Reality does not make mistakes and that is why we strive for meaning. A justification for Meaning.
I have been thinking on this for quite a while now and thought I might put these thoughts up some where they can be criticized.
It is apparent to me that there are four things that an individual can unequivocally prove.
-The first: You exist. This I believe to be the simplest proof, considering that if you did not exist on some level than you would not be able to ponder your own existence in the first place.
-The second: Time exists. If time did not exist then one would not have the ability to discern past from present.
-The third: Reality can not make mistakes. The concept of a mistake does not exist within reality, it only exists within human perspective. In order for a mistake to be made there must first be an agreed upon correct outcome to an event, and considering that reality (Meaning the world in which we exist) exists outside of human consciousness and it's ability to assign correct and incorrect, this would mean that any event that happens within reality is not a mistake.
-The fourth: Reality has a blue print. "Blue print" refers to a set of universal laws that bind reality together in someway which set the stage for all events occurring in reality. You can call this blue print what you will, mathematics, god, or what have you, but there must be laws binding reality together. If there was no blue print for realities existence than we, humans who exist within reality, would not exist either. I now refer to the first proof.
If these four proofs are true then humanities existence is not a mistake and humanities ability to create meaning from seemingly nothing is also not a mistake. If we exist within reality then we are one part of the blue print of reality and if no event which occurs within reality can be classified as a mistake than our ability to create meaning for our own is existence is not a mistake.
To me this is just a complicated way of saying that by creating meaning for the decisions you make in life you are doing exactly what a human meant to do.
It is apparent to me that there are four things that an individual can unequivocally prove.
-The first: You exist. This I believe to be the simplest proof, considering that if you did not exist on some level than you would not be able to ponder your own existence in the first place.
-The second: Time exists. If time did not exist then one would not have the ability to discern past from present.
-The third: Reality can not make mistakes. The concept of a mistake does not exist within reality, it only exists within human perspective. In order for a mistake to be made there must first be an agreed upon correct outcome to an event, and considering that reality (Meaning the world in which we exist) exists outside of human consciousness and it's ability to assign correct and incorrect, this would mean that any event that happens within reality is not a mistake.
-The fourth: Reality has a blue print. "Blue print" refers to a set of universal laws that bind reality together in someway which set the stage for all events occurring in reality. You can call this blue print what you will, mathematics, god, or what have you, but there must be laws binding reality together. If there was no blue print for realities existence than we, humans who exist within reality, would not exist either. I now refer to the first proof.
If these four proofs are true then humanities existence is not a mistake and humanities ability to create meaning from seemingly nothing is also not a mistake. If we exist within reality then we are one part of the blue print of reality and if no event which occurs within reality can be classified as a mistake than our ability to create meaning for our own is existence is not a mistake.
To me this is just a complicated way of saying that by creating meaning for the decisions you make in life you are doing exactly what a human meant to do.
Comments (91)
A mistake is the difference between prediction/knowledge and observation/experience, as attributed to either the prediction or to the observation. Mistakes, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. A mistake exists only when either prediction or observation is considered ‘true’.
Humanity’s ability to create meaning from seemingly nothing is a perception of humanity. What we do when we ‘create meaning’ is describe reality as an ongoing potential relationship between knowledge and experience. It’s only ‘nothing’ when either knowledge or experience is considered ‘true’. It’s just ‘mistakes’ viewed at a different level.
What a human is ‘meant to do’, then, is open-ended. How long is a piece of string? Was Hitler doing what a human was meant to do? I don’t think meaning is quite that simple.
Quoting vanzhandz
Quoting vanzhandz
I don't think you have proven any of your four propositions. Let's take a look:
Quoting vanzhandz
This isn't a proof. You've accepted it as a self-evident truth. That's ok with me.
Quoting vanzhandz
The fact that we can tell past from present is not a proof that time exists, it's a definition of what time is.
Quoting vanzhandz
Since reality is the standard by which whether something is a mistake is determined, saying that reality can not make mistakes is a tautology.
Quoting vanzhandz
When you say "universal laws" I assume you are talking about what are called "laws of nature," e.g. special and general relativity, the law of conservation of matter and energy, and the second law of thermodynamics. I don't think these are laws or blueprints in the sense you mean. They don't determine or regulate or how the universe works, they only describe it. They are generalizations from experience.
Quoting vanzhandz
I agree with this. Creating meaning seems to be something we do just because we are humans. It's part of human nature. On the other hand, I don't think it follows from your four postulates.
Suppose Human nature's personal need for 'meaning and purpose' only proves writ small Blind nature's impersonal lack of 'meaning and purpose' writ large?
Suppose, therefore, that individually and collectively fulfilling this personal need is merely an illusion we employ to get ourselves out of bed every morning and/or with which to variously sedate our despair (and that works only as long as we remain in denial that our 'meanings and purposes' are just (mostly adaptive) illusions)?
:death: :flower:
'
This is pretty much what I've thought and proposed on this forum too. When people claim that life or humans are an "accident", they are asserting that the universe has goals and the existence of life or humans weren't part of its goals.
Quoting vanzhandz
But what do you mean by "meaning"? How can meaning be created as an illusion or as something real and does the distinction make sense? Humans create all sorts of things and even meaning as an illusion has causal power. It makes humans do things and create things in reality which means that meaning is just as real as everything else. If humans and there minds are part of reality, then meaning is part of reality.
Personally, I think meaning, as a relationship between cause and effect, is something apprehended, and not created, by minds.
Re: "Reality does not make mistakes"
What "reality"? Whose reality?
I agree with your general implication, that whatever will be is what will become real. Hence, each individual's destiny was "meant to be" in some general sense. Others though, will pick apart your wording. For example, what do you mean by "reality"?
