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| Topic: Truth vs. Bull**** | |
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Edited by
creativesoul
on
Sun 11/16/08 03:53 PM
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I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt that your last response was made with the genuine interest of the discussion in mind, though I have my doubts...
Ok so let me get this straight. You're saying that we can determine that actuality exists, but we cannot determine it's content. Yes. We do not create(determine with our actions) the content of actuality. We only have a limited influencial capability. There are elements of which we have no knowledge of or control over. It has been determined as a fact that actuality exists it is the source of discovery. The evidence for this conclusion has been shown, without a logical refutation, in a logical and reasonable manner, and remains consistent with previous knowledge. Going farther you asked the following... Also, one other confusion I have. You said "It is to say that we do not determine the content of it's existence, which is irrefutable." 1) I'm unsure of the referent for the pronoun "It" at the beginning of that sentence. What does "It" refer to? Or is "It is to say that" simply an idiomatic or rhetorical phrase? The pronoun "It" that begins the third sentence in the quote below refers to the fact that we do not determine(create with our actions) actuality. The following statement of mine is what you are referring to... The fact that we do not and cannot determine actuality is not to say that it does not exist. We have already determined that it exists. It is to say that we do not determine the content of it's existence, which is irrefutable. It has already been scientifically and logically proven to be true. In this statement I pointed out the mistaken conclusion contained within the claim you made, and I underlined this. The basic construct used in the claim was this... If A then B... In order to correctly use this construct, not only must "A" be an accurate representation of my claim, but "B" must logically follow from "A"... You succeeded in neither. I copied your statement below and broke it down for response purposes. Since actuality cannot be determined, one can only think and speak of it in an abstract or theoretical or hypothetical sense. This is to say that since actuality cannot be determined(created by action) by humans("A") then it follows ("B") that it does not exist objectively? That is an illogical claim. The illogical nature of your stance was compounded as follows... It really has no practical use at all, other than as an interesting topic of discussion or debate that can never be resolved...And because of that, it seems to me that "actuality" would, per the thread topic, have to come under the heading of "Bull***". On a painted hook, one can only hang a painted argument, which is the epitome of the OP title... Do I not remember a mention of a self-righteousness label being attached to me somewhere in this thread by you? Good luck Sky... truly.  |
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Edited by
Jeanniebean
on
Sun 11/16/08 05:23 PM
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Okay, then after 12 pages of blah blah blah I finally know where you are coming from creative.
1. Something exists, that is a scientific proven fact. 2. We (mere human mortals) had nothing to do with it. 3. We (mere human mortals) have very little effect on it. 4. We (mere human mortals) are not responsible for reality. 5. We can't create our own reality. 6. We can't or don't decide what is or is not true. 7. We can't or don't decide what is or is not real. 8. The only relevant observers are human observers. 9. The only relevant knowledge is human knowledge. 10. Facts are true providing they are not in error. (?) 11. Consciousness cannot exist without a body. 12. You should only consider things that can be proven as fact, and all the rest is bullsh!t according to Creative. Okay, I gotcha!  |
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Edited by
SkyHook5652
on
Sun 11/16/08 06:30 PM
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I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt that your last response was made with the genuine interest of the discussion in mind, though I have my doubts... Ok so let me get this straight. You're saying that we can determine that actuality exists, but we cannot determine it's content. Yes. We do not create(determine with our actions) the content of actuality. We only have a limited influencial capability. There are elements of which we have no knowledge of or control over. It has been determined as a fact that actuality exists it is the source of discovery. The evidence for this conclusion has been shown, without a logical refutation, in a logical and reasonable manner, and remains consistent with previous knowledge. Going farther you asked the following... Also, one other confusion I have. You said "It is to say that we do not determine the content of it's existence, which is irrefutable." 1) I'm unsure of the referent for the pronoun "It" at the beginning of that sentence. What does "It" refer to? Or is "It is to say that" simply an idiomatic or rhetorical phrase? The pronoun "It" that begins the third sentence in the quote below refers to the fact that we do not determine(create with our actions) actuality. The following statement of mine is what you are referring to... The fact that we do not and cannot determine actuality is not to say that it does not exist. We have already determined that it exists. It is to say that we do not determine the content of it's existence, which is irrefutable. It has already been scientifically and logically proven to be true. In this statement I pointed out the mistaken conclusion contained within the claim you made, and I underlined this. The basic construct used in the claim was this... If A then B... In order to correctly use this construct, not only must "A" be an accurate representation of my claim, but "B" must logically follow from "A"... You succeeded in neither. I copied your statement below and broke it down for response purposes. Since actuality cannot be determined, one can only think and speak of it in an abstract or theoretical or hypothetical sense. This is to say that since actuality cannot be determined(created by action) by humans("A") then it follows ("B") that it does not exist objectively? That is an illogical claim. The illogical nature of your stance was compounded as follows... It really has no practical use at all, other than as an interesting topic of discussion or debate that can never be resolved...And because of that, it seems to me that "actuality" would, per the thread topic, have to come under the heading of "Bull***". On a painted hook, one can only hang a painted argument, which is the epitome of the OP title... Do I not remember a mention of a self-righteousness label being attached to me somewhere in this thread by you? Good luck Sky... truly. First off, thank you for clearing those things up for me. I truly was confused by them and wanted to understand. Secondly, it is apparent that we have either a major problem in the area of semantics, or a major difference in opinion as to what constitutes logic. Or - more likely - both. So with that, I thank you for your opinions and wish you the best as well. |
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Edited by
creativesoul
on
Sun 11/16/08 06:13 PM
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Sky...
