(January 8, 2015 at 5:08 pm)Spacedog Wrote:Sorry for not being clear. What I mean is, given the idea that the future of the Universe was predetermined, in the sense that the results of the world we experience were implicit in nature's laws, from the very beginning, could it ever be logical to infer, given "mind" and it's associative concepts such as "intelligence," "truth," "good," "evil," teleology, such that human beings are parts in a whole that was initiated to achieve some ends? I tend to think it vacuous to confuse the whole of predetermined events with purposes and intelligentsia borne out of them (such as us), and then to conclude that purpose and intelligence must have been present, even virtually, in the fundamental constituents of existence; or as Samuel Taylor Coleridge said: “Assume the existence of God,---and then the harmony and fitness of the physical creation may be shown to correspond with and support such an assumption;---but to set about proving the existence of God by such means is a mere circle, a delusion." Yet if I was inclined to be a deist I would probably consider this realization of predeterminism to at least make inference of something like a supreme unity of mind and matter a logical speculation. Just curious about your thoughts on this; if you find that such a fact eliminates "chance" from the oft-referred mantra "chance and necessity," and if beings were predetermined to contemplate something like a supreme mind or being, if that lends any credit or force to teleological arguments.(January 7, 2015 at 10:00 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Do you think it can be seen as suggestive, as theists would probably argue, that properties of mind, or our concepts such as "truth" and "morality," have a metaphysical basis that is more fundamental in the grand scheme of things, i.e. the structure of reality, the fabric of the cosmos, the cement of the universe? Or is that, as some say (I think rightly), a meaningless question?
I apologise for being slow, I'm going to have to try and clarify your question...
Do you mean - do I think that a deterministic universe suggests that products of the human mind are more fundamentally real than physical objects?
If that was the question, I wouldn't say that products of the mind like morality were more fundamental than the more obvious aspects of reality that you can pick up and hold in your hand; I would say they were equally as real because they are part of the same system.
This does of course then lead me to have to accept that a man who has conversations with his left shoe is experiencing no less real a form of reality than myself... hmmmm. I guess Stephen Hawking's goldfish bowl analogy could be relevant here:
"A few years ago the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved goldfish bowls. The measure's sponsor explained the measure in part by saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality? Might not we ourselves also be inside some big goldfish bowl and have our vision distorted by an enormous lens? The goldfish's picture of reality is different from ours, but can we be sure it is less real?"
I won't go on until you reassure me that I'm answering the right question anyhow!
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza