Pattern-chaser

Agreed. :up: So, having agreed that concepts don't exist (outside of the minds that contain them), you assert once more that they exist. But now it's ...

Fair point. The relationship between cause and effect is assumed to exist by the definitions of the terms cause and effect. But that has little to do ...

Define how? I have asked if we can consider the possibility of effects without causes. What further definition do you require? As to making the discus...

You claim that cause and effect exists because physics refers to it? Physics adopts cause and effect as an axiom, an unjustified assumption, honestly ...

If it existed prior to our 'discovery' of it, where, in the real-life space-time universe, was it kept? What was its location? It couldn't be in human...

Not "unjust" - lacking in justice - but "unjustified": no justification offered; no evidence to back your claim; no reason for it to be true. You see?

And that cause is...?

No it isn't. I keep looking at that link when you post it, and - surprise! - it turns out to be based on unjustified assertions and nothing else. Wish...

Ah, so the reason you argue against causeless events is because you can't imagine a universe where such things exist? And you could be quite right, of...

Interesting. Thank you both. Yet another unjustified assertion. So when we consider the only example we've come up with, of what could have been a cau...

Yes. I commented on the bit that I couldn't make sense of. :up:

So the universe did come from nothing, contradicting what you just said: :chin: Universes! :gasp: You just can't trust 'em! :wink:

But causality is what we're questioning here, so I'm afraid this resolves to another unjustified assertion, doesn't it? You are using causality to jus...

But that is my understanding of the Big Bang. I have read that a load of nothing transformed itself into a load of something, and a balancing number o...

Assertions (without justification) are a problem here. We are wondering if effects can happen without causes, and you respond by saying they can't and...

Unless a balancing amount of 'permanent' somethings go back to nothing at some point/time, as in the QM example?

An effect is a (detectable) event of some kind. And events happen all the time. It's not the event that's different or special, it's that the event ha...

That seems reasonable. Only if the causeless effect is the creation of the matter/energy involved. If the matter/energy is simply subject to an effect...

We sometimes find the truth difficult - maybe even impossible? - to determine, and your response to this is to say that sometimes people reason improp...

Define "causeless effects" as "something coming form nothing", then refute the latter? :chin: This depends for its validity on causeless effects being...

I'm not saying you're wrong - I don't have the evidence for that - but I asked you whether you had considered the possibility of causeless effects, an...

You haven't addressed the possibility that effects must have causes. Never mind the problem of obtaining eye witness (empirical) evidence of the BB, a...

Then there is no hope for you. If I tell you "I believe X", the only challenge you can make is that I'm deliberately lying, to mislead you about what ...

I meant to refer to more than just emotion, but it plays a central role in what I am saying, so fair enough. :up: As to your question: "what is emotio...

You've told them that you believe in the existence of God. How did you miss that? It's the one and only thing you said.

How wise, and how unusual! Most will say, without thinking, (for example) that the probability of the world our senses show us NOT being Objective Rea...

I deny the very existence of "empirical and theoretical evidence of a first cause."

Here we are also "dealing with logic in natural language rather than a strictly formal language." I'm not suggesting that we apply de Morgan's Theorem...

The trouble with truth is that, if you are too demanding about the quality (?) of the truth you seek, you will find nothing. Many issues do not contai...

And yet, in the context of debate, this looks a lot like an ad hominem, a personal attack. Such approaches have a long and wholly unsuccessful history...

Isn't this the standard argument for Intelligent Design? :chin:

Interesting. Considered and thoughtful. :up: :smile:

:up: No, it doesn't. Not if the "obvious" conclusion is intended to be the "logical" conclusion. For logic mandates that our conclusions should be jus...

I'm not arguing with what you say here. But I observe that your view is somewhat, er, utilitarian? You seem to be offering a view of humans as somethi...

Someone who thinks division is an intrinsic part of reductionism?

It is my understanding that the transcendent bit emerges only to those who failed to notice the interconnections in the first place, so they had no id...

If you're human, you're biased. Your only sources of information are non-objective. So you put beliefs where you have no certainty. As we all do. So y...

...and the observation that the USA seems to have fallen behind the other countries in recent times, and the UK may be showing the same trait.

You say this as an assertion, without any form of justification. Is there any justification, evidence, or anything like that?

I've found it useful to enhance creativity, to help it along. I think it enhances (only) instinctive or intuitive thought, so could be unhelpful when ...

How do you come to that conclusion? Of all the things that could have been related to the mind, you have identified one, and jumped straight to a conc...

But if it includes relations and processes, it can't be reductionism. :chin: Dividing the Big Thing into many Little Things - necessarily destroying a...

We overlay all of our mapping-ideas onto reality. The ones that fit, we use. But, as you say, they are our overlays, and not part of the real world. W...

Just one of many possibilities: evolution selected for something else, and your "it" just happened to be connected to the thing that's being selected-...

I suppose reductionists can say what they like. But their chosen method is a divide-and-conquer approach. We can't understand a whole human in one bit...

"Illusion"? "Nothing significant"? Maybe your consciousness is not a feature of your cells, but of their interconnections? It's the network that does ...

Yes, there's often much to be gained simply by contrasting two words. :up: "Geist" is also "ghost", real or imagined for the theatre. E.g. "Geisterkab...

OK. I can see that you replied to my post rather than to the thread in general. But I'm not quite grokking how what I said lead to what you cut-and-pa...

I've been mulling this topic over, even though it's quietened down. I think I use "spirit" and "mind" as sort-of synonyms, but for different purposes....

I am an embodied mind, with autism and some OCD-like behaviour.