Gees

You ask some difficult questions, and I think the answers are that both influence our ideas of who we are. Identity is a difficult concept because it requires an understanding of "self", which is very complex because "self" is a simple thing, but not a singular thing. I don't know everything about "self" and identity, but I can share some information. Since it has already been brought up, I should clarify the idea of identity as to birth. When a person is born, they are physically separated from their mother, but retain the emotional bond and identity for a period of time. We know this because infants, who do not retain a bond (or quickly develop a bond) die of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). These babies do not possess the instincts that are necessary for life, like the ability to suckle and the need to breath. These instincts and the bonding both work through the unconscious aspect of mind and are part of Jung's collective unconscious, which could be called the larger "self" and causes us to identify with other humans. This human identity is a chemical or DNA internal concept; the bond with the mother is also internal and originated through the shared body. At about 8 months old, the infant has discovered his fingers, toes, and the extend of his physical body; it is at this time that babies start to cry whenever mom leaves the room because they now realize that she is not connected and could leave them! So prior to this time, babies have no idea that mom and baby are separate things, which leads me to believe that baby sees his identity as the same as his mom's identity. This is a good time to start playing peek-a-boo with them so they can learn that out of sight does not mean gone. At about 2 years old, the baby finally has enough of it's own identity that it can survive a break in the bond with it's mother/caregiver, which is why SIDS is no longer a threat. It is about this time that baby realizes that mom has her own mind and could possibly disagree with baby, which causes a lot of stress, so baby tests this idea in the form of the "terrible two's", where baby disagrees with everything. This is when we get signs of an individual mental self. Then around 5 years, the child realizes that other people have their own minds and points of view. At 7 years the child has a fully developed rational aspect of mind. Although more changes will happen for years to come, this is the age when the child is considered to have the ability to choose rationally and to have identity. Most people consider the rational aspect of mind to be their "self" or identity. So far we have talked about the parts of identity that come with the body. Then there is identity that is acquired by living: the school you went to, your hobbies, sports, religion, culture, family, friends, social status, race, college, work, city, country, home, or anything that you put the word "my" in front of adds to your identity. So identity comes from a lot of different sources, and "self" is like a drop that lands in still water causing an infinite number of ripples of "self". Does this part of identity affect your image of your "self"? Of course. Gee

Yes, that is a good example. Another might be the discovery of pheromones. Science thought that trees communicated along their root systems because it was obvious that communication happened, and it was not otherwise tracible. In the 1960's we discovered pheromones and realized that trees were communicating through the air, which solved that mystery. But then we learned that all multi-celled species communicate with pheromones (pheromones communicate more than just sex) and there is a whole world of communication that goes on in a forest or any ecosystem. This is probably how an ecosystem stays in balance, or at least it is part of the solution. I don't know why, but most of the people in the science forums have the general idea that philosophy does not observe, or they think that if the observation is done through technology, then it is not relevant to philosophy. This is not true. Without observation, I don't think there would be philosophy, or science. Gee

I think we are both having trouble understanding each other. It may be that I did not recognize your offer of a counter example to my absolute claim, because I did not make an absolute claim -- at least in my mind. There are very few things in reality that are absolute, so I was talking about a general understanding of how things work. If you take a hundred year old science book and a fifty year old science book, and a current science book on the same subject, you will find some differences over time in what science finds to be factual or true. Some subjects will have little or no change, others will have a lot of change. This is usually because the subjects with a lot of change found that false assumptions caused the flawed science, or you could say a false premise caused the flawed science, or you could say the flawed philosophy caused the flawed science. This is what I meant when I stated that without (good) philosophy, the science can turn to crap. It is possible that a scientist's experiment is flawed; it is also possible that the scientist is deceitful in his/her reports, but I find that mostly this is not "necessarily so". Mostly it is a false assumption or bad premise that screws up the science, which means bad or flawed philosophy. I like all of Gershwin's music. Great(er) is a word that is used comparatively. Look at your examples above to see the truth of this, so it is a word that is all about opinion. You are asking for opinions in this thread and then making the assumption that the opinion is in some way relative to the truth or fact of the matter. It is not. Whole threads have been devoted to explaining this, so I doubt that I can explain the difference, but I can tell you that truth is subjective and facts are objective. Cotton wool sandwiches? Are you serious? I don't think that I could eat something like that and hope I never have to. No. I am the one who used the word "dominant" because I see it as a problem in psychology/psychiatry. I see this as a left over problem from the monism v dualism nonsense, which causes science to treat consciousness like a problem that has to be treated with chemicals. Not a problem. I look at things a little differently, probably because of my studies of consciousness. I refuse to accept that the study is about either religion/"God" or about the human brain. But if one eliminates both of those things, what is there to study? How it works -- so that is what I study -- how things work. More facts or truths? Are we counting them? So more is better, or more is greater? Well distance, measure, numbers, and trees are of philosophical interest. I don't know a damned thing about "the production of high quality concrete", so I did not respond. Is there a point that is relative to this thread? Gee

Sorry it took me so long to respond. We had a bad storm and more than 300,000 people were without electricity for about a week. I still have pieces of a hundred year old maple tree strewn across my backyard where the electric company left it after cutting it off the power lines. No. Just what the doctor told me, but I have no reason to doubt him. I do remember that 40 or 50 years ago, Ocean Spray, cranberry juice had a note on its label that it was "partners in a kidney foundation". I always assumed that this was because of the "old wives tale", but that notice was removed a good 30 years ago. I assume that the removal of that notice coincided with the scientific testing that showed that cranberry juice did not fight bladder infections. I have no references and am not even sure if cranberry juice causing bacterial infections to slide off the walls of the bladder is a mechanical or chemical effect. You would need a scientist to figure that out -- I just keep cranberry juice in my cupboard. Generally speaking, I don't agree because physical therapy and surgery would not be part of medical science if mostly the chemical were considered. In my mind, only in psychology and psychiatry is the chemical too dominant in treatments. Not sure why you are referencing this -- the Bible is a history book(s). I have never read any history book that does not contain lies. Do you have a point? Well, whether "Great Britain", "The United Kingdom", or "The sun never sets on the British Empire", I think that it means that England thinks very well of itself. If you think that science fits the description of greater now, then you would have to agree that religion fit that description 1,000 year ago. Is that what you think? Philosophy is the study of knowledge, truth, and wisdom. Science and religion have both created methodologies to find their own knowledge and truths, which would be why they are both children of philosophy. Kind of like a teenager, who thinks he knows more than his parents? Not sure what you want here. Philosophy deals in truths, science deals in facts. Can facts exist without truths? No. Agreed. I did not state that they were doing science, what I stated was that they were working science; maybe I should have said working at science. Just as thinking is not doing philosophy, but it is a start. Gee

You are still misquoting people in order to make yourself look good and make them look bad? I thought you just did that to me. To be fair, I should note that jonnobody did use a complex sentence, so maybe you were just confused. I will underline the main parts of the sentence so that you can follow it. You see that word "haven't"? That means that Dennett did NOT use a spiritual basis. Does that clear things up? Gee Thank you. I have a starting point now. Gee

I did not know that. I have been wondering for some time now if thought is real; I know that emotion is real -- physical -- but was not sure about thought. Can you give me some reference so that I can study this? Well I don't know about the internet, but Jung's collective unconscious could be called a superconscious. Gee The integrated species-consciousness that you are referring to would be called the unconscious in us. Jung studied the collective unconscious and found there is at least one for every species and that it contains an unbelievable amount of information. You can find information on this in Wiki. No we don't have the obvious chemical perception of ants, but if you consider the riot mentality, you will find that chemicals produced through strong emotion causes a herd-like effect on our behavior. This collective unconscious does not really integrate, but instead connects us through bonding and emotion. Yes, trying to digest that much information would make anyone or anything insane. I spoke to a neurologist, who explained that just the information in a person's own unconscious mind would be too much to absorb, so trying to absorb the collective unconscious of a species would be ridiculous. Gee

