Re: Hooray: the Church of Scotland shows the way


"loiner2003" <loiner2003@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:7apd43F20351aU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thomas wrote:

Ghettos are, generally to be avoided. On the other hand people do tend to
cluster with like-minded people or those of a similar background. This can
lead to separate cultures, but equally it can be helpful to newly arrived
groups, giving them a safe haven to which they can retreat when their new
world seems frighteningly alien. The knack is recognising when the group
starts to become a ghetto, and offering support so that this does not
happen.

I don't think that most people are essentially "fundamentalist", to use
the term loosely. But when someone feels threatened it is tempting to
retreat into what seem like certainties.

How many centuries must pass before in-comers feel comfortable within their
new country? The Poles and Irish seem to accomplish this within a generation
or two, there are (for example) few signs of Heugenot enclaves in Britain
and yet many well Anglicised Jews still put great pressure on their
offspring not to marry out. Surely there can be no more sincere a form of
racism than that?



Yes, I think humans (and other species) are creative in a way that
mechanical and algorithmic devices are not. My hunch is that the same
process which gives rise to this creativity is what gives us our sense of
being. Whatever this process is it can't be accommodated within our
present
scientific models which are either deterministic or randomly
probabilistic.

The question is: is it ever going to be amenable to such models, or is it
in essence something which is a-scientific? In the latter case, what is it
in actuality?

The scientific model as currently defined requires explanations/models to be
presented in public terms that can reviewed and potentially falsified by
third parties. I'm not sure that an explanation which includes private terms
such as subjective experience can fit into that mode. However I think any
explanation must stay close to the scientific model in spirit and any
objective elements it relies on must conform fully to that model. But
science isn't the only tool we have to explore and explain our condition -
we also have mathematics, philosophy and the arts.




Another way of looking at it is that the Fabric of Reality provides the
canvas on which a conscious experience is played out. The creative aspect
of
our
consciousness helps to determine our trajectory but can only operate
within
the constraints of that canvas and the boundary conditions imposed by our
previous actions. The future is not however determined by the past.

You are starting to sound very mystical! :-) "Fabric of Reality", with
capital letters indeed. It's a lovely phrase but what do you mean by it.
Are we in the realm of the screen in Plato's cave, whereby we see only
shadows of ideal reality?


Sorry, "The Fabric of Reality" is the title of a book by David Deutsch FRS
who is widely considered to be the father of the quantum computer. He takes
quantum mechanics very seriously - unlike many scientists who tend to adopt
the "who cares what it means - it works, so just use it" approach. The
fabric of reality just refers to the set of rules/contraints within which
the material world operates - I don't think Deutsch was the first to coin
this expression.

Anyway, the fabric of reality provides the rules for a quantum universe
which evolves in a fully deterministic fashion - although the term "evolves"
in this context imposes a rather human centred notion of the flow of time
in which the past determines the future. In fact the quantum
universe is a-temporal and simply exists as a consistent framework within
which it is possible to impose something akin to the human notion of time as
one of its axes - along with spatial axes that is.

Human existence and the existence of all the material things that we
experience corresponds to a sub-set of the quantum universe that arises due
to measurement processes which pick out "observables" such as position,
momentum, time etc. Specific material worlds evolve and gain "momentum" due
to a process called coherence whilst other possible worlds decohere.

Adding all of these parallel universes together should in some sense restore
the absolute symmetry of the quantum background. Note however that parallel
universes are not totally separated - rather we have a complex branching
structure in which some twigs can become so separated from others that they
are effectively belong to different
trees.

These branches correspond to the world of classical mechanics - the world
that was considered by Newton, Hooke and all those other classical
scientists. Of course, we only have direct access to a single classical
world - the existence of the other classical worlds (from which we have
decohered) can only be inferred from quantum mechanics. Deutsch is one of a
number of physicists (perhaps the majority even) who consider these parallel
universes to be as real as our own.

The important thing though is that the evolution (from a human point of
view) of a classical world is not fully deterministic, we cannot predict the
future with complete certainty - even in principle. That said, each
classical world carries with it a set of
constraints which effectively make some future events all but impossible -
hence
classical physics is generally considered to be fully deterministic.



Yes, and it's a great shame that philosophy is not more widely taught
in
our schools than religion.
Or religion could be taught as a comparatively accessible introduction
to
philosophy. I see religion as a branch of philosophy (or, just possibly,
vice versa).

I'm not convinced!

:-) One could argue that religion is too dangerous for it *not* to be
taught in schools! Leave it to sectarians to do the teaching and the risks
are enormous. But teach it, that is the idea of religion, within a
philosophical framework, with an introduction to the actual provenance of
texts like the Bible, and we might start to undermine fundamentalist
attitudes.

