Your rebuttal to this common atheist argument

[siti]

Bula!

A basic rule of Logic is that no conclusion can be drawn out, by inference, that was not already in the premises, by implication.

A basic rule of Analytic Logic. But it is an assumption that either physical reality or metaphysical "ideality" are ultimately reducible to a set of fundamentally undeniable premises - i.e. axioms. For all we know there may actually be an ad infinitum regress of physical laws/metaphysical axioms. For all we know there may never be (or have been) a temporal or spatial limit of "thing-ness" as opposed to a boundary beyond which there is only "no-thing-ness".

String Theory postulates the existence of an invisible realm of reality that is beyond the resolution of any currently conceivable microscope or particle smasher. Those metaphorical "strings" can't be made of conventional matter or energy, because they are supposed to be the constituents of energy itself. They are too small to have sensible qualities of their own, other than the mathematical quality of vibrations; just alternations of on/off at various frequencies.

Invisibility does not imply non-existence. To me it makes no difference whether strings (if they turn out to be an appropriate model) are made of matter/energy or matter/energy are made of strings or whether both are simply different ways of looking at the same reality. Are strings things, or no-things? For now, they are metaphorical and metaphysical because they are just an idea that seems to work (to some as yet physically untestable extent), but that does not mean that there is not a part of the reality of the cosmos that corresponds to this model. Perhaps vibrating strings are the information that matter and energy carries around with it. Perhaps there are even deeper layers of the nested realities from which the holons we are able to perceive (yet dimly understand) are synthesized. And that, to me is the point. The unweaving of the rainbow by explaining the mechanics of its apparition is an explication of the process not a replication of the phenomenon. We cannot reverse-engineer nature in order to duplicate it - at least not yet anyway - but it does help us to understand some of the components that nature comprises. Even if we did eventually find ourselves clever enough to reinvent the universe, I doubt we would be able to foresee its actual manifestation with anything like the precision required to make meaningful predictions about its ultimate fate. The finished painting is never quite what the artist originally envisioned. The creation itself throws its own emergent spanners in the works from start to finish so that the end product is nothing like what it started out "to be".

[gainesvillecathy]

__As I said before, the Platonic “Ideality” is not more complex than physical Reality, because in terms of Information theory it is a state of perfect order : no things, no change, no “thinking”; just one static holistic thought. However, like the still water behind a dam, perfect order implies an infinite reservoir of potential, from which finite flowing things may emerge.

10__Actually, I suspect that most people with a better-than-average understanding of modern science would appreciate what you are getting at, even though they might not grok some of the technicalities. Those I loosely label “New Agers” would probably prefer my theory with its G*D equivalent to a timeless universal consciousness. But the ones I label “post-post-moderns” might prefer your theory of a universal consciousness emerging from the flux of mundane reality. The Gaia hypothesis is familiar enough for most people to grasp the general concept, even if they can’t swallow it whole. Ironically, the Enformationism theory is open-ended enough that it could accommodate both the eternal and the emergent deities.

I 'whole'-heartedly agree, and I also see this as being very compatible with siti's last post.

I have always enjoyed watching the rain on a window pane. The "static, holistic thought" is the rain. The drops appear, then they begin to move and flow into other drops. What was the 'make-up' of an original drop then becomes unrecognizable, but it not only has contributed to the merging waters, it has also left behind a path that other drops may more easily follow.

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[gnomon]

1> A basic rule of Analytic Logic. But it is an assumption that either physical reality or metaphysical "ideality" are ultimately reducible to a set of fundamentally undeniable premises - i.e. axioms. For all we know there may actually be an ad infinitum regress of physical laws/metaphysical axioms. For all we know there may never be (or have been) a temporal or spatial limit of "thing-ness" as opposed to a boundary beyond which there is only "no-thing-ness".

2> Invisibility does not imply non-existence. . . . Perhaps vibrating strings are the information that matter and energy carries around with it. Perhaps there are even deeper layers of the nested realities from which the holons we are able to perceive (yet dimly understand) are synthesized.

