The Force as described by a physicist?

can't speak for Khaos, but I really do not see how he said that belief in the Force was delusional, nor am I sure that he'd be qualified to judge so if he did.

No,no, not at all.

What I asked was, by the explanation laid out, that something exists, but you cant prove it, measure, it, etc, nor can science, or any other system, how that was different than what amounts to a delusion.

Is the belief delusional?

I cant say, especially by the sheer lack of well, any evidence of it.

What I can ask, is that if it is only believed without any real correlating evidence, how can you say it isnt?

How would you know it wasnt?

Khaos wrote: Why, because the evidence may be to the contrary?

As such it holds no more power than a delusion regardless, as sure, you cannot prove it doesnt exist, but you will accept that no proof is good enough?

BionicPianoMan wrote: the Force is the one thing in my life which is based on feeling and feeling alone. I believe I have felt it. What I have felt I can not describe nor explain, thus my continuing search for more knowledge and understanding.

Gisteron wrote: If one is going to challenge Jedi beliefs, a Jedi place is the place to do so if there is one.

I admit I felt at odds with one who would claim my belief in the Force to be delusional. Whatever that definition may be. In admittance, that definition is and can be always evolving, for my very own definition of 'god' has changed over the past two decades. My apologies to Khaos if I perceived your questioning incorrectly and its intent.

And my many thanks for this summation:

Gisteron wrote: Now, as for existence, and I have met people on both sides who do not feel that that term is up to discussion, I find that one ought to define what existence even means. For if we do not, we could stand here all day arguing about whether something does exist only because it is observable or whether there even is anything that doesn't exist, if observation is no requirement all of a sudden. We could define existence so that a thing needs not meet any requirements to qualify as existing, but then the label is useless. We could also define existence as a matter of personal revelation or perception if you will, but then objectively some things would be both existing and non-existing and the label would yet again be useless at least as a means of communicating the concept of an actual real property. If on the other hand we define existence in such a way that some intersubjectively testible criteria need apply, the existence in question now becomes a matter of scientific inquiry.
Of course, after we are provided your definition of existence, we would also need a coherent definition of the Force such that we had a way of comparing whether it meets the definition of "something existing", and that is arguably the more complicated definition to find.
This is what makes the Force so similar to gods. Every believer knows on a deeply personal level the mind of their creator, and yet it seems that everybody's creator is as different and unique as the believers themselves - invisible friends, if you will. We can safely dismiss all but one internally consistent subset of them yet we have no means of deciding which one not to dismiss. And thus we reserve our judgement, leaving the burden on the believers to explain to us what makes their beliefs rational ones to hold.
Do I then believe the Force exists? I wouldn't know. You tell me what you mean by the Force, then what you mean by existing, and then maybe, soon or after some thinking, I can tell whether I do believe that it does. And if I don't and you think you have good reasons why we should, perhaps you would share those reasons such that both of us end up with a reasonable belief after all, which ever that is.

Yes, and to my previous questions then?

o, it is your conclusion that one has no business being here if one does not believe in the Force?

I also agree that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In the case of science however, they will seek evidence, in which in regards to the Force, you are comfortable to leave it ambiguous...Why, because the evidence may be to the contrary?

As such it holds no more power than a delusion regardless, as sure, you cannot prove it doesnt exist, but you will accept that no proof is good enough?

How will you "study" the Force, and what will be gained on a wider scale then anecdotal evidence?


So, by what method does one study the Force, and if all gathered evidence is anecdotal at best, how does one share it, or use it on a wider scale then just the individual?

Hmm, well, have at it then. It just makes me wonder, that well, what are you doing in regards to Force studies in any capacity if you cannot really verify it as such, or not?

What are you doing here even if you do believe?

How exactly can and will you progress in knowledge and understanding of such studies.

Sure, science hasnt answered all questions, perhaps it even cant.

It has a method of trying however, that has proven itself over and over again in regards to furthering knowledge and understanding.