Yes. It might help to remember that consciousness is not about doing anything including thinking. Consciousness is about being and feeling; thinking is an extra. Trees don't think, but they are conscious. Gee A lot of people confuse consciousness with conscience -- especially in the science forums because science insists that the brain and consciousness are the same thing. They are not. Flowers will turn their faces to the sun because they are aware (conscious) of the sun. Flowers do not have brains, so flowers have no rational aspect of mind, so they have no judgement regarding good and bad, so they have no conscience. Alive = some degree of awareness, consciousness Brain = rational aspect of mind and maybe conscience If you are going to try to understand these threads, you should know that spiritual means emotion/feeling. To get into the "spirit" of things is to get into the mood. A spirited horse is one with a lot of feeling. Although few people seem to understand this, religions actually study emotion and they name the entity that leads the emotion, "God". So you in fact are spiritual, cause you are not a psychopath. Yes, this can be done. All we have to do is observe other species and remember that consciousness is NOT thought and is NOT the brain. Consciousness is awareness. All life is sentient, so all life is aware of some things, specifically the need to eat, maintain itself, and reproduce. Any other things that they are aware of can be studied. Gee

Hello Studiot; It has been a long time. My thought is that science has always been a part of philosophy. 50,000 years ago, if someone had an idea and they did an experiment to see if the idea was valid, they were working science -- even if they did not call it science. I think science was defined as a separate discipline in the 17th century, (maybe by Galileo?) who worked out and defined the scientific method. As to which is greater, philosophy or science, it does not strike me as a valid question. It reminds me of the question, which is greater man or woman, which I always found to be kind of funny, as they are interdependent. Philosophy and science are also interdependent. Philosophy works to validate it's premise and puts faith in the beginning of a process; science works to validate it's testing and puts faith in the ending of a process; both are necessary to produce good results. For example: I was talking to my doctor just the other day and he was explaining about cranberry juice. Years ago, I had told him that I drank cranberry juice to relieve a bladder infection and he told me that it was an old wives tale and that cranberry juice had been tested and did nothing to bacteria and therefore did not help to get rid of an infection. When the subject came up again, he apologized and explained that a fortune had been dumped into the testing of cranberries with the thought being that a new medicine could be synthesized once the testing proved its validity -- but it had failed, repeatedly. Eventually it was learned that cranberries could not neutralize bacteria and could not fight bacteria, but could make the walls of the bladder slick so that the bacteria slid off and washed out, thereby disposing of the infection. If the testing is good, careful, and valid, but the premise is invalid, then the science turns into crap. If the premise is good, carefully considered, and valid, but testing shows negative results, then no matter how well thought out, the philosophy is crap. They are interdependent. Gee

Hoola; Nicola Tesla was an inventer, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and a physicist. Since the AC motor is based on science, we can rightly assume that his training in science is what enabled him to imagine the AC motor and cause it to be possible. Please note that he did not imagine "flying pigs" and enable them to be possible. This is a science forum. So it is not difficult for a clear thinking person to understand that the point of this thread is that "imagination" on it's own does not make things possible. Science is required. But I agree with you about the "advertising industry" as most people would rather imagine than think. G

Kristalris; Per the underlined above, who or what dictates which data is "relevant"? Because if you choose which data is relevant, then it is your opinion/judgment of that data that causes a circular and self-supporting evidence. Would that be imagination? Or would that be reality? G

