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philosophy (pg. 5)
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| D-res |
| quote: | Originally posted by Spirit5
something had to have sparked the big bang, and something had to have existed before the big bang, whether it was another Universe, or something else completely. |
stephen hawking, arguably one of the most brilliant scientific minds... ever, opened me up to this idea of, rather than the big bang, which, while supported by many scientists, i think its kinda of an easy way out, of a constant cycle of "big bangs." i'm not sure who came up with the theory, whether it was hawking or simply something he wrote about in his more famous books. he said instead of a one big bang that started it all, its really a big cycle wherein the universe constantly expands for billions and billions of years and as stars begin dying and black holes form, they grow bigger and more powerful and the whole universe eventually almost implodes on itself and is sucked down into tiny molecules or even one molecule, and there is so much energy in that molecule that it explodes and the cycle starts all over. i didnt explain it in great detail as i've only read the basis of the theory, but i think that almost seems more probable than a single big bang. then again we're almost jumping into physics and astronomy now and moving away from philosophy. none the less, i like the idea |
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| Spirit5 |
| quote: | Originally posted by D-res
stephen hawking, arguably one of the most brilliant scientific minds... ever, opened me up to this idea of, rather than the big bang, which, while supported by many scientists, i think its kinda of an easy way out, of a constant cycle of "big bangs." i'm not sure who came up with the theory, whether it was hawking or simply something he wrote about in his more famous books. he said instead of a one big bang that started it all, its really a big cycle wherein the universe constantly expands for billions and billions of years and as stars begin dying and black holes form, they grow bigger and more powerful and the whole universe eventually almost implodes on itself and is sucked down into tiny molecules or even one molecule, and there is so much energy in that molecule that it explodes and the cycle starts all over. i didnt explain it in great detail as i've only read the basis of the theory, but i think that almost seems more probable than a single big bang. then again we're almost jumping into physics and astronomy now and moving away from philosophy. none the less, i like the idea |
I like the idea too that your talking about, and I've read about it as well. However, what controls all of these big bangs? This is a theory as well, we have no strong evidence for it yet. I belive in String Theory and M-Theory, so I think there are many universes and dimensions out there (12 dimensions actually) and that somewhere along the lines, there's got to be some FORCE controlling these things, some type of cosmic order. I don't think happen just because, there's got to be some purpose, some underlying thing that is controlling these big bangs. It is very possible there was another universe before our own, and that universe probably did implode on itself and then our universe was formed. It could be what M-Theory believes that there are these other universe or branes, that hit each other, and thus causes these big bangs to happen, again though we don't know this for sure. There has to have been something outside of these branes as well, something would have had to create them.
I guess I picture it this way. The universe is like a painting, reality in itself is a painting. We are both the painters and the characters in the picture. Or another metaphor (a famous one) would be that we are characters in our own play or own novel. We control the outcome of our lives, we have freedom of action to do certain things. But there are things that aren't always free, true free will doesn't exist IMO. If free will did exist, then we would literally be able to do whatever we wanted to and there would be no orderliness to the universe. There must be SOMETHING out there that controls some type of order within the universe. It is not something pulling at strings, rather it is like a plan set out by SOMETHING, and we follow out that plan to the best of our ability. I don't know if this cosmic order is God, but you can't deny that there is some type of oderliness to the universe, that there's laws, but thats not to say those laws can't be broken ever. Again we are only at an elementary level of our understanding, well close to intermediate, but it's going to take many many years until we can start to understand what this order is, and why things are the way they are. |
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| Epicurus |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
That first part is incidental. I'm willing to concede to you that it may have used in a different context to the one we're discussing here, but it was the second part that I was interested in. I'm not sure that there's anything ambiguous or context specific about the sentence "[Existentialism] declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view". As I said, given this sentence alone (to say nothing of the rest of the body of Sartre's work that I am familiar with) I would disagree with your claim that "it does indeed matter whether God exists or not to an existentialist atheist".