I'll leave the buzzards to scavenge over your terminology. So, I'll just note that "reality" is not absolutely Deterministic. Instead, Evolution is heuristic*, which means "trial & error". Therefore, the future state of the world is never absolutely certain, but always open to serendipity (chance). Which allows sentient beings some maneuvering room on the road to destiny. :smile:
* This notion of "heuristic evolution" is being discussed on the Free Will vs Determinism thread : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/653374
[i]Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours to see[/i]
___Doris Day, Frank De Vol
Quoting Possibility
I appreciate your well rationalized definition of what a mistake is and I agree said definition. I think however that you have taken my words as some form determinism. Although they could be used in that way, it was not my intention. My idea is; that when you separate human perspective from reality (the world in which we exist) this leaves no room for human concepts such as mistakes, good or bad, correct or incorrect. Reality exists outside of human perception, all we can do is observe it, but these observations have no affect on the laws of nature which govern reality. Meaning, if an event occurs within reality, because all things within reality are subject to these laws of nature, it can not be classified as a mistake. One planet crashing into another planet is not a mistake, it is the result of reality and the laws which govern it taking its course. Thus, if human consciousness exists within reality, it is subject to these same laws of nature, meaning the advent of humanities ability to create meaning is not a mistake. It is the result of events within reality taking their course, devoid of an intention to do so.
Thank you very much for pushing me to expand upon my points. I agree that I did a poor job explaining them and that I really ought not call them "proofs."
Quoting T Clark
Yes, my proposition on time is based on humanities ability to perceive it. I would like to separate human observation from human perception. Human observation relies upon the senses, where as human perception relies upon the consciousness itself interpreting information. We could say that we can observe change within the world around us, but then that leaves the door open for the doubt of human observation. The question of whether or not we can unequivocally prove that our observations are correct? I am of the mind that there is now way to prove this, so then I fall back upon human perception, which does not require outside information in order to prove the existence of time. As a human you can perceive a time which has already passed without needing to reference this with any outside influence. You can understand that at one point your consciousness did not exists and then at another moment it came into existence and persisted ever since. This is my justification for the existence of time.
Quoting T Clark
I would agree that my wording of this does not do my point any justice. I wish I could find a better word then "mistake." What I am saying is; the events that happen within reality can not be classified as mistakes because in order to do so we would have to apply our human perception of a mistake to said event. Human perception, although it exists within reality, does not however have any affect on the rules which govern reality. And because all events that happen within reality are subject to the rules of reality, including the advent of human consciousness, then you can not classify any event within reality as mistake. It is the result of the rules which govern reality taking their course.
Quoting T Clark
The universal laws I was referring to were not eluding to the "laws of nature" as you describe them, all though that terminology is much better than my own. I am not referring to any specific set of rules that we as humans have already come up with to explain how the universe operates. I am proposing that there must be laws which can explain why reality is capable of having things exist within it in the first place. We as humans would be subject to these laws, considering we exist within reality, meaning that within these laws of existence there is the capacity for beings such as ourselves to exists. And for beings such as ourselves to create meaning in the way that we do.
This is the perspective I hold. Again, I thank you for you comments.
I understand the concept you're getting at. I am not however trying to prove whether "Meaning" is an illusion or not. My idea is based upon humanities ability to create meaning and how we can rationalize the existence of this human ability.
Well it's a good question, but I'm not sure if it's required to understand my argument.
I am not saying that one can prove whether the reality they witness is the true reality or not, but that there must be a base reality outside of human observation. Without a base reality to exist within than where would our consciousness reside? And within this base reality there must be a reason why a being that is conscious can create meaning.
Thank you for your question.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I agree with you that "meaning" must exist within reality alongside the humans that create it. My definition of however is based on human interpretation of reality. Meaning is the reasoning a consciousness gives itself for the actions it takes, in such a way that it assigns worth to these actions. In my mind meaning is meant to give a consciousness enough feeling of worth in order for that consciousness to desire the prospect of going on living. Ultimately the meaning we give ourselves is up to us, it is not based on what we have observed but it is based upon our interpretations of what we have observed. Just as our concept of self is based upon how we have interpreted the life experience that we have had.
I appreciate your response. You are correct in saying that my terminology is most likely flawed, I need to do better.
My point wasn't exactly meant to be deterministic, as much as it was to just simply point out that you can't say whether an event is a mistake or not because you would have to apply your own human definition of what a mistake is to the event. I don't think we should do this because human perception has no affect on the rules which govern reality, thus it does not matter what happens within reality it will always just be the result of the rules of reality taking their course.
I do agree that reality is simply deterministic. One could say that the events of the present moment create the future, but I do not believe that they determine it.
I was afraid that you would say that! :smile:
The vast majority of people (including "thinkers") believe there is and talk about an "objective" reality. Isn't this the "base" reality and the reality "outside of human observation", that you are talking about?
n such cases I use to ask, "If there is an objective a reality, who is out there to tell?" And I continue to explain that we can only talk about subjective reality: a person's reality: yours, mine and other persons' reality. Realities differ among people rearding everything. The closest one cout get to an "objective" reality is "common" reality. This is an agreed upon reality. It you and I agree on something, we can talk about a common reality. Even if, hypothetically, all the people on Earth agree on something --completely impossible--, this is still a common reallity.
What people usually mean by "objective reality" is the physical universe! Which, of course exists "outside human observation", as you describe it. They use these terms interchangeably, and almost as synonyms.
Therefore, specifying "What reality" and/or "Whose reality?" is required to understand your argument! :smile
Quoting vanzhandz
In our own reality. We build our reality mainly by perception, reasoning and knowledge. Reasoning includes understanding and knowledge includes facts to which you have agreed on or the existence of which you have accepted. Faith can be also part of one's reality, regarding things the existence of which one cannot prove or explain.
Quoting vanzhandz
You create meaning based on your perception, reasoning, understanding and knowledge. In short, your reality.
Good points, but I think the definitions might need some work to describe what you are getting at.
If we rephrase the above, could it mean, "no event occurs within reality, for which, if we knew all the conditions for it (the blue print), we should be surprised?" That is, if we know how the "right" answers come to be, we should never be surprised by them.
This has two likely unintended consequences.
1. This would mean the information content of the universe, measured in physics/information science as the amount of surprise we have about what happens in a system, is zero using an absolute frame of measurement. That is, nothing is mistaken so nothing should surprise us, and the actual entropy of the universe from an absolute viewpoint is zero, meaning there is nothing to know. This also implies hard determinism from the bottom up.
This is counter intuitive; it tells us that only by having incomplete information can we have any information, total information = 0 surprise = no information. Maybe there is something here, this is indeed what Hegel gets at with his oppositions of X and Y, where pure Y turns out to be X because it has nothing by which to define itself aside from abstraction, but many people don't like the dialectical. (He does this with nothing and being in PhS and pure freedom in the Philosophy of Right.)