1__An infinite regress of natural laws would be meaningless to the finite human mind. Also the seemingly bottomless Real world, as currently presented by Quantum science, may force the average human to give-up on understanding, and just assume that “god did it”. For me, the “turtles all the way down” explanation of reductionism leaves me with no choice but to look-up from the microscope and simply see the big picture. But even if "god did it", there's no reason for us to stop looking for a reductive scientific understanding. Although it has some philosophical appeal, "God" is not a very useful explanation for practical purposes. Newton's "unweaving the rainbow" has actually advanced our understanding and appreciation of the intricate lacelike woof & warp in the fabric of reality.
__For most people, the God concept serves as both an unquestioned assumption and an axiomatic explanation for existence : A self-evident principle or one that is accepted as true without proof as the basis for argument; a postulate. For good reasons, pragmatic Science rejects that unprovable assumption. But philosophy can't so easily avoid grappling with such a many-headed monster.
__The thingness of a string depends on how you define a “thing”. To my mind, sub-atomic Strings are not things in the usual sense, but merely philosophical metaphors for mathematical equations. Mathematics is bound only by pure Logic, apart from impure physical laws or spacetime constraints. Mathematicians refer to the immaterial ideas they work with as “mind objects” to distinguish them from physical objects. In my own theorizing, I make a distinction between Physical “things” and Meta-Physical “ideas”. Our ideas about things include their properties or qualities, which we abstract from reality into our mental laboratories, for analytical dissection. In fact, all we know about Things is their Properties, which are mental concepts. Therefore, all we know about Reality is our own mental model of what we “assume” to be outside our minds. So which is more real, model or assumption? [see below]
__Defining “no-thing-ness” is also a never-ending game. The smallest element of Reality was once presumed to be tiny solid atoms of fundamental substance. But now we have gone several levels below that, and still haven’t struck bedrock. Likewise, the original definition of the Vacuum was no-thing-ness. But now Science tells us that the vacuum is simmering with something . . . something virtual. But is a “virtual” thing a real thing, or just a placeholder for a better understanding in the future? For the purposes of Enformationism, Virtuality serves as the porous boundary between Reality and Ideality; between potential and actual; between imaginary and observable; between funda-mental substance and physical substance.

Thing :
An object is a technical term in philosophy often used in contrast to the term subject. Consciousness is a state of cognition that includes the subject, which can never be doubted as only it can be the one who doubts, and some object or objects that may or may not have real existence without reference to the subject. Metaphysical frameworks also differ in whether they consider objects exist independently of their properties and, if so, in what way.[
. . . Because substances are only experienced through their properties a substance itself is never directly experienced. The problem of substance asks on what basis can one conclude the existence of a substance that cannot be seen or scientifically verified. According to bundle theory, the answer is: none; thus an object is merely its properties.
Some philosophies[which?] include theories of both bodies (physical substances) and minds (mental substances). So the problem of substance arises in both the physical and the mental realms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_%28philosophy%29

Note: Enformationism postulates that Information is the "substance" of matter. This notion is derived from the "fact" that matter can be reduced to energy, and energy can be reduced to information, and information can be reduced to relationships, cognitive links between objects or ideas.

2__Non-existence is not in question, merely what kind of existence : temporal or eternal. Invisibility does imply that physical existence is questionable. Is it camouflaged or hidden or “cloaked” or simply not there? Even when we can’t see a thing with our eyes, we can imagine it in our mind’s eye. We can even strongly feel that it is there, even when we can’t see it clearly. Human imagination has dreamed-up a menagerie of occult things and beings, such as unicorns, demons and fairies, which are merely mental rearrangements of concrete things. That’s not the kind of unseen “reality” I’m interested in. Instead, I’m focusing on the qualia and properties that could never exist in the physical world; those of an eternal deity, for instance.
__Strings, or some other metaphorical "things" may well be a part of our reality. But so is Information; which may be the essence of both strings and Reality as a whole. Enformationism does not deny the Reality that we all experience. It merely connects that perceived reality with a higher category of being, within which all possible realities are "nested". The notion of pure cosmic vibrations has been around for millennia. The Stoics and Neoplatonists used the term logos spermatikos to label the generative principle of the cosmos; and one manifestation of the Word was in the form of vibrations, as in the spoken word. A more modern, and less mystical, term for the creative principle of reality is Enformy, which is the antithesis to Entropy.
__String Theory is often called a "Theory of Everything" because it is supposed to explain everything in existence as a manifestation of musical vibrations. But it's hard to conceive how a one-dimensional string of "nothing" can create matter & energy simply by "spelling" their codes in oscillating tones. Anyway, I suspect there may be some real-world truth to the theory, even though it envisions an unreal and unimaginable realm completely unlike the world we know via our senses.

[gnomon]

Semi-off-topic

The July issue of Scientific American magazine has reprinted some old articles written by Nobel Laureates. I found the quotes below to be relevant to our discussions about physical and metaphysical Reality.


Martinus Veltman, 1986
<<Indeed, modern theoretical physics is constantly filling the vacuum with so many contraptions such as the Higgs boson that it is amazing a person can even see the stars on a clear night! >>
When is a vacuum not really a vacuum? When it "spontaneously" generates something from nothing.

