I don't care about understand versus not understand

I'm asking you, why the hell did we ever even think to ask about something that couldn't
possibly be experienced or observed?

why is water wet or an apple red? why does your car smell like garlic stuffed in a 9 week-old sweaty tube sock? 
garrett, you ask such silly questions. we are the way we are because we are, because we evolved to be this way. 
it gave us an evolutionary advantage over other primates, and here we are today. the human brain seeks new 
experiences, novelty, excitement, pleasure. boredom leads to obsession which leads to depression. this is the 
newest theory on why there are so many addictions. we're just wired this way.

and yes, i realize this debate too will go nowhere. i can't disprove the supposedly unprovable, ie anything that's 
faith-based. i'm merely stating my personal beliefs for why we are the way we are, ie explaining things in the 
creator-less reality paradigm.

you can smell garlic, you can feel water, you can't measure infinity with a yardstick,
stop watch, the eye, or basically any of your senses: taste, touch, smell, sight,
hearing--do any of them make any sense in grasping infinity?  It is purely abstract and,
as such, not something you really experience.

so I'm still waiting.

why is our IDEA of infinity not infinity experienced? what do you define as "experience" anyway?

experience...basically, to observe.  the idea of infinity is itself finite, as we cannot
fully grasp infinity.

intresting. you're basically defining "god" as a mathematical concept, and arguing that because we have the 
notion that, as 'finite" beings there must also be this "infinite" thing beyond us (once again proving my point 
about how we like to dichotomize things). 

whoa. I was in the wrong forum.

it's interesting how you just completely made up your entire point devoid of what I was
talking about.

Sure, you COULD say I was talking about God...but then you'd be ignoring the fact I was
talking about infinity--you know, the 8 that is on it's side?  I was talking about God
earlier, true, but this has come to be a different thing altogether as I have already
explained.

it's also interesting how you still haven't spoken any substantive truth or logic on the
matter of how human existence could first grasp infinity without purely abstract reason,
ie--NOT nature, not natural experience.

"it's interesting how you just completely made up your entire point devoid of what I was
talking about.

Sure, you COULD say I was talking about God...but then you'd be ignoring the fact I was
talking about infinity--you know, the 8 that is on it's side?  I was talking about God
earlier, true, but this has come to be a different thing altogether as I have already
explained."

<sarcasm> well thanks for clarifying it oh-so well in an earlier post. </sarcasm>

"it's also interesting how you still haven't spoken any substantive truth or logic on the
matter of how human existence could first grasp infinity without purely abstract reason,
ie--NOT nature, not natural experience."

i have no idea what you're getting at here either. first off, how is infinity "NOT nature" or "natural experience???" 
how do you know the universe isn't infinite? is the universe not natural then? and again, what do you mean by 
"grasp infinity???" do we ever truly completely understand anything, or do our brains just pretend like we do? 
perhaps all thought is subjective. now i told you our brains are wired to give us the ability to find commonalities 
between different things for the benefit of our survival. is this not "abstract reasoning?" if not, what is? i totally 
don't "grasp" how what i stated is so far removed from what you're talking about. but even with limited 
"abstract reasoning" we could get by just as other animals do. we can "grasp" abstract ideas with examples. that 
is where we get our inspiration from. e.g.: you frequent a message board. you post a shitload of posts while 
debating totally worthless things with another member. this increases your post-count by about 1000 in the 
course of one week. you wonder what it would be like if you could keep the debate going forever (and that's 
what it's felt like...). aha! "infinity!"... but you know what? if you want to nitpick semantics, go for it. just because 
you don't understand my opinion doesn't make it any less devoid of "truth or logic."

"i have no idea what you're getting at here either. first off, how is infinity 'NOT
nature' or 'natural experience???'"

when was the last time you lived forever to observe it taking place?  So...yeah, that's how.

Unless you have lived forever, what makes you think than anything else does?  So, maybe a
house can stand for a long time, but it needs to be fixed.  So, if anything, something
might last a LONG time, but things lasting a long time is no reason to even consider
infinity when you speak of what you actually experience.

"how do you know the universe isn't infinite? is the universe not natural then? and again,
what do you mean by 
'grasp infinity???'"

I don't know if the universe is infinite, that's my point, thank you--you can prove me
wrong by telling me how you've lived forever and know it to be true if you want.

