How do you cope with your mortality?

[Canute]

I think 'seeing', and perception of all kinds, is generally considered to be theory-laden, not as providing certain knowledge. As Eintein said somewhere "The human mind has first to construct forms, independently, before we can find them in things."

 

[Another God]

It's the difference between seeing, for example, A whale as opposed to 'something big', or a toilet versus 'something strange'...

 

[AscensionX]

The original question and some other crap...

I'll have you know I always keep an open mind and if someone is willing to challenge what i have to say and can back their argument up then I'm willing to change my view on the subject.

I'm going to explore some mental truths with you.

To state that 'There is no ultimate truth' is plainly false. By its own parametres the statement cannot be true - because nothing is completely true! Thats what the statement is saying, it is saying that 1+1 does not equal 2.

Mathematics as a model defies mistruth, because it is the truth of pure logic.

Therefore, there is truth. This may be in the form that the universe is bound by some simple fundamental truths, like the behaviour of quarks, and that everything produced by that behaviour could be engineered or pure accident- it doesn't really matter.

The main point I am making here is that truth exists, and our reality is quite stable.

This point brings up many other paths of speculation - How did the universe come into being? Is there a reason the universe exists?

Lets let these pass for now.

Another problem with our own scientific system is that it incorporates that which reason defies - belief.

Most scienctists Believe in the void (space or an outer void)- But how I ask you, how do you prove nothing exists with something. You can't say 'that is empty space, nothing exists there at all' because you are able to percieve that space even based on our own limited senses - vision. The scientist believes nothing is there, but how can it be possible to prove nothing?! I measured X with Y and concluded X did not exist- then how Did you measure it einstein?!

Scientist are victims of belief amongst us all, believing in something (the void -dark matter if you know what it is) without being able to prove it is there.

At this point it could be reasonable to argue that space as we know it is alive and filled with light. Light can only illuminate what is there however- darkness is simply where there is light but nothing else - no air molecules to colour the sky blue etc.

What I am saying is that for something to not exist it cannot be there, if you catch my drift ;P

That which does not exist, you can't see, detect, move through etc. because it is completley void - not even gravity affects it.

This concept has been explored briefly with Dark matter, but what I saying with this increasingly confusing example is...

It is pure conjecture and guesswork to talk about things which are beyond measurement. Our own system of reason traps us in a world bound by the truths within that world. Quiet simply, you cannot use rules against themselves.

What is required to move beyond this world and its limitations, is belief, faith, inspiration, hope, and perhaps ignorance.

The reason I accept death? Everyone else dies and there is fairness in that. Death is the great equilizer of men.

 

[Canute]

Originally posted by AscensionX
I'll have you know I always keep an open mind and if someone is willing to challenge what i have to say and can back their argument up then I'm willing to change my view on the subject.

I'm going to explore some mental truths with you.

To state that 'There is no ultimate truth' is plainly false. By its own parametres the statement cannot be true - because nothing is completely true! Thats what the statement is saying, it is saying that 1+1 does not equal 2.

Mathematics as a model defies mistruth, because it is the truth of pure logic.

Therefore, there is truth. This may be in the form that the universe is bound by some simple fundamental truths, like the behaviour of quarks, and that everything produced by that behaviour could be engineered or pure accident- it doesn't really matter.

The main point I am making here is that truth exists, and our reality is quite stable.

But the situation is not this simple. There is a difference between contingent truths and ultimate truths. 2+2=4 within certain given systems. However if you're going to talk about reality itself, what lies beyond such systems, then things are more complicated.

“ So far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain. And so far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality”. Albert Einstein

Another problem with our own scientific system is that it incorporates that which reason defies - belief.

Of course. All scientific theories are axiomatic, i.e. take something on faith. As Hawking says:

What is the relation between Goedels theorem and whether we can formulate the theory of the universe in terms of a finite number of principles? One connection is obvious. According to the positivist philosophy of science a physical theory is a mathematical model. So if there are mathematical results that can not be proved, there are physical problems that can not be predicted….( )

In the standard positivist approach to the philosophy of science, physical theories live rent free in a Platonic heaven of ideal mathematical models. That is, a model can be arbitrarily detailed, and can contain an arbitrary amount of information, without affecting the universes they describe. But we are not angels, who view the universe from the outside. Instead we and our models are both part of the universe we are describing. Thus a physical theory is self referencing, like in Goedels theorem. One might therefore expect it to be either inconsistent, or incomplete. The theories we have so far, are ~both inconsistent, and incomplete.

