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Awesomelyglorious
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22 Feb 2009, 4:13 am

Dussel wrote:
Kant needed this construction of the concious because he hasn't a material theory about the brain and its functions. We have such a theory, at least in the beginnings, therefore we are no longer in the need of such a construction.

Well, that is an assertion. I would counter-argue that a material theory of the brain does not deny mental states, and their 1st-person experience, thus I do not see a reason why your reference to Kant matters too much.
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It is not - not being aware about the physical background does not mean that something non-physical happens. When I would say "I am angry" it is a physical state of my brain. You argument would be that the statement "This is wet" would exclude the statement "Water is nothing more than Dihydrogenmonooxid", because realizing the state "wet" does not need a deeper understanding of the molecule structure of water. What we call "anger" (or any other emotion) is category in which strip states of our brain into categories.

Well, the issue is that the physical background is not the basis of the knowledge. The knowledge is based upon something non-physical. If something can be without the physical background, then there must be a non-physical element.

When you say "I am angry" you refer to a non-physical state of your mind, not of your brain, because you do not necessarily know about the link between the physical brain and your mind.

Well, no, you actually are completely misunderstanding me. "This is wet" is referent to a feeling provided about water. This feeling is non-material, as it is qualia. Saying "this is wet" is actually a statement about a mind experience provided by the material, not a statement about the material, beyond that this material conjures up experiences of wetness.

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We live in the universe we live in - this universe is governed by laws. Those laws contain logic. Because we can't take a stand outside the universe to observe this universe, our brans and thinking must obey this laws.

Brains obey logic, but the position that brains understand logic is not supported by your argument.

Rocks exist in a universe that we live in. This universe is governed by laws. Those laws contain logic. Our rocks do not take a stand outside the universe to observe it. Our rocks must obey the laws of the universe.

Have we then successfully argued for the sentience of rocks? No. Rocks cannot understand logic. Why then would human brains have to understand logic? They don't, the connection does not necessarily exist.

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Which richer "reality"? In the roughly 1000 years mystical thinking governed Europe there was less progress made than in single year today.

The additional relationship in reality that mystics see is something that people enjoy and find profound.

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"Real problems"? How we can cure AIDS? How we can maintain a higher standard of living for 6 bio. humans?

Well, the problems are subjective. I mean, you could be fine with AIDS, you could not care about higher standards of living, even wanting them to be lower for some groups. It is not as if these questions demand to be considered important, as such a notion is meaningless.

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Even here - the notoriously non-mystical Stoics showed well working way to handle to dilemma. This dilemma is raised when the mind realizes the the reality does not fit with the wishful thinking. Accepting the world as-it-is helps here a lot.

Accepting the world as it is does not necessarily help, but rather can be incredibly depressing, and does not necessarily confer the same positive benefits that an irrational belief could provide. Not only that, but there is a question about the proper way to understand the world as it is, as subjectivity and emotionality are integral parts of being in the world, things that it would almost be impossible to actually address the world without.



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23 Feb 2009, 3:00 pm

Magnus wrote:
Quantum mechanics is nondeterministic, meaning that it generally does not predict the outcome of any measurement with certainty. Instead, it tells us what the probabilities of the outcomes are. This leads to the situation where measurements of a certain property done on two apparently identical systems can give different answers.


ruveyn wrote:
Quantum mechanics yields up the eigenvalues for ever Hermitian operator (that is what an observable is). With these eigenvalues the odds can be computed exactly. Computing the odds is not the same as predicting an outcome precisely. Only the probability of an outcome can be known prior to a measurement.


Those two statements are essentially identical. They're both saying the same thing. :D


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Awesomelyglorious
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23 Feb 2009, 6:31 pm

SpazzDog wrote:
Those two statements are essentially identical. They're both saying the same thing. :D

ruveyn will do stuff like that. I was once tempted to correct him in saying that I did not need to be corrected, but I did not think it worth it.



twoshots
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23 Feb 2009, 7:39 pm

SpazzDog wrote:
Magnus wrote:
Quantum mechanics is nondeterministic, meaning that it generally does not predict the outcome of any measurement with certainty. Instead, it tells us what the probabilities of the outcomes are. This leads to the situation where measurements of a certain property done on two apparently identical systems can give different answers.


ruveyn wrote:
Quantum mechanics yields up the eigenvalues for ever Hermitian operator (that is what an observable is). With these eigenvalues the odds can be computed exactly. Computing the odds is not the same as predicting an outcome precisely. Only the probability of an outcome can be known prior to a measurement.


Those two statements are essentially identical. They're both saying the same thing. :D

True, but Magnus was perhaps misinterpreting the significance of nondeterminacy in quantum mechanics (although talking about eigenvalues and Hermitian operators may not be the best way to clarify things). The point is that quantum mechanics *does* make a very definite prediction over a large number of experiments, making it perfectly fine in the scientific paradigm.


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ruveyn
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23 Feb 2009, 10:20 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
SpazzDog wrote:
Those two statements are essentially identical. They're both saying the same thing. :D

ruveyn will do stuff like that. I was once tempted to correct him in saying that I did not need to be corrected, but I did not think it worth it.


ruveyn is an Aspie and is genetically programmed to do stuff like that.

ruveyn



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23 Feb 2009, 10:57 pm

What I was referring to is how a particle can appear in two places which is dependent upon the observer. When we are looking, it behaves like a particle. When we are not looking, it behaves as a wave.