It could also just be telling us that our methods for measuring entropy are missing something. That they only work if you accept that you are a system made up of parts of the universe measuring other parts, arbitrarily defined as systems.
Thus, speaking of measuring the universe as a whole is a meaningless concept, and we cannot logically apply our rules to everything. This is somewhat suggested by the fact that the information exchange formula for the universe as whole would be zero following the holographic principal, since the surface of the universe contacts nothing. Also by the fact that thought experiments positing magical observers without physical parts that hang out in vacuum allow you to violate the laws of thermodynamics.
2. At the lowest level we can probe, the universe seems stochastic, modality is exhibited in wave functions. We can only know of probabilities of X (e.g., types of spin) and measuring what X is causes changes in the system (collapse). But our zero information system should have no surprises, so this probabilistic nature of QM can't be there, else mistakes can always arise.
Perhaps the universe isn't probabilistic at small scales, perhaps there are hidden variables that hold the spin of particles in wave form. However, against this point is the fact that experiments on Bell inequalities consistently tell us that this is not the case, so far. So surprise appears to be an essential part of reality, which means that "mistake" must become a more amorphous definition. It means not one outcome versus another, but rather a huge spectrum of outcomes that you can be surprised about no matter how much you know.
Another problem might be time. Time now generally needs to be understood as space-time. Experiments in quantum tunneling seen to suggest the possibility of effects in time breaking the laws we thought we had found for it, waves crossing barriers before they have left, although this needs more experimentation.
However, if time is relevant to an observer, but at the fundemental level, particles do not have their own identities, what do we make of that?
I think there is something here to this perspective in that a system can only have information about other systems based on which systems it has been able to exchange information with.
"Objective" reality appears to require an infinite, absolute viewpoint to at least be posited as possible. It does not currently seem possible, and were it to exist, we run into the problems above vis-á-vis our current conceptions of information.
This doesn't imply meaning in the sense of sentience however. The light sensor in your camera is a system and can act as an observer in QM, but I think this fact still has implications for how we think of meaning.
This is one way to take it. The conclusion that the total information content of the universe from an absolute perspective is zero would jive with this depending on how you want to interpret it.
However, I think it does run into ontological difficulties. How does a system with no surprise, no information, produce information for systems within itself and why does it seem to necissarily do so?
You can posit the findings of scientific inquiry as a series of unanalyzable facts, but you're still left with the issue of how such facts can come to be known, seemingly due to logical necessity.
And while human logic is fallible, and our logical intuition can be seen as a by product of evolution, it certainly does seem to be saying things about the way things actually are. It's how we can determine said brute facts, and the ground for understanding them. If you feed contradictions into quite different computational devices from the mind, modern computers or mechanical ones, you end up with infinite loops, halting problems. Incomputability shows up as a physical property.
Okay. Thought I alternatively "rationalized" "this human ability" without any essentialism (as per Zapffe, Camus, Cioran, et al) ... A speculation on "meaning" as a self-serving illusion, not "proof".
I don't see the relevance to my post.
To start, it is not my intention to claim that time doesn't exist. It's a concept I use all the time (oops). Still, here are some thoughts:
None of this means you are wrong. It just means things are more complicated than they seem.
Quoting vanzhandz
I'm a bit confused by this, but I'll take a swing at a response. Which you probably won't like. Which we don't need to follow up on. Your contention depends on the existence of an objective reality. There are those, including me, who do not think that the existence of objective reality is self-evident or necessary. This is not a fringe idea. You will find discussions of it here on the forum. I won't go into it further here. I think it will disrupt your discussion.
Quoting vanzhandz
For there to be laws or rules, there would have to be someone who wrote them. There are two possibilities I can see. 1) God or 2) Us. As I said before, the laws of nature humans come up with are descriptions of how the world works, not requirements that the world must follow. The laws of nature are human constructs that we superimpose on the world as we perceive it.
Quoting vanzhandz
As I said previously, I agree that we humans are built, evolved to create meaning.
Interesting point. It makes me think of "omniscience" or "absolute knowledge" and similar metaphysical concepts, which are utopias and which are nice to dream about. But unfortunately we have to wake up at some point! Indeed, if one knew everything one wouldn't need information! And, by consequence one would never be surprised about anything. What a boring state of existence! :grin:
Now, something that just came up to me --as it often happens with these discussions ... I have not worked this well, but I think that both of the above terms ("omniscience" or "absolute knowledge") are actually counter-intuitive or self-contradicting ... (I can't think of the term for something that contains an impossibility.) If I'm telling that "I know everything", that "I have an absolute knowledge", etc., then, at the same time, knowledge would have no meaning as far as I am concerned, since that would mean that and could only happen if I myself am knowledge and/or I am knowledge itself! It could maybe also mean that and happen only if I am everything!
Now, it's time time for me to wake up! :grin:
I was saying that could be taken as evidence of "blind nature's lack of meaning." I think the more supported conclusion is that speaking of "blind nature" or nature qua nature, is the thing that isn't actually meaningful.
There are, of course, plenty of similar armchair psychologist reasons that people have for asserting the meaninglessness of nature, so IDK if there is much to say about the other part of the post.
Right, that's another interesting point. To have an absolute standpoint would require you to have a memory essentially equivalent to the energy of the universe as a whole... maybe.
You can compress information in ways that are fully reversible. The simplest example I know of is simple image compression block coding. If an image is almost all black pixels, with a white square in the middle, instead of coding each black pixel, you can instead code them as a block of consecutive black pixels (i.e., "0 x 10", versus "0000000000"). Interestingly, trying to compute the absolute minimal way in which a piece of information can be stored, the maximum compression that allows for irreversibility (Yao entropy or Kolmogorov complexity), results in logical contradictions that throw computation into endless loops.
Interesting to consider when people make analogies to reality as being like a "simulation" or "computer program," anyhow. I think those comparisons tend to mislead more then they elucidate though.
I suppose I wasn't being very specific. I meant, speaking of nature either having or lacking meaning in the context of a naturalism informed by modern physics is potentially using the concept of meaning where it isn't applicable.
Something's meaning, its bearing, information, value, significance, [insert synonym here], etc., for something else obtains as as an interaction between two physical systems, or a system and its environment (another system). Information transfer and erasure are physical interactions (e.g., Landauer's principle). As a relationship between two systems, it isn't something you can say nature has or doesn't have. That'd be akin to saying that "the universe has gravity." The universe contains meaning, it does not have meaning of itself; it's the difference between being able to ask yes/no questions about something and saying it posseses answers, and saying something possess questions.