After re-reading our last few exchanges... In all honesty, I can actually see where some confusion could be had concerning my statement regarding the term determine. I take responsibility for adding this element which could be the possible cause of confusion. I mindlessly made the assumption that a connotative meaning would be understood, because I had clearly made the distinction between actuality and our interpretation of it(personal truth/reality). The underlying argument being whether or not we determine reality. The evidence I have provided, which refuted the notion that we create actuality, has been given clearly without refutation. Therefore, I had moved beyond that aspect of the conversation. So, in the sense that we determine(create with actions) that which existed prior to us and will continue it's existence beyond ours(actuality), it is obviously a fact that we do not determine(cause by action) actuality. We can and have determined that it is a fact that actuality exists. So, I guess I am still wondering what it is that you were truly trying to accomplish with that succession of responses... Now, I believe that I understood the meaning behind your response, and have thus clearly identified the "evidence" that you suggest supported your conclusion. The evidence itself was a misunderstanding. This is where I may have some responsibility, unless you have some other explanation for the course of events that just happened. Hopefully this and the last response that I gave can add some genuine clarity to the topic at hand, unless it is just a battle or a game. In that case it was over long ago, as soon as the evidence warranted actuality's existence prior to ours. It is reasonably impossible to deny that evidence. No thing can exist prior to the individual elements which, when combined, constitute it's existence. All else is elementary logic. EDIT: Our posts overlapped, the above underlined section was cleared up in your last post...
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We do not create(determine with our actions) the content of actuality. In order to understand this statement I would need "the content of actuality" defined. Are you talking about rocks? Mountains? Trees? Or other things? To me the statement means: We do not create the content of reality by our actions. And yet the reality is that when I look at a sky scraper, I see something that was created by someone's actions. A sky scraper is real. It is part of reality. It was created by someone's actions. By our visualizations, we imagine a thing we want to create and we create it and it becomes part of this world and this reality. We only have a limited influencial capability. This statement admits that we do indeed have some capability to effect and create things that become part of our reality, although it has been qualified as "limited" the ability still exists. There are elements of which we have no knowledge of or control over. This is a fairly safe statement and I agree. We know very little about this reality and how to effect it, but we do effect it. |
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Sky... After re-reading our last few exchanges... ... (post truncated for the sake of brevity) Ok, how about if we regroup, go back to some definitions, and continue from there... My dictionary defines "actuality" in terms of "reality" and "reality" in terms of "actuality", so there is no help there. So what I would like is some standardized methods, processes, or comparisons, that can be used to show definitively, whether or not a thing is "actual" or "real", and the exact time, relative to any hypthetical situation posed, that the reality and/or actuality came into being. I would like this to be concise enough that, anywhere within our conversation, the rule can be stated, inline, to show why the word ("actuality" or "reality") is used to refer to something. Also, for to vaoid any future misunderstandings, I'd like to avoid the use of "determine" in the sense of "create" and only use it in the sense of "make a decision" or "come to a conclusion". So, is that something you can agree to? |