But man does not have this option anyway, regardless of whether God exists or not. To invoke God as an absolute subject, as an absolute instance of "the Other" (rendering the self, therefore, an object of judgement) is to engage in "bad faith". If we are, as Sartre says, an instance of "Being for-itself", then we can not ever inherently be "good" or "rational", because "Being for-itself" is man's inexorable condition of constantly "becoming", without ever actually "being". Therefore, to invoke God as a "reason" for one's "goodness" or "rationality" is to misunderstand the nature of human consciousness by rendering it as "Being for-itself" (that is, a fixed object) rather than "Being for-itself" (that is, a transcendental subject). Given this, in the context of Sartre's philosophy, invoking God as a means of escaping one's anguish at being confronted with absolute "freedom" is an instance of "bad faith" in the sense that it is a consciously futile attempt to escape the inescapable. If this freedom - which is central to Sartre's theory of consciousness - actually is inescapable, then invoking God will not change in the slightest the reality of our existence.
(The only way that the introduction of God would change Sartre's philosophy, is if such an introduction were to eliminate the possibility of free-will. Given that I'm not familiar with any religion which states that God does not permit the possibility of free-choice in his subjects, I'm not sure that this is an issue.)
Again, the existence of God would make no difference in the context of Sartre's ethics. Man is still condemned to choose for himself (and - by extension - for all men) whether we invoke the existence of a God or not.
I'm not sure if this was an implication that I'm not familiar with Sartre outside of that essay I quoted, but I can assure you that I am familiar with Sartre's philosophy and that is precisely why I feel that - given what I have read both by and about Sartre - I can state authoritatively, that while Sartre was sometimes "concerned" with the issue of God (again, only to the extent that he sometimes contrasted his own ideas with the religious perspective) it is ultimately inconsequential, in the context of determining the veracity or applicative scope of his ideas. As Sartre himself put it with regards to atheistic existentialism, "even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view".
Also, when I say that Sartre often contrasted his theory against the religious perspective, I do so with the understanding that, as an atheist, Sartre was often necessarily going to have to define his ideas in the context of God's absense. So long as there was a dominant train of though that suggested God existed and that Sartre's ideas were deemed to be antithetical to that train of thought, then Sartre was going to have to address it.
To quote from Being and Nothingness (Conclusion, p.792):
So, as Sartre says, the "ideal synthesis" (i.e. that of God) is always indicated (either by the human apprehension of the state of the world, or merely by others - Sartre isn't clear here, but it amounts to the same thing) and, as such, Sartre's theory may therefore look like an attempt to "disintegrate" this synthetic union of the "for-itself and the in-itself" (Sartre's conception of the nature of God) and as such, Sartre has to justify on what grounds he can "disintegrate" this union within his philosophy. Sartre's point, however, is that he didn't "disintigrate" any synthesis at all, as there was never a synthesis there to begin with. Therefore, it's not as though he is defining his stance on opposition to the theory of God (in which case the existence of God would matter) but rather he defines his stance independently from and in the complete absense of any "possible" theory of God.
Throughout the entirity of Being and Nothingness, there are plenty of little asides about God like this, but they are never central to his argument, nor are they used as examples of antitheses that could make or break his philosophy depending on their veracity. If Sartre defines himself as an "atheist", then some aspect of his philosophy is necessarily going to be defined in opposition to "theism" (as that is, after all, what atheism is) but there is no aspect of his philosophy that is dependent on the assumption of the non-existence of God, hence my continuing assertion that - to Sartre - the existence of God really doesn't "matter" to his philosophy.
So Sartre's essay about his own philosophy is "too condensed" and too geared towards the "layman" to avoid possible "misinterpretations" of his said philosophy, but two pages from a book entitled "The History of Philosophy" is complete enough to stand as an authoritative exposition of Sartre's ideas? Vous sérieux, mon ami? :p
From the bolded part:
Let us, then, presume that there is a God who has a "fore odained divine plan", a "common ideal of human nature" and who promulgates "ethical norms". Presuming that this God does not choose to impinge on human free-will (and that, therefore, Sartre's conception of humanity as a "Being for-itself" remains valid) how does this in any way change man's cirumstances as a being-in-the-world that is both condemned and responsible to choose "for itself"? Of course, if God were to be revealed, along with these said expectations he has for humanity, some (probably most) will decide to "appeal" to him as a reason for deceiving themselves into believing that they have anything but absolute free-choice. But how is that any different, in the context of Sartrian existentialism, from appealing to any other authority (be it religion, another human being, a letter box, or anything else) as justification for the abdication of his responsibility? How does the positing of an "absolute other" in any way change the nature of man as a "being for-itself"?