By grasp infinity, I mean the concept thereof.  I mean, you come to terms with this
completely revolutionary, completely unexperienced and unnatural idea that something might
live forever, that a road could stretch on to infinity, or whatever...there are a great
number of differnt things...like a circle--you can trace a circle around and around for a
really long time, but no matter how big the number it is you get to, you've no experience
of it being infinite--you would need to live forever for you to know.

so we don't really know/understand infinity, we grasp a concept of it.  that is what I mean.

"do we ever truly completely understand anything, or do our brains just pretend like we do?"

Yes, I truly and completely understand that I exist.  Therefore absolute truth must also
exist--one does not exist without the other with respect to me, nor could it.

"perhaps all thought is subjective"

no, I just proved that wrong.

"now i told you our brains are wired to give us the ability to find commonalities 
between different things for the benefit of our survival. is this not 'abstract
reasoning?' if not, what is?"

well, a bell ringing and food dropping into a pan are very different things.  yet dogs
associate the commonality of the events being tied together if they happen frequently
enough for the benefit of their survival.  Are you saying that dogs are deep, abstract
thinkers?  Basically, recognition of patterns only takes time and effort.  Parrots
recognize speech patterns, gorillas can recognize character patterns, all sorts of things
under the sun.  There are lots of stories of the amazing intelligence of animals, when it
really involves the appearance of intelligence through a much more simple yet effective
means of pattern recognition.

abstract reasoning is the ability to perceive things beyond our existence through thought.
 like the creation of the universe.  no matter how it happened, it happened, and yet we
consider it quite often...were we there when it happened?  did we exist before existence
did?  Yet we still grasp the ways and means of saying...yeah, I think this is the way it
went and here as some things that I have experienced that lead me to believe it.

abstract reasoning is completely, utterly, amazing.

Well, again...of course you can experience some things that "inspire" you to jump to other
conclusions.  Think of those events as sparks.  Each time you look at a pendulum and
think...hmm, it has been swinging on a fairly frictionless path for a while now...but it
is gradually slowing down.

boom, there is a spark.  that spark will do nothing without "not" nature, "super" nature,
the abstract, whatever you want to call it.  without the ability to actually process that
thought and realize the shocking, much more significant question past "how long will it
swing for?" is "what if it kept swinging and never stopped?"

I don't think you realize just how crazy it is--we have no reason or experience that
supports the idea of things always being.  We haven't always been, we don't have
experience of something always being except with respect to ourselves (or, if you want to
include, some others).  Keep in mind, you don't always exist...so something always
existing while you exist for a few short years is meaningless.  You can tack a lot of
years onto it, but it won't come close to infinity.

We have no sane reason to just assume infinity in a situation like that...abstract
reasoning is the fuel for the spark to ignite.

"when was the last time you lived forever to observe it taking place?  So...yeah, that's how."

really now, must you live something to understand it? do you live atoms? do you live the number 0? do you live 
amyloidosis? do you live macroeconomics? how is infinity any different?

"so we don't really know/understand infinity, we grasp a concept of it.  that is what I mean."

well duh. i claim our entire consciousness is merely grasping concepts through associations. EVERYTHING is 
filtered through our neurons and turned into stuff we can respond to... so what's your point? all you seem to be 
doing is asking me for my beliefs and refuting them.

"Yes, I truly and completely understand that I exist.  Therefore absolute truth must also
exist--one does not exist without the other with respect to me, nor could it."

OOOOOOR the "absolute truth" that you exist exists and nothing more.

"well, a bell ringing and food dropping into a pan are very different things.  yet dogs
associate the commonality of the events being tied together if they happen frequently
enough for the benefit of their survival.  Are you saying that dogs are deep, abstract
thinkers?  Basically, recognition of patterns only takes time and effort.  Parrots
recognize speech patterns, gorillas can recognize character patterns, all sorts of things
under the sun.  There are lots of stories of the amazing intelligence of animals, when it
really involves the appearance of intelligence through a much more simple yet effective
means of pattern recognition."

so who's to say we're not just recognizing patterns of our own? c'mon now. you haven't disproven me anything.

