Causation

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Plus, the feeling of randomness I get from some of your posts makes more sense now that Dan pointed that out.
How much of your thought content circulated through the web before it landed in your lap and got rebranded as 'my' thought?

All of it?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Causation

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Dennis Mahar wrote:"I must look good"
Any drive for quality or originality, no matter if it's achievable in any objective sense, is just that: a drive. In the end we are our own audience first and foremost. Judge and jury. Without this there would be rising decadence and uncontrolled sprawling of criminal tendencies in all of our communications.
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mental vagrant
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Re: Causation

Post by mental vagrant »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
mental vagrant wrote: Ah yes, i very much like the wording here, and tend to agree strongly with your analysis.
Good to hear, vagrant. Still wandering? :)
From place to place. :)
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mental vagrant
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Re: Causation

Post by mental vagrant »

Dennis Mahar wrote: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.
Mental gold. Be exemplar not templar.
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mental vagrant
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Re: Causation

Post by mental vagrant »

Dennis Mahar wrote:
Plus, the feeling of randomness I get from some of your posts makes more sense now that Dan pointed that out.
How much of your thought content circulated through the web before it landed in your lap and got rebranded as 'my' thought?

All of it?
I request the three of you stop this train of thought immediately in the arena of this discussion. It's not useful. EO has started an interesting topic and we should respect the flow, since we can create our own topics to deal with such issues.
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Cathy Preston
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Re: Causation

Post by Cathy Preston »

I agree this thread is great, even though I find all the science challenging, I agree with Diebert we are our own audience and for myself I've gotten more clarity.
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Russell Parr
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Re: Causation

Post by Russell Parr »

Dennis Mahar wrote:
Plus, the feeling of randomness I get from some of your posts makes more sense now that Dan pointed that out.
How much of your thought content circulated through the web before it landed in your lap and got rebranded as 'my' thought?

All of it?
All I was saying is that had I known that you pull quotes from the web without citing them, it would have been a little easier to understand them and where you're coming from. Regardless of that, I generally find your posts insightful.
mental vagrant wrote:I request the three of you stop this train of thought immediately in the arena of this discussion. It's not useful. EO has started an interesting topic and we should respect the flow, since we can create our own topics to deal with such issues.
Don't mind me, no intention to derail this thread :)
Eric Orwoll
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Re: Causation

Post by Eric Orwoll »

The central objection I've seen has been to my claim for the reality of being outside of perspective (undifferentiated reality).

My evidence for its existence is mathematics.

Mathematical truths exist, they can be discovered, they do not depend upon any mind. Before Pythagoras was the square of a hypotenuse not the sum of the squares of the other two sides?

It's true that all geometry relies on the syntaxes of arithmetic and dimensionality but given any syntax/perspective truth evaluable statements can be made. Once humanity had discovered arithmetic operations they could use that syntax to discover what was true or false in the relations of integers.

Mathematical truths only carry meaning within governing syntaxes, but mathematical truths exist for every syntax regardless of whether humans have discovered them.

All math exists whether or not anyone is looking at it. Therefore math exists outside of perspective.

There is a mathematical expression for everything. Everything can be reduced to math. Insofar as our physical reality exists as points in dimensional relationship, it can be viewed as a graph. Every graph has its accompanying algebraic expression.

Math encompasses all possibility.

Math exists outside perspective,
Math encompasses all reality,
All reality exists outside perspective.

All mathematics can be expressed in binary. A perspectiveless being and nothingness alone produce all mathematics.


--

The claim that causality can emerge from nothing seems to rely on a conception of objective time. Without time there can be no emergence of phenomena. For change to exist, time must exist. You're left then with causality emerging from something other than nothing, because true nothing could have no property of time.
I'm basing this off of incomplete information, so please educate me as to how this is not the case.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Any drive for quality or originality, no matter if it's achievable in any objective sense, is just that: a drive. In the end we are our own audience first and foremost. Judge and jury. Without this there would be rising decadence and uncontrolled sprawling of criminal tendencies in all of our communications.


That statement appears to be deeply mired in conventional reality.
This forum, dedicated to the nature of ultimate reality recognises 2 truths.

conventionally, it's true an individual mind can generate original perspective in its particular causes/conditions,
ultimately, it's true no individual owns anything including its thoughts.
ultimately there's no individual.