Steven Weinberg, 1994
<< But one constant does seem to require an incredible fine-tuning : it is the vacuum energy, or cosmological constant . . . the vacuum energy involves arbitrary constants, which must be carefully adjusted to make the total vacuum energy small enough for life to be possible. . . . All these problems can be solved without supposing that life or consciousness plays any special role in the fundamental laws of nature or initial conditions. >>
Ironically, it is that insignificant "life or consciousness" which has allowed the "mechanical" universe to become aware of itself, and to make arbitrary choices in what to do and believe. In this context, "arbitrary" means "to break the rules" and runs counter to materialist determinism. Thunk-thunk-thunk : Fine-tuning, Life, Consciousness, and Freewill successively emerged from an undirected random process like a blind archer repetitively hitting the bullseye? Weinberg's "solutions" to these problems seem to require a fertile imagination : magical inflation of spacetime, vacuums that are not vacuums, spontaneous generation of life, strings that are not things, unimaginable extra dimensions of space, and an infinite regress of non-empirical multiverses. Only our faith in the reliability of metaphysical mathematics could make these exotic notions believable for reasonable people.


Here's some excerpts from another article, on psychological research, that seems to be relevant to Deism based on Reason.

How Critical Thinkers Lose Their Faith in God
<< . . . people who have a tendency to rely on their intuition are more likely to believe in God. . . . encouraging people to think analytically reduced their tendency to believe in God. . . . System 1 thinking [intuition] relies on shortcuts and rules of thumb, whereas system 2 [reason] relies on analytical thinking and tends to be slower and to require more effort. . . . Because system 2 thinking requires more effort, most of us tend to rely on our system 1 thinking processes whenever possible. >>
Apparently, even self-proclaimed Intuitive Deists were analytical enough to critically question their former belief systems.

[siti]

Bula!

...which is more real, model or assumption?

That depends on whether the model is based on a genuinely "self-evident principle" or an unfounded assumption. Models based on unfounded assumptions are presumably less likely to be an accurate reflection of any underlying reality than models based on evidence. That is one of the principles of scientific investigation. The problem for science (and western analytic philosophy to a large degree), is that it cannot seem to get past its obsessive reductionism - the unfounded assumption, which is by no means at all self-evident, that reality is ultimately reducible to a set of relatively simple fundamental axioms and inviolable laws. Any model based on this assumption is ultimately doomed to failure (no matter how many successes it has in explaining the nuts and bolts of things along the way) because what seems abundantly self-evident to me is that Nature is by nature unpredictably synthetic.

Invisibility does imply that physical existence is questionable.

I don't think this is necessarily true at all. And I am not talking about fairies or unicorns. I am talking about the wind, the vibrations caused by a tree falling in the forest, the waves on the ocean, the Higgs field or even the electromagnetic field from which nature weaves the rainbow in the first place - to give a few macro/micro scale examples. We can sense none of these directly, but we know they are really physically there even if our metaphorical descriptions of them are sketchy and imprecise.

[gnomon]

1> That depends on whether the model is based on a genuinely "self-evident principle" or an unfounded assumption.

2> I don't think this is necessarily true at all. And I am not talking about fairies or unicorns.

1__Quite true. The ancient Greeks may seem a bit naive in their assumption that the mind can access "self-evident principles" directly. They justified that assumption with another assumption : that human minds retained basic knowledge from former lives in cycles of reincarnation. Socrates insisted that all knowledge is remembering. But I wouldn't go that far. Presumably, the human brain does retain some hard-coded information from ages of evolution, in the form of basic categories (compartments) of meaning, and in the form of the logical architecture of the brain and its processes. But most of what we know comes from personal experience and interpersonal learning, both of which are subject to misinformation and miscalculation.

2__Point taken. But I didn't have that kind of technical invisibility in mind. Instead, I was thinking of the more general commonsense notion that if you can't see it or sense it, it ain't real. The point I was making is that human Reason [inference] can "see" things that are not apparent to the five senses. That's why I refer to it as the sixth sense. Fortunately, Analytical Reason can also test its preliminary inferences against other vetted knowledge to determine if the inference is justifiable. Unfortunately, most of us lazily validate our leap-of-faith inferences by how they work for us subjectively and emotionally. So ruthless critical analysis is necessary to weed out beliefs that don't work objectively and rationally.

