Is anything ruled out?
Is anything impossible? Is anything ruled out and why?
For example is an afterlife ruled out?
Is creation ruled out?
Are idealism or solipsism impossible?
Is an amoral reality possible?
Are there logical, theoretical or empirical limits.
Just a thought the flashed through my mind.
For example is an afterlife ruled out?
Is creation ruled out?
Are idealism or solipsism impossible?
Is an amoral reality possible?
Are there logical, theoretical or empirical limits.
Just a thought the flashed through my mind.
Comments (35)
Here's an old 4 pp. thread which might interest you.
How about the question: does God love a thing because it is good, or is it good because God loves it? Presumably one can be ruled out - but which?
If there is no God then they can both be ruled out. If God is of necessity good then they can both be ruled in. (Compare: are two lines parallel because they never meet or do they never meet because they are parallel?)
That's enough ruling out and ruling in for one post.
Easy. The elephant is hanging over the cliff secured by stout and strong cables and also with its tail tied to a daisy. The question is not "How is this possible?" but "Who would do that to an elephant?"
*****
On reflection, I think it's impossible to tie an elephant's tail to a daisy. You would always end up tying the daisy to the elephant's tail. What you do with the elephant after that is a matter for your conscience.
No evidence to suggest there will be an afterlife, and why would anybody desire one?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No, even from the perspective of the laws of physics, everything was created with, by, and in those strictures.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Idealism is supposed to be impossible, it provides a consitent aim to reach for asymptotically. Solipsism is nonsense, you can tell because I'm typing to you. No shit.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No, the human mind is a natural concept generating entity that produces concepts specifically for reconfiguring behavior and thought to produce better outcomes. Which is what ethics is. Even sucide is a concept within the mind of the individual committing the deed which is determined to be the best course of action for that person. There's no escaping the ethical domain once one develops the requiste sophistication to occupy space within it.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes. For example A=A is a tautology, and a begging the question fallacy. But, get this: its absolutely true. A can is a can. A human is a human. A dog is a dog. And A is A. Limitations are what allows for reality to even exist. Reality is comprised of all kinds of matter and energy and quanta all acting together under the strictures of the universe that are non-suspending. So, just get to work and see what you can't break the limitations on using your mind.
There are actually lots of anecdotal accounts of near death experience.
There obvious reasons why people would want an afterlife. I don't see why you would struggle to think of any.
There are versions of reality that would allow for an afterlife for example other dimensions, idealism and solipsism, the notion of consciousness as separate from but interacting with the brain.
I was interested in what facts would make something impossible not whether evidence exists for something.
How do I know you are not a creation of my imagination? A dream? It takes more effort than that to refute it.
Because you are using your mind to investigate the question, using senses produced by your body, which can be felt and verified, with another body (me) doing the same and providing you verification in that inquiry. Plus, there's no reason to believe that your brain is capable of projecting a fake reality, when all evidence that exists suggest reality is real and has created you through evolutionary processes to detect it as a means to extend your life. If your brain was producing a false reality, you would be killed in no time flat. And, no, it doesn't take more than my original statement to prove it. I am not you and I responded to an actual message from you, which you really saw, and proved both of our existence by responding with a further question. Solipsism is nonsense.
This might not be true.
"In the metaphysics of identity, the Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
Reality could be forever fluctuating. For example you can have a pet dog, a drawing of your dog, a computer graphic of your dog and a photo of your dog and you still recognise the dog in different mediums. What is what we experience doesn't necessarily have to be consistent just present the same identity.
Before the radio, television, airplanes, internet etc these would have seemed impossible to exist and did to some including Lord Kelvin physicist who said “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible”.
Obviously human creativity and innovation has yet to hit a brick wall.
Anecdotal reports are not evidence.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
What are they? Can't imagine why one would desire such, other than as a means to espace this one.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
There would need to be evidence of this. As it stands, the whole of research from cognitive neuroscience suggests that consciousness is produced by the brain, meaning there is no separation between them.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Facts associated with phenomena are required to inform such a conclusion to be formed.
One idea of an imaginary possibility which is unlikely but not cannot be ruled out is that of time's arrow reversing. I came across it in ' The Death of Forever: A New Future For Human Consciousness' by Darryl Reanney.The book is a contemplation of time and eternity and he thinks that it cannot be ruled out that time's arrow could reverse and history occur backwards. It was also the theme of Martin Amis novel, 'Time' s Arrow' which is an interesting fictional tale of characters' lives in reverse. It is a bit of a mind boggling idea and I have to admit thinking about Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence and how it would work as a fantastic possibility...