Hello Everyone; While reviewing this thread, I came across the statement, "Well, we agree that the OP is not true." in Kristalris's last post to me, so I thought that I should clarify my position. I have no idea if YodaP's proofs of the statement, "If I can imagine it; it is possible", are accurate or not, because I do not know enough about math to evaluate the proofs. But I am in full agreement that the statement is nonsense. I have no doubt that a person can find truth using math, if they know what they are doing; on the other hand, I don't use math, because I do not understand it, so I often use emotion to find truth. Why? Because emotion is inherently honest--it does not know how to lie. So this is how I would consider the problem: You are reading a newspaper and come across an article about a man, who got high on drugs, imagined that he could fly, and jumped out of a third story window to his death. Would you think to yourself, "It is a shame that he tried that on a Tuesday, because any other day it is possible that it would have worked." or " What a waste. The man was an idiot." Better yet, we will say that the person, who imagines he can fly out the window is someone that you love or care deeply about. Would you think, "Gosh, I hope this works for him because he has always wanted to fly." or would you jump forward, grab the man and wrestle him to the ground to prevent his death? If you chose the first sentence in either or these scenarios, you are lying. We can pretend to believe anything that we can imagine, but once emotion is involved, the pretense falls away. If we consider people who are suffering from illness, people who have survived death camps, and people who lay for days on a battlefield praying for death, it is pretty clear that "If I can imagine it; it is possible" is just not true. Imagination has no causal effect on possibility. Since we have already ruled out Solipsism, the only possible argument that can be made is that imagination exists and possibility exists, and that they can happen together. Here is the problem with this argument. Per Wiki: "Superstition is a belief, not based on human reason or scientific knowledge, that future events may be influenced by one's behaviour [imagination] in some magical or mystical way." It is an argument for superstition. That is what superstition is, the idea that something can be imagined and possible with no causal relationship. The rational mind has an amazing ability to corrupt itself, as is evidenced by our history, and when one bases their considerations on imagination, then the possibilities for corruption are endless. But this is not truth--not reality. I am not sure why, but I have noted that when some people turn on their computers, log onto SFN and scroll to the Philosophy Forums, they seem to think that reality jumps on the back of a Pooka and takes a midnight ride. (chuckle) Not so. Reality is still here. While reading this thread, I came across a statement that explained that science starts out with imagination and a guess, which develops into hypothesis, testing, theory, and proofs. I have read this before, in this forum. I believe that someone was quoting Feynman, who was purported to state, "First you guess." When I read that, I was sure that it had to be a misquote, or out of context, because Feynman was a very smart man. But it is possible that science has moved so far from philosophy that it has forgotten it's roots and really believes that imagination and guessing is how truth is discovered. This might explain threads like this one, and the silly ideas that come from using imagination and guessing as a starting point for scientific exploration. To be honest, I suspect that using guesses to start scientific studies would cause one to run out of funding before they got anywhere. So I am going to share my layman's self-proclaimed version of how studies start with regard to philosophy. (chuckle) First, you observe or experience something. Then you must go through the very tedious process of stripping that something of your beliefs, projections, and perspective. This is a very important step, because if you can not accomplish this, then what you are studying is yourself, your beliefs, your projections, and your perspective, so you are not studying the actual "something". If you manage to strip away all or at least most of your biases, then you can start to analyze this "something" as you now can know the truth of it; what it is, in and of itself. As you analyze and study it, you will have questions like, "What is it? Why is it? How does it work?" At this point your imagination can come into play while attempting to answer these questions, so this is the guessing part. Imagination can work here because the parameters of imagination are limited by the truth that you have uncovered of the "something" that you are studying. Then you form a hypothesis and pass it off to science, so that science can test and prove it. Science will prove the hypothesis false and call you an idiot, or prove it true and claim the credit. Either way, philosophy rarely gets the credit. So if science forgets philosophy's truths, it can make a fool of itself and produce nonsense. If philosophy forgets science's proofs, it can make a fool of itself and produce nonsense. They are a team that works hand in hand. imo Maybe this will help someone to understand the imagination problem. Unlimited imagination belongs in Hollywood. imo G

