Guardian Angels

[Syne]

Don’t get mad or defensive, Syne, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to call yourself a theist. A theist believes there is a "God" who made and governs all creation. A sacred charter, if you will. It may sound harmless and benign like the moderates, but there’s no two ways about it. When you use that type of language, you’re giving credence to "potentially" destructive bullshit.

There is a god who who made and governs all creation. It's just a distributed god. "Sacred charter"? Where do you come up with these phrases? Not all religions are equal, so the "potential" for destructive bullshit varies wildly among them. The civilizing and freedom promoting potential of the better ones has proven well worth the risk.

[Secular Sanity]

"Sacred charter"? Where do you come up with these phrases?

I meant "character" but I guess "charter" works, too. I like Zinjanthropos' romantic idealized view, but he knows it’s a romantic idealized view.

We’ll have to agree to disagree, Syne.

Wait, I just thought of something. I’m a part of it, too, right? Well, my part is to tell you that you’re wrong. Does that work?

[Syne]

I meant "character" but I guess "charter" works, too.  I like Zinjanthropos' romantic idealized view, but he knows it’s a romantic idealized view.

We’ll have to agree to disagree, Syne.  

The difference is that I need no anthropomorphized fables about a god's motives.

Ah, that most used thought-terminating cliche' to quell cognitive dissonance. I agree to no such thing, but you're always free to beg off.

Wait, I just thought of something.  I’m a part of it, too, right?  Well, my part is to tell you that you’re wrong.  Does that work?  

Sure, there are always parts seeking the downhill path of least resistance. That sort of "been there, done that" attitude that dismisses anything they have not seen as unseeable. It must be nice and comforting.

[scheherazade]

Back to the title of this thread, 'Guardian Angels', I do reflect upon the silly notion that there have been some very incredulous situations that I have either walked away from relatively unscathed, or missed becoming a statistic by a hair's breadth.

Call it the luck of the draw, synchronicity or maybe the universe still has need of my skills and abilities, such as they are, but it works for me. I was raised with a Christian background, call myself a pagan druid when pressed and generally observe the seasons and try to work within nature's framework. I enjoy my technology as well and try to minimize my carbon footprint.

On another forum, I have a mind exercise thread where one assumes that 'Thought', is an energy form. The forum is very quiet of late but for those who enjoy poking about in archives, they might find this thread of some interest.  http://www.toequest.com/forum/assume-tru...-form.html

(On that forum I am known as Labelwench.)

[Syne]

Yeah, I always say I've lived a charmed life, with some very close calls as well. I don't ascribe it to luck or angels. While I haven't always been the optimistic person I am today, I think that potential was always there, temporarily hidden, and that one's attitude toward life and the world has a lot to do with where you find yourself.

I think people differ in their innate persistence in the face of hardship.

[Secular Sanity]

Back to the title of this thread, 'Guardian Angels', I do reflect upon the silly notion that there have been some very incredulous situations that I have either walked away from relatively unscathed, or missed becoming a statistic by a hair's breadth.

Call it the luck of the draw, synchronicity or maybe the universe still has need of my skills and abilities, such as they are, but it works for me. I was raised with a Christian background, call myself a pagan druid when pressed and generally observe the seasons and try to work within nature's framework. I enjoy my technology as well and try to minimize my carbon footprint.

On another forum, I have a mind exercise thread where one assumes that 'Thought', is an energy form. The forum is very quiet of late but for those who enjoy poking about in archives, they might find this thread of some interest.  http://www.toequest.com/forum/assume-tru...-form.html

(On that forum I am known as Labelwench.)

What, precisely, is a 'thought'?

I would suggest that it is a form of energy that the brain is able to manipulate, it's source being the fundamental substance or field that surrounds all.

All animals and plants likewise have access to this energy, and in the case of more advanced life forms, as an example domestic species, we can actually communicate, at a basic level, by means of this energy.

No hocus-pocus.