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Ok, how about if we regroup, go back to some definitions, and continue from there... Agreed... My dictionary defines "actuality" in terms of "reality" and "reality" in terms of "actuality", so there is no help there. Since the distinction has been made already that necessitates the existence of an objective and independently existing actuality, for the purposes of this conversation perhaps it would benefit us best if we avoid using the term reality and instead use the label "personal truth". I proposed earlier that there is no practical distinction to be made between personal truth and reality, since personal truth and reality both equate to an individual perception and interpretation of actuality. Actuality and personal truth need to be considered as distinctly separate terms with equally distinct definitions. So what I would like is some standardized methods, processes, or comparisons, that can be used to show definitively, whether or not a thing is "actual" or "real", and the exact time, relative to any hypthetical situation posed, that the reality and/or actuality came into being... I would like this to be concise enough that, anywhere within our conversation, the rule can be stated, inline, to show why the word ("actuality" or "reality") is used to refer to something. This sounds like an invitation for a realism/antirealism discussion. Ignore most of the rest of this post if it is not. I do not think that a realism/antirealism conversation and/or debate has any practical value or solution. Whether or not a thing is "real" is but a matter of the content of personal truth and is therefore completely subjective to it. This fact is the very reason for my postulating the existence of actuality. For if we can conceive of "It", then "It" has obtained the virtue of being "real", at least within the one who is conceiving. However, the notion of "It" being "real" within one's thoughts does not equate to "It", nor the elements which constitute the existence of "It" to have a basis in actuality. Also, for to vaoid any future misunderstandings, I'd like to avoid the use of "determine" in the sense of "create" and only use it in the sense of "make a decision" or "come to a conclusion". Consider this done. So, is that something you can agree to? |
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I do not think that a realism/antirealism conversation and/or debate has any practical value or solution. Whether or not a thing is "real" is but a matter of the content of personal truth and is therefore completely subjective to it. This fact is the very reason for my postulating the existence of actuality. For if we can conceive of "It", then "It" has obtained the virtue of being "real", at least within the one who is conceiving. However, the notion of "It" being "real" within one's thoughts does not equate to "It", nor the elements which constitute the existence of "It" to have a basis in actuality. antirealism?  I wonder what that is.  |
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Edited by
Jeanniebean
on
Mon 11/17/08 09:08 AM
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Creative wrote:
Whether or not a thing is "real" is but a matter of the content of personal truth and is therefore completely subjective to it. I think Creative finally agrees with me when I said: "Ultimately we decide what is real and what is not." The "actuality" Creative speaks of can probably only be known by God, because the rest of us, humans and other observers, have faulty and limited perceptual capacity for interpreting these "things" which are vibrating and causing this apparent reality in which we live. So there is a truth, and that truth is that we exist. That truth is that SOMETHING EXISTS. Beyond that, its a matter of personal interpretation and perception. |
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 Oh my... There would be the kind of "real" that exists only in one's mind,and therefore has no factual basis in actuality... Is that "real"? This ridiculous argument provides the very reason that the term reality has no value and has been rendered meaningless regarding actuality. Does a mental patient "decide" to believe in those figments of his/her imagination? And then there would be actuality... the source from which all observers interpret their own sense of reality. |
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Edited by
Jeanniebean
on
Tue 11/18/08 08:05 AM
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The nature of reality and how we, as individuals perceive it is a very valid argument, and not just for me. Scientists and philosophers have been discussing it for a long time. That you choose to dismiss and laugh at the arguments is your personal choice and your personal reality.