A forum dedicated to ultimate reality ought not be overly concerned with 'who owns' an idea in the egoic space of conventional agreements.
the issue is the idea and not the personality.

Hopefully the judge and jury takes ultimate reality in to account.

Conventional reality and ultimate reality operate simultaneously.
much like the wave and the particle operate simultaneously.
the observer, at any particular point has its foot in one camp or the other,

where are you coming from?
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

EO,

emptiness, empty set, doesn't mean the absolute nothing postulated in physics.
it means 'swollen with possibility'.

algorithims (maths)
means regularities, patterns.

trees need soil, nutrient, climate, planet.
oak trees don't produce strawberries.

algorithims generate structure.
mind generates algorithms.

mind, algorithms, changing appearance (structure) are inextricably bound in possibilities for being.

Is that what you're getting at?
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Russell Parr
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Re: Causation

Post by Russell Parr »

Eric Orwoll wrote:The claim that causality can emerge from nothing seems to rely on a conception of objective time. Without time there can be no emergence of phenomena. For change to exist, time must exist. You're left then with causality emerging from something other than nothing, because true nothing could have no property of time.
I'm basing this off of incomplete information, so please educate me as to how this is not the case.
Yes, change and time are really just descriptions of the same thing (or idea).

However, 'math' is a concept that exists only in the mind just as much as 'causation' is. They are both logical discrestions that only exist in congruence with an observer. Math also cannot exist without time because of this.

Where causation is particularly useful is that it provides more profound and fundamental insights into the workings of reality. For example, we can discern that all things are causally dependent on each other. Such realizations can lead to a more unbiased, ego-less conscious.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Causation

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Dennis Mahar wrote: A forum dedicated to ultimate reality ought not be overly concerned with 'who owns' an idea in the egoic space of conventional agreements. Hopefully the judge and jury takes ultimate reality in to account.
Then it's true, that for you emptiness merely a powerful impenetrable idea to hide some lack of aspiration behind? You seem to make the point that the ultimate removes the need for quality, in the sense of trying to generate proper prose, expressing as clearly as possible and doing some more effort than glorified copying and pasting, from others or yourself?

It's a dangerous attitude. It looks like a form of being stuck in nihilism. Lack of meaning does not imply lack of spirit. Where is your spirit these days, running on empty?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Causation

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Eric Orwoll wrote:Mathematical truths exist, they can be discovered, they do not depend upon any mind. Before Pythagoras was the square of a hypotenuse not the sum of the squares of the other two sides?
So you're claiming that the Babylonians couldn't have done anything else but "finding" the geometry and arithmetics waiting to be found? Like Plato's cave, where mathematical ultimate beings roam outside the cave and we professors inside the cave behind the fire derive the form and shape of these beings by writing on the wall, outlining their shadows?
Mathematical truths only carry meaning within governing syntaxes, but mathematical truths exist for every syntax regardless of whether humans have discovered them.
But these truths could just as well be formulated in terms of properties of subjective human perception. So a systematic categorizing of our own instrument and how it interacts with "the great other". But are we really describing the other or our complex biological instrumentation? Are there any alternative rule sets possible?
All math exists whether or not anyone is looking at it. Therefore math exists outside of perspective.
The whole universe exists whether or not anyone is looking at it. Or?
There is a mathematical expression for everything. Everything can be reduced to math.
It appears that way but it could also mean mathematics is some symbolic counterpart of how we perceive and that's why everything always seems to boil down to "universal" mathematical symbols.
Math encompasses all possibility.
But this statement itself is not mathematical: its possibility cannot be calculated by the same rules it's examining! Not without asserting some universal axiom first.
Cathy Preston
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Re: Causation

Post by Cathy Preston »

Eric wrote:All mathematics can be expressed in binary. A perspectiveless being and nothingness alone produce all mathematics.

But this is perspective, nothingness relies on being. So all you've reduced math to is a another relationship. True nothing is an impossibility because it's always relational.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Then it's true, that for you emptiness merely a powerful impenetrable idea to hide some lack of aspiration behind? You seem to make the point that the ultimate removes the need for quality, in the sense of trying to generate proper prose, expressing as clearly as possible and doing some more effort than glorified copying and pasting, from others or yourself?

It's a dangerous attitude. It looks like a form of being stuck in nihilism. Lack of meaning does not imply lack of spirit. Where is your spirit these days, running on empty?


