Hello, Cy, hello, OMF II

Testing.......

Yes, it is working.

Congratulations to Cyrellys & Co.!

I will be continuing the BPWH blog from Compass Morainn, which was a continuation from the original OMF site on ProBoards, which is in the process of being re-archived from that site.



(cont.)

Welcome to the new OMF Dan! Congrats. You have both Special Guest & Moderator status.

--------------

Edit to Add: For all of Dan Smith's readers, his work at the original OMF can be found at:
http://theopenmind.freehostingcloud.com/indexaeec.html?board=dansmithsom

When OMF original site went down he moved to Compass Morainn and so some of his work in that interm just before this site was available is at:

http://compassmorainn.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=bpwh

Dan's last post at Compass Morainn is linked to for everyone's convenience here in his comment below.

Cy,

Obviously, the birthing of a forum is no mean feat. We can appreciate what Bren had to go through. Call on me when you need me. Otherwise, I'll mainly be sticking to business in my own little corner. I cast my internet fate to my friends. I will be in Montana in the latter part of June. There will be a memorial picnic for Louise, on or about June 22.


My latest post on Compass Morainn was this......

http://compassmorainn.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=bpwh&thread=96&page=5#1054

KIM, that eschatology is always bordering on gallows humor...... and that is where I am today, with the dispatch of Lego, feline, age 21, being today's priority.


4:20-------

I had a convo w/ Sam about the TA proposal......

He did support the Boo-Boo cosmology......

I compare the Holocaust to a skinned knee.......

Mother comes to kiss our knee, reassuring us that it will be healed. Does anyone suppose that the Holocaust, or any other atrocity, cannot be healed? Why not? Cannot time heal all wounds? Who invented time, and why?


But why the atrocity, in the first place?

Even Sam, after all these years, did not understand that the BPW = the ONLY world.

Everything that is ever going to happen, in space and time, has to happen right here.

Would the ONLY world have been better if Hitler had not happened?

If Hitler had not happened, Israel would not have happened. Israel has a very important role to play within the Prophetic Tradition.

Does this mean that the atrocities in Cambodia and Rawnda did not measure up? Does this mean that the prophetic tradition in inessential?

My friend at Stanford, 1961-64, Chia Tse, is Cambodian. It is quite possible that his family was consumed in the Holocaust of Pol Pot, that was provoked by Nixon's bombing of their country. It is a small world. I have not maintained contact. I had more important things to do..... eschatology. Don't we all?

Yes, I think we can make it all the way to reinventing the best possible world. What is the BPW, if it cannot be reinvented?



(cont.)

I'll be down in the Shenandoah for another couple of days..........

We got back a bit early, so now I get to go to GFC/SfA. I remain optimistic about the possibility of working on the same page with these three local groups...... GFC, BGF and the TA's. I'm not saying that I will convert any of them, but merely that I can convince them that the BPWH is not implausible. That's all.....!

By itself, this is no big deal, but the right person, at the right time, could make it into a big deal. Yes?


I continue to fret about the role of atoms in the BPWH........

As an idealist, I can't live with them, as a realist, I can't live without them. But, wrt the atoms, it just occurred to me that my larger problem may be with the photons. I'll have to handle these two species in some coordinated fashion.

If I were to get as serious about photons, as I may have to get about atoms, then the fundamental premise of direct perception would be jeopardized, if not rendered entirely incoherent. But photons and atoms are like a horse and carriage, no?

Can there not be any ontological space between the two? But, if there were, that would jeopardize the fundamental monism, which relies significantly on the mathematical monism of physics. At one point I was going to attempt to focus a significant portion of the panpsychism onto atoms. But this would not work with photons, and still be able to maintain direct perception. How do sound waves compare with light waves, in this regard?

With direct perception, the 3D aspect of vision requires explanation. Well, this is what I was thinking about, yesterday. All of physics requires a background of space and time, which are very difficult to explain physically. They have no explanation, per se. They simply have to be presupposed, despite special and general relativity.

Given space and time, then we have to fill it with something. What else, besides atoms and photons? And, by the same token, how does an immaterialist explain gravity? Or, perhaps, more to the point, how does a materialist explain gravity? It continues to be a real headache. But, if gravity is so problematic, then why should electricity not also be problematic? Just because the mathematics is more perspicuous?

Does gravity require the reification of gravitons? Their ontology remains very obscure. The ontology of any quantum phenomenon, which is supposed to provide the 'physical' basis of all phenomena, remains very obscure, despite a general propensity to ignore and/or deny that obscurity.

Is there a different degree of objectivity between humans and viruses? Humans partake of the cosmic soul, in a way that viruses do not. But atoms partake of a Pythagorean soul. They may well partake of a panpsychism. How do we differentiate?


3pm------------

Instead of starting with atoms, we should start with gravitons. If they have an ontology problem, then atoms will, too. And, frankly, I've never understood how we can quantize the curvature of space. Presumably, each graviton is a wave of the curvature metric. But, no, the gravitons that make up the curvature would all be virtual, as with electrostatic photons. Well, I'm not so sure that there can be any objective distinction between real and virtual photons, given the relativistic invariance.


4:30-------------

I'm reading the article on virtual photons, and there do seem to be some philosophical issues.

We can think of the electric force as being the exchange of virtual photons between two particles. However, the curvature of space around a massive object is thought of as a real phenomenon in itself, independent any actual exchanges between particles. Is this conceptual distinction between electric and gravitational fields merely a 'semantic' difference?

Nonetheless, there does not exist a generally accepted quantum theory of gravity....