No, it may not. You cannot live in space. That's because you are confined to exist within the domain of the restrictions placed on you through evolution and the systems associated with this particular planet.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
A reconfigured representation of the same object by design, but the objects that made the original constitute the original. A=A. A =/= identical to A, except all of the objects that constitute A. In that case you're speaking about forms, rather than literal identity.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
All of those are different things, that's why each of them can be distinguished. A does not ever stop being A.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Previously wrong statements of fact do not constitute an argument, or evidence of a hypothesis that is entirely unrelated.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes, but it has to be generated in tandem with reality and the laws that govern it.
It's impossible for an immovable object to exist in the presence of an irresistible force.
A human virgin birth.
Feeding 5 thousand people with a loaf and two fishes.
Raising the dead.
Fitting people and two of every lifeform in existence into an ark and surviving a global flood.
Making the Sun stop spinning without all the planets flying off into space.
Every so-called miracle the theists say actually happened.
Oh, I also agree with 'solipsism is nonsense.'
I am referring to personal evidence from the private realm/sphere of someone's mind. Just because an experience is private or had alone does not make it untrue or not evidence.
I don't know what evidence you would accept for the afterlife.
I have never heard voices like a schizophrenic but I have to accept that they do or just be sceptical of what anyone says about their mental states or events that I didn't witness.
What if the loaves of bread and fish were all huge?
You just need a huge oven and very big fish.
Quoting universeness
Maybe a genetic mutation could cause some kind of self fertilisation but then I suppose the woman would cease to be a true human.
Quoting universeness
I think theist stories are fictional but not necessarily physically impossible.
Personally I don't like the idea of permanently ceasing to exist. If you aren't suicidal I don't see why you would welcome the cessation of existence?
What about the cessation of existence of the universe? I suppose you welcome the postulated heat death of the universe?
That's good. I'll have to think about that one.
But the existence of new entities like the internet and radios reveals that we don't know what is ruled out and what laws exactly exist. These things and others are called emergent properties which are not predicted by physics.
You may be treating the laws of physics like theological commandments rather than scientific formulae that await exceptions or modulations.
The failure of physics and the rest of science to account for consciousness our only access to reality is consciousness) is a big whole and the materialistic project.
This depends on whether we have an accurate definition of time.
I feel that once something has happened it has permanently happened so I am not sure what time reversal means.
For example say I am hit by a car and badly injured, time somehow reverses and the process reverses I am not longer hit by the car but it did happen somewhere at some time and I would still have the memory of it. There seems to be a link between memory and the arrow of time and also causal necessity I suppose making causes unidirectional.
Yes, it is probably unlikely that time reversal could happen as a real possibility because it would involve the reverse chains of causality. It would sort of mean that the injury of the car crash would have to then happen backwards with the crash being later. However, the book was well written and as far as the memory aspects that is more complex because it involves aspects of knowledge being outside of time, from the perspective of eternity. That would make sense in terms of precognitive experiences because it would be about people being able to perceive beyond 3 dimensional world experience.
Cognitive neuroscience accounts for consciousness as it currently stands. The brain produces consciouness. And again, the realm of could be's unknown is not evidence to suggest what laws are well known are somehow able to be negated.
If the proposition "nothing is ruled out" is true, then the proposition "nothing is ruled out" is an exception to this. "Nothing ruled out except the current proposition", perhaps.
1. Physically impossible: No human, without the aid of machines, can lift the rock of Gibraltar (Long live the Queen). Time-limited (enhanced humans, like superheroes, may be able to pull it of in the future).
2. Technologically impossible: A manned mission to the dwarf planet Pluto is out of the question. Time limited (as we discover new technologies, we may be able to send a man/men to Pluto).
3. Logically impossible: A contradiction (p & ~p) is impossible. Married bachelor! Time limited?
4. Left to the reader as an exercise.
An afterlife can't be ruled out and the question is better posed as,: is life here as the only life ruled out?
How can creation be ruled out?
Some people are idealists or solipsists. A rather weird and selfish, and lonely belief but still.
Men without morals exist.
