On 2/16/07, Tom Caylor <Daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
> On Feb 13, 11:35 pm, "Jesse Mazer" <laserma....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> > Tom Caylor wrote:
> >
> > >I'm talking about ultimate meaning, meaning which is ultimately based
> > >on truth. Purpose would go along with that. I think that this
> > >situation is similar (metaphysically isomorphic? :) to the "primary
> > >matter" situation. I think you maintain that experience is enough. I
> > >maintain that if all you have is relative references, you are having
> > >faith that there is ultimately something "there". I'm not interested
> > >in any straw-man caricature god who decides what is valuable etc. on a
> > >whim. I'm interested in the source of the wonderfully unexplainable
> > >good in us.
> >
> > In mentioning the idea of God deciding morality on a whim, you perhaps
> > allude to the old counterargument to grounding morality in God in the
> first
> > place, known as "Euthyphro's Dilemma" from one of Plato's dialogues--if
> God
> > *chose* these supposed laws of morality, then they are ultimately
> arbitrary
> > since God could have chose a completely different set of laws, but if
> moral
> > truths are in some sense beyond God's ability to change, much like many
> > philosophers would say the laws of mathematics or logic are, then it's
> not
> > clear why you need "God" in your explanation at all, you could just cut
> out
> > the middleman and postulate eternal platonic moral truths in the same
> way
> > many on this list are prepared to postulate eternal platonic
> mathematical
> > truths.
> >
> > The only way in which I could see that it would make sense to relate
> > goodness to "God" is to imagine a sort of pantheist God that represents
> a
> > sort of ultimate pattern or harmony connecting every individual part of
> the
> > universe, so goodness would represent some kind of orientation towards
> the
> > ultimate pattern which encompasses all of us, and which would override
> > individual conflicting interests. A variation on this might be the
> "Omega
> > Point" idea that every individual finite being is on some sort of
> long-term
> > path towards being integrated into an infinite superorganism (perhaps
> only
> > as a limit that can never actually be reached in finite time), or in the
> > concepts of this list maybe a single infinitely complex observer-moment
> with
> > memories of every other observer-moment, which could also be seen as an
> > ultimate pattern connecting everything (one might say, as in Frank
> Tipler's
> > speculations about the Omega Point, that an infinite mind would itself
> > contain simulations of every possible history in every possible universe
> > leading up to it, so that the Omega Point would both be an endpoint of
> > history but also contain all history integrated within it). In this
> view,
> > every instance of individuals trying to cooperate and to understand and
> > connect with each other is an incremental "step in the right direction",
> so
> > one could ground "ultimate goodness" in that. I recently came across an
> > interesting interview
> athttp://www.wie.org/j34/swimme2.asp?%20from=lnk-zaadzdiscussing Teilhard de
> > Chardin's thoughts on the Omega Point, and many on this list will be
> > familiar with Frank Tipler's version which I mention above (even if
> Tipler's
> > specific ideas about using the Big Crunch to do an infinite amount of
> > computation in a finite time are proven wrong, as a transhumanist I'm
> still
> > crossing my fingers that intelligence will find some loophole in the
> laws of
> > physics that will allow it to continue forever without violating the
> laws of
> > thermodynamics). But neither of these versions of "God" bears much
> > resemblance to the creator-God separate from the rest of the universe
> that's
> > imagined by most mainstream religions.
> >
> > Jesse
> >
>
> Yes. Now we're startin' to talk! I don't know much of the language,
> but I think that when people experience what some may call words like
> "enlightenment", "cosmic consciousness", etc. they are experiencing
> something that is really there. In fact, they use words like "seeing"
> reality as it "actually" is, etc. They speak of "wholeness" and
> "integralness".
Except that people would still have the same experiences whether or not
something were really there, just as they would still experience the sky as
a dome whether or not it is in fact a dome. In other words, if you imagine a
being in a universe without meaning, cosmic consciousness, enlightenment and
all the other significant things which are supposed to be there, but with
otherwise the same physical laws etc., can you think of any reason why such
a being would or wouldn't come up with the same ideas as humans have,
assuming similar evolutionary provenance?
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Fri Feb 16 2007 - 10:19:28 PST