In most, though not all, theories of quantum gravity, the gravitational field itself is also quantized. Since the contemporary theory of gravity, general relativity, describes gravitation as the curvature of spacetime by matter and energy, a quantization of gravity seemingly implies some sort of quantization of spacetime geometry. Insofar as all extant physical theories rely on a classical spacetime background, this presents not only extreme technical difficulties, but also profound methodological and ontological challenges for the philosopher and the physicist. Though quantum gravity has been the subject of investigation by physicists for over eighty years, philosophers have only just begun to investigate its philosophical implications.

(cont.)

Space and time separate us from and reconnect us to God, but only indirectly, as through a glass, darkly. We have the shining present and the eternal presence.

Our biology and sapience eventually provide for our dominion over space and time. That eventuality may be upon us. And what now, my love, now that our sojourn is nearly complete?

Who are we? From whence did we come, and whither do we go?

From dust to dust?

Atoms share a mathematical soul. We may share a personal one. Is this duality? It has to do with symmetry breaking. E8 is a form of the mathematical soul. So is the Mandelbrot. Our egos are the atoms of a superheated gas. We are about to condense back into a cosmic mind.

Will it be a room with a view? We may look, but not touch the best possible world. Eternity is a state of mind. It is not a duration. We get to meet our alter egos on the way to at-one-ment, or the cosmic mind-meld. I don't know that we should need more. Anyone for reenactments? Tree hugging? Virtual realities?

Are memories eternal? They seem to be. But I suspect they also partake of the symmetry breaking and atonement. There is the cosmic kaleidoscope. That is our heavenly gameboy, along with knitting and tree hugging.

How can atoms be real if photons are not, and gravitons are even less so?

Why not virtual atoms? Everything else is. Virtual persons to match my virtual mountains?

Our eternal, best possible, virtual world? Symmetry broke?

Suppose that rocks were 'quantized'.... that they only came in certain shapes and sizes? Leaves are a bit like that. Can you tell that I've been walking in the woods?

Every pebble carries with it, its individual history. That seems mind boggling. Who keeps track of it all...... going back billions of years? That's where virtuality kicks in. But we can never reach the edge of time or of the world. Just ask Neil A, or Kit G, his debriefer. There is no measure of virtuality, or of reality, for that matter.

Obviously, God loves nature. Should we be jealous? We all try to be natural.... just ask Robert R. I can dream that I'm an eagle. Can they return the favor?

Atoms exist on the edge of nature, as do gravitons. We don't want the atmosphere to evaporate from the Earth, do we? And where would marine life be, without the tides?

Elemental atoms have no individuality, but their chemistry underwrites all individuality, besides our eidetic memories. They are pure Pythagorean souls..... having only a bit more individuality than the integers that designate their quantum states.


3:10 ------------

To be is to relate, as I've often stated. This is the hallmark of monism and theism. This should apply to numbers, atoms and people.

There could not exist a world with just the number 4, for instance. But what about a world composed of one hydrogen atom? It would be very hard to specify a space-time frame in which this atom could exist, and even if that were possible, by quantum uncertainty, it would be everywhere and nowhere.

The mere existence of anything resembling matter, i.e. having mass and solidity, is only an emergent property of a relativistic quantum field theory that must include a Higgs boson, among other things. Even then, that solidity is only relative to other particles sharing the same mathematical symmetries. This latter point remains ambiguous, TBMK.

Neutrinos, even though belonging to the same E8 symmetry group, are notoriously ghostly, passing through the Earth, with hardly scratch or dent.

It is supposed that there are universes that may be very much like ours, and interpenetrating ours, but that, with a slightly different set of physical parameters, would be completely invisible to us. How different do the parameters have to be, to be non-interacting? Or is it simply a matter of having different sources? They might be exactly the same, but in a different, parallel space-time frame, or on a different branch of a quantum measurement, i.e. like Schroedinger's 'split' cats.

The more we learn about the world, the more improbable, nay, impossible, that it seems, but most of us keep quiet about it, not wanting to cause alarm! And all of this is just a matter of standard physics. It has nothing directly to do with the venerable ontology of immaterialism..... how do we know that we're not dreaming, or are not the figments of someone else's imagination or dementia? The world seems more like a great thought than a great machine.

Notice that we've not even mentioned the Anthropic or the mind-body problems.

But how is an immaterialist to explain the leaves and stones along the forest path? The leaves, being so transient, seem less problematic than the stones. Out of sight, out of mind, for a 'billion' years or so.... each one so darned individuated, and just begging to be someone's pet rock! On the dinning room table is a bowl of beach pebbles from Iona, each one seemingly a work of art. Are the Cedar Run pebbles jealous?


5:50---------

Apropos of relationalism, we could follow Richard Feynman and say that materiality is partly the result of all of us time-sharing a single set of recycled, or time-looped, elementary particles, as we humans time-share the cosmic soul. It is all a matter of self-interaction. But that does not explain the persistence of detailed properties, especially of inanimate objects. Fossils would be another instance of this, and are especially problematic for me, who sees time, especially 'deep' time, as illusory! It's no wonder that I'm the last of the immaterialists!

What renders nature coherent is its self-generation. What perverse genius would go to the trouble to fake that? Or is that too parochial of a view? Could it not be the filling of a blank canvas, retroactively, under the guidance of our collectively informed unconscious, with God being our cheerleader?



(cont.)

Atoms are logically essential, as the ultimate carriers of physical laws and chemical properties. But they cannot be objective and still allow for the strong emergence that appears in biology and psychology. This quasi-objectivity of atoms enables upward causation while, at the same time, allowing for downward causation, i.e. psycho-bio-kenesis, or freewill and vitalism. The quantum problems are a manifestation of this non-objectivity.

This is a component of the broader issue of explaining materiality within the context of immateriality. Hmmm.........

Well, there is, at the least, a somewhat separate issue of explaining the persistent identity of material objects. This goes back, at least, to Berkeley's 'tree on the quad'....... why is it still there, in the morning? Immaterialism and relationalism seem to argue against independent existence. Ionian pebbles and books in the stacks seem to argue otherwise.