Sartre even addresses this in Being and Nothingness (Part Three, Chapter One IV, p. 385):
In other words, if we accept the existence of God and then "hypostasize" our existence as "Being in-itself" rather than "For itself", then we are indulging in mauvais fois by defining ourselves as a type of object, in deference to our relation to some "outside" instance of "the Other". Therefore, even if God does exist, defining ourselves in relation to him would, for Sartre, still be an inauthentic mode of existence, meaning - yet again - that nothing is changed whether or not God actually exists. In all cases, man is still free and man is not a fixed object.
Yes, most enlightening. |
Did you really have to breakout Being and Nothingness :p I had put it away years ago on my shelf, hoping to never have to use it again. Needless to say, I almost choked from the dust that was gathered on it when I opened it up again. Anyway, as much as I would love to debate this to death, I can't do your post justice without it consuming most of my afternoon, time I unfortunately cannot spare now or in the near future. I should probably learn to keep my comments to myself if I cannot make time to defend them, but I assumed this being the COR, it would not make much of a difference either way. I was clearly wrong :p At any rate, I'll briefly comment about certain issues before having to adjourn our discussion.
I personally believe that Sartre's philosophy is full of contradictions in general, and is rather inconsistent. At certain points he states that the existence of God does not matter, while at others, he claims that his project is to logically deduce the full consequences of his atheism, thus clearly making the issue of God the foundational head upon which most of his theory is built on.
My understanding of Sartre can be summed up as follows: if God exists, then man would not be free. Thus, if God exists, his entire ethics would be thrown into chaos. I understand that most religions do not deny the concept of free will, but Sartre, to me, seems to have completely disagreed with this point. In other words, he did not believe that the existence of God and free will were compatible. Since I really don't have time to get into this, I'll simply refer you to the following site (Click here and here) that does a decent job of explaining the dichotomy between God and freedom in the Sartrian sense.
Before you criticize me unfairly for presenting this site or any other second hand source as an "authoritative" exposition of Sartre's main philosophy (since clearly, my purpose was/is not to do so but simply to present a perspective that is already written up that I happen to agree with), note that this is merely a reflection of my opinions stated by others whom I happen to agree with for the most part, and which I make use because I have no time to transcribe in any thoughtful or comprehensive manner my exact position.
At any rate, I'm sure we'll get back into this at some later point in time. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by D-res
stephen hawking, arguably one of the most brilliant scientific minds... ever, opened me up to this idea of, rather than the big bang, which, while supported by many scientists, i think its kinda of an easy way out, of a constant cycle of "big bangs." i'm not sure who came up with the theory, whether it was hawking or simply something he wrote about in his more famous books. he said instead of a one big bang that started it all, its really a big cycle wherein the universe constantly expands for billions and billions of years and as stars begin dying and black holes form, they grow bigger and more powerful and the whole universe eventually almost implodes on itself and is sucked down into tiny molecules or even one molecule, and there is so much energy in that molecule that it explodes and the cycle starts all over. i didnt explain it in great detail as i've only read the basis of the theory, but i think that almost seems more probable than a single big bang. then again we're almost jumping into physics and astronomy now and moving away from philosophy. none the less, i like the idea |
I believe what you’re referring to is the big crunch. It’s a “neat” theory in the sense that it implies infinite existence of mass whether you go back or forward in time. Unfortunately the evidence seems to suggest that it’s not going to happen. Evidence provided by cepheid variable stars (stars that are very bright, oscillate, and send out x-ray bursts like a lighthouse), supernovae, and a mapping of the cosmic microwave background all seem to indicate that the universe is accelerating and it does not have enough critical mass to slow down the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. This of course assumes that dark energy is a cosmological constant, which it might very well not be. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by Spirit5
I like the idea too that your talking about, and I've read about it as well. However, what controls all of these big bangs? This is a theory as well, we have no strong evidence for it yet. I belive in String Theory and M-Theory, so I think there are many universes and dimensions out there (12 dimensions actually) and that somewhere along the lines, there's got to be some FORCE controlling these things, some type of cosmic order. |
That's easy:
Strong nuclear force, electromagnetic force, weak nuclear force, and gravitational force.
:p |
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| Spirit5 |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
That's easy:
Strong nuclear force, electromagnetic force, weak nuclear force, and gravitational force.