If there are logical, theoretical, or empirical limits, depends on the subject they are applied to.
Afterlife can't be ruled out. Maybe it's better to ask: can a single isolated life be ruled ou?
Creation can't be ruled out and is even the only option left when the gaps are closed.
There are idealists and solipsists, so the logical conclusion is that they are not impossible.
There are men without moral. Thus, amoral reality is possible.
If there are there logical, theoretical or empirical limits depends on the subjects you apply them to.
No evidence points at the contrary. So why rule it out?
Quoting Garrett Travers
And still there are idealists and solipsists.
Quoting Garrett Travers
No. Men or women without morals exist.
Quoting Garrett Travers
No. It depends to what the rules are applied.
I think you are struggling here.
If they were actually feeding on a whale shark then I think they would have at least reported a very big fish and I don't think they were capable of making loaves that size and if what you suggest is true then it's unlikely it would have been reported at all, as if these the large food items you said are common practice when feeding a gathering of 5000 people then that would just be 'having lunch.'
But I agree with your comment that theist stories are just that, stories!
Argument from ignorance.
Quoting Schootz1
Just as there are Platonists and Kantians, that doesn't mean it's any less foolish.
Quoting Schootz1
No, they do not. Only men and women with moral codes that lead them in the right direction, or the wrong one. The moral code of no moral code is still just that, a moral code. Humans are concept generators. Concepts are ethical functions in nature. Whether your moral code is evil or not, that's something I'll know by its fruit, as it were.
Quoting Schootz1
This sentence says "No. Yes."
Hehah, see how reality kills irrational approaches? Reality negates its negation. The beauty of consistency.
We don't even know what matter, time, or the brain are, so save your certainty for the feeble minded.
All interpretation of experience it seems is done in consciousness. Causality is a schema we have interpreted or perceived through consciousness.
I think idealism or the idea that reality is a big mind or collection of minds and mental events allows for far more flexibility than an assumption of materialism. I say this taking in mind dreams.
In dreams it is clearly an all mental experience because I assume we are asleep and any experience we have is being created by the brain/mind. So this says to me that anything we can experience in dreams is independent of immediate perception of an external world or external causes. So things like colour and causation and sound etc in dreams are purely mental at that point.
We could then view a dream like a cartoon and in cartoon there can be time and causal reversal. So for example a dropped cup that shattered in reverse would be bits of ceramic or glass on a floor randomly lifting into the air and rearranging into cup object. We might need a causal explanation for this or if it is like the dream world it might just be another mental event and mental events need a different explanation than physical causality models.
I think therefore that what is impossible or even inexplicable in a physical world model might be far more explicable in a mental world model including consciousness itself.
Just rambling.
So is the argument for no afterlife.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I didn't say that. They exist. So solipsism and idealism do exist. Materialism looks foolish from their perspective.
Quoting Garrett Travers
They don't have right and wrong directions. That's you projecting.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yes. No!
No... No it is isn't. That's an assertion without evidence for itself.
Quoting Schootz1
It would to fools. However, solipsists contradict their own perspective by having an opinion at all, and by existing.
Quoting Schootz1
That's a direction.
Quoting Schootz1
Don't know what you're on about.
Ruled out by what?
In chess, it is ruled out by the rules of the game that a bishop can move from a black square to a white square or vice-versa.
In language, it is ruled out that up can be down.
But if reality decides that the world is round and folks on opposite sides of it point up in opposite directions, language had better learn to accommodate this inconvenient fact.
In general, the rules of science are descriptive not prescriptive. This means that they do not rule anything out, but merely describe the fact that some things do not happen.
"Cows do not lay eggs." This is a generalised observation, not a rule. Here is another generalised observation: "Reality is not ruled by thoughts or words." Traditionally, it was supposed that God said stuff, and it was so. Sometimes when a tyrant says stuff, it is so, but even Canute proverbially could not rule the tides. To suppose that words can rule things in or out is magical thinking. Conform your thoughts to the way things are, and be ruled by that.
Having said that, there is much also to be said for that kind of magical thinking that is called 'design and planning'. An engineer designs a non-existent bridge, and builders realise his ideas. Many of mankind's magical imaginings have been realised in this way - I myself have a magic mirror that enables me to see and speak to my daughter on the other side of the world, and send messages to philosophers that I have never even met. My daughter put on wings and flew seven times seven leagues; and so on.