A further, related issue, is the lack of temporal, spatial or scalar limits on natural processes. To put this another way, immaterialism generally implies anthropocentrism. Nature has every appearance of being decidedly non-anthropocentric. Ever since Copernicus and Darwin, we have been lost in space and time.

My basic rationale is that the self-revealing God is necessarily self-concealing, and the primary aspect of that self-concealment is to hide behind the veil of Nature. But how do I explain this ability.....? Mainly by implicating ourselves...... we are the great, albeit unwitting, (retroactive!) rationalizers. Nature is largely our own ratiocination. Thus are we the co-Creators, even to the point that God's role becomes that of our leading motivator.

IOW, it is mainly we who have managed to outwit ourselves, by drawing the veil of Nature between our creaturely selves and our Creator Self. Naturally, we are reluctant to give up this game, its being tantamount to our giving up the Ghost.

With the resource crisis, we are holding our own feet to the fire. How else could we possibly expect to wrest this blue-green pearl from our death-grip?

Why? Why not forever?

This is Forever. But, just now, and still, we are seeing Eternity..... the shining Present/Presence..... as through a glass, darkly. We need only to keep moving toward the Light...... whilst dragging our heels? But of course!

The memory of trees, rocks and books is but an aspect of our collective, eidetic, relational, memory, teleologically elicited, dreamlike, from our awakening at the Omega, at which point God, and we, are cured of our MPD syndrome, God willing!

All perception is direct, with the proviso of its being refracted through Nature, which includes our own artifacts, such as books and the Internet.

Direct perception? All perception is an artifact of the Cosmic navel-gazing, and the temporal cosmic 'dementia' that results therefrom. This is just a (clinical) restatement of the principle of Lila, which, more technically, is a form of Pandeism, which very lengthy entry I'm now perusing for the first time.......

It is therefore most particularly the belief that the Creator of the universe actually became the universe, and so ceased to exist as a separate and conscious entity..... Through this synergy pandeism claims to answer primary objections to deism (why would God create and then not interact with the universe?) and to pantheism (how did the universe originate and what is its purpose?).

My only proviso, if it has not already been added, is that of the necessary Resurrection of Creator/creatures.

And I'm quite put off by the very truncated metaphysics of the video found here....

http://sites.google.com/site/pandeists/about-us

It's often hard for me to understand how, seemingly sapient, individuals can become so misguided. A conspiracy of dunces? No doubt!

So, I would be a Resurrectional Pandeist, perhaps.

The primary misconception of the pandeists is their reflexive adoption of the scientific cosmology as their ontological presupposition. Can they not move beyond that posit? The pantheists have fallen into this same trap. That misapprehension precludes a spiritual telos.

That is an awfully big oversight.

Then there is this.......

The pandeistic universe is just as the universe described in naturalistic pantheism, with the distinction that the belief necessarily encompasses a sentient being that existed before the formation of the universe. Panentheism also suggests a universe designed by a sentient deity, and composed of matter derived from that deity. The belief systems part on the point that panentheism asserts that God is greater than the universe, and therefore continues a separate existence alongside it, while pandeism asserts that everything that was the Deus became incorporated into the universe.

The problem here is the Newtonian, absolute time, PoV of this contributor. Evidently, the Ouroboric time-loop is quite beyond her/his comprehension.


8:30-----------

I'm now reading a early version Craig Dilworth's 'Simplicity', which is to be published within a couple of months by Lexington Books. Craig is well known to Sam and me. Sam and Genya will be visiting him in Sweden, at the end of the month. The book has received at least one rave review. I briefly discussed it with Craig, when he was Sam's guest, last year.

Anonymous review of Simplicity, April 2012

1. Content: Craig Dilworth has written an extraordinarily insightful book on one of the deepest and most comprehensive of philosophical subjects, metaphysical categories. And he connects explicitly with a truly amazing variety of philosophical ideas, often in binary pairs requiring subtle distinctions, including, e.g., perspective and world view, knowledge and understanding, reason and intuition, the transcendent and transcendental, the phenomenal and transcendental, primary and secondary qualities, universal and particular, objects and properties, the a priori and a posteriori, analytic and synthetic, emergence and reduction, mind and body, substance and accident, change and stasis, the abstract and the concrete, necessity and possibility, doubt and certainty, reference and intentionality, existence and being, being and nothingness, space and time, cause and effect, identity and difference, paradox and contradiction, knower and known, and, of course, at its core, simplicity and complexity. The book comprises 19 chapters, arranged in the classic style of Plato’s Republic and Kant’s Critique, with an “analytic” at the beginning, whose task is to explain the basic theory followed by a “dialectic” that demonstrates how the theory contributes to a unified understanding and resolution of a wide variety of contested issues. Dilworth’s analytic explains the “simplicity way of thinking,” a way of thinking about simplicity itself as the fundamental organizing feature of reality. Following the table of contents there is a handy listing of and index to all the principles (fundamental rules of reality) and definitions introduced and defended in the book.......

2. Scholarship: Dilworth is on intimate terms not only with much of the philosophical literature but with the relevant literature of science (especially modern physics) and religion (Buddhism and Taoism) as well. The book contains a great many deeply insightful historical remarks and analyses. All in all, in my view, Simplicity belongs in that rarified pantheon of masterpieces on fundamental metaphysics and category theory (what Dilworth calls meta-metaphysics), which includes Plato’s Sophist, Aristotle’s Categories, Aquinas’ On Being and Essence, Descartes’ Meditations, Berkeley’s Principles, Hume’s Treatise, Kant’s Critiques, Bradley’s Appearance and Reality, Russell’s Logical Atomism, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations, Husserl’s Ideas, Strawson’s Individuals, and Butchvarov’s Being Qua Being, as well as foundational work in logic and mathematics by Aristotle, Euclid, Newton, Leibniz, Boole, Cantor, Frege, Russell, Gödel, Boolos, and Prior. Beside these, Dilworth’s effort is worthy indeed. Close reading is rewarded with much deeper understanding not only of how to frame metaphysical issues, but what the meaning is of various kinds of attempted solutions.

