Civil War in Dallas???


BaalChatzaf

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1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

cause  can be attributed to any act or process.  Nothing in the cosmos changes without a cause. 

on the other hand blame or responsibility can only be attribute to acts of sentient beings  made to happen by "acts of will".  

Since there is no first cause--Barbara Branden once said that--"cause" is part of a tremendous circularity taking in everything.

--Brant

causes causing causes

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15 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Since there is no first cause--Barbara Branden once said that--"cause" is part of a tremendous circularity taking in everything.

--Brant

causes causing causes

Ever since the Big Bang  everything that happens has a cause.  This,  however,  does not mean the physical laws are deterministic.  A Cause may have several possible Effects.  Quantum Theory assigns probabilities to the Effects.

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3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Ever since the Big Bang  everything that happens has a cause.  This,  however,  does not mean the physical laws are deterministic.  A Cause may have several possible Effects.  Quantum Theory assigns probabilities to the Effects.

Cause is a relationship between an object and actions possible to an object of that nature.  When looking at physical objects through the lens of the laws of physics it may be very appropriate to consider Quantum Theory.  But when the object is a human being and the action is choosing to focus more tightly on an issue, or to become less focused, that would be a very poor lens and what would be seen would not relate to volition, that action, or the nature of man. 

Physics is a discipline, a body of knowledge, but not the only one.  If I'm trying understand something written in a book, I don't look to see what laws of physics are applicable to that book - I don't look to see how it is held to the table top by gravity.  And I don't make the mistake of choosing the lens of chemistry and trying to find the meaning of the sentences in the chemical make-up of the ink.

The billiard ball kind of cause-effect model works for playing billiards, and, to a limited degree, every day life.  It is always about objects interacting with other objects. It can even help one, under certain circumstances, advance the narrative on a given attempt to understand something.  But, it is wrong at the root because cause is, and should be understood as, that within the nature of an entity that explains an action.  There are certain human actions whose cause can be the choice to act, and that choice to act might be understood to have been caused by an emotional impulse, and that emotional impulse might be seen as the effect of a pattern of past choices, and that pattern might find it's ultimate cause in an act of free will - an act of volition - an act of choosing to not focus the mind, to go blank, under certain circumstances.

[Think about the stolen concept fallacy in this context.  Can one understand "determinism" in the context of human actions, without first grasping the concept of volition of some sort?  No.  Determinism in the context of human behavior is only understood as in opposition to volitional.  Going to Quantum Theory does not make man the agent in any action of his - it is just a different kind of determinism.] 

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Black and Blue in Dallas ...

 

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12 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Since there is no first cause--Barbara Branden once said that--"cause" is part of a tremendous circularity taking in everything.

Brant,

What you just said is more metaphysics than Rand ever dealt with. I mean in terms of fundamentals. Rand's entire metaphysical system is basically summed up by her axiomatic concepts. The nature beneath those concepts is something she never bothered with except to say things are the way they are. Existence exists and A is A and consciousness is how we know it.

Her prime movers start from there, not from deeper than there (or beyond there, or underneath there or whatever preposition you wish to use). She doesn't bother with where her axions start. They just are.

I, too, like the circular idea. I didn't know Barbara had said that.

The way I have always said it is that you can construct all kinds of epistemological systems if you imagine metaphysics as a circle. You get to decide the starting point and you can start anywhere you wish. What you can't avoid is that your starting point in any circle is also the end point once you have gone around it.

(Just feeling like getting into a mindfuck right now. :) )

Michael

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13 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Ever since the Big Bang  everything that happens has a cause.  This,  however,  does not mean the physical laws are deterministic.  A Cause may have several possible Effects.  Quantum Theory assigns probabilities to the Effects.

Assuming the big bang.