"I don't think you realize just how crazy it is--we have no reason or experience that
supports the idea of things always being.  We haven't always been, we don't have"

whoa now. how do you know for sure we haven't always been? not to say i believe in a "soul" or anything, but i 
can just as easily assert that we have existed forever, that the universe has existed forever, as you claim that we 
have no reason to not be able to understand a mathematical concept. science has observed subatomic particles 
going in and out of "existence." perhaps they don't go in and out of "existence," but merely appear to to the 
best of our understanding. perhaps death and this whole freakin' crazy universe just isn't what it seems because 
our minds are limited. 

and i'm still failing to see where you're getting at with all this. so woop dee doo. you are personally amazed by 
the concept of infinity. i guess that's cause worthy enough to ruin jeremy enigk's thread. :)

Once again, I must just mention that-

Garrett. Not believing in a higher power does not equal Science only. Science itself 
aknolwedges the fact that there is an Infinite number of things we do not know and may 
never know, but science is a progress and hopes to discover these things. Science and 
human knowledge is tiny and small and possibly all wrong, but does it matter?

To believe in a higher power, in my opinion, makes it even worse. You say "Yup, I am 
ignorant and science can't tell me, so I'm just going to say the word God and claim I 
understand or make sense or can now feel as if I know the secrets of the universe."

It's just giving human ignorance an excuse.

I don't believe in a higher power, I also do not much belive in what science has to say. 
I know I can't completely understand infinity. I also know that saying God or a higher 
power is the reason for this world and that he is to look for for answers and to 
understand things is just silly. As what will then explain where this Higher Power came 
from? How did he sprout of out nothingnness and decide to create a universe? There's far 
more holes in religion than there ever will be in science.

If you would like to know why humans can think of things that we will never understand, 
like love, or infinity, or whatever, there are several books I could probably recommend 
pertaining to the evolution of the human mind and the reasons behind our psychology. 

-Seven

just one thing...

Jeremy Enigk is God....
yes he is..

L

"really now, must you live something to understand it? do you live atoms? do you live the
number 0? do you live amyloidosis? do you live macroeconomics? how is infinity any different?"

no, you don't.  nor was it my point.  you can understand finite things with finite minds
by experiencing and interacting with them.  infinity is different in that the only way you
can interact with it and know is to be infinite AND conscious of it.  so maybe you have
existed forever Pinar, but you weren't conscious of it.

"all you seem to be doing is asking me for my beliefs and refuting them"

except we don't associate with infinity with anything, only a concept of infinity.

"OOOOOOR the 'absolute truth' that you exist exists and nothing more."

I am conscious and know that for certain.  I understand that I am my own being.  I have my
own thoughts.  I know that I exist, that statement is true without any doubt, nor could
ther ever be any doubt to the fact.  That requires absolute truth.  So, like I said, I
understand that I exist and absolute truth also exists.

"so who's to say we're not just recognizing patterns of our own? c'mon now. you haven't
disproven me anything."

infinity isn't a pattern.

"i guess that's cause worthy enough to ruin jeremy enigk's thread. "

yes, because this thread was on the fast track to unraveling all of Jeremy Enigk's
deepest, darkest secrets and I was the first one to post off topic in that regard. DAMN! 
If only you had told me that EARLIER...wow, I never knew.

The point that you felt doesn't exist is that certain people seem to believe that there
exists only the natural world and nothing else...basically there was a whole stink about
existence, experience, and whether or not super nature exists.

" Not believing in a higher power does not equal Science only."

when did I say it DID?

"Science and human knowledge is tiny and small and possibly all wrong, but does it matter?"

yes.  science is based on philosophical ASSUMPTIONS.  the only thing that you know for
certain is that you exist, and the only person you can prove that to with completely
factual evidence is yourself.  Everything else is assumed.  

For those of you who don't like assumed, you can substituted accepted in trust, accepted
by faith, or something similar...b/c that is what it is.

"To believe in a higher power, in my opinion, makes it even worse. You say 'Yup, I am 
ignorant and science can't tell me, so I'm just going to say the word God and claim I 
understand or make sense or can now feel as if I know the secrets of the universe.'"

oh, so you mean other than the huge emphasis that there is on learning and understanding
with respect to beliefs.  like the fact that by merely working at a private catholic
college can allow you free tuition to take classes called calculus and biology...I think
they call them God Numbers and God Animal Stuff though...b/c of course they have no idea
what science really is b/c they just say "God" as their answer for everything and it's
always right.