This statement relies on information/entropy being the same thing as, or closely related to, "meaning." If propositions can be about physical objects, and if sensory inputs are reducing our uncertainty about physical objects, this relationship must be the case. Information cannot be created or destroyed. If we have information about a system, it is coming from somewhere outside ourselves, since we are a separate, finite system.
To be sure, the information is coded quite differently within an animal. The channels are imperfect, so there is a massive amount of compression. There is added complexity in the system, so in people you have abstraction, analysis, the same information going through feedback loops. But at the end of the day, a thing's meaning, the sense of what it is, our reduction in uncertainty, is information. This concept doesn't apply when considering what a system is of itself.
Second, the universe necissarily contains meaning. Nature could not exist if a single coherent yes/no question could not be asked of it.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what people mean when they say nature does or doesn't have meaning. If the question is more "does it have a goal?" I think that is a question that is at least conceptually sound.
I - I do exist. => means that you are aware of the fact that you can think. (the notion of existence is ambiguous)
II - Time exists => Things I see/think vary overtime. (You know that time exists because you see variation)
III - Reality can not make mistakes => Things that happen happen. (If I understood your concept of mistake properly (= an error from our thought system regarding our representation of the reality))
IV - There is a blueprint for reality => There is a set of universal rules. (I do not agree with that one, since it's affirmative.
However, I would agree with "There could be a set of universal rules".
I will agree to your own statement if you prove me that a set of universal rules is needed to keep a reality up.
Since we can only experience the world,
Rules are usually the name we give to "patterns we discovered in the reality", which means it's a way for us to state that something in the world seems (to our eyes) to be constant, happening repetitively.)
What exactly? The self-contradiction ... ?
It's better if you use TPF's "Quote" feature (as I do).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't know if and what kind of energy a memory consists of ... But if it is, then it should be really huge, esp. considering the images stored in a computer, even in compressed form! This shows clearly that memory cannot be located/stored in the brain, as scientists try in vain to establish since a long time ago!
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree.
"...how to interpret it."
Interpret it. It what?
- the conclusion
- information content
- universe
- perspective
- zero
- this (what ever "this" is)
I don't want to join this thread because two of the worst writers of the forum (the other is @180 Proof) who are otherwise very intelligent, are incomprehensibly debating here. Let them misunderstand each other and frictionalize the debate on the grounds of completely missing each others' points, due to unclear writing.
I give up after this. It was a tangential thought anyhow, and I don't even necissarily disagree with the general gist of the post, in the sense that people may ascribe anthropomorphic purpose to nature for psychological reasons (although the converse is true too).
It's wrong because nature contains meaning; this is a basic physical fact, empirically verifiable and logically necissary. If it was meant as, "does nature as a whole have meaning, from a universal perspective," it's wrong because it misunderstands the nature of information.
Meaning = definition = reduction in uncertainty about a system = information = entropy. This is not really controversial. Information being physical has held up to experimentation and been a boon to physics as a concept.
Talking about "blind nature" having meaning doesn't fit the concept of meaning because information, if it exists, obtains between two or more systems. Nature as nature can't be said to have meaning (in the context of naturalism). That would be saying it somehow has or lacks a reduction in uncertainty (information) about nothing.
The meaning, reduction in uncertainty, about nature for people (physical systems interacting with other systems) can't be fully illusory. That would be saying minds somehow create information that doesn't exist. This would be woo, indicative of some sort of supernatural type of information or access to information, solpsism, or idealism. I've gathered that you are not a fan of woo, so this seems like an issue.
Information channels can have errors. When you get to complex systems that have computational abilities and subsystems that attempt to generate inference from information, you can get strange, incoherent, and false representations, but the meaning has to be in nature.
This could be applied to the concept of purpose, such that systems can have purpose (e.g., life - self replication), but I think that is going way out on a limb. Purpose seems more like an abstraction, and doesn't exist in the essential way meaning/information does.
I was thinking in terms of a thought experiment where you somehow magically step outside nature and observe it through supernatural means, which is the only way to get information from nature writ large.
You can conclude:
1. That entire experiment is in error and misunderstands how the concept of information works, my view.
2. That information about nature qua nature, essential non-perspective information, is impossible without magic, relegating it to woo.
3. Is a coherent use of the concept of information, but shows that such information is impossible to obtain, and necissarily indeterminate.
Maybe this helps:
Time, existing and reality…
Remembering Neil on the moon I have taken my fair share of decisions, like, together with my then girlfriend now wife, deciding to skip the pill and the rubber and see what happens.
Now, I know that you’re taking this up as a philosophical problem, but do your musings on time and reality have ANY bearing on decicisons you have or will take IRL?
Thanks. If you and I agree on something, we must be right.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It has always seemed to me that belief in an objective reality requires a belief in God. As you note, there has to be someone who can experience it, someone with "an infinite, absolute viewpoint."
Certainly. An absolute reality requires a God. But people, so much misled by religious dogmas and bias of all sort,as well as lack of critical reasoning and undestanding, don't even treat God as something absolute. They rather treat him --at least in Christanity, I don't know in other dogmatic religions-- simply as a super human being! And in fact, with a lot of human attributes like vegeange, destructive tendencies, etc., that go hand-in-hand with "love", "mercy", etc. And that's why we see God as an old Man in paintings ... Why old? And why masculine? A Supreme Being has no age or sex!
I mean. all that is ridiculous, isn't it?
The bottom line is, I think, that such a absolute state is highly impossible to exist. But even if it does exist, we are not able to conceive it. anyway. So, there's no meaning in talking about it, exept only for ... stressing the point of such an impossibility! :grin:
It seems, to an extant thinking entity, that objective reality, within which only that which exists can dwell, requires a belief in a fabricated conceptual entity of extramundane ability - which was excogitated by other extant thinking entities, using an objective piece of hardware known as the brain, entities just like yourself - never before seen or head of by any independent observational metrics that we here in objective reality possess? No, friend. To NOT believe in the objective reality in which you live requires the belief in a god. That's why the whole of Western subjective philosophy is dominated by the influences of Christianity, and the sciences are not.
