Causation

[Dennis Mahar]

The question that separates the Materialist from the Buddhist is whether there is anything left to explain about reality once algorithms and and datastructures have been factored out.

The Materialist would answer that algorithms and datastructures offer a complete explanation of the universe, without any remainder. The Buddhist would claim that a third factor, mind, is also required.



The strange interactions of fundamental particles with the mind of the observer have long been of interest to philosophers. There are two opposing views:

(i) Quantum weirdness produces the mind, versus

(ii) The mind produces quantum weirdness.

[Dennis Mahar]

protesting 'circular reasoning' becomes circular reasoning.

self validating.

circular reasoning is invalid because circular reasoning is invalid.

The reason circular reasoning is frowned on by people who concern themselves with logic, is because circular reasoning doesn’t get you anywhere.
for example,
John has a beard,
John is beardy.

Logic, for these folks, has to do something, lead somewhere, it has to add something to the conversation, so to speak.

In Buddhism, it seems you’re supposed to embrace the circular nature of it all to find enlightenment.

[Eric Orwoll]

Mental Vagrant, can you help me understand how my reasoning is circular?

The attempt at understanding singularity from the "outside" creates a perspective, and therefore creates a differentiated reality.
Nevertheless, my understanding of the singularity in itself is pure infinity. It has all qualities. Any reduction or specification of the singularity beyond that cannot address the singularity as a whole but only a limited manifestation.

I'd be interested to hear your understanding of the foundations of reality.

Why do you ask about my name?

The Materialist would answer that algorithms and datastructures offer a complete explanation of the universe, without any remainder. The Buddhist would claim that a third factor, mind, is also required.

Mind is required but it can be conceived of as part of data structure.
Being interacts with nothing everywhere, creating all data structure, that data structure can be viewed dimensionally though an element of itself which perceives.

Quantum effects do not produce the mind, nor does the mind produce quantum effects.
The data structure of being can only be viewed as a physical syntax through perspective but the entire data structure exists as an informational singularity.
Mind and quantum effects are syntaxes of a data structure which is produced by the interaction of being and nothing.

The information of quantum effects exists without being observed, but it can only be manifested in a differentiated form through observation.

The information of Mind exists without being physically 'caused', but differentiated perception can only exist within a governing syntax.

The phenomena of differentiated perception and differentiated manifestation exist only together.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Within an informational singularity the phenomenology of mind (which includes concepts) can be described outside of material functionalism. In this way conceptual devices may not be viewed as a property of nature, insofar as nature refers to a material universe.

Mind seen as property of nature might indeed be more like some category error. The subject of mind seems to be rooted in the realms of linguistics, semiotics and psychology: metaphysics perhaps, while the notion of "material universe" is based on scientific principles, derived from logic and embedded in our cultural being (the 'factual' body). Neither of them addresses "what is" in any existential manner needed to get to consciousness. They rather flow from it.

I don't adhere to materialism, I think a more useful way of describing the world we see is as an isomorphic graphing of underlying mathematics.

Something is useful only in the context of something that has to be achieved. Utility can only be measured by stating the goal first. The goal here is to describe something (what?) but describing to which audience and using which syntax, to which end? That's why here's no ultimate form of any description.

Pluralistic manifestation as opposed to an undifferentiated manifestation, is a property of mind; all syntax exists but we perceive only a limited set.

It's impossible to assert manifestation as only property of mind because it would leave open the question of how mind itself would manifest. Suggesting some "interaction of being and nothing" might not be as useful as the notion of causality itself.

My contention here, however, is with causation being viewed as a property of physical reality.

Causality needs to be larger as a concept than "physical reality": a "higher" notion. It might be better to see "physical reality" as one particular view on causality.

[Cathy Preston]

You exist both undifferentiated from and completely disconnected from the remainder of Being.

disconnected from = separation; ego, causation, karma, birth, death

undifferentiated from = nothingness; no self, karma ends, causation of ego ceases

Reality = the interplay of environment, body and mind, causation

When I believe I am disconnected from the Universe, ego is created, ego is caused

When I dissolve the belief in separation (cause of ego), ego ceases

The ego comes from nowhere and goes nowhere.

