Reality

Everything that is not dependent on the physical does not exist. Hence, a controller or governor of the universe does not exist. Just because something turns out right does not mean there is a God. This would be a denial of reality. At the central point or essence of emotions is a void or supreme being which makes one feel as though God is within one. This is what the Actual Freedom website (which I thought was evil) terms "Ground of Being". All causes must be physical causes, hence you are a body and not a soul. Nothing is mysterious or strange. Everything hangs together in an overarching system of governance. However, the universe can do absolutely cool and weird stuff like project images from the human psyche into the external environment. Making one believe the projection is real. There is nothing more than matter, animate or inanimate. One must have a living brain to be conscious. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Question for discussion: Does reality go deeper than appearances?

 

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What do you guys think of this article...

http://compellingevidencefortheafterlife.com/?p=273

 

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Suppose the appearances of any immediate moment were just a slice of a phenomenal continuum (past events like that still exist, future events already exist).... Then the need for either a super-external (metaphysical) realm which appearances try to represent or a transcendent process and its principles which output and regulate such manifested occurrences, is negated or can at least be deemed redundant or unnecessary. Which is to say, the regularities of the conventional external world (as well one's private thoughts) would then just be built into that extended structure, similar to how the order or lawfulness of whatever transpires in the course of a movie is an internal part of its sequence of connected frames. No extras from beyond are required, unless they must be recruited to explain the "flow" (for the movie metaphor, that would be the projector, tape or dvd player, computer / media software, etc).

If such a continuum of public / private manifestations is not the case, then as a consequence there would obviously be more than those appearances. Which is to say, that which makes them possible; what makes those individual presentations and disappearances of them possible. Even if we claimed that the reliability of the content of each moment conforming to an overall pattern of governance simply "happened" without a super-external cause or provenance (IOW, a sustained miracle), such brute order itself then qualifies as what an immaterial class of metaphysical agencies are about. That is, to be consistent with their definition they are not items that exist as more physical phenomena (shapes, bodies, symbolic descriptions, etc) residing somewhere in a location (space); but are principled powers whose be-ing rests in their non-random consequences and their persistent control / enforcement.

 

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Reality must be nested/ embedded within a greater reality in order for that to work, where the two on the surface only appear to be separate but in fact maintain the reality-based proposition (axiom) that it is indeed one with two aspects, not straying from Quantum Mechanical evidence that wave (subjective/ metaphysical) and particle (objective/ material) are one.

 

Depending upon one's choice of philosophy of time, another level of "interacting objects in space" (a reality) can beg for being nested in yet another level of "interacting objects in space" (a reality), unless a radically different style of be-ing is introduced which finally terminates the human impulse / reflex to treat "cause" as logically prior to existence. This same Russian doll theme subsumes the idea of a physical computer whose operations instantiate a virtual reality which in turn is itself an inhabitant of a virtual reality instantiated by the operations of yet another physical computer, and so on endlessly. To elaborate on how "philosophy of time" can lead to the scenario...

It's in the context of an eternalism view of time that a cosmos is whole and primal, no longer subservient to cause / origin and to immaterial or general laws that putatively regulate it. The latter is instead revealed as simply an organizational pattern of the extended structure granted to the universe by such static interpretations of time.

Whereas in the context of presentism, a cosmos lacks this whole or completed character (exists only as fleeting stages or developments of itself) and thereby lacks a permanent state of existence or specific identity (it constantly changes). It also falls out of a formulaic or regulating process that's hierarchically prior to it. IOW, due to these discrete acts of one universe state being almost magically replaced by another universe state from moment to moment, presentism by its very nature invites or outright demands another level which is responsible for ensuring that the present cosmos has coherence with a non-existent past, and that future moments yet to be likewise adhere to the non-random results of that principle-enforced system.