--Brant

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Interesting...  "Quantum model predicts universe has NO beginning - and it could even explain dark energy":
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2947967/Did-Big-Bang-happen-Quantum-model-predicts-universe-NO-beginning-explain-dark-energy.html

Quote
  • Current physics can't explain what happened during the Big Bang
  • The new theory combines general relativity with quantum mechanics
  • The equations found that quantum particles can never meet or cross
  • 'Since different points in the universe never actually converged in the past, it did not have a beginning,' Professor Saurya Das told Dailymail.com
  • The model also has the potential to explain dark energy since the quantum particles create a constant outward force that expands space
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From the May, 1962 edition of The Objectivist Newsletter

by Nathaniel Branden:

Question: Since everything in the universe requires a cause, must not the universe itself have a cause, which is god?

Answer: There are two basic fallacies in this argument. The first is the assumption that, if the universe required a causal explanation, the positing of a "god" would provide it. To posit god as the creator of the universe is only to push the problem back one step farther: Who then created god? Was there a still earlier god who created the god in question? We are thus led to an infinite regress - the very dilemma that the positing of a "god" was intended to solve. But if it is argued that no one created god, that god does not require a cause, that god has existed eternally - then on what grounds is it denied that the universe has existed eternally?

It is true that there cannot be an infinite series of antecedent causes. But recognition of this fact should lead one to reappraise the validity of the initial question, not to attempt to answer it by stepping outside the universe into some gratuitously invented supernatural dimension.

This leads to the second and more fundamental fallacy in this argument: the assumption that the universe as a whole requires a causal explanation. It does not. The universe is the total of which exists. Within the universe, the emergence of new entities can be explained in terms of the actions of entities that already exist: The cause of a tree is the seed of the parent tree; the cause of a machine is the purposeful reshaping of matter by men. All actions presuppose the existence of entities - and all emergences of new entities presuppose the existence of entities that caused their emergence. All causality presupposes the existence of something that acts as a cause. To demand a cause for all of existence is to demand a contradiction: if the cause exists, it is part of the existence; if it does not exist, it cannot be a cause. Nothing does not exist. causality presupposes existence, existence does not presuppose causality . There can be no cause "outside" of existence or "anterior" to it. The forms of existence may change and evolve, but the fact of existence is the irreducible primary at the base of all casual chains.

Existence-not "god"-is the First Cause.
Just as the concept of a causality applies to events and entities within the universe, but no to the universe as a whole - so the concept of time applies to events and entities within the universe, but no to the universe as a whole. The universe did not "begin" - it did not, at some point in time, "spring into being." Time is a measurement of motion. Motion presupposes entities that move. If nothing existed, there could be no time. Time is "in" the universe; the universe is not "in" time.

The man who asks: "Where did existence come from?" or "What caused it?" is the man who has never grasped that existence exists. This is the mentality of a savage or mystic who regards existence as some sort of incomprehensible miracle - and seeks to "explain" it by reference to nonexistence.
Existence is all that exists, the nonexistent does not exist; there is nothing for existence to have come out of - and nothing means nothing. If you are tempted to ask: "What's outside the universe?" - recognize that you are asking; "What's outside of existence?" and that the idea of "something outside of existence" is a contradiction in terms; nothing is outside of existence, and "nothing" is not just another kind of "something" - it is nothing. Existence exists; you cannot go outside it; you cannot get under it, on top of it, or behind it. Existence exists - and only existence exists: There is nowhere else to go.”

 

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Not bad on NB's part. Note the antique Objectivist phraseology of "a savage or mystic" which NB dropped after AR dropped him and he moved to LA. Note also that he equates the "universe" with all of existence when it should be known existence.

--Brant

I think BB used "no first cause" in one of her PET lectures and I think she meant it slightly differently than NB's and would not argue the point with him, just explicate more to common ground

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I think the problem with the Big Bang is the data is saying the universe is expanding faster than gravity can draw it back to another Big Bang meaning there is more going on than we know and perhaps can know or everything runs down and there was only one Big Bang and never will be another implying existence effectively goes out of existence. This leaves one Big Problem: why was there a Big Bang if there ever really was one?

