A Being That Syntactically Self-distributes Itself

F

Fork

Banned
Banned
Mind

The fundamental entity of SCSPL reality is the "syntactic operator", or unit of self-processing information.[35] Because, argues Langan, cognition is just the specific form of information processing that occurs in a mind, information processing can be described as "generalized cognition" and self-processing information as "infocognition".[36] So in the CTMU, reality is a dual-aspect monism consisting of one substance (infocognition) with two aspects (information and cognition); space is a configuration of syntactic operators, and time is the activity of these operators as they process themselves and each other.
The CTMU therefore supports a kind of panpsychism. Although every part of SCSPL has a cognitive aspect, the mental capabilities of a given subsystem depend on its structure. Langan distinguishes three "levels of self-cognition": subordinate, agentive, and global.[37] The lowest of these levels, subordinate, encompasses low-complexity objects such as rocks. In the CTMU, rocks are cognitive in the generalized sense—their molecules interact, thereby processing information—but they do not possess independent volition or any intrinisic ability to optimize their environment.
The next level of self-cognition, which includes humans, is that of agents or "telors": observer-participants in the ongoing creation of reality.[38] Telors possess independent volition and constructive, creative intelligence or "sentience". In the CTMU, the distributed laws of physics do not fully determine reality; they are supplemented by "meta-laws" created by telors as reality evolves. This ability of telors is constrained by factors including locality, interference, and the fact that it must occur within the probabilistic limits of the laws of physics.
The third and highest level of self-cognition, the global level, is that of reality itself. This level possesses three formal properties of SCSPL: "syntactic self-distribution" (analogous to omnipresence), "perfect autotransductive reflexivity" (analogous to omniscience), and "self-configuration up to freedom" (analogous to omnipotence). Because these are theological attributes, Langan describes reality as "the mind of God". So, claims Langan, because the CTMU constitutes absolute truth—because it is founded on tautology and supported by logical and mathematical reasoning—it proves the existence of God.[39]
In short, the CTMU construes physical interaction as information processing, regards information processing as a generalization of human cognition, and assigns cognitive classifications to information processors—from rocks, to humans, to reality itself—based on their structure.

Cognitive-Theoretic_Model_of_the_Universe
wiki

The above basically says that God is a single being that can distribute itself over reality at large.
 
spidergoat said:
Langan is a nutcase, none of that makes any sense.
Click to expand...

And yet he logically demonstrates that there is something beyond our puny pathetic little lives that makes everything worthwhile and gives us an ideal to strive towards and the responsibility that will strengthen us in unity and truth. Read the Holy scriptures and destroy your ignorance and stupidity.
 
Fork said:
Actually, if it is tautologically true then yes, it does.
Click to expand...
Not to get in between you and Spidergoat, but the tautological case is the one that has no other support except that "if it is true, then it is true", lol. But that is not why I am posting. What Langan is doing is deriving God logically from his views of the nature of the universe. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

But it is just as legitimate to derive a different view from the observed nature of the universe, and that view would be that Nature is governed by a set of invariant natural laws. As science progresses, we unravel those natural laws but there are always the "as yet unknown" natural laws. A person can attribute any number of possible scenarios based on the "as yet unknown", the existence of God being one of them. However, science has to operate on the basis that anything that may appear to be supernatural has natural causes that we don't yet understand.

From that scientific perspective, we would not let the existence of unknown invariant natural laws be considered a basis for the existence of God, but we could not rule out the existence of God either. Sorry, I know that doesn't help anyone, lol.
 
Fork said:
And yet he logically demonstrates that there is something beyond our puny pathetic little lives that makes everything worthwhile and gives us an ideal to strive towards and the responsibility that will strengthen us in unity and truth. Read the Holy scriptures and destroy your ignorance and stupidity.
Click to expand...

Now, now Fork, we all know that reading the Holy Scriptures does not make you smart it just makes you literate.
 
quinnsong said:
Now, now Fork, we all know that reading the Holy Scriptures does not make you smart it just makes you literate.
Click to expand...
Lol, yes, but my response is that what we make of our puny pathetic little lives, though it may come from the as yet unknown natural laws that govern human capabilities, might be better sough after from within, than within the words of others, no matter how credentialed those others may be.
 
Fork said:
And yet he logically demonstrates that there is something beyond our puny pathetic little lives that makes everything worthwhile and gives us an ideal to strive towards and the responsibility that will strengthen us in unity and truth. Read the Holy scriptures and destroy your ignorance and stupidity.
Click to expand...