Further study in science, mythology, religions and the metaphysical? I'm not sure exactly how. Perhaps that is why I am here. To find a teacher. As my definition for 'god' or 'the Force' is ever changing within me this process of knowledge and understanding shall continue. Will I ever understand? Maybe, maybe not. Only up to the point of satisfying content, in which only time will tell. Or maybe not time? Something else perhaps? I truly do not know. Thus..I am here.

Khaos wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote:

Khaos wrote: Its not relevant to me.

its not APPEALING to you

it is absolutely RELEVANT to you, as the story of Jonah illustrates, although i admit that my own explanation of it is amateur (which is why i reference academic sources)

it is relevant to you but you dont want to see that because THE IDEA THAT IT IS RELEVANT is not appealing to you - which reminds me of a story about a god named osiris who willfully put himself inside of a coffin as a result of the fact that he refused to acknowledge the reality or relevance of something that was right in front of him - the danger that was posed to him by his brother seth, WHO IS UNDERSTOOD AS A MYTHOLOGICAL SYMBOL OF CHAOS

so its funny (to me) that a guy who calls himself Khaos would promote willful blindness in a discussion so heavily focused on the themes of mythology

in a sense you actually reenact one of the myths whose relevance you deny, BY THE DENIAL OF ITS RELEVANCE lol

its kind of poetic actually

Khaos wrote: As I said, if you need stories to back your moral and ethical dos and donts, fine.

i would like to ask you what "backs" your ethical do's and dont's, and where and how you learned those things, and if you seriously think that you just came to those conclusions all by yourself, without the social foundations which were the source of -- well to start with your existence, and everything which that means or imlies, including of course your ethics lol

and anyway ive explained that the myths dont "back" ethics, they express the realities of different kinds of human behavior

the social patterns exist first, then the myth is developed to articulate the pattern so that civilization doesnt have to keep repeating the same mistakes - or willingly put themselves into coffins lol

but i respect that youre not interested in the discussion, which seems to have moved on anyway

i wouldnt even have posted this but the bit about seth and chaos was too good to pass up

You do know we dont have to agree on this right?

Khaos, is a screen name on a forum. I think you have looked deeper into it than I have.

As I have repeated a couple of times now, if you need stories to back your moral and ethical do's and don'ts, that's fine.

It has no relevance to me, and I have no desire to try convince you otherwise that I dont need, or use them for mine.

You ultimately wont believe me anyway.

I also see that it is important to you, but I have no desire to challenge nor seek to remove that foundation.

I havent that power anyway.

This conversation, which has now been largely one sided, as I have repeated my disinterest in it, is going to the road to nowhere fast.

Here, lets just make it simpler.

Your right, im wrong.

Better? Can we move on?

Again, its not relevant to me, or appealing, or interesting, no matter how many caps you use.

its not important to me that you agree with me, or even recognize the point i make

and im not reading anything INTO your screen name - im just reading the name itself and i notice the correlation because its there and its funny

"if you need stories to back your ethical do's and donts" is not only a presumptuous, simplistic and dismissive way to refer to my belief structure, but it is also response which implies that your belief structure was developed in some fundamentally different way than my own - and im confident that it wasnt, because we are fundamentally the same thing: human beings

and while the end results of these structures may come out quite different across individuals and cultures, the structuring process itself - that process or set of processes which result in the fully formed structures, are essentially the same for the entire species

so i think its a totally fair response to your statement about my ethics to ask you "well, how did you develop your own structure of ethical dos and donts?"

and this is a fair response no matter how many snide evasions you use to avoid answering lol

i think it was the idea of science ending human civilization that drew you in to the discussion with me, and since we arent talking about that now, and since you keep saying you arent interested in the discussion THAT YOU KEEP HAVING, i guess i have to acknowledge (AGAIN) that i also see no reason for you to continue with our conversation, and anyway i see (AGAIN) that the overall discussion itself has evolved

so by all means feel free to move along at any time lol and my best wishes to you

but the next time i see you reference FIGHT CLUB to make an ethical point i am going to flatulate loudly in your general direction!!

Just because a story is neither necessary nor sufficient to establish a moral point, doesn't make it useless as a means to illustrate one. There is nothing hypocritical in employing them to that end whilst simultaneously preaching that it takes more than them. A knife is neither necessary nor sufficient to prepare a salmon fillet. Am I a hypocrite for using one anyway?

its not important to me that you agree with me, or even recognize the point i make

Clearly....