--Brant

babble bather babble

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2 hours ago, KorbenDallas said:

Interesting...  "Quantum model predicts universe has NO beginning - and it could even explain dark energy":
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2947967/Did-Big-Bang-happen-Quantum-model-predicts-universe-NO-beginning-explain-dark-energy.html

No beginning and no end. Non-existence has no existence save as an idea parasitical to existence. It exists only as an idea. That's why existence has always existed. It's easier to imagine non-existence (which doesn't exist) than eternal existence ignoring the role of particulars--that is, reality or existence is only an idea too, just like non-existence, save for the validating particulars, particulars non-existence has not--not one.

--Brant

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1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Note also that he equates the "universe" with all of existence when it should be known existence.

Brant,

Correct. We only know what we know and we should not assume knowledge about what we don't know. 

Dayaamm, you're good at this shit.

:)

Also, in The Art of Living Consciously, NB posited his idea of an "underlying reality" that gives rise to mind and physical stuff. He claimed that he mentioned this to Rand and she had no objection. (There is a thread about this on OL here.)

Michael

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1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

(There is a thread about this on OL here.)

Excellent thread!  I had already heard about the hydrocephalus resulting in the brain matter that was but a very thin sheet on the inside of the skull in a functional man with a job and family.  There is also the fact that for the first few years of life it doesn't seem to matter which part of the brain becomes associated with which function (up to a point).  E.g., if the Broca's area is damaged early on, the child can still learn to speak and some other area takes develops as the speech area.  But later on, this isn't the case.  I could go on about that and it's relationship to the issue of mind and matter, or about the way that some feeling states from a person's distant past are 'stored' as a pattern of muscle tensions... but I suspect that people would have to go back and follow that link first to have any interest.  I sure miss Branden.

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9 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Assuming the big bang.

--Brant

assuming the Big Bang....    Which implies  the CMB  which was detected in 1965 at Holmdale NJ  by Penzias and Wilson of Bell  Tel.  Not a proof, but a corroboration.

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On ‎7‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 5:00 AM, BaalChatzaf said:

cause  can be attributed to any act or process.

Yeah, amoral secular liberals totally agree with you, Bob. They also indiscriminately blame inanimate objects but never the evil human who uses them.

 

Greg

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11 hours ago, SteveWolfer said:

Excellent thread!  I had already heard about the hydrocephalus resulting in the brain matter that was but a very thin sheet on the inside of the skull in a functional man with a job and family.  There is also the fact that for the first few years of life it doesn't seem to matter which part of the brain becomes associated with which function (up to a point).  E.g., if the Broca's area is damaged early on, the child can still learn to speak and some other area takes develops as the speech area.  But later on, this isn't the case.  I could go on about that and it's relationship to the issue of mind and matter, or about the way that some feeling states from a person's distant past are 'stored' as a pattern of muscle tensions... but I suspect that people would have to go back and follow that link first to have any interest.  I sure miss Branden.

There is only matter/energy.  Mind is a bogosity inflicted upon us by Rene Descartes

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22 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

There is only matter/enery.

There is a level on which we agree.  If my context is the world of physical entities, there is only matter and energy.  And I would agree that 'mind' does not exist in the same sense that items made of atoms do.  But when we grasp that we can have thoughts that allow us to understand things, and that much of what we think involves grasping relationships, that is important.  I can understand a repulsion to any claims of 'ghosts in the machine' or mystical explanations.  And I can understand wanting to apply the laws of physics to all things.  But thoughts and relationships need to examined in an honest fashion that recognizes that we can't just dismiss their difference or in a religious-like fashion dogmatically cling to hard determinism of any kind of quasi-mystical claim that reason won't support.

What makes this so important is the understanding of issues of responsibility, of agency.  On these our social structures and our understanding of bodies of knowledge that revolve around human behavior will depend.

I am comfortable letting my mind have a blank spot - an area where it says, "To be Determined" - I don't know the details of how we will resolve these issues.  But I do know we aren't squawking parrots and I do know we aren't puppets of a mystical spirit that operates outside of natural law.  We have agency of sorts and we will one day understand it (but only if we leave our minds open to what we don't know).

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13 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

No beginning and no end. Non-existence has no existence save as an idea parasitical to existence. It exists only as an idea. That's why existence has always existed. It's easier to imagine non-existence (which doesn't exist) than eternal existence ignoring the role of particulars--that is, reality or existence is only an idea too, just like non-existence, save for the validating particulars, particulars non-existence has not--not one.