Everything is like this, things cease when their causes cease, there is no undifferentiated being, there is only causation.

Reality = causation

[Dennis Mahar]

Quantum theory states that any physical system remains in a superposed state of all possibilities until it interacts with the mind of an observer. Both quantum theory and Buddhist teachings on sunyata suggest that as soon as an observer's mind makes contact with a superposed system, all the numerous possibilities collapse into one actuality. At some instant one of these possible alternative universes produced an observing lifeform - an animal with a nervous system which was sufficiently evolved to form a symbiotic association with a primordial mind. The first act of observation by this mind caused the entire superposed multiverse to collapse immediately into one of its numerous alternatives.

Buddha's insight was that the Being of all existential beings, primordial Being, gets trapped in biological systems.

Biological systems,
a partnership of body/mental activity.
the body wants to feed, fight and fuck.
the mental activity wants to aid and abet 'feed, fight and fuck' in such a way as to avoid pain and get pleasure.

What's in it for primordial being?
not much.

[Eric Orwoll]

Quote:
I don't adhere to materialism, I think a more useful way of describing the world we see is as an isomorphic graphing of underlying mathematics.


Something is useful only in the context of something that has to be achieved. Utility can only be measured by stating the goal first. The goal here is to describe something (what?) but describing to which audience and using which syntax, to which end? That's why here's no ultimate form of any description.

The end is truth. A more useful theory is a theory which encapsulates more truth.
Viewing differentiated reality as a graph is more true than viewing it as material substance because the relationship of the graph to the mathematics is well defined, whereas the relationship between material substance and the ground of its being is less clear. Viewing reality in terms of mathematics tells us more about the Totality than viewing it in terms of material substance.

t's impossible to assert manifestation as only property of mind because it would leave open the question of how mind itself would manifest. Suggesting some "interaction of being and nothing" might not be as useful as the notion of causality itself.

Within undifferentiated reality all informational constituents of mind and matter exist. That's why causality is a constructed notion, there is nothing that causes another because all things exist within the underlying mathematics of being.
All possibility exists, it's perspective that manifests differentiation because differentiation is a property of perspective. Our minds do not cause reality, it is only the nature of our minds that they view Being incompletely. We view time and space as having distance relative to our perspective, distance does not inherently exist without perspective. Distance is a property of perspective.

The interaction of being and nothing is the foundation of everything, causality cannot get around the origin problem.
I search for the ground of all being. Causality is a phenomenon of being through perspective but it does not encompass all being.


The interaction of being and nothing produce all information.
It provides a binary syntax to generate all mathematics.

Within all information there exist mind, matter and all other phenomena.

The experience of mind is through perspective, which is the differentiated experience of information.

Our perspective views a dimensional reality, the differentiation of time and space produce a graph of the underlying mathematics.

At no point is anything caused, it is simply the nature of perspective to see limited information.

--

Cathy, I'm starting to feel that our areas of dispute are semantic. Can you provide me with your definition of causation?

--

Both quantum theory and Buddhist teachings on sunyata suggest that as soon as an observer's mind makes contact with a superposed system, all the numerous possibilities collapse into one actuality.

That's the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory. The many worlds interpretation, I feel, is more elegant in that it does not require an explanation for how the wave-function collapse occurs. Wave-function collapse is an element of perspective.
The whole superposition exists, all realities exist, but our perception inhabits only one actuality.
When we think we observe superpositions collapsing into one actuality we really observe the one actuality our minds inhabit split away from the others.

[Dennis Mahar]

Sunyata or emptiness or Beginner's mind is the recognition of 'empty set'.
'empty set' doesn't mean dark, cold, miserable, nihilistic.

It means swollen with possibility.

von Neumann on the origin of maths.
manipulation of sets.

A set is a collection of things.
An empty set is a collection of nothing at all.
An empty set can be thought of as nothing with the potential to become something (that is to be become a set with at least one member).

Von Neumann proposed that all numbers could be bootstrapped out of the empty set by the operations of the mind.