No he doesn't. And speak for your own pathetic life. I have things to strive for, and ideals, and responsibility, without a god. And since when has religion created unity?

Which holy scriptures should I read?
http://www.sacred-texts.com/
 
quantum_wave said:
Lol, yes, but my response is that what we make of our puny pathetic little lives, though it may come from the as yet unknown natural laws that govern human capabilities, might be better sough after from within, than within the words of others, no matter how credentialed those others may be.
Click to expand...

I have found as I have got older I contemplate my belly button a lot less.:p Having said that, my question to Fork would be, why does he feel his life is puny and pathetic without his perceived supernatural force? Hell, I was raised on magical thinking-christian-fundamentalism, but at some point one has a duty to investigate all the other possibilities. Does the possibility that there is an omniscient being start diminishing as you learn about the sciences, other religious beliefs, etc..., certainly it does and it can even make you kind of angry that you are taught pure ignorance as a child. Hell I still like the mystics and metaphysics but I do not know that this has made me a better person or more to the point, made my life less puny and pathetic.

I realize I do not know a lot about a lot, but I am able to reason, so that when I do take that journey within I am pretty confident that I will get as good advice as my understanding will allow. Furthermore, if my own understanding is not adequate there is always google and wiki!
 
Fork said:
The above basically says that God is a single being that can distribute itself over reality at large.
Click to expand...

God was a manner of taking the general lawfulness of a world and conceiving it, in the opposite way, as corresponding to a discrete personhood. The polytheistic Greeks did this abundantly: Having gods for harvest, seas, trade, metallurgy, love and beauty, music, etc. A reification of ideas into anthropoid deities because humans themselves seemed to be the only lesser and visible examples available of legislation: Regulations being prescribed and order / government established. Ergo, it was inferred that similar intellectual agents likewise were required for the founding of a lawful cosmos. Turning principles, classes / categories, and distributed actions into personhoods also made it possible to appeal to them with sacrifices and prayers, to have them intervene sometimes and show mercy to the mere mortals caught in the events and forces of those reigning gods. This calmed and managed the non-skeptical or non-philosophical population with stories and rituals they could easily relate to: Applying human faces, emotions, and conscience to the actual, 'indifferent to them' rules of the non-artificial environment.

Conceiving any natural or transcendent system as a "god" isn't a necessary part of its description or functional analysis; but it may serve afterwards as a coping tool or convenience of thought for some individuals or part of society. Even when morality is grounded in or falls out of reason rather than handed-down traditions, variable feelings, or decrees from deities, the majority of people may have an almost innate need to personify it. This lingering persisting habit / method of earlier humankind: The hypostatization of concepts, often into human-like forms.

Immanuel Kant: Reason inevitably creates objects for itself. Hence everything that thinks has [or can have] a God. [...] However, there still seems to be the question as to whether this idea, the product of own reason, has reality or whether it is a mere thought-object (ens rationis). [...] The subject feels himself necessitated through his own reason [...] What God may be can be developed from concepts, by means of metaphysics; but that there is a God belongs to transcendental philosophy and can only be proved hypothetically. [...] There is one world as my sense-object; for space and time constitute the whole complex of sense-objects. [...] The world is the whole of all sense-objects, thought not in aggregate but in a system, and there is one world and one God; and, if God is assumed, then there is a single god. The existence of such a being, however, can only be postulated in a practical respect: Namely, the necessity of acting in such a way as if I stood under such a fearsome -- but yet, at the same time, salutary -- guidance.... --Opus Postumum
 
The above basically says that God is a single being that can distribute itself over reality at large
Click to expand...

That seems more of a definition of substance, such as matter for instance. Matter is a single mode of being that distributes itself over reality at large. Energy does too as well as the quantum vaccum as presently conceived. Is God an ontic substrate? Seems he would be redundant since we already have an ontic substrate called Being.
 
Magical Realist said:
That seems more of a definition of substance, such as matter for instance. Matter is a single mode of being that distributes itself over reality at large. Energy does too as well as the quantum vaccum as presently conceived. Is God an ontic substrate? Seems he would be redundant since we already have an ontic substrate called Being.
Click to expand...

Yes, God is an ontic substrate. Of course.
 
