Everything is measurable, or how do you know it exists at all? To think that your life experience in its fullness is measurable is to turn yourself into an object. At root you're not an object but a subject (indeed The Subject). To make yourself an object is to turn yourself into a machine - the final goal of materialist philosophies. (I'm sure you are not machine-like in your life - no doubt you are as spontaneous as you need to be outside a Taoist fantasy - just that you don't see the implications of your worldview.)
If my mind had a pause button I could express all of it. And it doesn't have a pause button as everything is in constant change. But to express our experience in scientific language is to view our stream of consciousness through static, fixed categories. Actually you never have *exactly* the same experience again (both you and the world have changed subsequently) so the fact that we can nevertheless talk to each other about our experiences shows that we are just abstracting what is common to both of us from each unique individual event. To put it another way: if you were to challenge me to tell you what it is about my present experience I find so inexpressible, then I would have to express it in the common, dictionary-defined terms of our shared language. That is, I'd be doing your work for you by reducing the bubbling flow to static terms. I can't tell you what is ineffable about my world as it's ineffable! . ---In FairfieldLife@yahoobetween us amounts to this:groups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote : Any sort of god must be immune to entropy. And that would need an impressive explanation. The Absolute is outside time and space. Entropy is a theory about phenomenal change. I think you meant to say "The absolute, if it exists, is outside space and time" ;-) We should take comfort from the fact that everything is explainable and that everything has turned out to have a simple explanation. Science limits itself to the measurable. Everything is measurable, or how do you know it exists at all? Even if we discover that the world cannot be without some other phenomena we will know some of its attributes and will thus have made a measurement of sorts. Watch what's flowing through your mind right at this instant. How much - or rather how little - of that variety and novelty can you express in language or quantify? If my mind had a pause button I could express all of it. Imagine a situation involving guilt or shame; or feeling how ephemeral and fragile our lives are. In fact, try to picture what it must be like in those last moments for a man facing a firing squad. Could that inner "final judgement" be captured in a scientific report? Yes. Its bound to be a mixture of guilt, terror, regret, mania, maybe even laughter caused by shock. All these things can be understood as both physical, hormonal responses and the subjective stuff we know and love. How they interface is the mystery here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote : Re salyavin808: The problem here is the metaphors taking themselves too seriously. You probably think that's ducking the question but it's just avoiding getting pulled into the endless cycle of ever more mysterious sophistry. We won't work it out how minds work from the inside, at least no one ever has, so it's probably be a good idea to hang five and work out how it's all actually put together and start again from there. Yeah, but . . . it's the "actually put together" bit that is soaked in metaphysical assumptions. The type of person who tells us he's a hard-nosed, down-to-earth, "just the facts ma'am" type is saying that *the real world* must conform to his IDEAL view that the world is no-nonsense sensible. I agree about not taking metaphors too literally. We can't escape from the language trap. Then we have to be sure we haven't created one for ourselves. Hence the building of "my" world relies on nothing other than the simplest explanation of the data and not on assuming things we simply think - or want - to be true. So I exclude everything that doesn't fit in with the cornerstones of knowledge, most importantly the theory of evolution by natural selection. This applies to everything and not just us. If consciousness is some sort of eternal being that survives us after death and is even some sort of quantum god thing, then Darwinism has to go out of the window. Physics would have to be completely rewritten too, I imagine the laws of thermodynamics would be the first in the bin, which is a shame as they work rather well, but any sort of god must be immune to entropy. And that would need an impressive explanation. So if we assume the universe is a no-nonsense sensible place that works according to fathomable laws rather than for the convenience of invisible creators we can get an ideal that allows for the further research needed to explain what we don't know rather than one where things are assumed to be beyond us and where our interpretations are seen as just as valid as demonstrable theories. I worry that a lot of intelligent people are continually looking in the wrong place for their gods and that they will get all the publicity and research money because their answers are what people want to hear. The net is full of crap research funded by some religion or other with an agenda to push. Trouble is, we are still in a 'god of the gaps' situation with consciousness and intelligence but not enough to be able to say that they are part of some sort of extra-material reality of which we currently know nothing. We should take comfort from the fact that everything is explainable and that everything has turned out to have a simple explanation that requires no add-on supernatural powers but we like to reserve them for everything unexplained all the same. The human condition I suppose. So my "ideal" is based on what we can see and the knowledge that we are great at inventing stories and so everything that doesn't fit in with the known laws of nature is most likely our imagination. I convert for evidence though...