(cont.)

I've adopted one of the more gaudy seeming of the Ionian pebbles, as a talisman for the profligacy of nature. How could this riot of color and texture have come about, other than through the eons of geological reworkings? What better proof could there be of materialism? Who could have ordered such a specimen? All of this show, with hardly ever an audience!

One could point similarly to the surprising pictures of the of the planetary satellites sent back by Voyager. What fool would suppose that it was a show put on for us, Earthlings? Io vs. Iona..... the same metaphysical issue. Nature has outdone itself.

In the context of Craig's 'Simplicity' (to be published), how can such simplicity and complexity be so exquisitely intertwined? Yes, the Mandelbrot does come to mind.... Is this by way of a rationale, employing a virtual reality? Nature is but smoke and mirrors, kaleidoscopically adjusted? Are we not the mirrors of nature? A meditation on the complexity of the pebble..... would it not point to the simplicity of God? This seems to be what Craig is aiming at, but only very implicitly, good academic that he is.

Neither can I imagine that he is not playing with this paradox in the parallels between his last two books....... 'Too Smart' & 'Simplicity'! Suffer the children to come unto me.....

.

The assumption is that we humans are the primary sustainers, if not creators, wrt Nature. God creates us, and is the backstop for our fleshing out of the world, s/he having provided the framework and the initial and final causes.

The primary issue for the BPWH has always been how much independence can we or must we allow to Nature? Or, what is the best possible degree of that independence.....?

I have often stated that Creation is of, by and for.... the Spirit. Is it a zero sum game, between Nature and Spirit? How are we even to distinguish between these two?


5:15--------

How much independence can nature be afforded, in a regime of immaterilism?

In particular, how much determination may left to the atoms, if the Spirit is not to be unduly constrained, particularly in the eschatological regime? If we give the atoms an inch, won't they take a mile? How can we add physics to spirit, or spirit to physics? It's like the gingham dog and the calico cat. No?

This is the Cartesian dilemma/dichotomy, with which the modern mind has be struggling, for the last 400 years. The BPWH is committed to the Spirit, but how can we give the atoms their due?

The strategy to-date has been to focus on the 'habituation' of phenomenological cycles, particualarly of the biological sort. See the index on my BPW site......

http://bestpossibleworld.org/index06.htm#cycles

Non-biological phenomena are less amenable to the subsumption of the atomic dynamics within a vital system. To what extent can we extend ecology to cover geophysics?

Or extraterrestrial physics, for that matter? And I'm not referring to ET/UT 'physics', but to non-terrestrial planetary and stellar physics, as conventionally understood.

This has to do with upward vs. downward causation......

Now, the opposite view is that everything starts with consciousness. That is, consciousness is the ground of all being. In this view, consciousness imposes "downward causation." In other words, our free will is real. When we act in the world we really are acting with causal power. This view does not deny that matter also has causal potency — it does not deny that there is causal power from elementary particles upward, so there is upward causation — but in addition it insists that there is also downward causation. It shows up in our creativity and acts of free will, or when we make moral decisions. In those occasions we are actually witnessing downward causation by consciousness.

I note that this quote is from my old acquaintance, Amit Goswami.

But what then of animals and bacteria or even viruses? Do we grant them no independent efficacy? How do I explain my contraction of the flu? Was it an act of God? Do we toss out epidemiology and vaccinations?

Genetic mutations are a case in point.



(cont.)

If genes and proteins did not exist, God and or we would have had to create them out of atoms. Of what else? But does that logical necessity suffice to empower, say, evaporation or atom bombs?

Can ecology explain geology and astronomy? It can explain the necessity, but not the efficacy, IMO. Where there's a will, there's a way? That is the way of the spirit, but how does the spirit materialize the atoms, or become a proxy for them? The mind/matter duality is terribly seductive to the modern mind, and equally inchoate. The domains of upward and downward causation have no common ground. Ne'er the twain shall meet.

However....... if we think of ecology vs. mathematics, perhaps we can reduce the sense of dichotomy. Both of these tend to span the gap between mind and matter, between the phenomenal and noumenal. Craig's notion of Simplicity ought to be applicable, as well.

Despite the seduction of deep space, nature abhors a vacuum. Nature has no blind spots. Given the vertical asymmetry, there is no blank canvas. Reality has no edges. Even the night sky must be accounted for. Neither do mathematics nor ecology have edges. The spirit listeth where is wilt, and where it must. If there is any illusion at all, is has to do with the atomism of our egos. No man is an island. Consider the Mandelbrot and all those little brots! Aren't they a trip?

And this just in from the gray lady...... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/science/it-started-with-genome-omes-proliferate-in-science.html?ref=science

The tribulations of reductionism..... whither Simplicity?

How can the reductionist impulse be contained, or can it only be overthrown..... and proabaly from within....?


6:10-------------

Mind and nature are profligate to the hilt and to the core. Mathematics is where that profligacy comes under a microscope. Where Srinivasa provided the telescope.

The integers are the atoms being held together by the Mandelbrot. The Mandelbrot is the genome of reality. The sporadic/exceptional groups are the proteome, if you will. Simplicity there is. There need only be one atom, from a metaphysical perspective, as there is only one soul.