Kristalris; After reviewing your last post, I had a lot to think about. Most of the problems with your argument are not due to bad reasoning; they are due to misinformation. This is a commmon problem in the Philosophy forums, and not your doing, as this misinformation is perpetuated by the current attitude toward philosophy. I am probably not the best person to explain this to you, but you deserve a reasoned explanation rather than ridicule or condescention, and I don't see a lot of philosophers cueing up for the job. My knowledge of philosophy has been gained informally, so you will have to accept my layman's simplified version. It is my hope that I can explain this problem without offending you or the scientists, so please consider: I think this is the crux of the problem. Philosophy has never been under scientific rules, science has always been under philosophic rules. You may have heard the statement that, "Science is a child of philosophy."? But you have never heard that philosophy is a child of science, which is because science got it's rules from philosophy. Although science and philosophy share a common root, they are very different disciplines, and this difference is what is not well understood. Consider that philosophy started out as a discipline that studied what is real and true, then early on philosophy found that some things that are real and true are "fixed", others are not. These "fixed" truths are true to all people no matter the perspective and no matter the time; such as, a book which is a "fixed" truth. A book will remain a book from one day to the next no matter how many people look at it, it will still be a book and will still be in the same place unless some cause moves or changes it. As more and more was discovered about "fixed" truths, an entire discipline evolved to study these "fixed" truths. That discipline is science, and the "fixed" truths are now called facts. Science studies the facts of reality. Philosophy continued to study truths that are not "fixed" and the unknown. A truth that is not "fixed", is a truth that is relative to perspective and/or time, as time can change truth and each different perspective can have it's own truth. The unknown is extremely difficult to study because it is just too easy to imagine what we wish the "unknown" to be and rationalize our imaginations into supposed truth. So the discipline of philosophy must adhere to much more strident rules, that science does not have to deal with. Philosophy studies the truth of reality. Although the study of probabilities is based in science, math and fact, the results of the calculations are probable--not truth. Probabilities study predictability for purposes of decision making, control, and power as regards the unknown. This is not a study of reality or truth. This may well be true, but it is also true that one can always find a solution to a problem while considering only one assumption. That assumption is that the problem fits the solution. (chuckle) Philosophers are sticklers about reality and truth, so we like the solution to fit the problem, which can sometimes complicate things, but we really do like truth, so we put up with the complications. I retired from law and would like to discuss this, but it would take us off topic. So another time. Probability does not equal truth, at most it equals "close to truth--probably". So no it does not answer my question on "if". Bayes theorem is also not fact, it is theory. Truth can be based on fact, but it can not be based on probability, and can only be considered on theory. Here you are mixing science and philosophy again. Mathmatics is a study of facts that can find more facts, but that does not mean that these facts will find a larger and unknown truth. And there is no such thing as "absolute truth". It does not exist. In order for a truth to be "absolute", it would have to be true in all times from all perspectives, so it would be a "fixed" truth, which means that it would be a fact. Try going into the science forums and telling them that you have found THE ABSOLUTE FACT. Let me know how that works out for you. (chuckle chuckle) It may be true that it is a speculation, but that does not make it a philosophical truth. This may be part of the problem that blurs the distinction between philosophy and science. When science started to speculate, it may have also started to view philosophy as speculation. Speculation is based in some facts; philosophy is based in some facts. Speculation deals with unknowns; philosophy deals with unknowns. Speculation is often pseudo-science; do people think that philosophy is pseudo-science? Maybe. This may be how the comparison got started. Philosophy holds a very high standard for truth and speculation does not meet that standard. But possible does not mean a probability in philosophy. Here you are playing a word game that destroys your logic. The sentence was, "If I can imagine it, it is possible". It was not, "If I can imagine it, it CAN be possible." This is yet another example of changing the problem to fit your solution. Philosophy studies that which is real and true, so we can not adjust reality to fit with our solutions. The original statement is not true. Maybe so, but this is still about "guesses" and probabilities, it is not about truth. This is a philosophy forum and we deal in truths. The statement, "If I can imagine it, it is possible." is not true. It is a word game. Consider: If the statement, "If I can imagine it, it is possible." were true, then I could imagine that it would be true for me and false for you; therefore, anything that you imagined would become impossible. But being the clever person that you are, you could simultaneously imagine that everything that you imagine is true, but everything that I imagine is false; then neither of us could imagine anything that would be possible. But then Harry Potter, who is more clever than both of us combined, could see this problem and immediately imagine that everything he imagines is possible, but everything that anyone else in the world imagines is not possible, so he would win. He would be King of the World, Almighty God, the beginning and the end--a solipsist. But I thought you agreed that solipsism is nonsense. What do you think Monty could make of this? G