"if you need stories to back your ethical do's and donts" is not only a presumptuous, simplistic and dismissive way to refer to my belief structure, but it is also response which implies that your belief structure was developed in some fundamentally different way than my own - and im confident that it wasnt, because we are fundamentally the same thing: human beings



and while the end results of these structures may come out quite different across individuals and cultures, the structuring process itself - that process or set of processes which result in the fully formed structures, are essentially the same for the entire species

so i think its a totally fair response to your statement about my ethics to ask you "well, how did you develop your own structure of ethical dos and donts?"

and this is a fair response no matter how many snide evasions you use to avoid answering lol

Yes, and its not important that I agree with you or recognize your point, except, you felt the need to drive it home one more time? To what end? Also, I ended with snide remarks, not evasions, and only because you ignored any other attempt made by me to tell you I really had no desire to pursue this with you.

i think it was the idea of science ending human civilization that drew you in to the discussion with me, and since we arent talking about that now, and since you keep saying you arent interested in the discussion THAT YOU KEEP HAVING, i guess i have to acknowledge (AGAIN) that i also see no reason for you to continue with our conversation, and anyway i see (AGAIN) that the overall discussion itself has evolved

Actually, what drew me to this discussion was the OP. I havent been having a conversation with you on almost any level, but I have had one with BionicPianoMan. One I am/was interested in having The o.nly reason were back here again is because you still cannot let go trying to make a point you say is unimportant whether I agree with it, or recognize it. So......Here we are again. I havent kept having this conversation, you have, and im not sure why again. I will assume this is a mild delusion of grandeur here to your own importance.

so by all means feel free to move along at any time lol and my best wishes to you

If it were that easy, but apparently it isnt.

but the next time i see you reference FIGHT CLUB to make an ethical point i am going to flatulate loudly in your general direction!!

Yes, well, I will take that with a grain of salt considering the way metaphor is used here.

this was the statement which drew me into the conversation

Gisteron wrote: The limits of science lie where the limits of reality do. We can know things outside of that by other means, but inside those aforementioned bounds of reality all these means are incorporated deeply into science and neither anything more than it is required nor is anything less sufficient for within that realm.

to be honest im not sure i understand every single idea thats being expressed here

but what i do understand is that when (my interpretation of) this idea is articulated: "The limits of science lie where the limits of reality do"

some very common concurrent ideas are that:

material reality is the only reality that can be said to exist, or, the material view of reality is the most (or only) appropriate way to understand reality (and thus to interact with it)

and that

the methods of conceptualizing reality which existed before the advent of modern science are insufficient, or more important (to my way of thinking) that they are simply false and out dated

well, im not against science itself, however it may have seemed from the first line of my post, but i definitely think these ideas are not correct

a lot of modern people like to say "science is right and religion is wrong" and (while Gisteron himself is a scientist, which i do have genuine respect for even if it doesnt come across that way) many of the occasions where this idea is expressed, it is done so by people who understand neither science nor religion with any real depth; they just think "well "science" gave us cell phones and "religion" gave us terrorists"" and thats as comprehensive as their opinion gets

my entry into this discussion - and my commitment to it - is entirely predicated on the ideas that:

many of the conceptualizations of reality which existed before modern science are extremely sophisticated and relevant to us as human beings

and

as such they are "real" - as real as misery or failure or love or family (if by "family" we mean something more than simple genetics) which are all much more real to me than protons or quasars

and

our modern society was built upon the foundations that were laid by these conceptualizations

and

as a result of having been born into and having matured within the sphere of human culture, each of our intellectual, moral, ethical, spiritual and philosophical structures have been greatly influenced by these conceptualizations, regardless of our awareness of that fact

and

even if we structure them in a different way, we still need the structures themselves, and the psychological process of developing them is essentially the same for us as it was for our ancestors

and

we still build these structures around essentially the same themes - because these are the themes which are important to being human and having the human experience

all of which seems self evident to me that anyone who has ever identified as JEDI or SITH would instantly recognize these propositions as RELATING to their own personal experience