No, an absolute reality outside of the one accounted for by physics and biology requires a God. Where do you formulate this mysticism?
Quoting Alkis Piskas
There is nothing less absolute than a conceptual fabrication for which there is no evidence to suggest the existence of.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
This is a statement of absolute objectivity. It's more likely, given that science reveals to us that there is no such thing as the concept of "nothing," that the domain of existence you occupy, which is apprehended by an objectively extant brain, that will objectively stop working if a bullet passes through is, is an absolute reality of which you were created by, through evolutionary processes, to perceive with a considerable measure of accuracy, eneough to keep you alive and refine your behaviors in accordance with reality. Everything just stated is mainstream science, backed up by hundreds and thousands of research articles, projects, and programs. To believe there is something outside of what is known to be reality is a leap of faith that requires belief in a god.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Except the idea of it being impossible is more impossible than the fact that nothing outside of our domain of apprehension has ever been shown to exist in a manner that violates the laws of reality. That's shown, not confused about.
I wasn't making a statement about religion. What I wanted to say was about science. Science is supposed to replace religion, but it's underlying presuppositions are similar.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Not to go off on a tangent, but I think objective reality is a metaphysical entity, not something that exists in the world. It is one of the unproven assumptions, presuppositions, of science and much of our daily experience of the world.
I got a bit lost in your discussion. Until I got to this sentence, I thought you were agreeing with me. I disagree with your statement. I don't think one needs to assume that either objective reality or God have to exist.
Objective reality is a recognition of a self-evident, self-emergent, productive, law abiding, patternized, immutable plain of existence. Not an assumption. It can and does exist without the assumption of God. The only way for one to rationally come to the conclusion of a super ordinate plane of existence, is by assuming a super ordinate force beyond nature. Now, that doesn't mean one cannot postulate a super ordinate existence, but no evidence suggests such existence, thus one is reliant on making supernatural claims of an infinite variety. I've only ever known people who believe in God to think along these lines.
There are supernatural gods and then there are pantheistic gods. The Enlightenment moved toward the rejection of supernatural deities, but left intact the notion of the Good in nature. Other than the fact that you don’t use the word ‘God’ , your model of rationality and ethics is indistinguishable from a host of such post-supernatural accounts of God that have emerged since Descartes and up till Schopenhauer, Marx and Nietzsche. In fact, your philosophy is much closer to traditional theology than the hyper-liberal, heretical theologies of Kierkegaard, Levinas and Caputo.
The driving force behind contemporary theology isnt the super ordinate, but the truth of the ethical Good. Your thinking is very much within that tradition.
That's correct. The closer you get to objectivity, science, induction, logic, reason, and evidence, the further away you get from "accounts of God." My accounts do not take God into consideration whatsoever, and are not related to these "accounts" you seem to have attempted to link me to for some reason.
Quoting Joshs
That's because the rationalist account of things doesn't make room for such drivel. Thus, they've had to give an inordinate amount of ground, because they cannot take us in intellectual combat on the subject.
The rationalist account of things is absolutely dependent in its core on such drivel. Your ‘reality-based’ ethics sees the Good in , what did you call it, “ a self-evident, self-emergent, productive, law abiding, patternized, immutable plain of existence.” That is precisely what nature-centered theologies argue. Your deity is the ideality of the rational, what Nietzsche called the ascetic ideal. You substituted a perfect Reason for Christ, but the salvation is just as devout.
This is what is called a strawman, and I'm going to have to ask you not to tell me what I believe. As in, at all. I let YOU know what I believe. And, I'll show you the same respect going forward.
No, my conception of ethics is predicated on no such thing, and neither is the modern rationalist perspective of ethics. My conception of ethics is predicated on the human consciousness being the sole source in the known universe of all concept generation currently extant, as the result of the processes of the evolved human brain, which produces said consciousness. That the human brain has evolved to produce conceptual framework for informing and refining behaviors and thoughts (Ethics), through the collection and organization of sensory data over time and through a variety of experiences, for the benefit of the individual consciousness that so generates said conceptual framework, and by extension those within his/her purview of action and effect. That is my conception of Ethics. You want to challenge me here, you go right ahead, but be sure to characterize my position accurately, to the letter.
I disagree. I see the existence of objective reality as a metaphysical question, by which I mean it is an underlying assumption, what R.G. Collingwood calls an absolute presupposition. As such, it is neither true nor false. Collingwood and I are not the only ones who feel that way. That shows it is not "self-evident."
Quoting Garrett Travers
The idea of objective reality is meaningless if there is no one who can perceive it.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I make no claims for anything supernatural. To call something "superordinate" there has to be something that is ordinate, which would be objective reality. So, your argument is circular.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I have no religious beliefs.
The existence of objects is present and recognized before you can ever come to that conceptual framework.
Quoting T Clark
You have just demonstrated that you perceive that reality by talking within it with someone else also in it, through objective hardware, designed by objective technological standards, to send such messages as contain your objective statement of the objective meaning of reality in association with perception, which you could not have done without perceiving the objective reality within which you objectively chose to operate. But, we can play pretend all day if you want.
Quoting T Clark
Where is this circularity you speak of? You are claiming there is no objective reality, and thereby no super ordinate reality? If there were no reality, you'd not have been able to send such a message to me, which simply verifies that the only reality to speak of is the one we occupy.
Yes, and each of us occupies our own perspective
on that reality. To claim that there is one true reality that we can attain through empirical reason, above and beyond our perspectival access to the world, is confusing an assumption with an absolute truth. It relies on faith , and in its lack of insight into itself as a faith, it is more naive than any theology.
Sounds impressive, but you left out the part about how human consciousness is capable of having direct contact with true reality through scientific investigation. That is a faith masquerading as a truth.
I didn't say there is no reality. I said that there are other valid ways of interacting with reality that do not assume an objective reality. Even that wasn't my main argument, which is that the existence of objective reality is not self-evident.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Again, I didn't say there is no reality. I only said that its existence is not self-evident. It is not the only way of seeing things that is consistent with human experience of reality.
Valid? As in, objectively and logically fact based?