Kristalris; If we are going to continue this discussion, it must be between us and not include negative comments regarding other member's abilities. I do not always agree with YodaP, but have read enough of that member's posts to come to the conclusion that YodaP has a good mind and an understanding of philosophy. So I have no wish to debate the merits of any third-party member's posts, and would like to keep this between us. The problem that I have with your argument is that you seem to interchange the word "probability" with the word "possibility". They are not the same. Now if the original statement was, "If I can imagine something that fits within the parameters of science and Bayes probability theorem, it is possible!". Then I might have to agree that this is possible, but that is not the case. The original statement, "If I can imagine it, it is possible" sets the parameters of "possible" under the parameters of "imagine". Imagination has no parameters. And according to you, imagination is garbage and does not fall within the rules of Bayes Theorem, as follows: So I don't agree that Bayes Theorem even applies in this case. I certainly hope you will forgive me for this observation, but it appears as though solipsism, the religious "God" idea, and Bayes Theory have something in common. They have each taken an idea that they "imagine" to be true and applied logic to this idea in order to rationalize it and make it appear to be real. This is not reality. (chuckle) Lucky for me, I am not a scientist. I am a philosopher. Did you notice that this is the General Philosophy forum, not the General Science forum? The fact that the formula requirments dictate a testable hypothesis indicate that the formula is self serving and somewhat circular, so I would question it's ability to find truth. This formula seems to be a statistical game of probabliities, designed to predict reality, but it does not define reality -- or truth. G

Hello Kristalris; I very much enjoyed the video that you presented, and got a lot of laughter out of it. Thank you. I have never broached this subject before, but would like to take a stab at it, so please consider the following. It may well be true that a "hypothesis is held to be true until falsified", but it is also true that a hypothesis must be testable in order to falsify it. So is "possible" testable? The problem with the word "possible" is that it has no parameters, so only the consequence of that possibility, in hindsight, is testable after it becomes real. So one is not really testing "possible". Is "imagination" testable? Only after it becomes realized in reality. So I don't see how you can call this a hypothesis, as it is not testable. Now one could say that "if you can imagine it, it is possible" is a truism. But again, truisms are always true, so how could one know that it is always true? In hindsight, many things that were thought impossible became possible through someone's imagination, but not all things imagined became possible, so we can not call this a truism. Because the statement begins with the word "If", it implies a relationship between "imagine" and "possible"; "if this, then that". There are two ways to look at this, either "imagine" is a prerequisite to "possible", or "imagine" causes "possible" -- neither are true. Rain turns into snow because of temperature, not imagination, so there are things that are possible that do not require the prerequisite of imagining. Imagination is thought and is produced by the rational aspect of mind, so it can not actually cause a change in reality. Thought has no power over reality, so imagination, on it's own, does not cause anything to be possible. Think of imagination as you would a tool, like a hammer. A hammer is a very handy tool to have when building a house, but a hammer can not build a house. Imagination is a very handy tool to have when considering possibilities, but imagination can not cause those possibilities to become real. So I see this as a word game that has nothing to do with reality or logic. The only other way to view this is to say that "imagination" actually causes reality, which is the solipsist's view. Solipsism is nonsense. imo Do you disagree? G

YodaP; Not even close. I was first attracted to your title because I just spent 15 pages in the thread, Supernatural, explaining that imagination is a poor tool to use in philosophy. But I don't think anyone was really listening. I do think that my explanation that rationalization can not be used to find an unknown was understood, but I don't think that people realized that rationalization is just logic applied to imagination. People take an unknown, imagine what they think it is, then create logical steps to whatever they have imagined--and they call this rational. The problem here being that the rational part of the mind is the only part that knows how to lie. It seems to me that imagination is a coping ability. We take what we don't know or don't understand and use our imaginations to make it more palatable. But that does not make it more real. Philosophy studies what is real, not what is palatable. I do agree with you that math is a definite way to find and establish truth, and suspect that this is because math evolves from innate understanding. The innate understanding of more and less is at the root of math, but this is not the only innate understanding--not the only available truth. I study consciousness and life, so I do a lot of work on awareness and emotion, which are also innate understandings. If you can supply me with a formula that explains awareness and/or emotion it would be wonderful. Until you do, I will have to simply rely on the old tools of observation, experience, logic and reason. G

Hi YodaP; I really enjoyed your post right up to the last paragraph, then I wondered. Are you talking about me? G