I don’t think so, Scheherazade. Thoughts are a series of signals in the brain. You’re using energy to pump ions across cell membranes in the neurons, but the thought itself is not energy.

I think people have the tendency to take an extreme view of the macroscopic world as an intergraded connected whole and combined it with the wacky stuff that happens at the atomic level. It doesn’t magically scale up, though. That would be hocus-pocus. I think that decoherence reduces quantum effects, making them too weak to demonstrate themselves in our macroscopic reality.

[Syne]

I don’t think so, Scheherazade. Thoughts are a series of signals in the brain. You’re using energy to pump ions across cell membranes in the neurons, but the thought itself is not energy.

I think people have the tendency to take an extreme view of the macroscopic world as an intergraded connected whole and combined it with the wacky stuff that happens at the atomic level. It doesn’t magically scale up, though. That would be hocus-pocus. I think that decoherence reduces quantum effects, making them too weak to demonstrate themselves in our macroscopic reality.

Or you can assume the oppose extreme, as you seem to have done here. It is a false dilemma that the only alternative to some quantum mysticism is total determinism. Thoughts being only signals in the brain does not explain how brains can rewire themselves through conscious choices in studies that prove neural plasticity.

Imagination is equivalent, in brain activity and development, to action. Neural plasticity probably accounts for the results of this thread MR posted: https://www.scivillage.com/thread-2875.h...ht=silence

Trying to explain neural plasticity through determinism is either circular reasoning or evidence of self-causation...which is counter to determinism.

So there must be some other factors, that don't necessarily include tapping into "the force".

[scheherazade]

The forum was for an assumption to be explored, Secular Sanity. I t certainly generated considerable discussion over time.

So now we are pioneering technologies that use brainwaves as input. Perhaps not precisely 'thought as an energy form' but not that far off.

Using brainwave commands and a wireless connected EEG headset, which was developed by Emotiv, the technology can now send a “thought message” to anyone via a push notification (in-app SMS).
Forsland explains, “So as our Smartstone is like a remote control for prose using touch gestures and motion gestures, we’ve now partnered with Emotiv who makes an EEG headset that can record brain wave patterns, and we can assign those brain wave patterns as commands for the app.”
Notably, the technology is able to recognize a number of different thought patterns, and the device can even recognize facial patterns, such as smiles, blinks, sideways glances, and so on.
In order to start on the system, individuals work with someone who is familiar with the technology, and they focus on one or two key commands. Once they have mastered sending those communications, they can advance and add a host of others. In this respect, Forsland notes, “It’s like going to the gym.” You get more adept and efficient as you continue to practice.

http://futurism.com/think-speak-headset-...rainwaves/

http://www.industrytap.com/mind-matter-u...ices/34216

[Image: 600x400xEEGSmart.jpg.pagespeed.ic.x7LXqXZJ9k.jpg]

[C C]

Back to the title of this thread, 'Guardian Angels', I do reflect upon the silly notion that there have been some very incredulous situations that I have either walked away from relatively unscathed, or missed becoming a statistic by a hair's breadth.

Call it the luck of the draw, synchronicity or maybe the universe still has need of my skills and abilities, such as they are, but it works for me. I was raised with a Christian background, call myself a pagan druid when pressed and generally observe the seasons and try to work within nature's framework. I enjoy my technology as well and try to minimize my carbon footprint.

On another forum, I have a mind exercise thread where one assumes that 'Thought', is an energy form. The forum is very quiet of late but for those who enjoy poking about in archives, they might find this thread of some interest.  http://www.toequest.com/forum/assume-tru...-form.html

(On that forum I am known as Labelwench.)

I understand that you mean this in the context of speculative recreations, thought experiments, etc.

But for those who literally do want their spiritual practices to reference something more than just therapeutic rituals and attitudes... Such does not have to be forced into a strained semblance of compatibility with the natural world or science's affairs and choice of descriptive furniture. People who today take that approach might be trying to avoid the supposed innate popularity of substance dualism [#5 footnote at bottom], but the attempt instead often results in accusations of engaging in pseudoscience. Or accusations of items of science being seized for ideas / purposes other than what they were intended for.