:p |
Ok then what created these forces? What controls these forces? sorry I'm not a physics major or have read that much about it, or taken many classes (other than 8th grade Physical Science class). I've read a few stuff on String and M-Theory and own the PBS-Nova special on Brian Greene's "The Elegent Universe", but i'm not that great with physical science or math (i'm an english and social sciences type of person, my main academic interests are psychology and philosophy, majoring in pscyhology, minoring ih philosophy). |
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| Mr. Pink |
You know, as much as I went to a liberal arts university, studying communications, english, history, and philosophy....
I don't want to enter the conversation........your POV's are enough for one day of reading ;)
i must say, this thread is swell. Keep it up:tongue2 |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by Spirit5
Ok then what created these forces? What controls these forces? sorry I'm not a physics major or have read that much about it, or taken many classes (other than 8th grade Physical Science class). I've read a few stuff on String and M-Theory and own the PBS-Nova special on Brian Greene's "The Elegent Universe", but i'm not that great with physical science or math (i'm an english and social sciences type of person, my main academic interests are psychology and philosophy, majoring in pscyhology, minoring ih philosophy). |
Well this should explain everything:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ticle_chart.jpg
Just kidding. Your question is what phsyicists struggle with every day in the hopes of making a breakthrough to win the nobel prize. I know that electromagnetic force, weak nuclear force, and strong nuclear force can be explained by the properties and interactions of sub-atomic particles such as gluons, nouons, quarks, etc. My understanding of the fundamentals only goes down to the fundamental forces, however. Any deeper than that and I would need a phd. Gravity is still something of a mystery. Some postulate it's a field caused by gravitons, while others say that it's not caused or controlled by anything but is a property of the effect mass has on the curvature of spacetime. Therefore the "force" that keeps us planted on Earth is in fact not a field but rather how our mass and the Earth's mass interact together in spacetime. |
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| Renegade |
| quote: | Originally posted by Epicurus
Did you really have to breakout Being and Nothingness :p |
Haha come on. Surely you didn't expect me to post in a philosophy thread and not go stupidly overboard? :p
| quote: | | I personally believe that Sartre's philosophy is full of contradictions in general, and is rather inconsistent. At certain points he states that the existence of God does not matter, while at others, he claims that his project is to logically deduce the full consequences of his atheism, thus clearly making the issue of God the foundational head upon which most of his theory is built on. |
I don't agree with you about his philosophy necessarily being "contradictory" or "inconsistent" but I'd be lying to you if I said I agreed with everything he said. Basically, his moral position (concerning freedom and responsibility) is something I find useful and is a position that I feel makes a lot of sense, but his "phenomenological ontology" is something that, frankly, I could take or leave. All that "we are Nothing" stuff makes my eyes glaze over whenever I try to understand it.
Since I've got it out and dusted all the cobwebs off it though, I might give Being and Nothingness another go and see if makes any more sense a few years on.
| quote: | | My understanding of Sartre can be summed up as follows: if God exists, then man would not be free. Thus, if God exists, his entire ethics would be thrown into chaos. I understand that most religions do not deny the concept of free will, but Sartre, to me, seems to have completely disagreed with this point. In other words, he did not believe that the existence of God and free will were compatible. Since I really don't have time to get into this, I'll simply refer you to the following site (Click here and here) that does a decent job of explaining the dichotomy between God and freedom in the Sartrian sense. |
Again, I'd probably disagree with that, but I'd just be repeating myself to go into further detail.
Happy to agree to disagree. :)
"Two protons colliding at very high-speeds can produce various hadrons."
Man... I knew that scientists tended to be passionate about their field of study, but I didn't think they were so into it that they'd actually bar-up watching protons collide. :-/ |
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| Dervish |
Ahh cool I never knew that. I asked the guy who took me for nuclear physics when were out on the piss to explain it "with out dumbing it down"... needless to say Alky Andy (me) didn't pick up the finer points. But that explains it pretty well I recon.
Btw when was PDD war decared on the COR there have been a few threads in here or decent quality :wtf: |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
"Two protons colliding at very high-speeds can produce various hadrons."
Man... I knew that scientists tended to be passionate about their field of study, but I didn't think they were so into it that they'd actually bar-up watching protons collide. :-/ |
Yea well look at it spray arrows all over the place ... it's downright pornography. Hmmm I'll be back in 10 minutes. :p |
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| D-res |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dervish
Btw when was PDD war decared on the COR there have been a few threads in here or decent quality :wtf: |
i was never a big PDD guy but what can i say? im just a quality thread starter |
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