What are you trying to protect?
Cathy Preston
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Re: Causation

Post by Cathy Preston »

bluerap wrote:
Eric Orwoll wrote:The claim that causality can emerge from nothing seems to rely on a conception of objective time. Withouime there can be no emergence of phenomena. For change to exist, time must exist. You're left then with causality emerging from something other than nothing, because true nothing could have no property of time.
I'm basing this off of incomplete information, so please educate me as to how this is not the case.
Yes, change and time are really just descriptions of the same thing (or idea).

However, 'math' is a concept that exists only in the mind just as much as 'causation' is. They are both logical discrestions that only exist in congruence with an observer. Math also cannot exist without time because of this.

Where causation is particularly useful is that it provides more profound and fundamental insights into the workings of reality. For example, we can discern that all things are causally dependent on each other. Such realizations can lead to a more unbiased, ego-less conscious.
I think to grok causality fully one must drop even the concept of change. Change assumes something existing which then is changed over time, but Reality is not that, there is no particular thing that is changed, everything is flux of causality. For instance a rainbow, is caused just by the way sunlight reflects off raindrops, so no thing is changed when a rainbow exists or not exists, and consciousness, we think of it changing over time, evolving, yet consciousness isn't really a thing, it's caused by mind meeting matter, so what is being changed?
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jupiviv
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Re: Causation

Post by jupiviv »

Eric Orwoll wrote:Mathematical truths exist, they can be discovered, they do not depend upon any mind. Before Pythagoras was the square of a hypotenuse not the sum of the squares of the other two sides?

A mind is required to define mathematical truths, so they most definitely require a mind. A mind doesn't have to exist in all the instances wherein a mathematical truth can be applied in order to create that truth, which is what you seem to believe.
All math exists whether or not anyone is looking at it. Therefore math exists outside of perspective.
That doesn't follow. If it is true that math exists outside your perspective, then you have no grounds for making that very statement, since you can't know that it exists out of your perspective.
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mental vagrant
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Re: Causation

Post by mental vagrant »

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mental vagrant
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Re: Causation

Post by mental vagrant »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
Eric Orwoll wrote:Mathematical truths exist, they can be discovered, they do not depend upon any mind. Before Pythagoras was the square of a hypotenuse not the sum of the squares of the other two sides?
So you're claiming that the Babylonians couldn't have done anything else but "finding" the geometry and arithmetics waiting to be found? Like Plato's cave, where mathematical ultimate beings roam outside the cave and we professors inside the cave behind the fire derive the form and shape of these beings by writing on the wall, outlining their shadows?
Mathematical truths only carry meaning within governing syntaxes, but mathematical truths exist for every syntax regardless of whether humans have discovered them.
But these truths could just as well be formulated in terms of properties of subjective human perception. So a systematic categorizing of our own instrument and how it interacts with "the great other". But are we really describing the other or our complex biological instrumentation? Are there any alternative rule sets possible?
All math exists whether or not anyone is looking at it. Therefore math exists outside of perspective.
The whole universe exists whether or not anyone is looking at it. Or?
There is a mathematical expression for everything. Everything can be reduced to math.
It appears that way but it could also mean mathematics is some symbolic counterpart of how we perceive and that's why everything always seems to boil down to "universal" mathematical symbols.
Math encompasses all possibility.
But this statement itself is not mathematical: its possibility cannot be calculated by the same rules it's examining! Not without asserting some universal axiom first.
I made my point earlier and you are picking up on the same line. The idea of imagining something noumenologically impossible, cannot be achieved, our abstraction, our cortexes, forms math, math the patterns. So again i put it to you, can you in words show me that maths -> sense -> mind rather than mindsensemath -> mindmathsense ->sensemathmind? This is open to anyone, it seems logically impossible to untangle. Needs thought.
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mental vagrant
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Re: Causation

Post by mental vagrant »

Cathy Preston wrote:
bluerap wrote:
Eric Orwoll wrote:The claim that causality can emerge from nothing seems to rely on a conception of objective time. Withouime there can be no emergence of phenomena. For change to exist, time must exist. You're left then with causality emerging from something other than nothing, because true nothing could have no property of time.
I'm basing this off of incomplete information, so please educate me as to how this is not the case.
Yes, change and time are really just descriptions of the same thing (or idea).