Earlier philosophers solved the problem of beliefs and science getting along with each other via a "conceptual dualism" which did not become fully apparent or identified as such till Kant came along [#1 to #4 below]. It's actually just switching Plato's dichotomy of a sensible manner of be-ing slash intellectual manner of be-ing from a presumed ontological context (worlds, substances, etc) to an epistemological context (or perhaps cognitive / hermeneutical to be more precise).

IOW, a transcendent perspective can house spiritual concerns (which are not shackled to a history of direct, supernatural interferences on Earth like the Bible is) as alternative interpretations of some events and experiences of the phenomenal perspective. While also either safely assimilating or abiding with the "shown" phenomenal reality which science investigates without disturbing / compromising the latter's internal story of "how it works" (how it explains itself).

Example: "I have no volition in the mechanistic, relational side or perspective which is called natural; but I do have volition on the noumenal, thing-in-itself side or perspective".

The believer can either assume a parallel correspondence between such dual sides or that "influences" from a transcendent level are being converted into the system of how the natural / phenomenal domain operates (ergo, no surprise there will always be a scientific explanation available). It can also be vaguely construed as an 18th century anticipation of the virtual reality of computer games of the future. Wherein the behavior of characters in the latter may seem confined appearance-wise to the rules of their game world; and yet they're also being controlled by "players" outside that internal system (the transcendent counterparts of themselves).  

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[#1] Kant: No doubt I, as represented by the internal sense in time [introspective thoughts], and objects in space outside me [extrospective world], are two specifically different [classifications of] phenomena. But they are not therefore [to be] conceived as different things [metaphysical substances]. The transcendental object, which forms the foundation of external phenomena, and the other, which forms the foundation of our internal intuition, is therefore neither matter, nor a thinking being by itself, but simply an unknown cause of [both types of] phenomena [manifestations] which supply to us the empirical concept of both. --Critique of Pure Reason, Müller translation; circa page 379

[#2] Kant: In mathematics and in natural philosophy [science, physics] human reason admits of limits but not of bounds, viz., that something indeed lies without it, at which it can never arrive, but not that it will at any point find completion in its internal progress [i.e., within experience or the psychological representations of existence]. The enlarging of our views in mathematics, and the possibility of new discoveries, are infinite; and the same is the case with the discovery of new properties of nature, of new powers and laws, by continued experience and its rational combination.[...] Natural science will never reveal to us the internal constitution of things, which though not appearance, yet can serve as the ultimate ground of explaining appearance. Nor does that science require this for its physical explanations. Nay even if such grounds should be offered from other sources (for instance, the influence of immaterial beings), they must be rejected and not used in the progress of its explanations. For these explanations must only be grounded upon that which as an object of sense can belong to experience, and be brought into connection with our actual perceptions and empirical laws. --Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics

In the quote above, "internal constitution of things" does not refer to body organs, atoms, etc -- as the latter would be more interdependent members of the sensible world. The expression instead refers to how their existence would be conceived in transcendent terms or as in themselves minus the spatiotemporal relationships of phenomenal reality. "Internal structure" expressions are still used today in analytic philosophy: Bradley Rives: "In terms of concepts, the claim is that the concept BACHELOR has the internal structure exhibited by ‘UNMARRIED ADULT MALE’, and the concept KILL has the internal structure exhibited by ‘CAUSE TO DIE’." --"Jerry Fodor"; IEP

It was the neo-Kantians (and arguably Ernst Mach's skeptical treatment of microphysical objects as "metaphysical" in his positivism) who in the later 19th century began mistakenly conflating Kant's "things in themselves" (the noumenal side of this conceptual, interpretative dualism) with some of the hypotheses in physics (like atomistic theories). IOW, they blatantly ignored the qualification of such assorted hypothetical entities as phenomena (due to the latter having locations and causal interactions via space / time, not to mention their very detection in experiments decades later).