There is but one integer..... ramified. Numerology is the root of the ramification. Alchemy and astrology lie therein, in the refraction of the monad. Why is this so hard to discern? As above, so below..... the ouroboros of our conformality. Therein lies the simplicity and the complexity.

Does this solve the Ionian memory problem? If you've seen one pebble, you've seen them all? As with the flower in the crannied wall.



(cont.)

If you've seen one integer, one atom, one microbe, then you have seen God, as well. It being understood that only through God, can we 'see' anything at all. Everything else is a variation on that theme...... well, the best possible variation, with the best possible self-limitations.

Did you know that Olivia Newton-John is the granddaughter of Max Born? I read it in the review of Turing's Cathedral. Max was also the grandfather of the bomb. Everyone who had something to do with it worked with or for him at Gottingen, up until '33. And now I remember the fourth member of the bridge set of prodigies from 'Paly' high, in the freshman dorm, Trancos,..... Paul Teller, besides Doug H, Larry T and Charlie B, as previously noted. Charlie has been involved in the forensics of the children of the 'disappeared' in Argentina.

There is simplicity in the big bang and in the atom, but how does that simplicity relate to the monad? Why should this be so subtle? The relation has to do with math and ecology. It is the simplicity that lies behind that complexity. It is the simplicity of coherence and anthropics. It is the simplicity of organicity. But wherein is the simplicity of memory?

Here it is...... 'my life flashed before my eyes'. How so? Is it not like the flash of genius?

Each of our lives must be a symphony, but we don't realize it, until the end. The Ionian pebble is but a note of that symphony..... so simple in its relational complexity. Time and space are just so that everything doesn't happen at once. But, of course, it does. And so the suspense.

What is suspense? The hand-maiden of coherence? Suspense of disbelief? Suspense of judgment?


7:15-------------

I don't rightly know how relationalism relates to the exorbitance of nature. One might suppose that relationalism might tend to wash out the detail. What might enhance the detail? Do we have to place all of that burden on the atoms?

What is the driver of complexity? It has to do with the 10^10 'reflections' of the monadic soul. There is nothing more detailed than our 10^10 eidetic memories, besides, possibly, the history of the 10^40 atoms on earth.


(cont.)

Nor is it clear how the bio-eco-systems may relieve us, and the atoms, of our ontological burden. The mandelbrot should point to that possibility. Nor clear how geo and bio systems differ ontologically. Entropy plays a big role in both, but it does so in such a 'picaresque', idiosyncratic fashion that is so hard to simulate. Here the atoms may be essential. I'd love to know how they relate to memory and simplicity. How do we get from the 10^10 to the 10^40, in a coherent manner? What is the memory capacity of the akashic record book? Quite a few gigs, one might imagine! Or is it just one bit? Just a bit o' love, perhaps..... stirred well. What does it take to make the world go 'round?

We are to God, as the atoms are to us, recalling that we are the brain cells of God, although we are created equal with God, by God, of God, in a very non-trivial sense. We are all reflected in every atom, in every grain of sand...... Wait 'til you see our chain-reaction..... our childhood's end, if you will!

Aren't there measures and movements of the 'symphony' of life that we could have left out, individually and collectively? Gosh, it very often seems that way, but where would we start, and where to end? Who throws the first stone? Look to nature and to the mosquitos.... Who invited them to the party?

If my pet Ionian pebble did not exist, who would have invented/invited it? Would it have burned a hole in Nature's pocket? Wherein does its identity reside? Within itself? Within us?


3:30----------

At the SfA meeting today, Bill brought up the impact of Xianity on education and science. This led to the Islamic doctrine of occasionalism. Descartes, Hume and Berkeley also had to struggle with this problem, as does everyone who is not a strict materialist.

Atoms are just so darned convenient, how could we live without them? The problem of trying to live with them is a bit more subtle.

Another concept that came up in the meeting is that of divine aseity, which leads to the notion of divine simplicity, bringing us back to Craig Dilworth's 'Simplicity' (tbp).

The notion of divine aseity or simplicity does seem to argue against trinitarianism. Much of xian philosophy is devoted to apologizing for the trinity, of course. Out of the trinity comes us and the atoms. So much for simplicity!? The BPWH resorts to pantheism as a means to reinstate simplicity. We are Indra's necklace or monads with windows. Math and ecology/gaia point the way. Atoms have windows, too. The singularity of the BPWH has much to do with how all this complexity is simplified.




(cont.)

It is the cohesiveness/solidity of matter that is especially problematic for immaterialism. Does this mean that fluids and gasses are easier to explain? That may not be so. If we explain one state of matter, we explain all states, quite possibly.

Is this simply a matter of distributed intelligence.... of object-oriented programming? Or are there distinct categories of substantiality or substantiation?

Logic seems the most substantial of abstract categories. Are there any standouts amongst our qualia? They don't capture the objectivity of solidity. Concreteness and objectivity are quite different aspects of reality. Abstractness defines yet another dimension.

We may also need to account for the existence of entities that are able to selectively interact with various aspects of our world.

I have supposed, however, that memory is eternal, whereas matter is not. However, if memory is an aspect of direct perception, then it is a perception that is mediated by materiality. But memory and perception share in the illusory nature of the world through which they perceive the monad. The eternity of Creation is relative to the monad. Nothing is lost to the monad. The pebbles on the beach? There is the potential to reproduce them at will. But would there not then be independent identities?




(cont.)

Good Morning Dan!

I added a direct link to your work in the Archive I in my first post at the top of the page for any of your readers or for yourself so that access is easy.

Thank you for making use of the work it was to restore OMF.

We greatly appreciate you doing so.

Cy

Cy,

It is an amazing amount of work that you have done here. What can we do now to restore a wider interest in these topics? It is not going to be easy. I wonder if there is still any chance of a further reconciliation with other folks. Perhaps not.

