Is anyone else blown away by this or is it just me?

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TLEILAXU

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« Reply #15 on: November 16, 2018, 04:06:02 pm »
This about sums it up, wild ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oadgHhdgRkI

TL - your man gets a mention in this  :)
Always appreciate Nima getting mentioned, but this guy is a bit suspect. He says a lot of stuff that sounds reasonable, but then as the video progresses and he starts going on about evolution (hint: if you believe X has been under selective pressure you need to provide some evidence, you can't just state it as fact because you think it "makes sense"), and then around 29 minutes he starts saying stuff like "abstract algorithm called universal Darwinism" and that DNA doesn't exist "unperceived".
A quick google also reveals he's a member of the Chopra foundation. I definitely wouldn't trust this guy, he sounds like the type who seduces you with cool stuff before he takes you home and forces you to buy his ayurvedic herbs.
« Last Edit: November 16, 2018, 04:31:42 pm by TLEILAXU »

TaoHorror

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« Reply #16 on: November 16, 2018, 04:37:16 pm »
Thank you, TL - that's one reason we have you here, keep us honest and away from the freaks. I'm obviously out of my depth here, so I won't be able to sort through the riffraff.
It's me, Dave, open up, I've got the stuff

sciborg2

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« Reply #17 on: November 17, 2018, 08:51:37 pm »
Exactly - there is no table - and not speaking in some meta-physical/philosophical/whatever-ical sense, it's not there. It's a slightly denser "collection" of atoms/molecules "different" from other collections and our minds cooked up an interpretation of it so we can interact with it.

This is why I am apt to put forth the idea that our mental representations, and so our ideas, are actually more real than anything we can term subjective reality.

Consider the following example: you buy a new house and it is empty of furniture.  You get in a box, take the contents out, regarding the packaging as "garbage."  Only now you realize that whatever this thing is, you need a place to assemble it, possibly because it will be a messy process.  Now, the box that was "garbage" is now, "table."  Upon being done with said assembly, the "box," once "garbage" now "table" returns again to "garbage."  All while still being the same physical object.

The point of this poor allusion being, of course, to illustrate your point that things only exist how we conceptualize them to.  That is, the conception is what is real, to us.  We cannot interact with that which we cannot conceive of.

Hmmm but don't we know it's "garbage" on a longer time scale according to our intentions?

So our mental representation of the box doesn't change, just our use of it. I think this is different than the reductionist question, which is whether the table is an object in itself...which I kinda think it is?

On the level of the material the table clearly has some distinction, I mean one can make the argument the table and its surroundings are just atoms but to even get to atoms one has to accept the reality of the macro-level instruments physicists use.

At the level of mental representation the table is in an object within our thoughts. There's what philosophers call Intentionality - our thought about the table. This aboutness allows us to make use of the table, and aboutness about macro-level instruments in turn gives us the picture of atoms.

It seems something very interesting is going on here, at least to me, because the question to then ask is how can the matter in the brain be About a table? How is one arrangement of atoms intrinsically About another arrangement of atoms?