Yeh a rock sees humans running around doing things, having to work, having to eat, having to reproduce and they think: "What Morons those humans are. All we have to do is sit here and listen.

James,

If you are truly considering these ideas, you really should read Spinoza's Ethics... without presuppositions regarding what you think he means...

http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/rutherford/phil104/spinoza4.html

This may further interest you!

http://www.trinity.edu/cbrown/modern/spinozaPartII.html

Or this, which happens to closely resemble many of your expressions regarding knowledge and intuition.

Perhaps the language of ants and bees are quiet complicated

and their thought processes are just as sophisticated as a human mind even if many don't want to agree with it.

I liked the kinds of knowledge, but really found the rest to be far heavier then needed.

Too much fluff for my liking. Too much consequence to infinity. Too much pondering of navel.

I want to see objective data sets where each layer of thought can be shown to process.

This all seems like first perspective guessing.

Not exactly what I was wanting to link to...

Try below...

Ok...

This will give you access to a pdf translation of his actual works...

http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/f_spinoza.html


Oh yeah,

Jeremy it is all about 'God' my friend... first perspective guessing is the best kind, unless of course one believes in mediators...



Keep in mind that Albert Einstein believed in a Spinozan 'God', not the 'God' of Abraham...

Exactly. But also keep in mind that Spinoza's God was very Newtonian. Spinoza put a lot of faith in determinism and the absoluteness of space and time. He also believed that the unvierse was eternally old. Don't forget, in Spinoza's day, the entire universe consisted of the Milky Way Galaxy which wasn't even recognized as being a "galaxy" at that time. Potentially the Earth and Humans, could have been the sole purpose and goal of the universe.

You say that Spinoza didn't believe in the 'God' of Abraham, but I would argue with this. I feel that Spinoza actually did believe in the God of Abraham, but he simply interpreted the text differnetly. After all Spinoza was Jewish. He would have been hung up on Christianity. But there are many things in the Old Testament that could be interpreted as refering to the God of Abraham as being omniscient in nature.

In fact, even when I was a Christian I was taught that God is omnipresent everywhere. Well, that may not necessarily be the same thing as being omniscient in nature, but one could easily argue a case for this. Even in the Old Testament, Moses supposedly wrote that God does not want us to build an altar out of hewn stone, nor having steps leading up to the altar, for thine nakeness will not be revealed.

Well, I have personally always took that to mean that God is nature and if you lift up your tool upon nature thou hast poluted it. How ironic that the worshipers of the God of Abraham have never heeded these words to this very day. All they do is build stone or glass churches with steps leading up to the altar where the very book that says not to do that sits.

Ok, enough of that.

Getting back to Spinoza. I'm not exactly ignorant of Spinoza, I have read some of his works before. He was very scientific or at least logically methodical about setting up his formalism to describe 'God' and human existence within this context.

In fact, we had gone through this once before when we were discussing quantum mechanics several months ago. Spinoza begins with a whole list of postulates, many of which are extremely Newtonian in flavor. He demands, absolute space, and absolute time, and of much more importance, absolute determinism, at least in the mind of 'God'. For Spinoza God knows the FUTURE! Or to put that another way, the Universe is predetermined.

Even Einstein felt very vehement about this, he demanded, "God does not play dice!" Einstein never accepted quantum randomness to the very day that he died.

As far as the absolute space and time, I don't think that was as much of a problem for Einstein because even though Einstein discovered himself that space and time are relative, he also recognized that spacetime is absolute as a coherent fabric. So this would have just be a trivial detail that wouldn't have made all that much difference.

In any case, I would hope that you can learn something from Spinoza, Einstein, and Newton as well as others. Earlier I had suggested that you seem to be out to prove things, and that you should have become a mathematician. I did not mean that in any kind of derogatory way. Mathematicians and scientists do love to prove things, and philosophers are probably no exception to this rule.

However, look at what Spinoza did,...

He sat down, Like Eulclid (a mathematician), or Newton (a physicist) and he wrote out all of his postulates, THEN he made conclusions based on those postulates. Einstein did the same thing with his theory of Relativity.

My point to you is that you don't seem to use this approach. For example, in this thread, you ASK, the OPEN QUESTION,... "Is thought unspoken language?"

Then you proceed to go about attempting to argue that it is.

Why did you even ask, if you were already going to demand that it's true?

Instead of using this aproach (i.e. Attempting to argue the truth of your premises), you should have just stated, "Let's assume as a premise that thought is unspoken language and consider where this leads"

Then you can move forward from there. Everyone would either agree to consider your premise, or they would simply bow out saying that, for them, such a premise seems absurd.