If reality does not exist in the mind, then where does it exist? Everything 'exists' Here Now. Everything is perceived by the individual. If the past and the future exist, where are they? If time exists, where is it? The universal mind, the collective mind, (in which you don't believe,) is were all of these things exist. (We do have minds, and quantum theory seems to suggest that they are connected. That is a universal mind.) You said yourself: 'Whether or not a thing is "real" is but a matter of the content of personal truth and is therefore completely subjective to it.' That is the same thing as: ""Ultimately we decide what is real and what is not." It is you, creative, who has decided that the term "reality" has been rendered meaningless, because your arguments have been countered with logic and reason to the extent that you had to create a new word to represent what you think is "real" and that word is "actuality." But actuality is the same as reality in that it must be observed and the observer must decide if it is real or not, and if it is determined (decided)to be real, then he can proceed to study it and define it according to his agreements and perceptions. But if actuality exists on its own and no person (human observer) knows or can completely agree upon its true content or nature, then only God can know what actuality is. You are not the single person assigned to tell everyone else what is real. A group of scientists are not the ones either. It is ultimately the individual who will decide what is real. You can't get around that. No human observer can observe everything in existence therefore no human observer knows what actuality is. A human observer and even a group of human observers can only see part of it and declare it to be real. This is what you have done and you won't admit it. All you have proven is that "something" exists. We don't know for certain what it is, or what it is ultimately made of. and we don't know where it came from. jb |
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(We do have minds, and quantum theory seems to suggest that they are connected. That is a universal mind.) Can you validate this statement? |
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Edited by
Jeanniebean
on
Tue 11/18/08 09:23 AM
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(We do have minds, and quantum theory seems to suggest that they are connected. That is a universal mind.) Can you validate this statement? It is my personal opinion that the "universal mind" exists within an energy field. The human mind also seems to exist within an energy field. Valerie Hunt, a physical therapist and professor of kinesiology at UCLA, has developed a way to confirm experimentally the existence of the human energy field. Human energy field research provides a clue to where the mind resides. Discovery by neurophysiologists Benjamin Libet and Bertram Feinstein at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco caused a stir in the scientific community when they measured the time it took for a touch stimulus on a patient's skin to reach the brain as an electrical signal. Reaction time to stimulus indicated that it was not the brain that responded first but the human energy field that surrounds the body. We have been taught that our mind is a product of our brain, but if the brain and the physical body are just the densest part of an increasingly subtle continuum of energy fields, what does this say about the mind? The experiments went like this: Libet and Feinstein measured the time it took for a touch stimulus on a patient's skin to reach the brain as an electrical signal. The patient was also asked to push a button when he or she became aware of being touched. Libet and Feinstein found that the brain registered the stimulus in 0.0001 of a second after it occurred, and the patient pressed the button 0.1 of a second after the stimulus was applied. But remarkably, the patient didn't report being consciously aware of either the stimulus or pressing the button for almost 0.5 second. This meant that the decision to respond was being made by the patient's unconscious mind. The Patient's awareness of the action was the slow man in the race. Even more disturbing, none of the patients they tested were aware that their unconscious minds had already caused them to push the button before they had consciously decided to do so. Somehow their brains were creating the comforting delusion that they had consciously controlled the action even though they had not. This has caused some researchers to wonder if free will is an illusion. Later studies have shown that one and a half seconds before we "decide" to move one of our muscles, such as a finger, our brain has already started to generate the signals necessary to accomplish the movement. Again, who is making the decision, the conscious mind or the unconscious mind? Valerie Hunt does such finding one better. She has discovered that the human energy field responds to stimuli even before the brain does. She has taken EMG readings of the energy field and EEG readings of the brain simultaneously and discovered that when she makes a loud sound or flashes a bright light, the EMG of the energy field registers the stimulus before it ever shows up on the EEG. What does it mean? She says: "I think we have way overrated the brain as the active ingredient in the relationship of a human to the world. It's just a real good computer. But the aspects of the mind have to do with creativity, imagination, spirituality, and all those things, I don't see them in the brain at all. The mind's not in the brain. It's in that darn field." So the mind resides in the human energy field. It is not the brain. The solidity of the body is not the only thing that is illusory in a holographic universe. As we have seen, David Bohm, PHD, believes that even time itself is not absolute, but unfolds out of the implicate order. This suggests that the linear division of time into past, present, and future is also just another construct of the mind. Other experiments seem to indicate that all things are 'connected' to each other. jb |
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Edited by
Jeanniebean
on
Tue 11/18/08 09:30 AM
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To give just one example, in 1987, physicist Robert G. Jahn and clinical psychologist Brenda J. Dunne, both at Princeton University, announced that after a decade of rigorous experimentation by their Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, they had accumulated unequivocal evidence that the mind can psychically interact with physical reality.
