be taken as a primitive, as if it fundamental, is now common in literature. David Chalmers, who I would rate a lot higher than DD, has spotted this problem and suggested an approach called 'naturalistic dualism, whereby we would study consciousness scientifically and abandon any hope of a proper solution, since to find one we would have to solve metaphysics. Theoretical physics faces exactly the same problem. It is not really a problem, but it's a problem if we don't want this to be true. Nagarjuna solves metaphysics. Every problem evaporates. His solution is a whisker away from Chalmer's 'double-aspect theory of information' and I have never head Chalmers mention his name even once. When I complain about poor scholarship, it is not aimed anyone posting here but at professionals like Dennett and Chalmers. The solution requires the universe is a unity. So does this idea have implication fro physics? I'd answer yea, but I can see some valid objections. But if we change the question to: Does this idea help us make sense of the discoveries of physics, then the answer must be yes. There are plenty of physicists who see an interpretation for QM in this metaphysical view. I'm unsure of what those implications are exactly. They are completely consistent with physics, and it could not be otherwise if the universe is reasonable since the underlying 'theory' is provable in logic, but it would take a physicist to answer the question reliably. Here re some implications, scientific or not. The universe would be a unity All division and separation are illusory or conceptual The manifest universe of the BIg Bang is epiphenomenal No substance is fundamental Time and space would be conceptual imputations Distance would be arbitrary Materialism (and Idealism) would be false Hell, got to go now. I'll come back with a longer list if it's interesting. I didn't quite get to physics but it's a start. Perhaps the falsity of Materialism might count as a prediction for science. I wouldn't call it one, but a materialist scientist might see it differently. This is the sort of thing I'm exploring.

Okay. Maybe this is my fault. The thread is about Dan Dennett. I pointed out that he has solved no problems and that I cannot understand why he is admired other than for his prose. It would seem more sensible to me to admire people who made progress. I could have mentioned other names but I always think that Nagarjuna is the prime example of a success, since he offers the most comprehensive proof of how to solve philosophy of anyone I know. Francis Bradley gives the same proof, but in a less clear and less formal way. I went on to say that this seems to be a matter of education. In western academia it is almost always assumed that philosophy is intractable and that nobody has ever solved its problems. This is easy to establish since there is a constant stream of books and articles published that begin by assuming that Nagarjuna's view and solution are wrong but offer no counter-argument or plausible view to put in its place,. and usually make no mention of it. DD's book on consciousness is a perfect example. To many people it looks absurdly naïve, since he clearly has not done the research or, if he has, has chosen not to mention vast swathes of research and mountains of literature that are directly relevant to his ideas and the topic of the book. He may not think much of Nagarjuna's solution for consciousness and the mind-matter problem, but to ignore it reveals prejudice and incomprehension. That's just one writer. But it is an epidemic. When scientists argue against God they never, in my experience, use the argument presented by Nagarjuna. Why not? It is overwhelming. But it is mysticism, so gets no attention. Again, I see this as an education issue. The early quantum pioneers were fascinated by the ideas coming out of mysticism, found them directly relevant to their work and often knew a lot about them. But then the shutters went up. These days ignorance is bliss. Lawrence Krauss even questions the value of doing philosophy so ignorant is he of its successes, and his view is widespread. This all has something to do with the narrowness of the curriculum, it seems to me, since if just one good lecture per university course was spent on the philosophical position advanced by Nagarjuna (i.e. Middle Way Buddhism) then people wouldn't be able to get away with a book like Consciousness Explained. His readers would be asking him why he rejects Nagarjuna's metaphysics or fails to even mention it, when it could not be more directly relevant. Kant comes to the same philosophical; conclusion and he is supposed to be respectable, but he is also widely ignored. Anyone holding dangerous views like his is ignored. I hesitate to call it a conspiracy but it might as well be one. I'm not sure I should be expected to do the work of google, but here's a few notes. A metaphysical position or theory is a general theory of everything. It must be fundamental or it is incomplete. A 'positive' metaphysical theory is a theory that is partial, extreme or one-sided. Metaphysical problems take the form, superficially at least, of dilemmas. They have two 'horns'. This may be something/nothing, mind/matter, existence/non-existence and so on. When we ask a metaphysical question we find that we have to choose between two extreme answers, neither of which work. Anyone can verify this. It is, for instance, the entire justification for logical positivism. Nagarjuna shows that all these extreme do not work, in case there should be any doubt. He does this in order to persuade us to abandon them. The result is a 'neutral' position, one for which all extreme views are false, just as logic would suggest. In this way he explains two millennia of lack of progress in western metaphysics. It would be because his view is always rejected but never refuted. One implication would be that extension is not fundamental. I always feel that this has some bearing on nonlocality, and it is something I wouldn't mind discussing. But that's one for another thread. Please don't think I want to argue. It would be daft to argue before getting to the bottom of what we're arguing about. My point is about education, the narrowness of the curriculum and the poor scholarship of a certain professor. If he had put one sentence in his book giving the reasons why he feels it necessary to invent a different solution than endorse Nagarjuna's, which generically is 'nondualism', then I would have been happy. As it is he joins his mate Dawkins in the category of scholars who can't be bothered to do the work. Physics loses much credibility and respect because of this partiality and narrow-mindedness. and I am regularly in conversations where people just laugh at it. I do not laugh at it. Physics is important, and there are some great thinkers working in it. But generally, as it is, it is stagnant and lost up-its-own-whotsit, and I cannot defend this approach. To be fair, there is much conflicting nonsense talked about Nagarjuna, which can make him a difficult study. Many western commentators massively complicate his message, and tend to focus on the mechanics of his argument rather than all that matters, which is his result. His result, that all positive meta[physical positions can be refuted, is the same as the one reached by Carnap, Russell, and so many others. But where they see a problem he turns it into a solution. He proves that the Universe must be a unity according to logical analysis. A 'unity' would have no parts. The implications for physics can be explored by first developing the metaphysical scheme that is required, and then exploring what it says about the physical world that might be tested, or that at least might be interesting. . The implications for physics are debatable. If we define physics strictly then I'm not sure what would count. But physicists spend a lot of their time speculating and writing about metaphysics. Theoretical physics, if it is ever to be fundamental, must actually be combined with metaphysics. But it is not difficult to work out some of them. The simplest and most bold way to sum up the main implication, which may or may not be one for physics, is to say that he proves that nothing really exists and nothing ever really happens. On the face of it this is a daft idea, but if we are content to take things at face value we'll never get far in philosophy. So, I suppose one prediction would be that it is impossible to prove that anything truly and independently exists. This is the case. Another might be that solipsism is unfalsifiable, which it is. Another would be that Materialism is false. This is a prediction for philosophy, not physics, but given how many scientists endorse this metaphysical position it might be considered an implication for science. But I cannot start speculating about implications on a hostile physics forum. It is for physicists to do physics, If we don't know whether a metaphysical scheme grounded on an axiom of unity would have implications for physics then the best person to ask would be a physicist. If they cannot answer then they are ignorant of a large area of philosophy. But when others attempt it the result can be too woolly to be useful (Dancing Wu Li Master, Motorcycle Maintenance and the whole genre), I hope this helps explain my point. There is no need to endorse my philosophical view, and I'm not arguing for it. I'm arguing for knowing what it is before rejecting it, and for taking it into account in books about consciousness. . .