However, 'math' is a concept that exists only in the mind just as much as 'causation' is. They are both logical discrestions that only exist in congruence with an observer. Math also cannot exist without time because of this.

Where causation is particularly useful is that it provides more profound and fundamental insights into the workings of reality. For example, we can discern that all things are causally dependent on each other. Such realizations can lead to a more unbiased, ego-less conscious.
I think to grok causality fully one must drop even the concept of change. Change assumes something existing which then is changed over time, but Reality is not that, there is no particular thing that is changed, everything is flux of causality. For instance a rainbow, is caused just by the way sunlight reflects off raindrops, so no thing is changed when a rainbow exists or not exists, and consciousness, we think of it changing over time, evolving, yet consciousness isn't really a thing, it's caused by mind meeting matter, so what is being changed?
I think ultimately this asks, what the hell is time!?
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mental vagrant
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Re: Causation

Post by mental vagrant »

For time, time must sit on the laws it eludes to.

Thoughts?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Causation

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

mental vagrant wrote:....our abstraction, our cortexes, forms math, math the patterns. So again i put it to you, can you in words show me that maths -> sense -> mind rather than mindsensemath -> mindmathsense -> sensemathmind? This is open to anyone, it seems logically impossible to untangle.
There's the possibility that while math was formed at first by that abstracting capability, it then grew into something more or less independent of mind. Or at least it could manifest as such. Lets imagine as thought experiment that we could calculate how to ignite a Big Bang in a next door dimension and then actually attempted it. This Bang continues to create a whole universe there with life forming intelligence which at some point enables this being to build a communicator and it then beams over a challenge similar to the one you just raised. Would you reply to it now: "Our math created you" ?

The goal of this thought experiment was to illustrate the idea of math being part of our perception in the same way our perception is part of the rest of nature, of the totality. Pure math would then mean pure perception but necessarily relative and incomplete. In other words: mathematics could only describe itself but nothing more. It could describe everything only when everything is first defined mathematically.

Aha! This reminds me of the phrase: "computers will be able to function more like the human mind the moment the human mind will start functioning more like a computer".
Eric Orwoll
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Re: Causation

Post by Eric Orwoll »

Dennis Mahar wrote:algorithims generate structure.
mind generates algorithms.

mind, algorithms, changing appearance (structure) are inextricably bound in possibilities for being.
Mind, algorithms and changing appearance are inextribably bound in manifestation. Being exists regardless of the nature of its derivations.

Where do you claim that mind comes from? For me, mind is an informational phenomenon which occurs within the binary syntax of being and nothing.
bluerap wrote:However, 'math' is a concept that exists only in the mind just as much as 'causation' is. They are both logical discrestions that only exist in congruence with an observer. Math also cannot exist without time because of this.
It is true that math only carries meaning when it is observed, but mathematical truths exist whether they are viewed or not. The truth quality of 1+1=2, within the context of arithmetic syntax, retains its identity no matter how many times it is rediscovered by different observers.
The syntaxes of math exist in the mind of the observer, but every syntax that is called into manifestation has truths that can be discovered. These truths exist no matter who is doing the calculations. It's this discoverability and verifiability that points towards the existence of math outside of mind.
Individual observer variations cannot alter the truth qualities of a given mathematical syntax.

Physical manifestation is a property of mind, mind is a property of math, math is a property of the interaction of being and nothing.
Causation is a property of mind, but there are levels of reality above mind. All things ultimately have only one cause, the interaction of being and nothing.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:But these truths could just as well be formulated in terms of properties of subjective human perception. So a systematic categorizing of our own instrument and how it interacts with "the great other". But are we really describing the other or our complex biological instrumentation? Are there any alternative rule sets possible?
All alternative rule sets are not only possible, they are actual. Outside of perspective, being and nothingness have no location and so they interact everywhere. All syntaxes are generated independent of observation. Observation is the experience of a syntax from within. All syntaxes exist, not all syntaxes have observers.

Mathematical truths are not properties of human perception because they can be verified from any perspective. This verifiability transcends all individual perceivers. It applies to all perceivers. What is it that all perceivers are referring to and agreeing upon? An informational existence outside of perception.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Quote:
Math encompasses all possibility.