[Dad]

[An infinite regress of natural laws would be meaningless to the finite human mind. Also the seemingly bottomless Real world, as currently presented by Quantum science, may force the average human to give-up on understanding, and just assume that “god did it”. For me, the “turtles all the way down” explanation of reductionism leaves me with no choice but to look-up from the microscope and simply see the big picture. But even if "god did it", there's no reason for us to stop looking for a reductive scientific understanding. Although it has some philosophical appeal, "God" is not a very useful explanation for practical purposes. Newton's "unweaving the rainbow" has actually advanced our understanding and appreciation of the intricate lacelike woof & warp in the fabric of reality.

and

Unfortunately, most of us lazily validate our leap-of-faith inferences by how they work for us subjectively and emotionally. So ruthless critical analysis is necessary to weed out beliefs that don't work objectively and rationally.

We continue to bash our horns against the dam wall seeking to find out what lies beyond but somehow I think you've laid it as it is in the above quotes. It's not laziness or giving up, but a conscious realisation that seeking the cause behind the cause inevitably becomes a futile exercise in search of the causeless cause. How can there logically be such a thing in a world ruled by cause and effect? Surely our efforts must be directed at a critical analysis of cause and effect itself if we are to have any hope of discovering a weakness in the dam wall.

[gnomon]

Surely our efforts must be directed at a critical analysis of cause and effect itself if we are to have any hope of discovering a weakness in the dam wall.

Unfortunately, that damn wall is incredibly dense.

Change has been noted as the only permanent feature of Reality. We observe "effects" everywhere all-the-time. But often the "cause" is not obvious, and must be reasoned-out from circumstantial evidence. Ancient peoples attributed mysterious causes to invisible "gods or spirits", which we now call "forces". Consequently, the Greeks extrapolated backward from current happenings to a postulated First Cause : the God of gods.

But modern materialists see no need for a Prime Mover or Creator of the processes of Reality. They just assume that what you see now has been going on forever, world without end (or beginning). And for short-term practical purposes that assumption is sufficient to plug most of the metaphysical leaks in the dam holding back a strange spiritual world of infinite potential. However, the human mind is accustomed to fictional and factual stories with a comprehensible beginning and end, even if the start and finish lines are drawn arbitrarily. So we find interminable cycles boring, changeless eternity unimaginable, and both unsatisfying.

It seems natural then for us to view the world as a historical process; cyclical yes, but also with important catalytic events or agents that we tend to interpret (linearly*) as the ultimate singular cause of later events. Such step-by-step stories make our lives seem meaningful rather than random. Unfortunately, unfeeling philosophers and scientists have pointed out that our simplistic understanding of Cause & Effect is based on the paradoxical asymmetry of Time. Logically and mathematically though, Time should flow both ways, forward & reverse; from effect to cause. So I think it's reasonable to infer from the observed fact of a directional "arrow of time" that Evolution is going somewhere specific; not just round & round in cycles. And from that firm basis, we can boldly go where imagination takes us, to the hypothesis of a Cosmic Archer, an Uncaused Cause, or Eternal Creator with specific, though veiled, teleological intentions for the outcome of the unfinished history of the world.

And so, we continue to hammer the dam with our ineffectual imaginings, all the while wishing that God would manifest Her power in a lightning bolt to destroy the wall between mundane Reality and whatever we imagine may be on the other side.


* In reality the overall flow of causes & effects is a complex branching and bushy process rather than the simplified single-line diagram we usually imagine intuitively, for the sake of convenience.

Arrow of Time : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time

[siti]

Bula!

And so, we continue to hammer the dam with our ineffectual imaginings, all the while wishing that God would manifest Her power in a lightning bolt to destroy the wall between mundane Reality and whatever we imagine may be on the other side.

Yep, been there, done that. But in the end, when you do finally break through, perhaps "ineffectual imaginings" are all we will find behind the dam wall after all. God, it turns out, was never really on that side in the first place - and the impenetrable wall now seems to be a gossamer thin and increasingly threadbare curtain that only separates front stage from backstage and is gradually losing its ability to disguise what once appeared to be the ghostly outlines of the immaterial props and special effects that make the production of our synthetic, holistic, monistic reality what it is. As Peter Mayer's song puts it: "My, what a wonderful play!"

[gnomon]

But in the end, when you do finally break through, perhaps "ineffectual imaginings" are all we will find behind the dam wall after all. God, it turns out, was never really on that side in the first place

Perhaps. But perhaps God is on both sides of that wall. Perhaps God is out there and within you. Perhaps God is both playwright and player. Perhaps God is sitting in the first row enjoying the comedy & drama, and the sturm & drang of this mystery we call Life. In any case, as the poet said, "it's a wonderful play".

[gnomon]

This is just a sidenote to the continuing conversation on the nature of God.