Attempting to argue the raw premises leads to what Feynman said about the two philosophers sitting opposite each other screaming, "What do you mean by know? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by,... and so on."

This is why I don't need to read Spinoza, I can just look at his premises and say that I already disagree with his starting point, why bother going into the details when I already disagree with his premises?

In fact, I would suggest that if Spinoza was alive today he would change his premises based on the more modern knowledge that is available. That knowledge simply wasn't available in his day. He had no choice but to work with the currently known picture.

On the Topic of Rocks

I was thinking about rocks today. I actually have two selenite crystals that I take outside and charge up in the sun. I also have three fairy statues that light up in various ways, they are for in a garden and have solar panels that charge their batteries. I keep them in my bedroom but take them outside in the sun to charge them up.

Anyway, I was looking at their solar panels. They are made of silicon which is rock. Then I realized that they also have Nicad batteries. That would be Nickle-cadmium batteries. More rocks!

Then I realized that my CRT on my computer is made of glass (another rock), even the LCD (liquid Quartz display) on my laptop is make of rock. Then I thought, gee, we think nothing of asking rocks to display the photo of the human female we are hot for, and the rock presents the photo to us so life-like that it's like looking through a plate glass window (yet another rock!)

Gee, rocks do an aweful lot when you stop and think about it.

Our most sophisticated machines (computers), are made of rocks. Silicon semiconcudtors. They are made of rocks because rocks have this wonderful ability to deal with electrontic phenomena in an infinity of ways!

Yep, rocks are extremely complex entities indeed.

You really got me thinking about rocks now.

Quite right, but I call a rock silicates that are not processed rocks, and processed silicates other things, like LCD, or . . . .

But yes silicon and carbon are amazing friends arnt they?

Yes, there are scientists who have proposed that silicon would be the other atom that can form bonds that are almost as complex as carbon. From this they have proposed the possiblity of silicon-based life forms.

Of course such lifeforms would almost necessarily be cystaline in form. Rather than eating and digesting nutrients like animals and plants do, they would be more likely to just obtain their energy directly from solar or heat sources. Because of this, mobility would not be necessary as they would not need to seek out food.

I suppose the big question would be reproduction. It seems like a silicon-based lifeform would not be easily propagated. This is probably why they have not evolved. Whatever crystals do they must do in the span of their own lifetime. Although considering that cystals can exist for eons that might not be as big of a limitation as we might think.


Star Trek has a couple episodes where they ran into crystal beings that spoke perfect English.

At first I thought that was strange, but then I realized that probably only English-speaking crystaline beings were auditioned for the part.

Too much pondering of navel.

^^^Is that your navel?^^^

No, I imagine they spoke any language that they ran into by means of a telepathic communication. They simply downloaded the information as soon as they made contact with the English speaking beings and then used that language to communicate.

Thought communication, the transmission of impression from a sender to a receiver, is a property inherent in the very nature of universal consciousness. To think and share thoughts without the use of speech is a natural human ability. Present-day human beings “filter out” and reject awareness which is not part of the “individual” identity, however, and this is the reason thought communication is not more commonly experienced. Thought communication can be acquired through practice—a re-training of the awareness that allows the impressions to transfer, as the individual learns to forget to not allow. It is not learning a new skill, but accustoming the mind to discover this ability by learning not to block out the impressions.

The Self is composed of pure consciousness. This pure consciousness may be likened to a sea, a sea where impressions are carried by a flowing in and flowing out, carried upon colorless, formless, moving waves. This conduction of impression occurs beyond space and time—it is characterized by a release from time. The impressions are carried, not upon thought waves, but upon waves of release, waves without light, color or form, that wash clear for impression. The idea is to create an opening to impression through a release, a release from time, from the moment, from time and space, and from individuality

This is not easy, as the human mind seeks to impose order on the impressions being received, to establish known elements, patterns or shapes. The mind expends effort to "pigeonhole" the impressions, and hence the difficulty. It is often the case that impressions are easily received, yet it is this filtering function of the mind that can make recognition difficult.At each moment the awareness of each of us receives countless impressions, and filters them into conscious awareness, eliminating many. Each person seeks to recognize the impressions he or she has decided to receive.

Is thought language at all.

I think in impressions of color, light and sound, touch even smell.

Sometimes its hard to translate into words.

James,

Why would I state a premise as being true without knowing?

You can argue all you want James... I said that Einstein did not believe in the 'God' of Abraham...

I said no such thing of Spinoza.

If one reads Spinoza, one will see that he may, in fact, have been wanting to prove the existence of such a 'God', however, one will not get that 'God' out of Spinoza's works.