The mind observes the empty set. The mind's act of observation causes the appearance of another set - the set of empty sets. The set of empty sets is not empty, because it contains one non-thing - the empty set. The mind has thus generated the number 1 by producing the set containing the empty set.

Now the mind perceives the empty set and the set containing the empty set, so there are two non-things. The mind has generated the number 2 out of emptiness. And so it goes on all the way up.

Numbers have causes - the algorithms that perform the operations on the sets.

Numbers have parts and aspects. The number 1 is defined as the set which contains the empty set and so on.

And in the final analysis the entire number system has been generated by the play of mind on emptiness, in the complete absence of the need to refer to any material thing, or things, which are being counted.

Numbers are non-physical phenomena and need make no reference to physical systems for their existence. But neither are they inherently-existent entities. Numbers are dependently-related manifestations of the working of the mind.

An interesting aspect of emergent phenomena is the different causal and organisational relationships which appear at different levels of investigation. For example, ecology emerges out of biology, which emerges out of chemistry, which emerges out of physics, which emerges out of mathematics, which emerges out of the mind contemplating the empty set. Each level of investigation has its own explanatory relationships, yet if we check carefully there is no 'added extra' coming from the side of the objects.

[Beingof1]

Dennis:

Von Neumann proposed that all numbers could be bootstrapped out of the empty set by the operations of the mind.

Do you have a link or reference for this Dennis?

[Dan Rowden]

Dennis,

You do know it's easy to google entire segments of your posts and find you've lifted them?

[Dennis Mahar]

That's Ok.
Listen Dan,
I openly declared a long time ago I will pull language from anywhere that has a nice ring to it that supports emptiness.
It's not some secret thing that was just found out.
Let it stand or not.
The ball's in your court.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Or are we talking about the type of emptiness which needs to continuously support its void by fillings from everywhere?

[Cathy Preston]

Our minds do not cause reality, it is only the nature of our minds that they view Being incompletely

Our Minds do not cause reality, but are irretrievably mixed up in it. Yes perspective is limited, distance, space and time are all perspectives, and ultimately don't exist but rather are a convention of mind meeting matter, but whereas mathematics reduces everything to a common denominator, or a ground of being, emptiness has no such ground, all things are relationships, so even a photon which science says today is an elementary particle is really just a relationship we are as of yet unaware of. Science looks for building blocks, emptiness asserts that the building block is emptiness. So in quantum theory their experiments are flawed from the get go, since they assume photons are elementary particles the unpredictable results may simply be a result of this flawed premise.

[mental vagrant]

protesting 'circular reasoning' becomes circular reasoning.

self validating.

circular reasoning is invalid because circular reasoning is invalid.

The reason circular reasoning is frowned on by people who concern themselves with logic, is because circular reasoning doesn’t get you anywhere.
for example,
John has a beard,
John is beardy.

Logic, for these folks, has to do something, lead somewhere, it has to add something to the conversation, so to speak.

In Buddhism, it seems you’re supposed to embrace the circular nature of it all to find enlightenment.

That's more or less it, yes.

[mental vagrant]

Mental Vagrant, can you help me understand how my reasoning is circular?

The attempt at understanding singularity from the "outside" creates a perspective, and therefore creates a differentiated reality.
Nevertheless, my understanding of the singularity in itself is pure infinity. It has all qualities. Any reduction or specification of the singularity beyond that cannot address the singularity as a whole but only a limited manifestation.

I'd be interested to hear your understanding of the foundations of reality.

Why do you ask about my name?

The Materialist would answer that algorithms and datastructures offer a complete explanation of the universe, without any remainder. The Buddhist would claim that a third factor, mind, is also required.

Mind is required but it can be conceived of as part of data structure.
Being interacts with nothing everywhere, creating all data structure, that data structure can be viewed dimensionally though an element of itself which perceives.

Quantum effects do not produce the mind, nor does the mind produce quantum effects.
The data structure of being can only be viewed as a physical syntax through perspective but the entire data structure exists as an informational singularity.
Mind and quantum effects are syntaxes of a data structure which is produced by the interaction of being and nothing.

The information of quantum effects exists without being observed, but it can only be manifested in a differentiated form through observation.

The information of Mind exists without being physically 'caused', but differentiated perception can only exist within a governing syntax.

The phenomena of differentiated perception and differentiated manifestation exist only together.

Contradictory, can you prove that in words, nevermind anything 'harder'?

[mental vagrant]

Within an informational singularity the phenomenology of mind (which includes concepts) can be described outside of material functionalism. In this way conceptual devices may not be viewed as a property of nature, insofar as nature refers to a material universe.

Mind seen as property of nature might indeed be more like some category error. The subject of mind seems to be rooted in the realms of linguistics, semiotics and psychology: metaphysics perhaps, while the notion of "material universe" is based on scientific principles, derived from logic and embedded in our cultural being (the 'factual' body). Neither of them addresses "what is" in any existential manner needed to get to consciousness. They rather flow from it.

I don't adhere to materialism, I think a more useful way of describing the world we see is as an isomorphic graphing of underlying mathematics.

Something is useful only in the context of something that has to be achieved. Utility can only be measured by stating the goal first. The goal here is to describe something (what?) but describing to which audience and using which syntax, to which end? That's why here's no ultimate form of any description.

Pluralistic manifestation as opposed to an undifferentiated manifestation, is a property of mind; all syntax exists but we perceive only a limited set.

It's impossible to assert manifestation as only property of mind because it would leave open the question of how mind itself would manifest. Suggesting some "interaction of being and nothing" might not be as useful as the notion of causality itself.

My contention here, however, is with causation being viewed as a property of physical reality.

Causality needs to be larger as a concept than "physical reality": a "higher" notion. It might be better to see "physical reality" as one particular view on causality.

Ah yes, i very much like the wording here, and tend to agree strongly with your analysis.

[mental vagrant]

Quote:
I don't adhere to materialism, I think a more useful way of describing the world we see is as an isomorphic graphing of underlying mathematics.


Something is useful only in the context of something that has to be achieved. Utility can only be measured by stating the goal first. The goal here is to describe something (what?) but describing to which audience and using which syntax, to which end? That's why here's no ultimate form of any description.

The end is truth. A more useful theory is a theory which encapsulates more truth.
Viewing differentiated reality as a graph is more true than viewing it as material substance because the relationship of the graph to the mathematics is well defined, whereas the relationship between material substance and the ground of its being is less clear. Viewing reality in terms of mathematics tells us more about the Totality than viewing it in terms of material substance.

t's impossible to assert manifestation as only property of mind because it would leave open the question of how mind itself would manifest. Suggesting some "interaction of being and nothing" might not be as useful as the notion of causality itself.

Within undifferentiated reality all informational constituents of mind and matter exist. That's why causality is a constructed notion, there is nothing that causes another because all things exist within the underlying mathematics of being.
All possibility exists, it's perspective that manifests differentiation because differentiation is a property of perspective. Our minds do not cause reality, it is only the nature of our minds that they view Being incompletely. We view time and space as having distance relative to our perspective, distance does not inherently exist without perspective. Distance is a property of perspective.

The interaction of being and nothing is the foundation of everything, causality cannot get around the origin problem.
I search for the ground of all being. Causality is a phenomenon of being through perspective but it does not encompass all being.


The interaction of being and nothing produce all information.
It provides a binary syntax to generate all mathematics.

Within all information there exist mind, matter and all other phenomena.

The experience of mind is through perspective, which is the differentiated experience of information.

Our perspective views a dimensional reality, the differentiation of time and space produce a graph of the underlying mathematics.

At no point is anything caused, it is simply the nature of perspective to see limited information.

--

Cathy, I'm starting to feel that our areas of dispute are semantic. Can you provide me with your definition of causation?

--

Both quantum theory and Buddhist teachings on sunyata suggest that as soon as an observer's mind makes contact with a superposed system, all the numerous possibilities collapse into one actuality.