Quoting T Clark
I can't read what you're typing over you being the one objectively typing it. All evidence comes from reality via sensory data. There is no distinction between self evident and reality. Reality being that which exists. Existence and evidence are equivalent statements. You can surely assert that aspects of reality are not self-evident in accordance with out limited sensory capacity, but asserting that reality is itself not self-evident is an unscientific, anti-reason, illogical, and contradictory statement. You are yourself asserting evidence of existence when you send me these messages.
Quoting T Clark
Then you are going to have to provide an example of something extant that does not present itself as observable via evidence, given the ability to perceive such a thing through either the senses, or instruments created to detect it. Otherwise, you are saying something that is incoherent.
Yes. Objectively.
Quoting Joshs
No, no claim of the kind was made. Nothing about attainment, or absolute truth. Radical Objectivity is not open to us, that much is, frankly, self-evident. But, there is only one known reality for which evidence exists. The one we share now, where we're talking to each other. Objectivity does not require us to move beyond the capacity of our senses. Radical Objectivity does, and it's a garbage concept with no consistency of any kind.
Quoting Joshs
You would have a case if that were what it was I was proposing. However, I am not.
Observing something by evidence does not require there to be an objective reality. You keep saying it's self-evident, but it's not. Then you go on to claim that interacting with reality in any way requires an objective reality, which is begging the question. I agree with Joshs:
Quoting Joshs
A reality doesn't have to exist for objects in it to interact?
This is demostrably inaccurate. Objective means, in the context that we're talking about : not dependent on the mind for existence; actual. Things that exist, must exist within the confines of the laws that govern the universe, which is the domain of existence. Those things have evidence for their existence, irrespective of whether or not we see them.
Begging the question does not apply to tautological truths. Example: A=A. This is a self-evident, objective fact of existence, it cannot be denied. It is also a begging the question fallacy. It's also a tautology, and if you know anything about logic, every valid argument is tauological in nature. View a truth table for clarity on that.
So, again, I'm going to need that example of something that exists that provides no evidence of itself existing. Not that which we believe exists, or could exist and don't have enough evidence for yet. I mean, for you to be correct, and me to be wrong, you will need to provide an example of something that exists that: does not conform to the laws governing reality, exist within that reality the laws create, and provides no evidence for itself. That is the only way for you to be correct.
I didn't say there is no reality, I said there is no objective reality. I didn't even say that. I only said there are other ways to look at reality.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yes, that's what I mean by objective reality.
Quoting Garrett Travers
By calling objective reality "actual," you seem to mean it is the common everyday reality people deal with. That's not the only, or necessarily the best, way of looking at it.
Quoting Garrett Travers
So, again, I never said anything about something that exists that provides no evidence of itself existing. You're doing it again - using our everyday experience of reality as evidence that objective reality exists when the question on the table is whether we need the idea of objective reality to explain our everyday experience of reality.
I think acting as if there is an objective reality can be a useful way of seeing things, but it is not the only way of seeing things. And it is not necessarily always the best way of seeing things. Again, objective reality is a metaphysical entity. It's not true or false, it's just assumed. No, I don't want to get into a discussion of metaphysics. I've spent enough time doing that for a while.
Let's just leave it at that.
If our meanings and purposes are "Illusions" which are adaptive is there any sense in undermining them, though? What, that might be desirable, could be gained by doing that?
This is not a statement that makes sense. Reality and objective reality are the same. Objective is a reality descriptor. So, I don't know what you're saying at all.
Quoting T Clark
Then we agree.
Quoting T Clark
No, I mean the actual and only reality at all for which there is any evidence of. The one we exist in at all times and under all circumstances. The actual reality.
Quoting T Clark
Every bit of this is incoherent. Reality is objective. It's not a metaphysical claim, it's a physical one. As in, physics. Nothing about your position is clear.
Of course it makes sense if it is granted that there are also subjective realities. Our wishes, hopes, preferences and assumptions, for example.
As I said, let's leave it at that. We're not getting anywhere.
Yes, our brains have different ways of computing data, and chemical composition and so forth. Those aren't realities. Those are states of thought induced by a brain in reality, so even the activity of your brain is objectively source. Thoughts are not themselves objective represntations. The brain is a concept generating entity and is always generating concepts from sensory data being computed. Reality remains reality at all times. This is not something that is debated in science. Only in the realm of linguists do things like reality get conflated with thought. There actually isn't a this/that going on between subjectivity and objectivity, that's an illusion. Objectivity is actuality, and subjectivity is thought and emotion, they don't even over lap, they're utterly different ideas completely.
Yes, and consciousness is an objectively real thing giving rise to those real emotions that are exclusively your experience. Again, reality and your field of emotion are neither contradictory, nor comparable in nature. Reality is the domain of existence that has been here for 13.8 billion years. You thoughts and emotions are cognitive domains that are exclusive to your body, which exists in the objective reality to which it is bound. Realities in association with thoughts and emotion can only be assessed from the perspective of neuroscience, they are not realities otherwise.
Quoting Janus
I suppose that depends on how comparatively maladaptive any of our "illusions" happen to be.
This opportunes replacing old illusions with comparatively more adaptive newer illusions (e.g. "revaluation of values" ~F.N.)
If something is maladaptive, then by all means we should get rid of it. But what if some of our "illusions" are adaptive? In fact you had said that our meanings and purposes are mostly adaptive illusions.
That goes without saying. No one speaks about absolutes in the physical world as examined by science (physics, etc.)
Quoting Garrett Travers
Pardon me? :smile:
Quoting Garrett Travers
... or rather subjectivity? Do n?t "I think" and "highly impossible" sugest subjectivity?
Anyway, all this, besides going in circles, is totally off-topic. ("Reality does not make mistakes and that is why we strive for meaning. A justification for Meaning.") So better get back on rails!
You said "It has always seemed to me that belief in an objective reality requires a belief in God.". Are not beliefs and God related to religion? And, does science deal with either of them?
Quoting T Clark
Certainly. But I think that the points I brought up reflected or implied that ...
Anyway, as I already mentioned to @Garrett Travers, all this is off-topic. So we might better not go more "off on a tangent" as yourself already pointed out.
I believe I've already answered this . If we can, we ought to improve upon even our "adaptive illusions" when necessary, no?
I am not missing any point. Sensations, such as the ones you are describing, are not real. They are sensations of that which is real; ancillary sensatory effects resulting from brain activity that only the person to which the brain belongs can detect. It is you who are missing the fact that the only thing real in the equation you are trying to assert is the brain and body it is attached to: You. You are real, and your emotions and thoughts cannot be detached from neural activity, which is a material phenomenon.