In order to avoid a Russian doll regress of endless worlds within worlds, that next level which presentism lays in egg-ish fashion can't be another cosmos, reality, etc (a space filled with both extended and point-like objects). The algorithmic-like process responsible for generating each appearance and disappearance of a changing world should be something completely different (ontologically) than yet another complex resident dwelling in yet another spatial container. So as to terminate the otherwise endless chain of repetition. Thus the genesis of the "immaterial" concept, which when freed from conflation with potentially contradictory religious and folk interpretations, simply refers to an intellectual manner of be-ing: An instructional power or will (ranging from mathematical to whatever logic) that regulates the world of presentism from moment to moment.

As a savior for presentism (not eternalism): Immaterial affairs are divested of the philosophical baggage that curse material objects (that is, of being non-general denizens of a "place" which change). And thereby are not subservient to origins/causes, the framework of time, or the eventually deranged and perverse circumstance of "causation, why?, the reason for, etc" being treated as more fundamental or of more important status than existence. Examples of such: "What caused existence?" or "Why is there something rather than nothing?" or "What universe caused this universe?" (Again, the insanity of the latter one rests in the realization that it explodes into an endlessly repeated explanation; the whole point of such metaphysics should be to introduce a radically different manner of be-ing that ends the madness of containers of physical furniture housing more containers of physical furniture.)

In a certain sense, presentism elevates the provenance of "lawfulness" to a hierarchy above or prior to the cosmos (depending upon perspective); whereas eternalism demotes the provenance of "lawfulness" down into the cosmos itself (a vastly larger or whole / complete cosmos than that exhibited by presentism).

The "growing" view of time is an apparent hybrid or compromise of eternalism and presentism; likewise suffering the consequence of a transcendent process adding "new moments" to a real past (but still non-existent future).

 

God is not immaterial because there are no immaterial realms. Energy is not immaterial. If God is real (and I think He is) He would be supra-physical.

 

Btw thank you for the response. I will get back to you later.

 

God should not belong to or be subservient to the conditions and properties of ANY realm if it is to be omnipotent.

If God made a rule that "This is a rock I cannot lift", that would still be God being omnipotent because it established the rule and to consistently adhere to its own laws (as a God should do) it does not break the rule. However, such an anthropomorphic God occupying space and changing via motion and residing in places that have rocks is to be a God conforming to the limitations of a physical realm (including being subservient to causality, of God having an origin). Thereby one need not consider a God that bothers with whether or not to lift rocks since such a constrained being would not qualify as an omnipotent God to begin with.

Immaterial affairs, when divested of the corruptions contributed by religions and misguided philosophers, do not abide as objects in "realms". They are the logically prior principles that make "realms" possible (at least when eternalism is not selected as the philosophy of time). Not principles as in the impotent descriptive kind expressed by language and symbolic systems, but principles as "instructive powers" that bring about and regulate what is not immaterial. English lacks any single dead-on term for capturing what is meant here, and Schopenhauer's feral "will" that only blindly delivers the presentation of a complex reality eventually, in the course of its beast-like throes, merely flaps vaguely in that direction.

Before I get to the issue of a "physical God" of an upgraded physical status ("supra-physical"), this must be the preliminary:

"Physical" is not a synonym for "existence" (where the latter refers to the most general category of be-ing, and thereby integrates its members into one if so deemed that they must be integrated). Physical is a sub-classification of be-ing that accordingly declares itself distinct from [supposed] other styles of be-ing. If physical becomes a synonym for general existence, rather than serving the role of distinguishing one style of be-ing from another, it becomes ambiguous or outright ceases to have a meaningful function anymore (or again, becomes a redundant term for a general category of existence). An example of the identity crisis which can result even among physicalists, when they then find themselves still endorsing what has had its original significance / purpose stripped away in the course of elevating physical (as a word-unit of "physicalism") from a hyponym to a hypernym (i.e., proposing that "All existence is physical!"):

Johnny-Dee (to Victor Reppert, on a blog): Unfortunately, physicalists themselves have a hard time coming up with a definition of physicalism. When I attended Bowling Green University's conference on physicalism this past spring (2005), the speakers couldn't agree on what "physicalism" was. The best definitions were "negative" (e.g., physicalism is not dualism). Many of the papers that didn't want to get entangled in the definition debate would say things like, "we can't agree on a philosophical definition of physicalism, but we all know what we mean by it." I thought it was very humorous.