More specifically, Jahn and Dunne found that through mental concentration alone, human beings are able to effect the way certain kinds of machines operate. This is an astounding finding and one that cannot be accounted for in terms of our standard picture of reality. |
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(We do have minds, and quantum theory seems to suggest that they are connected. That is a universal mind.) Can you validate this statement? It is my personal opinion that the "universal mind" exists within an energy field. The human mind also seems to exist within an energy field. Valerie Hunt, a physical therapist and professor of kinesiology at UCLA, has developed a way to confirm experimentally the existence of the human energy field. Human energy field research provides a clue to where the mind resides. Discovery by neurophysiologists Benjamin Libet and Bertram Feinstein at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco caused a stir in the scientific community when they measured the time it took for a touch stimulus on a patient's skin to reach the brain as an electrical signal. Reaction time to stimulus indicated that it was not the brain that responded first but the human energy field that surrounds the body. We have been taught that our mind is a product of our brain, but if the brain and the physical body are just the densest part of an increasingly subtle continuum of energy fields, what does this say about the mind? The experiments went like this: Libet and Feinstein measured the time it took for a touch stimulus on a patient's skin to reach the brain as an electrical signal. The patient was also asked to push a button when he or she became aware of being touched. Libet and Feinstein found that the brain registered the stimulus in 0.0001 of a second after it occurred, and the patient pressed the button 0.1 of a second after the stimulus was applied. But remarkably, the patient didn't report being consciously aware of either the stimulus or pressing the button for almost 0.5 second. This meant that the decision to respond was being made by the patient's unconscious mind. The Patient's awareness of the action was the slow man in the race. Even more disturbing, none of the patients they tested were aware that their unconscious minds had already caused them to push the button before they had consciously decided to do so. Somehow their brains were creating the comforting delusion that they had consciously controlled the action even though they had not. This has caused some researchers to wonder if free will is an illusion. Later studies have shown that one and a half seconds before we "decide" to move one of our muscles, such as a finger, our brain has already started to generate the signals necessary to accomplish the movement. Again, who is making the decision, the conscious mind or the unconscious mind? Valerie Hunt does such finding one better. She has discovered that the human energy field responds to stimuli even before the brain does. She has taken EMG readings of the energy field and EEG readings of the brain simultaneously and discovered that when she makes a loud sound or flashes a bright light, the EMG of the energy field registers the stimulus before it ever shows up on the EEG. What does it mean? She says: "I think we have way overrated the brain as the active ingredient in the relationship of a human to the world. It's just a real good computer. But the aspects of the mind have to do with creativity, imagination, spirituality, and all those things, I don't see them in the brain at all. The mind's not in the brain. It's in that darn field." So the mind resides in the human energy field. It is not the brain. The solidity of the body is not the only thing that is illusory in a holographic universe. As we have seen, David Bohm, PHD, believes that even time itself is not absolute, but unfolds out of the implicate order. This suggests that the linear division of time into past, present, and future is also just another construct of the mind. Other experiments seem to indicate that all things are 'connected' to each other. jb extremely interesting G, thnx |
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JB, you actually did not validate the QM part, but in addition to that, I am finding quite a bit of skepticism over Valerie Hunt research (among the scientific community) in just 5 minutes of researching her . . . .
Not very promising so far . . . . I will continue to look into this. |
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JB, you actually did not validate the QM part, but in addition to that, I am finding quite a bit of skepticism over Valerie Hunt research (among the scientific community) in just 5 minutes of researching her . . . . Not very promising so far . . . . I will continue to look into this. I'm sure there is a lot of skepticism. There always is isn't there? I did not get into the QM part because I was not sure what exactly you were looking for. Since my belief is that a universal mind exists, the first step is to illustrate some evidence that the human mind is not inside of the brain, but it is within the Human energy field around the human. I call it a unified field. If a person can agree on that premise, --that a human energy field exists that contains the (human) mind (apart from the brain) then a discussion might progress to the next step in speculating how and where a "universal mind" might exist it its own energy field. If you cannot be convinced or if you are not willing to even consider that the mind is not "in the brain" or that it is not "from the brain" then there is where the conversation ends in disagreement. In that case, my efforts to present the rest of the argument are futile and just a waste of my time. Jb |
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You mentioned Quantum Mechanics as if It had some relation to this, I am merely waiting for you to set forth a connection . . .
I am still looking into the claims made by Valerie Hunt. |
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Edited by
Jeanniebean
on
Tue 11/18/08 02:13 PM
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You mentioned Quantum Mechanics as if It had some relation to this, I am merely waiting for you to set forth a connection . . . I am still looking into the claims made by Valerie Hunt. I base my conclusions on all science, QM is one of them. Exactly what are you wanting verified? That we are all somehow connected? Do you doubt that? If so, I will look for my scientific evidence and get back to you, but off the top of my head I don't have it. |
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You mentioned Quantum Mechanics as if It had some relation to this, I am merely waiting for you to set forth a connection . . . I base my conclusions on all science, QM is one of them. I am still looking into the claims made by Valerie Hunt. Exactly what are you wanting verified? That we are all somehow connected? Do you doubt that? If so, I will look for my scientific evidence and get back to you, but off the top of my head I don't have it. |
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