This clears up the opinion you asserted that sounded like mysticism. My apologies.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
This is a statement objectivity, not subjectivity on Clark's part.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
This is a statement of self evident fact. For reality to make mistakes, there would have to be two things established: 1. that there was a mind behind reality that could be responsible for making mistakes. 2. even a singular instances of the laws of nature being suspended for even a moment. No such phenomena have ever been shown.
OK. Thanks.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Again, these are not my words. It's the title of this discussion! :smile: (Just scroll up to the top of the page to verify.)
Why do you insist on putting words in my mouth? :grin:
I don't, the manner in which you post isn't clear.
I don't think you and I have any beef. Unless I've misunderstood what you're saying, we're agreeing with each other.
You mean, you can't see that the title of this topic is "Reality does not make mistakes and that is why we strive for meaning. A justification for Meaning." and that these are not my words? What about the quotation marks and highlighting that I use? Don't they mean anything to you? How more clear can it be?
These are all rhetorical questions. They show my great astonishment. You don't have to reply.
Right, we don't. And I don't think that you have misunderstood what I said.
Seeing isn't the issue. Determining what it is you are saying is the problem. Again, the manner in which you've been posting is not clear.
Yes, I agree with that. However, there may be some "illusions" which, even though they might seem to be contraindicated from a rigorous "third person" perspective, are nonetheless essentially adaptive and indispensable to human flourishing.
Quoting Garrett Travers
You are assuming what you need to show; that is that anything which cannot be objectively (inter-subjectively) shown to exist cannot be real. I agree that such things cannot be objectively real, because the criteria for that is inter-subjective demonstrability.
You are missing that fact that subjective feelings as they are experienced, as opposed to being thought to be some third person observable processes, are real, and in fact the most real phenomena, to the experiencer.
Such subjective feelings might be considered to be illusions from a third person perspective just because they cannot be demonstrated to be objectively real: a point which I have already acknowledged. That's why I say that what is real should not be thought to be exhausted by the objective.
I do not need to show to you what you are already proving you understand by typing words into your computer to send to me. It is YOU who must demonstrated what YOU are claiming to be real that cannot be observed as evidence. This is unbelievable that you subjectivists think this nonsense works on people. Reality does not need to be demonstrated to the person making the claim that their feelings are real, and that something other than what phycisists have shown or discovered to be what constitutes reality, is somehow a part of the equation of what is in reality. That onus is on you, not the whole of already established science.
Quoting Janus
No, Janus. That is something you've still yet to explain the reality of. Whereas I have only asserted that which we know scientifically: that your emotional states have a neurological explantion, which is to say, a material one.
Quoting Janus
This is a conclusion that violates all known observable metrics to date. If you experience thoughts and feelings as the result of chemical processes in the brain, you are not experiencing something outside of the objective. When your dead, you don't experience anything, because your material brain is no longer operating. That's all there is to that.
If you carefully observed your own experience I believe you would see that there are many phenomena therein which you could not possibly demonstrate to be real. Of these it should be said that they are not objectively, but subjectively, real. It you want to call them illusions despite the fact that you know you have experienced them, then go for it; I just don't think 'illusion' is the best word to define something which has undoubtedly been experienced.
If you want to say you don't experience such things, then I can only pity you on account of the poverty of your subjective experience.
Then they are not real. Luckily, everything that happens to me has a material explanation in association with my cognition, which is produced by my brain. So, no, you're wrong.
Quoting Janus
No such thing. Thoughts are produced by an objective brain. No way around it.
Quoting Janus
Me neither. The illusion is not the sensation. The illusion is thinking the sensation does not have a material explanation. It does, and it's called: the brain.
:rofl: No I was right; you apparently do suffer from a terrible poverty of subjective experience.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I haven't claimed that subjectively real phenomena could not be produced by objectively real phenomena; so you are attacking a strawman.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Again I haven't said that sensations don't have material causes. I think your focus on the brain is too narrow, though. The genesis of sensation is the living embrained body/ world.
(laughs in response to data computed by brain emoji)
Quoting Janus
This is a contradictory statement. You have made a strawman for yourself. There is no subjectively real.
Subjective: based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. The only real aspect of these sensations, is the brain producing them. (laughing crying emoji)
Quoting Janus
I'm glad to see you're finally understanding. Yes, this has been specifically my assertion this entire time. (laughing crying emoji)
You seem to think there is an objective matter of fact concerning whether or not subjective experiences are real. It;s really just a matter of the definition of the term 'real'. Of course if you restrict it to mean 'objectively real, then you are tautologously correct.
So...Quoting Garrett Travers
So where does the term 'real' figure in that definition? Also, the sense of "subjective" there is different because it refers to opinions or judgements, not experiences themselves. Subjective feelings, tastes and opinions are not based on subjective feelings, tastes and opinions, they are subjective feelings, tastes and opinions.
According to your hermetically sealed, self-serving definition of 'real', yes of course; but can you empirically demonstrate the truth of that claim?
Quoting Garrett Travers
:lol: It's not that I have been misunderstanding what you have been saying; it's that you have been thinking I have been saying something other than what I have been saying. The only point we disagree on, as far as I can tell, is about what the proper range of the term 'real' should be.
I was just looking out of my kitchen window at a leaf that caught my eye. And I thought this is a great, simple example; I could show you the leaf (if you were here), but I could never show you my view of the leaf. And you could never show me a very specific neural process which was my view of the leaf. So both your opinion that my view of the leaf is a very specific neural process and my view of the leaf itself are subjective phenomena. And yet, both your subjective opinion and my view of the leaf are real to each of us, respectively. That is why I think your restriction of the use of term 'real' to objective phenomena is wrong-headed.
All valid arguments and facts of identity are tautological in nature. It's you're first clue something is correct, or complete fabrications of the mind.
Quoting Janus
It doesn't that was the point.
Quoting Janus
I don't know what this means, looks like word salad. Completely incoherent.
Quoting Janus
Sure, I'd start with cognitive neuroscience. Here's a nice article to get you going with a bunch of references: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2016.00016#:~:text=A%20network%20of%20brain%20regions,the%20basal%20ganglia%20%5B3%5D.
Quoting Janus
This is the only thing I mean when I say real:
actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed.