--Brant

Thanks Brant, I'm already integrating what you said here.  Good stuff..

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On 7/11/2016 at 8:06 AM, Brant Gaede said:

Since there is no first cause--Barbara Branden once said that

Hi Brant. I'm sure she meant well, in lieu of the Creator who coined human rights according to Locke and the Founders, and in support of Rand's secular rights theory. A big causeless bang ex nihilo is a contradiction in terms. That's why I understand Rand's position to be epistemological rather than ontological, specifically that inquiring why existence exists is none of our business, can't possibly aid us in life's practical challenges.

It's possible that I mangled that discourse, but it seems fairly clear that I didn't volunteer to exist and don't gain anything from wondering why I am.

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On ‎7‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 10:16 PM, Brant Gaede said:

No beginning and no end. Non-existence has no existence save as an idea parasitical to existence. It exists only as an idea. That's why existence has always existed. It's easier to imagine non-existence (which doesn't exist) than eternal existence ignoring the role of particulars--that is, reality or existence is only an idea too, just like non-existence, save for the validating particulars, particulars non-existence has not--not one.

--Brant

Brant, your words got me to thinking of how they may be applied to good and evil...

Good is like light which has a positive affirming power-full existence... while evil is like darkness which does not exist in itself but is only the absence of light. Darkness has no power of its own. It cannot negate light, because by default it is only where light isn't.

Applied to human life. Evil has absolutely no power over us because it is only a lack of goodness. It's like the old vampire movies. A vampire is powerless to enter your home unless you invite them in.

Greg

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5 hours ago, moralist said:

Brant, your words got me to thinking of how they may be applied to good and evil...

Good is like light which has a positive affirming power-full existence... while evil is like darkness which does not exist in itself but is only the absence of light. Darkness has no power of its own. It cannot negate light, because by default it is only where light isn't.

Applied to human life. Evil has absolutely no power over us because it is only a lack of goodness. It's like the old vampire movies. A vampire is powerless to enter your home unless you invite them in.

Greg

A well aimed assassins bullet has the power to enter the skull and splatter the brains. That is not the absence of anything.

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5 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

A well aimed assassins bullet has the power to enter the skull and splatter the brains. That is not the absence of anything.

Jeez... you're so stupid, Bob. :lol:

Bullets don't have any power to do anything on their own. They're just inanimate objects. Again, you're thinking exactly like the liberal Democrat parasites. You fixate on inanimate objects with no power of their own to do anything...

...while blind to people who choose to do evil acts.

It is your immoral view that invites in the vampire...

Greg

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Just now, moralist said:

Again, you're thinking exactly like the liberal Democrat parasites, Bob.

You're fixated on inanimate objects with no power of their own to do anything...

...while blind to people who choose to do evil acts.

It is your immoral view that invites in the vampire...

Greg

A bullet of mass m  and velocity v   has energy = 1/2 x m x v^2  all of its own.

I think like a physicist.  You don't.  Which is not surprising.  Are you capable of dealing with abstract physical concepts?

I am glued to the world by fact and reason.  Government has nothing to do with it.   What is your connection to the world we live in?

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17 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

A bullet of mass m  and velocity v   has energy = 1/2 x m x v^2  all of its own.

I think like a physicist.  You don't.  Which is not surprising.  Are you capable of dealing with abstract physical concepts?

I am glued to the world by fact and reason.  Government has nothing to do with it.   What is your connection to the world we live in?

Wow Bob. I suppose you'd reduce "fact and reason" down to the foot-pounds pressure of a finger on a trigger. Why the finger got there doesn't concern you, hey?

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1 hour ago, anthony said:

Wow Bob. I suppose you'd reduce "fact and reason" down to the foot-pounds pressure of a finger on a trigger. Why the finger got there doesn't concern you, hey?

Not a scientific question.  Some people shoot.  Some people don't shoot.  In any case when a bullet hits flesh damage is done.

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