(Stephen Hawking – Goedel and The End of Physics – net article (http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/strtst/dirac/hawking/ )

Most scienctists Believe in the void (space or an outer void)- But how I ask you, how do you prove nothing exists with something. etc...

Just for interest...

when we encounter the Void, we feel that it is primordial emptiness of cosmic proportions and relevance. We become pure consciousness aware of this absolute nothingness; however, at the same time, we have a strange paradoxical sense of its essential fullness. This cosmic vacuum is also a plenum, since nothing seems to be missing in it. While it does not contain in a concrete manifest form, it seems to comprise all of existence in a potential form. In this paradoxical way , we can transcend the usual dichotomy between emptiness and form, or existence and non-existence. However, the possibility of such a resolution cannot be adequately conveyed in words; it has to be experienced to be understood.”

Staislav Grof – The Cosmic Game – 1998 State University of New York

“The view of the new physics suggests: ‘The vacuum is all of physics.’ Everything that ever existed or can exist is already there in the nothingness of space…that nothingness contains all being’

Heinz Pagels – 1990 'The Cosmic Code' New York-Bantam Books

While the attempts to describe the materialisation of the universe from nothing remain highly speculative, they represent an exciting enlargement of the boundaries of science. If someday this program can be completed, it would mean that the existence and history of the universe could be explained by the underlying laws of nature. That is the laws of physics would imply the existence of the universe. We would have accomplished the spectacular goal of understanding why there is something rather than nothing – because, if the approach is right, perpetual “nothing” is impossible. If the creation of the universe can be described as a quantum process, we would be left with one deep mystery of existence: What is it that determined the laws of physics?

Alan Guth ‘The Inflationary Universe’. P 276

It is pure conjecture and guesswork to talk about things which are beyond measurement.

“Pragmatically, physicists understand measurement just as lawyers understand pornography and philistines understand art: they can’t define it, but they know what it is.”

David Lindley 'Where does the Weirdness Go?' p 72 Vintage 1996 London

Our own system of reason traps us in a world bound by the truths within that world. Quiet simply, you cannot use rules against themselves.

I agree. So did Plato, Goedel, Popper, Aristotle etc.

What is required to move beyond this world and its limitations, is belief, faith, inspiration, hope, and perhaps ignorance.

Don't agree with that though. You missed out direct knowledge through experience.

 

[AscensionX]

Thx for the reply Canute I thought I'd be ripped up on these forums, and a well backed up argument too :P

In response to my last statement I was saying that aside from knowledge other responses and states of mind are necessary to learn. That simple idea that you can't learn new things unless you have something driving you to require more than the status quo (curiosity, accident & mishap, passion, confusion, a teacher who enforces an education etc).

Knowledge & experience are the primary functions for learning, knowledge sometimes coming after experience, sometimes before - Of course I agree with you there, what I was saying is that we cannot rely on this system alone, it leaves no space for what we

* Do not know (or do not have a teacher for)
* Cannot experience (we are sadly, limited.)

My initial example using mathematics as a model for truth definitely has its problems, but in terms of physicality of course there is truth - otherwise all would be chaos - and our perception of truth is what is limited. Perhaps life itself it just a quest for the highest truth we can attain - how close we can get to pure reality...

 

[Canute]

Hmm. Can knowledge preceed experience? I'm not so sure. Probably depends on how you define the terms.

 

[AscensionX]

True but what about instinctive knowledge, like pain. Most babies will cry when they experience pain.

Most intellectual knowledge has to be gained by experience.

 

[Canute]

Yes I agree. In fact I'd say all knowledge must be grounded in experience.

 

[Vosh]

Nothing is in mind that wasn't previously in sense.