The "best definitions" were such because they kept physical in its original role of being a distinction arising from comparison to other styles of be-ing. One of the dictionary definitions of "physical" as referring to physics isn't applicable here because physics is not an ontological doctrine or philosophical endeavor. If physicalism kidnaps some of the items of physics for that purpose (which it probably does) it is just that: Kidnapping; the results of the act cease to be physics.

Now, back to:

Assuming "supra-physical" refers to a physical stratum that another physical stratum is nested in (Russian doll syndrome), which might not be what you mean, but I'm going to explore it anyway because that's all I've got to go on at the moment...

Accordingly such a god would still be subservient to the philosophical baggage of physical (it would be spatial and divisible, it would change, it would have a cause or causes for itself, etc). It's kind of like the homunculus fallacy which generically equates to explaining something with a duplication of the original situation rather than introducing something different. A god is rather useless if instead of being what makes a physical realm possible, it is just another conforming member of such a container itself; or a resident of a repeat of it at another level (endless Russian doll syndrome). In such scenarios the god is eventually eliminated because the domain and its characteristics which it subsists in are more fundamental than the God.

When atheists parry or thrust with "What created God?", they are actually conceiving such as a physical god (that is, one which is space-ful, time-ful, and caused) which via that material nature begs an origin for itself. Which is quite applicable for any religion that claims God has a human form (or any empirical form) and which is declared to have a location in a somewhere. Christianity's heaven and Earth's cosmos are just flip sides of the same coin; both are described as physical (there are things in space, they move / change, they interact); both provide locations for physical phenomena to exist in their manner and enable their co-existence and relational inter-dependence. A putative "supernatural" angel that glows bright and has a body and wings or any extended, changing form is not an immaterial principle (space-less, time-less, cause-less) that makes material things and their lawful behaviors possible. Walking through walls like a ghost wouldn't exempt an angel from being material (space-ful, time-ful, caused). Neither anything referred to as a god which was burdened with such physical attributes.

To finally get to the matter of an "afterlife" that might have been suggested by your second post somewhere in this thread...

If there was such an item as a human having a "soul", and it was truly immaterial rather than just another material imposter in religious and philosophical history... The label would simply imply that even a seemingly contingent component of the universe like "Francis Smith" (etc) is the result of an archetypal principle that made possible an embodied instantiation of that person in the biological processes and overall history of a cosmos (or any crazy alternatives to that with different rules).

The immaterial principle slash archetype of "Francis Smith" itself would never change, it would not reside in some "realm" as a shape or extended form, it would have no origin. Its manner of be-ing and the evidence of its be-ing would be its power to yield occurrences of Francis Smith in multiple universes. Or at different times and planets if there was a single universe with a long enough duration for some of its contents to variably repeat themselves over time. In the context of either, each engendering of Francis Smith -- in isolation from the other instances -- would not stand out as unusual.

That would be the essence of Francis Smith's immortality: Continually being born or popping-up in physical "somewheres" via processes compliant with their laws. Perhaps even outlandish ones which computed the memories of a dead Francis Smith, for installing in a new body. In the course of an incredibly lengthy process that also computed all the other possible variations of people's memories that brains could have. Which is to say, if the extent of the physical manner of existence was infinite (or so vast it might as well be referenced as that) then I suppose even the notorious Frank Tipler's Omega Point technology could find realization in the proper nook of an applicable cosmos.

 

Is evidently some sort of Buddist sect started by Daniel Ingram in Australia. This post might have been better placed in Eastern Philosophy is my guess.

 

What do you mean : reality goes deeper than appearances?



You may assume reality is a reality.

You may assume reality goes deep.

You may assume it has features such as appearances!



But what you're really doing is assuming!

There is no reality, the thing defined as reality, is only what you experience till you appear to pass on, just as you appeared and were born in, so shall you disappear and be born out or pass in, or pass out, and what was before you were, will be, and be no more, why complicate something simple, you and your perceived awareness of a reality doesn't go any deeper than to be and then not to be nothing more!