I would be glad to discuss these issues with you, privately and/or in public. In the meantime, we just keep on trucking......
---------------


Obviously, there are fundamental aspects of the BPWH which remain only sparsely investigated. I can only hope that there are others who pursue this topic. If so, they are keeping an even lower profile, as if that were possible! It remains a terra incognita.

Divine simplicity and human complexity remain poles apart.

That simple fact should be grounds for optimism. Many, however, take it as a rationale for pessimism.

Optimism? Yes, ours has been a very extended sojourn into materialism, and all the complexity inherent therein. There are ample indications that this sojourn is coming to its logical end. The complexity of matter can only be finite, while the simplicity of God is infinite. With the LHC, for instance, it would seem that we have done our due diligence wrt the investigation of matter, and then some.

Is it not time to investigate our source? Perhaps our source is the big bang, to which the LHC does apply. Very few of us look elsewhere, with anything besides an unquestioning faith.

Craig D investigates simplicity, to which I refer as the knowledge implosion, tantamount to the falling of the sky. Our visitors are simply the harbingers of that eventuality, within the fullness of time.

The question remains as to identity within eternity, and the simplicity thereof. Complexity is a primal potency of simplicity, but it must not compromise the simplicity. How can we have the best of both of these worlds?

We wish to have nothing wasted. Need anything be wasted?

As usual, the Mandelbrot comes to mind. But, with the world, there is complexity on both sides.... objective and subjective. Recovering a day in a life would mean very little were it not able to include the original experiencer, or some meaningful enlargement, thereupon. The same issue arises with any theory of direct perception.


5:45-----------

In effect, we may be dealing with a compounded set of complexities, both internal and external. Can the compounding of complexity possibly lead to simplicity? How might one get a handle on this problem?

There are many cases, in the hard and soft sciences, where simplicity emerges from complexity, where order emerges from chaos. But, typically, the movement is in the other direction, in as much as a direction may be inferred. A case in point is the immensity of the biological complexity that owes its existence to the simplicity of the universal genetic code. The anthropic principle is trying to tell us something along these lines. So are religion and politics. Organicity and holism are, as well.

Language and science are our best attempts to address these issues. The Internet has the potential to complexify and simplify. Will a global self emerge from the global brain? Would that be good or bad? The mere fact that there may not be a cosmic soul, over and above the shared human soul, points to an at-one-ment.



(cont.)

Atoms are ok if we can keep them in their place, but that is hard to do. There tends to be a zero-sum, all or nothing struggle between atoms and spirit. Until only recently, atoms were winning by default, but since the (re-?)emergence of the mind-body problem as a primary topic in philosophy, there is a new opening to spirit.

Is the opening big enough to drive a Mac truck through it, and I do mean, literally! Most of us would choke on the truck. My concession is that there are probably no Mac trucks in heaven. Transportation is not a big issue, up there. But what about you and me? Metabolism is the issue. Are atoms going to be relegated to the Earth? Won't we look funny without them?

Atoms are coddled down here. They are our pet rocks. They hold us, and keep us from shaking. Down here, the streets are not real safe at night. We tend to lock our doors. Atoms are the talismans of our modernity. Without O2, we turn blue in the face.

Up there is a different story, and we are given a Millennium to prepare for it.

Somehow, atoms are proxies for our relationalism. They keep a level playing field, with or without our consent. We all have to pull on our pants, one leg at a time.

Will the Earth then be our proxy Atom/Adam? It will always be our anchor. Sometimes our sail or dynamo.

And now I read Adams' The Dynamo and the Virgin. It is powerful stuff..... prescient to 't', and out of what some say was the most significant book of the last century, a symphony composed at its dawn. What hath God wrought?




(cont.)

Is reformation possible? Not likely to occur, IMO despite the need for it to occur. Interestingly enough, if you look at the demographics of the camps, it seems that the starry eyed spiritualists find their home here as the nuts and bolts land elsewhere.

Perhaps, this is by design? Fate and circumstance has always been the motivator of like minds to eventually work towards an end goal. Small group dynamics seem to be more capable of such things when each voice can be heard.

I follow your walk on the Grace and Green front from afar. It either takes a lunatic or a leader, (maybe both) to challenge Gods administrators to grow up and peer out of the shells from which they take to the blinded eye.

Md02,

Thanks for checking in! Grace and Green are on hold for now, along with the Think Atheists, whilst I continue my fatal struggle with the those little buggers..... atoms, that is! Pesky little critters, aren't they?

Reformation.......? That's not the half of it. If that were all that this is about, it could have happened a couple of centuries ago. No, this is the big One, alright. Have no doubt, and no fear.

The Dynamo has done it's work..... has cast its spell. We are wired, now, for the return of the Virgin. That is how the sky will fall, on our unsuspecting little heads.

How can the electrons withstand the Virgin? Try though they might...... DNA is up for grabs..... immaculate or otherwise...... as written in the shadow of Towson's Big Mac.

Pebbles, Ionian or otherwise, will not bar the pearly gates. It is the blue angels.

It's not the primordial pebbles, it's the primordial soup that warrants our attention. This is a quantum, protoplasmic soup. Outside of that soup, atoms are the gargoyles of Creation...... or Spandrels, if you will.

Me? I'm the spaniel of the ptb...... cosmic, that is. See my teeth on their pants' cuff.

How do we turn the protoplasm into ectoplasm, pray tell? We have to jack up the quantum wattage, methinks...... all the way back to the Dreamtime that is the Omega >> Alpha spark-gap of Creation. That is our Rapture of the heights.

We are the Chrysalis, and, now, the Chrysalis is quickened, into its altered theta state, at 60 hertz. That is how the protoplasm is transubstantiated. All it takes is a few more watts of juice..... kinda like Ol' Sparky.