You're so prejudiced I balk at your thoughts.

"It's just giving human ignorance an excuse."

yes, b/c that is what I said.  or maybe I was making a logical argument based on the fact
that all human understanding (save very, very little) revolves around philosophical
statments which rely on faith and trust.  we have to place faith in our senses not
deceiving us or being deceived by outside forces beyond our control (allegory of the cave,
for instance...uh...hello?)

So yes, go back and tell Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle how much they accept ignorance and
encourage claiming God as an answer to everything.  They're basically what my entire
argument is based on.

"There's far more holes in religion than there ever will be in science."

science is a religion.  the sooner you realize that, the sooner you will be to actually
understanding anything.  you accet practically everything you know by what you sense,
which you cannot be certain of.  you just like to think you are certain of them, but your
senses can and do deceive you.

science and philosophy may say "God is dead" all it wants, all they do is simply take the
throne they have only just as much a right to occupy.

"no, you don't.  nor was it my point.  you can understand finite things with finite minds
by experiencing and interacting with them.  infinity is different in that the only way you
can interact with it and know is to be infinite AND conscious of it.  so maybe you have
existed forever Pinar, but you weren't conscious of it."

prove that last statement. i don't remember 75% of my childhood. was i not conscious then? did i not exist then? 
also, this argument is just getting lame. you still haven't disproven my points. first off, "infinity" IS just a 
mathematical concept, so of course we're only going to interact with it at that level. but even were it somehow 
not just a concept (first off, what would it be? and secondly...), we interact with EVERYTHING on the level of 
concepts (everything goes through our brains, duh). but you know what? even were the universe the epitome of 
"infinity," we still interact with PARTS of that "infinity," and that in and of itself can give us awareness of it. much 
as i don't need to interact with every dog in the world to understand what a dog is, i can understand what part 
of infinity is and go from there.


"I am conscious and know that for certain.  I understand that I am my own being.  I have my
own thoughts.  I know that I exist, that statement is true without any doubt, nor could
ther ever be any doubt to the fact.  That requires absolute truth.  So, like I said, I
understand that I exist and absolute truth also exists."

again, you only understand that the "absolute truth" that you yourself are thinking you exist EXISTS. nothing 
more beyond that can be proven without any doubt. that's the wonderful catch of science. unlike mathematics, 
one can only disprove things through science. the rest is probability and statistics.


"infinity isn't a pattern."

how can you know? apparently garrett understand infinity, everyone!


"yes, because this thread was on the fast track to unraveling all of Jeremy Enigk's
deepest, darkest secrets and I was the first one to post off topic in that regard. DAMN! 
If only you had told me that EARLIER...wow, I never knew."

jeremy's sooooo gonna kick your ass right now. as someone mentioned, jeremy enigk is god... 

i got bored about halfway through so i dont know if you guys came to any conclusion but
suicide should be legal.

word.

pinar, you may have been conscious as a child, I don't know--you tell me.  Were you?  Do
you remember being conscious?  My point is if you weren't aware of it and you don't
remember, then you don't know.  So, were you aware, did you know?  My point still stands.

"again, you only understand that the 'absolute truth' that you yourself are thinking you
exist EXISTS"

ok...consider for the sake of argument that you are an omniscient observer outside of
existence.  Within existence there is only one thing, an apple.  So out of everything that
could exist, that apple exists.  As soon as a statement that is evaluated true/false can
be made, Absolute Truth...as in, objective and definite...must also exist.

So realistically, even if nothing exists, the truth of nothing existing still holds.

So, if I even THINK that I exist, that means I must be conscious and aware, where-ever my
thoughts may come from (whether this body, an alternate universe, aliens from outer
space), the point is that I control them and that they're coming from somewhere.  I exist
somewhere in some form.  Where and in what form do not matter.  

garrett - way too cartesian here buddy. thought has progressed several thousand years 
past 'cogito ergo sum'. you rely too much on the nature of language for your arguments, 
and it is in precisely this arena of discussion (infinity, and other metaphysical 
discussions) where our language just isn't equipped to acurately describe that of which 
we speak. things like 'say some observer WAS outside of existence' break down in 
fundamental meaning because to say something WAS (therefore it existed) outside the 
scope of 'existence' just doesn't work. it's not possible unless there is some Thing 
that isn't subject to the laws of the universe (which i believe there is).