 

I see you are new to this thread so you might benefit from some background. This is one of dozens of "Reality" threads by our resident philosophical reality analyst Spellbound.

So far, we have worked our way through the reality ideas of CTMU and reality as something akin to a computer simulation, with a few side stops at various other philosophical constructs related to reality. Actually, Spellbound is pretty knowledgable about such things and as philosophies go, pretty much exploring every nook and cranny available in an attempt to model reality as something meaningful.

Like you, I gave up on philosophy some considerable time ago when it became apparent that there was not sufficient concentration in this field of learning on mitigating damaging philosophical constructs such as a belief in things that are absolute, including and especially the value we variously refer to as truth, whether in a purely mathematical or a physical sense. Any philosophy worth its salt would try harder or attempt to more precisely define the concepts it intends to discuss before discussing them, and any lack thereof would be what demarcates real philosophy from any pseudo philosophical meanderings.

You are correct that without this zeroth definition level of philosophical debate about anything, the result will only be assumptions layered upon assumptions until someone in the discussions runs out of ideas for additional layers, not one of which was appropriately defined in the first layer. Then the creeping unknown unknowns start to seep in and before you know it, all of us are at the same philosophical depth as someone like Donald Rumsfeld.

Welcome to the thread just the same. The knowledgable folks here still like to talk about such things without any ground rules or definitions, even if we don't. Enjoy.

 

CC,

Immaterial can be defined as reality?

 

What I mean is; is there something more than what we see before us?

 

http://planksandnails.hubpages.com/hub/Is-True-Reality-the-Immaterial-Influencing-the-Material

 

Potent principles (not the passive kind expressed by language and symbolism) would not reside as objects in a domain of space and time and causation. They would be the logically prior conditions that make such a reality possible, they regulate it. They make possible a place for possibilities to be realized as material phenomena that co-exist in a relational inter-dependence. They are immaterial because you want something radically different as an explanation so as to put an end to further need of origins. Avoid the homunculus fallacy of explaining a situation with the same situation. Material objects carry the baggage of requiring causes due to their spatial character that changes over time. They bleed a concept of causality like a gunshot victim. Repeat them at another level and the endless Russian doll syndrome ensues.

Again, such immaterial, potent principles MAY only appear necessary in the context of the presentism and "growing-past" options of philosophy of time, because of the apparent transcendent process that is continually replacing one state of the universe (moment) with the next (or adding to a still-existing past archive), and maintaining an overall coherence to the project.

Whereas in eternalism, there is no governing, creative process. The different states slash configurations of the developing type of universe above become an uncaused, integrated block (or etc structure), that could even include varying "multiverse" branches stemming from it (rather than a single determined continuum). The lawfulness and order of what exists along its extra-dimensional "length" is just an internal feature of those extended orderly patterns made possible by its higher dimensional structure or space. Eternalism, in effect, eliminates the need for immaterial instructive powers (potent principles).

 

If the external world presented by consciousness is only evidence of an existing world rather than that world itself (a representation, map, simulation, etc of such be-ing)... Then, yes, as a consequence of that there is more than appearances.

Even if the extrospective world of experience is not a representation (i.e., that's the way it actually exists for a "first time")... There could still be more than appearances. Crude analogy: The external world featured in a dream is not trying to represent the brain that causes it, but there is still a hidden "more" in terms of what makes that constructed on the fly, non-copied world possible: The brain.

 

Of course. The Brain has its limitations in all the senses. But that does not mean that the Brain is wrong in what it senses.

I agree with cc here. The Brain is telling us there is an outside world beyond ourselves and The Brain is giving us the hint so to speak of the outside worlds existence.

 

If reality is just neurosensory integration, who even needs a brain? It's all just stimulus-- react, stimulus-- react, then isn't it?

Even snow can do that much, during an avalanche. It doesn't need to make a model of the slope to know which way to fall either. Brilliant stuff, snow.

 

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You mean your favourite worlds of ghosts, goblins, giants, anal probing aliens and such?
If that's what your brain is telling you, perhaps it is the absence of a brain you are confusing it with?