It was believed that, before humans, animals, and plants came into being, their 'souls' existed; they knew they would become physical, but not when. And when that time came, all but one of the 'souls' became plants or animals, with the last one becoming human and acting as a custodian or guardian to the natural world around them.

Traditional Australian indigenous peoples embrace all phenomena and life as part of a vast and complex system-reticulum of relationships which can be traced directly back to the ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings of The Dreaming. This structure of relations, including food taboos, had the result of maintaining the biological diversity of the indigenous environment. It may have helped prevent overhunting of particular species.

I couldn't have said it better....... Note, that there is just one soul per species. And that we, soul mates, were holding out, up there on Noah's electric Ark.

Heaven could just be an altered state, supported by this earthly dynamo, eternal in its temporal closure. There is conscious continuity, but not physical. But we still have to explain the restoration of the Earth. This transpires under the rubric of the Dreamtime.

Are there any animals on the Ark? The logistics would get very awkward, pace Noah! But perhaps their souls are thus ensconced.

This is sounding more like my earlier notion of Pokatok, with a virtual Jurassic pArk aboard the Ark. Anchors aweigh!

And we sent out the Dove from the Ark. Where is V Dare when we need her? Were the abos on the Dove?




(cont.)

Just stopped in to say Hi, Dan.

Haven't had the time to read over your thread, but see that you are busy trying to rationalise dualism's purpose in creation.

Brings a question to mind to ponder...Is there a form of dualsim in heaven or the hereafter?

Jake,

Yes, it's been awhile. And it's hard to teach an old dog, like me, any new tricks!

I am trying to wean us off of dualism, particularly of the Cartesian kind, and even that between heaven and earth. It's all a matter of degree, not of kind.

In the Millennium, reality becomes more malleable and permeable, as in the Dreamtime. This trend continues into our Ultraterrestrial destiny. Atoms have never been more than the logical tokens of metabolism, IMHO. Outside of that, totally relational milieux, they are the Spandrels of Creation, not unlike the sand on the beach, or the Ionian pebbles. Where would we be without sandy beaches?
-------------


Have I solved the atom problem, or have I merely talked it to death..... for now?!

But, now, I may need to readjust the idea of direct perception. Perhaps I should say that perception is relational first, and only secondarily might it be direct. All perception is directed to the monad, ultimately, but there are many (cob-)webs of relations that have to be worked though in the process.


6:25----------

The latest New Yorker has an article on Daniel Nocera's Artificial Leaf. His breakthrough came back in 2008, when he developed a cheaper photoactive electrode. This would solve the storage problem for solar energy being produced in widely distributed, small quantities. Commercial production on a global scale remains decades in the future. However, India's Tata Group is investing.




(cont.)

A crucial issue for the BPWH is the transition between Heaven and Earth.

The continuity of consciousness and of the ontology is a critical condition for any system that embraces monism. Materialism has not fared too well, in this regard, especially when it comes to the mind-body problem and the Big Bang, for example. Can immaterialism do better?

My big problem is breathing....... as in, when do we stop? This is supposing that a substantial number (144 million?) of us will choose to take the 'rapture' route, rather that just passing on. In figuring this out, we need to look at it subjectively and intersubjectively.

As it stands now, there will be a final departure, mediated by some sort of stargate. In that process, we garner the ability to shape shift. This is where the ontology and biology become transitional. This is the regime of the dreamtime. What sort of continuity can be, or should be, maintained, from here to eternity? For instance, will there be superannuated bodies? And what about our pajamas?



(cont.)

At night the dew covers the grass. In the morning it disappears. Is this more difficult to rationalize than my footprints disappearing from the beach? Maybe not. Or how about the dinosaur prints that lasted for a hundred million years, or so we are told?

I put a kettle on to boil, and see the steam escaping. Shouldn't that convince me of materialism? Am I just being a troglodyte?

Dream atoms are not conserved. Waking atoms are, or so it seems. Fire is a more dramatic form of atomic phenomenon, and the real thing will burn you. Again, I must be a troglodyte, or a mystic.

If fire convinces me of the existence of atoms, do footprints convince me of the existence of sand? Am I being a smart aleck? Or is it atoms that convince us of the existence of fire? Better read the Psychoanalysis of Fire. Are the morning and the evening stars the same? Ask G Frege. Are ET's and UT's the same? Is it just a word game, just semantics? So are Being and Nothingness. Can there be anything more real than you? Are you real?

Is Mt. Everest more real than you and me? Are atoms? Which ones? And that's a trick question, having to do with identity. And gravity..... how real is that? Of what sort of reality does gravity partake?

Have I rationalized the morning dew?

Is curved space more or less real than space? Did space exist before the Big Bang? Where? Does anyone have time for time? Is there anything more real or more paradoxical than self-reference?

But if there are atoms on Earth, why not or how not in heaven? No wine in heaven? Will it just be a pale shadow? Will it chill the body, but not the soul? Or the other way around?

Why could there not be a Large Hadron Collider in heaven? That might be more likely than atoms. Atom smashers may turn out to be more real than atoms. So might be the Mandelbrot, somewhat by the same token.

Atom smashers are reification machines for atoms. And they may work retroactively, in that regard.

I suppose that we will see things in greater depth, on the other side. Better able to see how things relate, and how they adumbrate the monad. Will we ever come back to the 'farm' after we've seen Paris? Can we go home again? The costs might outweigh the benefits, in general, but we'll probably give it a try, anyway. It would likely be disappointing.

On the other side, we can, together, simulate and emulate anything physical that we care to. God will be much less hidden, in general. That being the signal of the greater depth.

So, yes, the atoms in heaven will be more real than the ones down here, in every optional way. Shape-shifting will be a primary mode of transport. Time will be both less and more real, depending on the context.