pinar - infinity, like many other things, is only a concept. we can grasp the concept, 
but the concept only vaguely alludes to the Thing Itself, which we cannot grasp under 
the current conditions of our thinking. we will never turly understand 'infinity'. we 
recognize it as a concept, and we talk about it in vague general terms. but we can never 
accurately describe infinity, or experience it (like garrett said). so, in that regard, 
yes - there are many things which we THINK we understand, but about which we only have 
the faintest of notions. we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we can think our 
way to infinite knowledge (have fun with that one!).

garrett - way too cartesian here buddy. thought has progressed several thousand years 
past 'cogito ergo sum'. you rely too much on the nature of language for your arguments, 
and it is in precisely this arena of discussion (infinity, and other metaphysical 
discussions) where our language just isn't equipped to acurately describe that of which 
we speak. things like 'say some observer WAS outside of existence' break down in 
fundamental meaning because to say something WAS (therefore it existed) outside the 
scope of 'existence' just doesn't work. it's not possible unless there is some Thing 
that isn't subject to the laws of the universe (which i believe there is).

pinar - infinity, like many other things, is only a concept. we can grasp the concept, 
but the concept only vaguely alludes to the Thing Itself, which we cannot grasp under 
the current conditions of our thinking. we will never turly understand 'infinity'. we 
recognize it as a concept, and we talk about it in vague general terms. but we can never 
accurately describe infinity, or experience it (like garrett said). so, in that regard, 
yes - there are many things which we THINK we understand, but about which we only have 
the faintest of notions. we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we can think our 
way to infinite knowledge (have fun with that one!).

"pinar - infinity, like many other things, is only a concept. we can grasp the concept, 
but the concept only vaguely alludes to the Thing Itself, which we cannot grasp under 
the current conditions of our thinking. we will never turly understand 'infinity'. we 
recognize it as a concept, and we talk about it in vague general terms. but we can never 
accurately describe infinity, or experience it (like garrett said). so, in that regard, 
yes - there are many things which we THINK we understand, but about which we only have 
the faintest of notions. we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we can think our 
way to infinite knowledge (have fun with that one!)."

ugh. this stopped being fun hundreds of posts ago so i stopped replying. i never said we totally understand 
infinity. my stance is that we don't completely understand ANYthing (EVERYTHING is a concept) beause it has to 
go through our brains for it to be processed and make sense, thus rendering our vision of reality to be very 
subjective. garrett has problems with this it seems, as he believes in an "absolute truth" of some sort, whatever 
that means, regardless of what our brains may lead us on to believe. philosophy was always a pain in my ass for 
this very reason: it so frequently boils down to semantics. it's a headache i wisely chose to avoid during college.

well you could say that as life in our experience, is ultimately undefined...and how this 
stems from the universe being infinite. i feel there are plenty of ways you can do this. 
you could say that there are ends to the universe...but the you can't think of it like 
that becuase the universe is finite as it is expanding infinitely so. so as there are 
walls...they're always moving/expanding so they aren't walls at the same time...??? i 
dont know...it's a paradox.

the experienced universe as infinity experienced...i understand where you're coming from 
as we're only experiencing a glimpse of infinity. but because of this i want to say that 
we both know and don't know infinity. a paradox.

throwing infinity into the abstract thought bin is a tough argument when you're saying 
it's inexperience that puts it there. i just think it is and it isn't.

i'm working on a spiritual book about all this called whateverism...jk.

actually alot of the ideas in my last post were kind of addressed already. whoops.

about infinity...

i can't escape the idea of plato's cave. where the light is coming in from behind...we 
never see the 'thing' itself...but only shadows. i've always thought that was a good 
analogy for the what is/isn't concept/rhetoric discussion.

or your smart ass remarks. keep 'em coming!




jk

"you frequent a message board. you post a shitload of posts while debating totally worthless things with 
another member. this increases your post-count by about 1000 in the course of one week. you wonder what it 
would be like if you could keep the debate going forever (and that's what it's felt like...). aha! 'infinity!'"

you guys have ruined the first semi-serious discussion i've taken part in...in a loooong 
time.

although i like rambling about stuff like this...why the hell is it in mr. enigk's 
thread again? that's probably the funniest angle about this whole thing.