That's the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory. The many worlds interpretation, I feel, is more elegant in that it does not require an explanation for how the wave-function collapse occurs. Wave-function collapse is an element of perspective.
The whole superposition exists, all realities exist, but our perception inhabits only one actuality.
When we think we observe superpositions collapsing into one actuality we really observe the one actuality our minds inhabit split away from the others.

Might they be one and the same?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Something is useful only in the context of something that has to be achieved.

The end is truth. A more useful theory is a theory which encapsulates more truth.

This hinges on what you first defined truth to be, its outline - like your "underlying mathematics". This dictates then to you that your most useful theory here would be pure mathematical, right?

Viewing reality in terms of mathematics tells us more about the Totality than viewing it in terms of material substance.

And viewing reality in terms of logic tells us again more than applied or formal mathematics. But in the end the descriptive cannot approach the "numinous" since the mind is not a description either.

Within undifferentiated reality all informational constituents of mind and matter exist. That's why causality is a constructed notion, there is nothing that causes another because all things exist within the underlying mathematics of being.

If causality is a constructed notion also existence would become a constructed notion. And any undifferentiated reality as counterpart ("non-existence") as well. So there's only causality, right? A primal notion if nothing else.

The interaction of being and nothing is the foundation of everything, causality cannot get around the origin problem.

What is the "origin problem" in this case and why does anything need to get around it?

I search for the ground of all being. Causality is a phenomenon of being through perspective but it does not encompass all being.

You assert a being outside perspectives. But once anyone would step out of perspective - creation - what then happens to existence? Where is god or being? Where is death and all his friends?

The interaction of being and nothing produce all information.
It provides a binary syntax to generate all mathematics.

You mean the law of non-contradiction? The mind works indeed by contrast and opposition. And all we perceive appears likewise.

Within all information there exist mind, matter and all other phenomena.

The problem I see here is that the word "information" becomes something else entirely. Does it really help you to do that?

Information is all about context. You lift the idea out of its context but don't you realize it's not "information" anymore at that stage? There's no information "in itself" in which a phenomenal totality can exist. Or any other thing. This can be reasoned out with very simple means actually.

At no point is anything caused, it is simply the nature of perspective to see limited information.

Any being or mode of existence has the same limit. That limit is also causality. Its causes and effects become the very limits themselves.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Ah yes, i very much like the wording here, and tend to agree strongly with your analysis.

Good to hear, vagrant. Still wandering? :)

[Dennis Mahar]

Diebert,

Or are we talking about the type of emptiness which needs to continuously support its void by fillings from everywhere?

Sarcasm.

empty.

[Dan Rowden]

That's Ok.
Listen Dan,
I openly declared a long time ago I will pull language from anywhere that has a nice ring to it that supports emptiness.
It's not some secret thing that was just found out.
Let it stand or not.
The ball's in your court.

Oh, I'm more or less happy to let it stand, but it's a bad look Dennis, frankly. I think you would look more legitimate if you expressed things in your own words, but, hey, that ball is in your court.

[Dennis Mahar]

the old 'looking good' agenda for human being.

it's not a rule, just a context to enrol in.

I must look good
I must look good
I must look good
I must look good
I must look good

Thanks for the tip.

[Dennis Mahar]

MV,

That's more or less it, yes.

John has a beard,
John is beardy.

direct experience.
how?
causes/conditions.

other than that, it spins off into,
is the beard a political statement,
what is the aesthetics of beardedness,
is it ethical
all sorts of mental junk.

[Russell Parr]

the old 'looking good' agenda for human being.

it's not a rule, just a context to enrol in.

I must look good
I must look good
I must look good
I must look good
I must look good

Thanks for the tip.

Perhaps you could cite your quotes or reword them to match your flow of conversation.. I think what Dan is getting at is that anyone that doesn't know that you openly declared that you will pull quotes from the web, and discovers this for themselves, may take you less seriously.

Plus, the feeling of randomness I get from some of your posts makes more sense now that Dan pointed that out.

[Dennis Mahar]

You're talking about a style blemish.
A failure to 'look good'.

Eric's doing a great job with structure.
stick to that.