About that merlot? I'm not real worried......

And which then is more real, the Ionian pebble or the atoms it is made from? Does it not depend on the context? The contextuality of reality is the bottom line of my monism. Is the morning dew contextual? Rather much so. It is also rather hard to localize. A dew drop is not the same as the dew. Semantics? Try to get away from it, except in your mind's eye, perhaps.


5pm--------------

When we think about pebbles and atoms, they seem to enter into our thoughts as isolated individuals, existing as if unto themselves. How else could we think about them? It is not known how that parsing out occurs. Recognition and comprehension are very complex processes. Our total store of knowledge and experience can be brought to bear, and how much of this process entails unconscious elements? Certainly it is a great deal more than we are ever likely to fathom, on this side, anyway. I suspect the story will be different, over there.

But what about the thing in itself, apart from our knowledge of it? Can that not be a simple? Something objectively simple? That is what our abstracted thoughts tempt us to suppose. But when we think again, we understand that it cannot be so simple. The ultimate simple is the monad. That's as close as we will get to true simplicity...... supposing there can be such a thing. Can we logically suppose otherwise? What else can be the source of coherence, if coherence is not just an illusion.




(cont.)

I need to elaborate the BPWH position on PK, particularly in the eschatological context.......

The BPWH is all about mind over matter, but I have mainly been discussing this in terms of states of consciousness, rather that about specific intervention.

But, now, I'm headed out..........


5:30--------------

Mind over matter ranges from my ability to wilfully raise my little finger, to the notion that faith will move mountains. I see no reason to be skeptical about either phenomenon. Everything in its proper context. In the meantime, shyness continues to rule. Did it not, we would not have the internet. We would be using telepathy. Everything has to be orchestrated.



(cont.)

I'll get back to psychokenesis in bit. In the meantime, allow me to get back to atoms by way of essences........

Most of modern philosophy may be summed up as an attempt to eliminate essences. That this attempt has been unsuccessful is notorious, but no one, besides possibly myself(!), knows what to do about it.

Does it simply mean that philosophy will have to continue to scale back its ambitions, or is it an indication that we have a tiger by the tail/tale, as in metanarrative?

It turns out that Buddhism and Hinduism differ primarily in their take on the existence of essences.

Here is a paper on essences that I 'ought' to read......

http://khu.academia.edu/ItayShani/Papers/681711/The_myth_of_reductive_extensionalism

The BPWH, with its embrace of a singular, cosmic soul, i.e. its radical monism, attempts to steer between essentialism and atomism....... 'monadism' being the result.

However, there do remain the essential parts of the BPW, sub specie aeternitas, of which you and I partake. Each of our lives is a window on eternity. The Sun does not annihilate its rainbow, even when no rain is present.

Buddhists point to the Sun, Hindus point to the rainbow. Materialists point to the atoms.

With atoms, materialists are trying to have their Sun/monad, and eat it, too. It doesn't work. Well, it works, in theory.

Monism is simply saying that each part of the BPW is essential. We are the photons of the Sun, supposing that the Sun has only 10^10 of them/us.


And what does this tell us about PK........?

I suggest that PK may just be a form of teleology. In the BPW, everything is that. It manifests as we get with the plan. It is an essential aspect of the metamorphosis of our chrysalis. This cosmic PK, in which we participate, extends to the Apokatastasis of the Earth, as in the Omega >> Alpha extended Dreamtime. We will be channeling the cosmic PK.

Will the atoms continue to do their thing? To a degree. To a greater degree, they'll be doing Our thing. Entropy will slow down, and then reverse. Childhood's End? Perhaps. CO2 sequestration, back into hydrocarbons. A nice trick, if we can pull it off. Gaia will come into her own. Anyone for some mind melding?

Are we all just a means to an End? Well, like any trip, getting there is half the fun. 90% of the fun? Fin...again, as with JJ? Can we come back, again? We are back, already. Didn't you notice? It's the eternal shining present/presence. Where did you think all that light was coming from?

Atoms are an essential part of God's rainbow, as are we. We channel them.... they channel us. Wait 'til we get our act together.

As the cosmic essence begins its long march into the light, when might we take notice?

How far can we sojourn into the woods of extensionality? All the way....... until we trip over the intensionality/intentionality. Someone is bound to notice, eventually...... don't ya think? Saul K tried, but he does have his professional pride. It's a tiger by the tail/tale.....

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

The tyger will invade our altered states, and then our waking states..... they will be sucked into the Dreamtime. Resistance is futile. The more you try, the harder you fall.

What about the twelve Motherships? Will we even notice them? Will Gaia have her own ship? Spaceship Earth? Who will be observing? We'll be too busy to be dispassionate.


Forgive me if I escape into 2012, the movie.......

.

Perhaps I'm being cavalier about essences and, in particular, about natural kinds. Note that the wiki entry, not linked, seems to dismiss natural kinds, besides just atoms. The SEP entry, linked, takes them more seriously.

Should the BPWH be hinged on this single issue? Is there any choice?


9:30-----------

Here's another problem I've not explicity addressed....... The relationalism of the BPWH..... is it referring to particulars or to universals? And to what extent may an immaterialist embrace particulars, whilst supposing that all particulars are subsumed by the Monad?

Well, in the best possible world, everything is individually essential. No? But then how can these essential individuals be subsumed? Can 2 be subsumed by 3, or 3 by 1? Is every minibrot subsumed by the Mandelbrot? That seems more like it.

And, yes, the Mandelbrot is subsumed by every minibrot..... Flower in the crannied wall......

Not too shabby.....

How might one arrange for quantitative finitude, in such a toy model? Is the Mandelbrot essentially infinite?

Wrt the Mb, quantity and quality are interchangeable? No? Is this not the essence of mathematics?

.