As we've seen from the discussions on slavery, the Bible actually contains
some prett disgusting things. As we've also seen, once people are hooked on
this stuff they seem prepared to go to the most extraordinary lengths to
rationalise things which they would simply dismiss as odious if they came
across them in any other source - such is the power of religion :-(


I'm struggling here with the concept of existence that you seem to be
using. I know the conundrum of course - does the tree in the quadrangle
exist when no one is looking at or thinking about it? It's just that such
questions seem to me to be akin to the koan of Zen - what is the sound of
one hand clapping?, for example - they are a device to stimulate the mind
or soul, but the questions are themselves meaningless.


I don't think I'm using 'existence' in any special way - I'd go with (iirc)
Samuel Johnson's test - can you kick it? In other words, things are real
(exist) if they have (or can potentially have) some effect on our
experience. Yes the tree exists when no one is looking because we are firmly
cohered to its existence - and it to ours - we share the same classical
branch. I've never understood what the sound of one hand clapping is
supposed to mean - other than gobbledy gook. Now whether a tree exists that
has fully decohrered from our world (ie whose existence could not possibly
influence our expereince/measurements) is a different matter, I think that
is moot.



The Jesuit palaeontologist, Teilhard de Chardin, had an idea that all
creation was evolving towards an ultimate "omega point", which for him had
decided links with the idea of God. Hmm, this might perhaps be the final
corollary of the Big Bang - the Damp Squib perhaps! :-)

Current thinking is that the universe is evolving towards total chaos - the
heat death of the universe. Murray Gell-Mann (he of the quarks) postulates
that the period of complexity between the simplicity of the Big Bang and the
chaos of the Heat Death is where the really interesting stuff happens.


But have you not just said that a closed and complete explanatory
framework is not available for the sense of being? Or do I misunderstand
you?

No, I hope I didn't say that - sorry if I implied it.

At the moment we have two main strands (pillars if you prefer) to modern
physics - quantum mechanics and general relativity. Until we have managed to
unify these two great models then I think it is premature to abandon the
search for an entirely naturalistic solution to the origin of the sense of
being.

Of course, many philosophers of mind discount this and believe that a
naturalistic explanation of mind (including the experiential aspects) can be
delivered within the framework of an entirely classical scientific model.
I'm totally unconvinced by this however - it seems to me that they are
simply ignoring the hard problem and concentrating on the easier behavioural
problem. I don't even think that they have solved that however since I think
that the power of human intellect goes beyond what is achievable by a
classical/mechanical device. The creation of a credible algorithmic
intelligence would prove me wrong.

Anyway, I have a lot of sympathy with Penrose's view that gravity is
responsible for the evolution of classical worlds from quantum worlds. He
postulates a type of quantum reduction which is creative and non algorithmic
in just the same way that the human intellect seems to be. I should add that
he has drawn some pretty fierce criticism from some quarters for his views
but I personally find them quite attractive. If he is correct then the sense
of being is something which accompanies this non-algorithmic process. The
more the process is controlled and organised by classical structures such as
the brain the more intense the emergent sense of being becomes.



I find difficult to the idea of an intrinsic curvature that does not have
a corresponding extrinsic one. But clearly I need to read further.

I think the curvature of General Relativity can only be truly understood in
intrinsic terms.

As a matter of interest, it's worth noting that something can have a
pronounced external curvature but be totally lacking in any internal
curvature. A cylindrical surface embedded in a 3D space is an example. 2D
beings confined to the surface of a cylinder would not see any curvature and
would not be able to make any local measurements that would reveal the true
topology of their world. Of course the same thing applies to the 4D
space-time that we inhabit - who knows our universe may possess some sort of
exotic topology which allows fast travel between otherwise remote regions -
though there is no special reason for believing that.

I am trying slowly to get to grips with where biology and physics are at
now. It is not easy but it is quite clear to me that ordinary mortals, and
that includes philosophers and theologians (not to mention moralists and
politicians) have not even begun to comprehend the significance of
evolutionary theory, let alone of relativity and quantum theory.

There has been a huge surge in knowledge since the Bible was put together -
I'm amazed that anyone would want to devote themselves to the study of such
irrelevant old books when there are so many alternative and better sources
of knowledge.



I have been reading, when I get the chance, in order to try some
self-education. Stuff such as Steve Jones' "Almost like a Whale" on
evolution, together with some Dawkins. On physics there is Hawking of
course and I have just obtained and am starting to dig into Richard
Feynman's "Easy and Not so Easy Pieces." At the very least it is fun
(fun???) trying to tease the little grey cells.

Good luck with that, I really enjoy Feynman - I'd love to have attended some
of his lectures.


The point is, why look for an external deity to explain our own intrinsic
humanity - surely that, if nothing else, belongs to us.

Does *anything* belong to us, in a universe where we are little more than
another pile of atoms?


Yes, I think our humanity belongs to us - we create it and its ours!
To quote that great philospher Noel Gallagher, "how can they give us a dream
that was already ours?"

Thanks
Thomas











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