[#3] Kant: But when all progress in the field of the supersensible has thus been denied to speculative reason, it is still open to us to enquire whether, in the practical knowledge of reason, data may not be found sufficient to determine reason's transcendent concept of the unconditioned, and so to enable us, in accordance with the wish of metaphysics, and by means of knowledge that is possible a priori, though only from a practical point of view, to pass beyond the limits of all possible experience. Speculative reason has thus at least made room for such an extension; and if it must at the same time leave it empty, yet none the less we are at liberty, indeed we are summoned, to take occupation of it, if we can, by practical data of reason. This attempt to alter the procedure which has hitherto prevailed in metaphysics, by completely revolutionising it [...] forms indeed the main purpose of this critique of pure speculative reason. It is a treatise on the method, not a system of the [...approach...] itself. But at the same time it marks out the whole plan of the [...approach...], both as regards its limits and as regards its entire internal structure. --CPR

[#4] Kant: But as will be shown, reason has, in respect of its practical employment, the right to postulate what in the field of mere speculation it can have no kind of right to assume without sufficient proof. For while all such assumptions do violence to [the principle of] completeness of speculation, that is a principle with which the practical interest is not at all concerned. In the practical sphere reason has rights of possession, of which it does not require to offer proof, and of which, in fact, it could not supply proof. The burden of proof accordingly rests upon the opponent. But since the latter knows just as little of the object under question, in trying to prove its non-existence, as does the former in maintaining its reality, it is evident that the former, who is asserting something as a practically necessary supposition, is at an advantage (melior est conditio possidentis). For he is at liberty to employ, as it were in self-defence, on behalf of his own good cause, the very same weapons that his opponent employs against that cause, that is, hypotheses. These are not intended to strengthen the proof of his position, but only to show that the opposing party has much too little understanding of the matter in dispute to allow of his flattering himself that he has the advantage in respect of speculative insight. Hypotheses are therefore, in the domain of pure reason, permissible only as weapons of war, and only for the purpose of defending a right, not in order to establish it. But the opposing party we must always look for in ourselves. For speculative reason in its transcendental employment is in itself dialectical; the objections which we have to fear lie in ourselves. We must seek them out, just as we would do in the case of claims that, while old, have never become superannuated, in order that by annulling them we may establish a permanent peace. --CPR

[#5] Paul Bloom: "Dualism and religion are not the same: You can be dualist without holding any other religious beliefs, and you can hold religious beliefs without being dualist. But they almost always go together. And some very popular religious views rest on a dualist foundation, such as the belief that people survive the destruction of their bodies. If you give up on dualism, this is what you lose. This is not small potatoes." --Natural Born Dualists https://www.edge.org/conversation/paul_b...n-dualists

[scheherazade]

Originally posted by C.C., attributed to Paul Bloom.

[#5] Paul Bloom: "Dualism and religion are not the same: You can be dualist without holding any other religious beliefs, and you can hold religious beliefs without being dualist. But they almost always go together. And some very popular religious views rest on a dualist foundation, such as the belief that people survive the destruction of their bodies. If you give up on dualism, this is what you lose. This is not small potatoes." --Natural Born Dualists https://www.edge.org/conversation/paul_b...n-dualists

I consider that existence is the ultimate irony, in that 'life' serves it's own purpose, to beget more life, either directly (procreation) or indirectly (community). For many years, I took up the mantle of wondering what life was all about, simply because that was what I was surrounded by in the thinking of others.

To contemplate that there could actually be no reason to strive for survival when circumstances are exceedingly difficult was almost unthinkable.

The ultimate cognitive bias may prove to be our own genetics, born wondering 'why' and not satisfied with 'how' when it comes to many questions as yet not conclusively answered.

"Be pious toward all the gods" therefore seems prudent, at least in the company of others. Besides, it allows more occasions for sharing in ceremonial feasting at regular intervals.