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24 Feb 2009, 11:50 pm

I'm taking a graduate course on quantum mechanics this semester and am having so much fun learning all about these Hermitian matricies! (Half sarcasm there.) One thing that I finally got clarified for myself was the truth behind the whole observer deal. It has absolutely nothing to do with our minds. In the two slit experiment, "observation" of which slit the particle enters has nothing to do with our eyes. In experiments, physicists use a light source and shine it perpendicular to the path of the electrons right behind the slits. A detector then watches for a small burst of light as the electron hits the photon. So all this observation is, is simply collision of light quanta with electrons. Nothing mystical or supernatural about that. It's solid, hard, objective reality.


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25 Feb 2009, 11:48 am

Something can be both a wave and a particle depending upon how light hits it?



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25 Feb 2009, 11:58 am

Magnus wrote:
Something can be both a wave and a particle depending upon how light hits it?


"Wave" or "particle" are models to describe behaviour of "thing in itself" ("Ding ansich"). There is no reason to assume that both behaviours must exclude each other, but can be similar ways of description.

To understand nature on deeper physical level you emancipate yourself from the ideas you have from all-day experience and need to accept that the world is only to understand on very abstract and mathematical level.



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25 Feb 2009, 3:47 pm

There is a bit of confusion on what quanta really are.

David Park wrote:
...[I]t is obvious from the experiments [...] that a light wave is not just a scaled down version of waves in a duck pond, nor is a quantum particle a scaled down version of a baseball. In fact, the nature of light cannot be represented as a scaled down version of anything we are familiar with. It has its own nature, whatever that may be, and what we know about it is what happens in different experiments.

from Introduction to the Quantum Theory, emphasis added


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26 Feb 2009, 3:06 am

Dussel wrote:
Magnus wrote:
Something can be both a wave and a particle depending upon how light hits it?


"Wave" or "particle" are models to describe behaviour of "thing in itself" ("Ding ansich"). There is no reason to assume that both behaviours must exclude each other, but can be similar ways of description.

To understand nature on deeper physical level you emancipate yourself from the ideas you have from all-day experience and need to accept that the world is only to understand on very abstract and mathematical level.


Your point is well taken. Our intuition is formed by the experiences we have in a human-scaled world. This intuition is ill suited from dealing with the very, very small, the very, very large and the very, very fast and the very, very slow. That is why we need mathematical tools for dealing with the quantum reality. Our life-times are way too short to deal with the reality of evolution. The best we can do is construct a verisimilitude of the process by studying bio-chemical processes and fossils. As Kant pointed out, our consciousness is on the wrong side of the sensory barrier. We only get to see our side of the spectacles. All we have, in the end, are the phenomena. As Plato pointed out, all we get to actually see are the shadows on the wall.

ruveyn



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26 Feb 2009, 3:32 am

Is it possible that particles don't really exist in reality?



Dussel
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26 Feb 2009, 3:39 am

Magnus wrote:
Is it possible that particles don't really exist in reality?


Depends what you mean with "reality". We can make the the following statements:

1) There exists "something" which causes phenomenological sensations (e. g. light, matter, energy)
2) This sensations are following certain pattern which able to reproduce
3) Those pattern we gave the name "natural laws"
4) Our mind does order those laws with the means of mathematics



ruveyn
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26 Feb 2009, 9:22 am

Dussel wrote:
Magnus wrote:
Is it possible that particles don't really exist in reality?


Depends what you mean with "reality". We can make the the following statements:

1) There exists "something" which causes phenomenological sensations (e. g. light, matter, energy)
2) This sensations are following certain pattern which able to reproduce
3) Those pattern we gave the name "natural laws"
4) Our mind does order those laws with the means of mathematics


Kant Lives! But his synthetic a priori apodictic judgement is still bogus. The useful true things we know are synthetic and a posteriori. We have to look and measure to find out what is what.

ruveyn



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28 May 2011, 4:10 pm

Hi, my son has this aspergers and based on my experience of him over the past 13 years I believe there is something profound, if not spiritual, about this. At the age of three he awoke to tell me he had dreamt of a Thundebird who's wings were so large the ocean rose to meet them. He told me night rainbows came from his beak, but not daytime rainbows, night time rainbows. He told me they were called Aurora Borealis. He further went on to explain to me the entire phenomena of what Aurora Borealis were. He's also woke one morning to tell me how light moves and bends into a black hole. He has woken up to draw symbols of things from his dreams. He describes knowing things that can not be communicated by language. He is the purest individual I have ever come accross. He is unable to connect with those who are not pure in energy, heart or mind. He sees energy and reacts to it. He has a very hard time being around people with walls, facades or those who are not living and loving from an authentic place. I don't know what to call it. I am always curious, challenged and even frustrated by/for him. He has a hard time with this world, crying for hours when the oil spill in New Mexico happened. He didn't understand how people could go about normally with such distruction happening. He is not unemotional, although if one didn't know him one would think this. He is hypersensitive and overemotional if anything. He prefers the company of animals, who can blame him? I think he senses so much, he has to shut himself down in part just to cope. He tells me he can hear everyones conversation in a crowded room and the information is too much. Since I believe in science, physics, spirit, dimensions, energies I'd have to say yes, something is happening that we don't understand with these individuals. Something pure and definately evolved beyond our capacity to understand.



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28 May 2011, 6:32 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
SpazzDog wrote:
Those two statements are essentially identical. They're both saying the same thing. :D

ruveyn will do stuff like that. I was once tempted to correct him in saying that I did not need to be corrected, but I did not think it worth it.


ruveyn is an Aspie and is genetically programmed to do stuff like that.

ruveyn


This is where my baby brother chimes in to accuse you of using AS to justify your [scilicet unacceptable] behavior.