I found a quote on the topic of Idealism that seems to support my insistence that Enformationism is both an Idealist and a Monist worldview :

Idealism :
<< What would normally be called 'the external world' is somehow created by the mind . . .>>

Enformationism is doubly idealist in that the External World (physical reality) is presumed to be created by the Mind of G*D, and within that Real World human minds create a virtual model of Reality from bits of incoming sensory information. Each person's mind-model is similar to the limited scope and perspective of the Mars rover, as contrasted with the god-like global view of the planet from orbit.


<< Whereas Bekeleian idealism [Berkeley] and transcendental idealism [Kant] are pluralistic, objective idealism [Hegel] is monistic, maintaining that all that exists is a form of one mind (Absolute Mind).>>

With that distinction in mind, I'll refer to Enformationism (E-theory) as a form of Objective Idealism, which is also compatible with Subjective Idealism. Attributes of the parts are different from those of the whole. E-theory is monistic in that it assumes a singular Omni-Reality, which contains a Universe-Reality, which in turn contains a multitude of Personal-Realities. The ultimate objective worldview is the perspective of the Omni-Observer on the outside looking in. But as the creator of the Reality-game, G*D also gets to play all roles in the game, from many Subjective perspectives.

Berkeley's Idealism asserts that an apparently solid object actually consists of nothing but ideas [ what we might now call Information ]. And this insight came long before Quantum Theory demonstrated that all matter is rooted in an immaterial ground.

Kant's Transcendental Idealism went even further to say that << the objects of our experience, in the sense of things existing in space and enduring through time, are nothing but appearances, and have no independent existence outside our thoughts.>> This sounds similar to the Quantum notion that a sub-atomic particle exists in a limbo of immaterial potential until forced by an observer to commit to an actualized physical existence. However, E-theory postulates that objects in spacetime do have an independent ( Enfernal ) existence outside of human thought, as mind-objects of Absolute Mind. Of course that's just a theory, but hopefully not an "ineffectual imagining".


Note :The quotes above came from Antony Flew, the notorious Atheist Philosopher, who toward the end of his life admitted that a Deist God was a reasonable belief.

[gainesvillecathy]

This is just a sidenote to the continuing conversation on the nature of God.

I found a quote on the topic of Idealism that seems to support my insistence that Enformationism is both an Idealist and a Monist worldview :

Idealism :
<< What would normally be called 'the external world' is somehow created by the mind . . .>>

Enformationism is doubly idealist in that the External World (physical reality) is presumed to be created by the Mind of G*D, and within that Real World human minds create a virtual model of Reality from bits of incoming sensory information. Each person's mind-model is similar to the limited scope and perspective of the Mars rover, as contrasted with the god-like global view of the planet from orbit.


<< Whereas Bekeleian idealism [Berkeley] and transcendental idealism [Kant] are pluralistic, objective idealism [Hegel] is monistic, maintaining that all that exists is a form of one mind (Absolute Mind).>>

With that distinction in mind, I'll refer to Enformationism (E-theory) as a form of Objective Idealism, which is also compatible with Subjective Idealism. Attributes of the parts are different from those of the whole. E-theory is monistic in that it assumes a singular Omni-Reality, which contains a Universe-Reality, which in turn contains a multitude of Personal-Realities. The ultimate objective worldview is the perspective of the Omni-Observer on the outside looking in. But as the creator of the Reality-game, G*D also gets to play all roles in the game, from many Subjective perspectives.

Berkeley's Idealism asserts that an apparently solid object actually consists of nothing but ideas [ what we might now call Information ]. And this insight came long before Quantum Theory demonstrated that all matter is rooted in an immaterial ground.

Kant's Transcendental Idealism went even further to say that << the objects of our experience, in the sense of things existing in space and enduring through time, are nothing but appearances, and have no independent existence outside our thoughts.>> This sounds similar to the Quantum notion that a sub-atomic particle exists in a limbo of immaterial potential until forced by an observer to commit to an actualized physical existence. However, E-theory postulates that objects in spacetime do have an independent ( Enfernal ) existence outside of human thought, as mind-objects of Absolute Mind. Of course that's just a theory, but hopefully not an "ineffectual imagining".


Note :The quotes above came from Antony Flew, the notorious Atheist Philosopher, who toward the end of his life admitted that a Deist God was a reasonable belief.

I agree with everything stated above. My only question is how someone cannot see that synchronicity makes sense. If Objective Idealism is also compatible with Subjective Idealism, it makes sense to me that the processing of the combined 'Idealism's' would lead to synchronistic events on the grand scale, and that we may occassionally recognize them.

Sorry, I couldn't help but comment on this. I'm really trying hard not to interrupt your very worthwhile discussion.

.