But this statement itself is not mathematical: its possibility cannot be calculated by the same rules it's examining! Not without asserting some universal axiom first.
I don't know what you mean here. Can you clarify?
Cathy Preston wrote:Eric wrote:
All mathematics can be expressed in binary. A perspectiveless being and nothingness alone produce all mathematics.


But this is perspective, nothingness relies on being. So all you've reduced math to is a another relationship. True nothing is an impossibility because it's always relational.
I agree. Math is relational, being itself is the only thing that doesn't refer to anything else for its existence (as far as I can tell).
It may be that being and nothingness exist dependently upon the other, in which case I want to learn the nature of that dependent origin. The von Nuemann explanation was not helpful as it relies on the prior existence of mind. The question of being itself, outside of mind and math (without relating itself to nothing), is my greatest problem.

Math is the relation of being and nothing, but I don't see that as existing inherently within a perspective. Is the application of nothing automatically a perspective? This is why I said our disagreements may be semantic. That's not the way I define perspective. Being and nothing can interact forming an undifferentiated singularity of all syntax/math but perspective would be the incomplete viewing of that totality.
jupiviv wrote:Quote:
All math exists whether or not anyone is looking at it. Therefore math exists outside of perspective.


That doesn't follow. If it is true that math exists outside your perspective, then you have no grounds for making that very statement, since you can't know that it exists out of your perspective.
Your last sentence= You can't know that anything exists outside of your perspective. Touché.
I'm going to go ahead and acknowledge the epistemological argument for solipsism and admit that I'm basing everything, ultimately, on the assumption of some existence outside of my own mind. If you have a problem with that, then it doesn't matter because your existence proves my assumption correct.

jupiviv wrote:Eric Orwoll wrote:
Mathematical truths exist, they can be discovered, they do not depend upon any mind. Before Pythagoras was the square of a hypotenuse not the sum of the squares of the other two sides?


A mind is required to define mathematical truths, so they most definitely require a mind. A mind doesn't have to exist in all the instances wherein a mathematical truth can be applied in order to create that truth, which is what you seem to believe.
You assert that a mind is required to define mathematical truths. I agree, nevertheless those same truths can be discovered and rediscovered, defined and redefined by all different types of mind. Throughout all that collapse and rebirth of math as idea, how does the nature of truth within a syntax stay consistent? I argue that the nature of truth for a given syntax is consistent because math exists outside of observation. The definition of math is the act of observing not the act of creating.
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Re: Causation

Post by Dennis Mahar »

I agree. Math is relational, being itself is the only thing that doesn't refer to anything else for its existence (as far as I can tell).
It may be that being and nothingness exist dependently upon the other, in which case I want to learn the nature of that dependent origin. The von Nuemann explanation was not helpful as it relies on the prior existence of mind. The question of being itself, outside of mind and math (without relating itself to nothing), is my greatest problem.
Meaning makers can't rest in emptiness.
Ineffable silence.
They want more, more, more.
They have to infer, construct models, assert, believe, have faith, assign labels.,
pretty soon they come up with cherubs and santa claus.

You don't know.
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Russell Parr
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Re: Causation

Post by Russell Parr »

Eric Orwoll wrote:Your last sentence= You can't know that anything exists outside of your perspective. Touché.
I'm going to go ahead and acknowledge the epistemological argument for solipsism and admit that I'm basing everything, ultimately, on the assumption of some existence outside of my own mind. If you have a problem with that, then it doesn't matter because your existence proves my assumption correct.
But alas, the person you are responding to is still ultimately just a projection of your perspective.
It is true that math only carries meaning when it is observed, but mathematical truths exist whether they are viewed or not. The truth quality of 1+1=2, within the context of arithmetic syntax, retains its identity no matter how many times it is rediscovered by different observers.
The syntaxes of math exist in the mind of the observer, but every syntax that is called into manifestation has truths that can be discovered. These truths exist no matter who is doing the calculations. It's this discoverability and verifiability that points towards the existence of math outside of mind.
Individual observer variations cannot alter the truth qualities of a given mathematical syntax.

Physical manifestation is a property of mind, mind is a property of math, math is a property of the interaction of being and nothing.
Causation is a property of mind, but there are levels of reality above mind. All things ultimately have only one cause, the interaction of being and nothing.
The very nature of existence is intimately dependent on observation. Math can only be discovered/rediscovered by minds that are capable of observing math.
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