C C said:
God was a manner of taking the general lawfulness of a world and conceiving it, in the opposite way, as corresponding to a discrete personhood. The polytheistic Greeks did this abundantly: Having gods for harvest, seas, trade, metallurgy, love and beauty, music, etc. A reification of ideas into anthropoid deities because humans themselves seemed to be the only lesser and visible examples available of legislation: Regulations being prescribed and order / government established. Ergo, it was inferred that similar intellectual agents likewise were required for the founding of a lawful cosmos. Turning principles, classes / categories, and distributed actions into personhoods also made it possible to appeal to them with sacrifices and prayers, to have them intervene sometimes and show mercy to the mere mortals caught in the events and forces of those reigning gods. This calmed and managed the non-skeptical or non-philosophical population with stories and rituals they could easily relate to: Applying human faces, emotions, and conscience to the actual, 'indifferent to them' rules of the non-artificial environment.

Conceiving any natural or transcendent system as a "god" isn't a necessary part of its description or functional analysis; but it may serve afterwards as a coping tool or convenience of thought for some individuals or part of society. Even when morality is grounded in or falls out of reason rather than handed-down traditions, variable feelings, or decrees from deities, the majority of people may have an almost innate need to personify it. This lingering persisting habit / method of earlier humankind: The hypostatization of concepts, often into human-like forms.

Immanuel Kant: Reason inevitably creates objects for itself. Hence everything that thinks has [or can have] a God. [...] However, there still seems to be the question as to whether this idea, the product of own reason, has reality or whether it is a mere thought-object (ens rationis). [...] The subject feels himself necessitated through his own reason [...] What God may be can be developed from concepts, by means of metaphysics; but that there is a God belongs to transcendental philosophy and can only be proved hypothetically. [...] There is one world as my sense-object; for space and time constitute the whole complex of sense-objects. [...] The world is the whole of all sense-objects, thought not in aggregate but in a system, and there is one world and one God; and, if God is assumed, then there is a single god. The existence of such a being, however, can only be postulated in a practical respect: Namely, the necessity of acting in such a way as if I stood under such a fearsome -- but yet, at the same time, salutary -- guidance.... --Opus Postumum
Click to expand...

Yes, God, or One, is real.
 
"(Paul) Tillich defines God in diverse ways. God is spoken of as "the name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being,"[Footnote: Tillich, SOF, 57.] as the name of the ground of history,"[Footnote: Tillich, SOF, 59.] as "the answer to the question implied in being,"[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 163.] as "the power of being in which every-being participates,"[Footnote: Tillich, Art. (1946), 11.] as "the power in everything that has power,"[Footnote: Tillich, Art. (1946), 11.] as "the name for that which concerns us ultimately,"[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 211.] and as "being itself."[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 189, 205, 230, 235, 237, 243; PE, 63.] Out of all of these definitions, it seems that Tillich's most persistent definition of God is "being-itself," esse ipsum. Let us therefore turn to a discussion of Tillich's meaning of being-itself.


i. God's transcendence of finite being

In affirming that God is being-itself, Tillich is denying that God is a being besides other beings. He is also denying that God is a "highest being" in the sense of the "most perfect" and "most powerful" being. If God were a being He would be subject to the categories of finitude, especially to the categories of space and substance. Therefore if such confusions are to be avoided, says Tillich, God must be understood as being-itself or as the ground of being. Tillich often speaks as though "absolute," "unconditional," "infinite," "eternal" were synonyms for "being-itself"; but he insists that being-itself, or God, is "beyond finitude and infinity," "relative" and "absolute,"[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 144.] "temporal" and "eternal," and even "spatial" and "spaceless."[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 138.]

In saying that God is being-itself Tillich intends to convey the idea of power of being. God is the power of being in everything and above everything.[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 236. This passage suggest an impersonal monism of power.] Tillich is convinced that any theology which does not dare to identify God and the power of being as the first step in its doctrine of God relapses into monarchic monotheism.

The traditional category of omnipotence is included in the concept of God as being-itself. God as power of being resists and conquers nonbeing.[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 272.] In the Christian belief of an "almighty God," there is the assurance of the inexhaustible power of being to resist nonbeing. This is why God warrants man's ultimate concern. The omnipotence of God does not mean that God has the power to do anything he wishes. Nor does it mean omni-activity in terms of physical causality. Such conceptions of omnipotence, asserts Tillich, are absurd and irreligious. Tillich uses the symbol of omnipotence to express the religious experience "that no structure in reality and no event in nature and history has the power of preventing us from communion with the infinite and inexhaustible ground of meaning and being."[Footnote: Tillich, Art. (1940), 8.] This idea of omnipotence is expressed in the Pauline assertion that neither natural nor political powers, neither heavenly nor earthly forces can separate us from the love of God. All of this leads Tillich to the conclusion that omnipotence means "the power of being which resists nonbeing in all its expressions."[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 273.]

