101–110 of 233 posts
> The religious person is left with a mystery which is no less than the mystery with which science leaves us As a Hindu I find this baffling. For the Hindu there is a consistency across science and religion, and sometimes the line between the two isn't clear. They work together harmoniously to form my worldview. Based on the cursory information I have about the author's background, I am assuming he was exposed to Wes…
If you like the question of "Why does anything exist?" then an obvious next question is: "What's stopping things from not existing?" In philosophy, there is a distinction between things that must be (they're called necessary) and things that may or may not be (they're called contingent). For instance, if we use the standard definition of a square, then every square you will ever encounter will necessarily have four s…
Can you give an example of a "necessary" thing? You brought up the square having four sides thing, but that's not about existence. Furthermore, why does a contingent thing have to depend on a necessary thing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see how your response makes sense in terms of questions like "why does an electron exist", but what about the general notion of existence? It seems self-evident that there is something, even just experience. I interpreted the question as more "why something rather than nothing" which seems coherent.
I don't really follow. I interpret "there is" and "something" as quantifications, not predicates. What would be the predicate here? The general notion of existence, at least in natural language, seems to be a shorthand for quantification or negation. I'm not sure what it would mean for "existence" to exist, short of adopting Platonism or some bizarre metaphysical system. The "something rather than nothing" question,…
Why do you think "something rather than nothing" question doesn't make sense?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, I don't see the problem - Everything in the universe is contingent, except for one thing which is necessary. Everything relies on that necessary foundation. What's the issue?
> Everything in the universe is contingent, except for one thing which is necessary. Everything relies on that necessary foundation. How do you know this?
At some point I understood that faith is orthogonal to the mind, and the tension was lowered.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
First, assuming that the universe is an absolute system doesn't mean we can't build models to interpret its nature through binary interpretations. In the same way that a map is not the territory, a mental model for the universe isn't the universe. So saying "abandon our rational mind" is just a rhetorical mechanism to establish that perhaps this is the wrong question, and we should reframe what we understand as absol…
I still don't really get it. Not all ideas which disagree with or go beyond the current best scientific models of the universe are considered non-scientific or esoteric (if this were the case scientific progress would be impossible). How about this: state explicitly what strategies beyond empiricism, model building, ontology refinement, and epistemological reasoning you think can provide genuine verifiable insight ab…
I'm saying that when those strategies are applied axiomatically, there's no room to reinterpret what we know about the world because there's a general feeling that doing so will undo all scientific progress.
Take, for instance, the relativity vs. quantum mechanics debate. I'm not a physicist, but it's pretty evident that the biggest struggle of that debate is that most people want to reconcile both theories by unifying them through some other rational interpretation of the world. Whether or not that's possible remains to be proven, but a theory of everything may emerge from a completely different interpretation of the world. One that is rationally contrarian to what relativity and quantum mechanics tell us.
And this brings me back to my original argument, which is that perhaps we have the proper methods to understand the world, but we are just asking the wrong questions.
In a vacuum with no matter or radiation, presumably the laws of physics still exist, and therefore it will be emptiness forever. As King Lear said, nothing will come of nothing. But if the laws of physics themselves did not exist, then nothing could indeed come from nothing - what’s to stop it?
I wonder if the first part of the statement is true actually. What if the laws of interaction between space, energy and matter were poured in along with the space, energy and matter itself?
If you like the question of "Why does anything exist?" then an obvious next question is: "What's stopping things from not existing?" In philosophy, there is a distinction between things that must be (they're called necessary) and things that may or may not be (they're called contingent). For instance, if we use the standard definition of a square, then every square you will ever encounter will necessarily have four s…
> our universe requires a "sustaining cause" (as with a picture on a TV set). Diving further into this, there's a hot debate about whether the universe does require a sustaining cause (the Existential Expiration thesis), or whether it can just exist unless something stops it from existing (Existential Inertia Thesis) Personally, I am inclined to think that things tend to keep existing unless something stops them from…
Here's how Mitta summarized that page: "The term 'nyat' is used in Early Buddhism to refer to the emptiness of all things. This emptiness is seen as a meditative state, an attribute of objects, and a type of awareness-release. The term is used to emphasize the deceptive nature of all things, and to show that they are all ultimately worthlessness and vacuous."
Now we ask it directly to compare it to a monitor (I'm pastel-mature-herring):
pastel-mature-herring~> Discuss this likening emptiness to a blank computer monitor.
victorious-capuchin*> One way to think of emptiness is to liken it to a blank computer monitor. Just as a blank monitor contains the potential for any image to be displayed on it, so too does emptiness contain the potential for any and all things to arise within it. Just as a monitor cannot display any image without the proper input, so too does emptiness require the right conditions in order to give rise to anything. And just as a monitor will eventually return to its blank state when the input is removed, so too will things eventually return to emptiness when the conditions that gave rise to them are no longer present.
pastel-mature-herring~> And if someone understands this, what does that say about them?
victorious-capuchin*> If someone understands that emptiness is like a blank computer monitor, it suggests that they understand that everything is ultimately emptiness and that everything is ultimately impermanent. This understanding can lead to a sense of detachment from the things of the world, and can ultimately lead to a state of liberation from suffering.