Literally nothing other than the definition of the word.
Tautologies tell us nothing about what is the case. You are committing a rookie category error.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Not a very good point then since you seemed to be claiming that the definition had some bearing on the term 'real'
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yes, just like any subjective experience as such. No need to think of them as being nothing but neural processes (of course they may also be correlated with neural process in addition to being subjective experiences).
Quoting Garrett Travers
Try using yourself (i.e. your brain in your terms) a little more and you might get it.
BTW, I have read a decent amount of cognitive neuroscience and I don't have an issue with its findings. The third person approach is one way of understanding ourselves, and if you were familiar with my postings you would know that I have argued against those who reject, for prime example, Daniel Dennett's work.
I have read a good deal of and respect his work even though I don't agree with all his conclusions. Of course scientific studies of the brain have things to tell us that we could not discover any other way. But there is an alternative approach; namely phenomenology, which I think your narrowly limited focus could be remedied by an open-minded study off, and which enables other perspectives on human life and experience which could not be discovered any other way. Both have their place; what deserves no place in my view, is the kind of reductive, narrow-minded, nothing-but-ism you seem to be espousing.
If you don't understand the law of identity A=A is a tautology, or that valid propositions when arranged in truth tables are tautological, you are not in the right place, and are not talking to the right person.
Quoting Janus
No, it has no bearing, because the two do not relate. Which was the point that I've been making since the beginning of this poor attempt of yours to argue this position.
Quoting Janus
No, that falls into the "imagined" category.
Quoting Janus
They are, quite literally, nothing else.
Quoting Janus
Try writing it in a complete sentence, and I think we'll get somewhere quicker.
Reality is real, Janus. Not accepting the facts of science is what is dogmatic.
:rofl:
Quoting Garrett Travers
Science consists in observation and hypothesis, prediction, experiment and the adoption of provisional theories, not merely in facts (the bare facts of observation). I think a little reading in the philosophy of science as well as phenomenology may help you gain a more comprehensive understanding.
You poor fool... I'm the only one of the two of us that has said anything scientific all day long. But, you go ahead and keep insulting me because your position is a bullshit fairytale that helps you feel better. In the meantime, take your own advice, you're very far behind.
I could accept that but I need an example by quoting what I say. Saying "the manner in which you've been posting is not clear" is too general and tells nothing. It also makes the other person waste time to find out where he was not clear!
So, which of us is actually not clear?
Again, this is a rhetorical question, and you don't have to answer it!
It's just to show you what writing in a clear manner actually means and is.
[quote=Descartes]Cogito ergo sum.[/quote]
Alright!
Quoting vanzhandz
A circulus in probando. Some don't mind it, but some do.
Quoting vanzhandz
&
Quoting vanzhandz
There have been (documented) complaints against Intelligent Design. For example, the recurrent laryngeal nerve which in a giraffe's long neck starts at the base of its brain, descends all the way into its chest and then does a U-turn and extends back up to where it does its thing, the larynx. The assumption here is that an intelligent blueprint would avoid such a roundabout way of innervating an organ (it's equivalent to using your right hand to scratch an itchy left ear).
Staying in the neck region of humans, our ability to speak thousands of languages comes at a price: risk of choking (the food and wind pipes are too close to each other).
Good advice. I'm used to forums that automatically quote replies.
I'm not sure about this. For example, companies are already storing digital text and image codes using DNA. A cubic cm of DNA is capable of storing 5 petabits of information. The actual total amount of information for something with the energy of the brain itself would necissarily be far larger than what is coded in ways that are usable for the brain's components, because you'd be talking about the total phase space of the brain, all the possible molecular arrangements that are compatible with the observed macrostate. The amount of potential configurations and permutations is astronomical. This huge amount of entropy is true even for a mole of hydrogen gas sitting in a liter container at room temperature. Just think about how large Avogadro's number is.
All this is quite interesting!
I have no idea about geneticism. (Regarding "memory" I have only heard about "genetic memory", ehich is a different thing.)
But, because I am --and always was-- quite interested in the subject of memory, I just searched for memory+DNA+capacity in the present context and found some interesting articles:
- "Are memories stored in DNA?"
(https://www.scienceinpublic.com.au/csl/fellow-dna)
It says "Geoff Faulkner is testing a bold idea— he thinks long-term memory might be stored in our brain’s DNA." Etc. But this is just a "bold idea".
- "DNA can carry memories of traumatic stress down the generations"
(https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/122740-dna-can-carry-memories-of-traumatic-stress-down-the-generations)
It says, "Animal and human investigations indicate that the impact of trauma experienced by mothers affects early offspring development, but new research is also discovering that it is also actually encoded into the DNA of subsequent generations.". We are talking here about memory of sensations (pain, etc.)
- "Memories may be stored on your DNA"
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0262407908629930)
We read, "Experiments in mice suggest that patterns of chemical “caps” on our DNA may be responsible for preserving long and short-term memories" Mice! And most probably memories of sensations again.
- "DNA could store all of the world's data in one room"
(https://www.science.org/content/article/dna-could-store-all-worlds-data-one-room)
Subtitle: "New algorithm delivers the highest-ever density for large-scale data storage"
It talks about what you describe in your post. More precisely, "Now, researchers report that they've come up with a new way to encode digital data in DNA to create the highest-density large-scale data storage scheme ever invented. Capable of storing 215 petabytes (215 million gigabytes) in a single gram of DNA, the system could, in principle, store every bit of datum ever recorded by humans in a container about the size and weight of a couple of pickup trucks. But whether the technology takes off may depend on its cost."
Well, I don't know if by "humans" they mean "all the humans together" or just "any human" ... Because I can't think of a human brain with the size of two pickup trucks! :grin:
Besides, the project is still in its infancy ...
And so on. See, scienitists, in general, are so eager to find and prove that human memory is located and processed in the brain, that every now and then they come up with "exotic" theories, which of course fade away after some time, to be replaced with new ones. I have mentioned elsewhere in TPF, that they are using the wrong tools in getting involved in realms that are outside theirs. Some of them of course admit that some things are just a "mystery" and/or outside the realm of Science. Scientists are doing great things regarding matter and energy. Let them keep on in that realm!
(Note: I am referring to conventional Science and scientists; not the scientifc research, methods, experiments, etc. in general.)