In this conception of God as being-itself or power of being, Tillich seeks to solve the problems of the immanence and the transcendence of God. God is transcendent in the sense that he, as the power of being, transcends every being and also the totality of beings--the world. God is beyond finitude and infinity; otherwise he would be conditioned by something other than himself. Tillich makes it palpably clear that "being itself infinitely transcends every finite being. There is no proportion or gradation between the finite and the infinite. There is an absolute break, an infinite `jump'."[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 237. This reminds one of the Barthian "Wholly Other."]

On the other hand God's immanence is expressed in the fact that everything finite participates in being itself and in infinity. If this were not the case everything finite would be swallowed by nonbeing, or it never would have emerged out of nonbeing.[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 237.]

So we can see that all beings have a double relation to being-itself. This double relation that all beings have to being-itself gives being-itself a double characteristic. Being-itself is both creative and abysmal. Its creative character is found in the fact that all beings participate in the infinite power of being. Its abysmal character is found in the fact that all beings are infinitely transcended by their creative ground.[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 237.]

ii. God's transcendence of the contrast of essential and existential being

As being-itself God is beyond the contrast of essential and existential being. The transition of being into existence which involves the possibility that being will contradict and lose itself, is excluded from being-itself.[Footnote: Tillich makes one exception to this statement, viz., the christological paradox.] Logically being-itself is prior to the split which characterizes finite being.

The ground of being cannot be found within the totality of beings, nor can the ground of essence and existence participate in the tensions and disruptions characteristic of the transition from essence to existence.[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 205.]

Therefore it is wrong to speak of God as universal essence, for if God is so understood, he is identified with the unity and totality of finite potentialities, thereby ceasing to be the power of the ground in all of them. "He has poured all his creative power into a system of forms, and he is bound to these forms. This is what pantheism means."[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 236.]

On the other hand, it is a grave error to speak of God as existing. Tillich affirms that the Scholastics were right in their claim that in God there is no difference between essence and existence. But they perverted this whole truth by proceeding to talk of the existence of God and even attempting to prove such existence. "It is as atheistic to affirm the existence of God," asserts Tillich, "as it is to deny it. God is being-itself, not a being."[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 237.] Again Tillich writes:

It would be a great victory for Christian apologetics if the words "God" and "existence" were very definitely separated except in the paradox of God becoming manifest under the conditions of existence, that is in the Christological paradox. God does not exist. He is being-itself, beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him.[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 205.]

Tillich is convinced that the usual discussions of the existence of God completely miss the essential nature of God. Such discussions start out with the assumption that God is something or someone. But God is not a being, not even the most powerful or the most perfect being. The objectification or the "thingification" (to use J. L. Adams' term) of God is blasphemy. Whenever God is made an object besides other objects, the existence of which is a matter of argument, theology becomes the greatest supporter of atheism. "The first step to atheism is always a theology which drags God down to the level of doubtful things."[Footnote: Tillich, SOF, 45.]---- "The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr."http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/kingweb/publications/papers/vol2/550415-Dissertation_Chapter_3.htm
 
Tillich actually does succeed in removing a great deal of the absurdity attached to the god concept. Or rather, he does a good job of recasting it. His conception gets a more favourable position on my metaphysical probability scale. I mean after all, he's almost atheistic. In fact with respect to Christian fundamentalist conceptions of god for example, he is atheistic.

In any case, he makes for interesting reading.
 
Magical Realist said:
"
i. God's transcendence of finite being

In affirming that God is being-itself, Tillich is denying that God is a being besides other beings. He is also denying that God is a "highest being" in the sense of the "most perfect" and "most powerful" being. If God were a being He would be subject to the categories of finitude, especially to the categories of space and substance. Therefore if such confusions are to be avoided, says Tillich, God must be understood as being-itself or as the ground of being. Tillich often speaks as though "absolute," "unconditional," "infinite," "eternal" were synonyms for "being-itself"; but he insists that being-itself, or God, is "beyond finitude and infinity," "relative" and "absolute,"[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 144.] "temporal" and "eternal," and even "spatial" and "spaceless."[Footnote: Tillich, ST, I, 138.]
Click to expand...


God is One, and subject to space and substance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top