---

---

Gisteron wrote: Just because a story is neither necessary nor sufficient to establish a moral point, doesn't make it useless as a means to illustrate one. There is nothing hypocritical in employing them to that end whilst simultaneously preaching that it takes more than them. A knife is neither necessary nor sufficient to prepare a salmon fillet. Am I a hypocrite for using one anyway?

im not sure about the difference between "establishing" a point and "illustrating" one - i understand the difference in terms of of definition, but at the functional level dont they come down to the same thing?

im not sure how to respond except to say that for anyone to accept a point that i may want to make, i have to be able justify that point in a way they can relate to

if i just tell someone "dont yell "bomb!" in a theatre and they ask "well why not?"

now i have to justify what ive said - so i could tell them any number of things, but lets say im lazy and dont want to explain "civilized" or especially "wrong" lol so i just say "because you will probably go to jail if you do it, and as a consequence of being in jail, you will be miserable, and long after the event is "over" it will be more difficult to get a good job, particularly in the theatre industry" (parenthesis used because if an event is still affecting you, is it actually OVER?)

well maybe she doesnt care about working in a theatre but she probably doesnt want to be miserable

so the next question is " how do i know she would be miserable in jail? and how do i really know that she would even go to jail?"

because i know some stories of some people who went to jail for doing things that society said they are not allowed to do

and in all of those stories, the people in jail were miserable

you might say "well but you also know that yelling "bomb!" is not allowed, and you know that people go to jail for doing whats not allowed"

i only know hypothetically that they go to jail - but until i learn of someone who it has actually happened to, i dont have any reason to believe its really true

excepting that i experience it directly, i really do NEED the story to believe it

and if i do experience it directly, i will (potentially) tell my story to others in hope that they do not make my mistake

so i guess what i am getting at is: how do you convince someone of the importance of accepting your point without resorting to any kind of story?

even if they can accept the point you make at face value, doesnt that require that they have already accepted other stories, the messages of which being the foundations of their readiness to accept the point?

i dont know if that makes sense on the reading end lol

Gisteron wrote: There is nothing hypocritical in employing them to that end whilst simultaneously preaching that it takes more than them.

i agree that its not hypocritical to employing them while advocating that it takes more than only them

considering that i have put some amount of time and energy into articulating my position that they ARE necessary (and i may not be doing a very good job of it, but again thats why i reference academic sources)

i believe that it IS hypocritical to

1) tell me that they are unnecessary
2) which obviously means that i am wrong for saying that they are necessary
3) imply that not only am i wrong but i am silly for beliving them necessary
4) tell me "my foundations" are not very good, which kind of implies that the very process which i use to understand reality is itself inferior, which implies that i cant understand reality in an effective way

and then just LEAVING ME THERE, in that place of having learned that my foundations are not very good, in some kind of condescending and dismissive way, possibly because you cant be bothered to walk through the steps and demonstrate what exactly is silly or inaccurate (in other words where i could maybe improve my understanding)

AND THEN go on them use them yourself in another situation

Gisteron wrote: A knife is neither necessary nor sufficient to prepare a salmon fillet. Am I a hypocrite for using one anyway?

i accept the point youre making, with the response that a KNIFE may not be necessary, but a BLADE is

or a CUTTING instrument or "some darn thing that fillets the salmon" lol

which is what stories, metaphors particularly, are: "knives" or "cutting instruments" which take broad and complicated circumstances and "fillet" them into manageable and "digestible" portions

the "knife" is like the individual recounting of one persons experience, and the metaphor is what happens when enough of those are put together to make like a META-KNIFE which "fillets" the experience of (for example) an entire culture

is it still a metaphor if you use the metaphor of "knife" to speak of the phenomenon of "knives" in general? lol

and that you WOULD be a hypocrite for using the knife in a situation where you just as easily could use the superior tool

if youre using the knife because you dont have anything better then yes it would be hypocritical - conversation happens at a different level than material reality

so its one thing to say "there are objects other than knives which are more efficient at filleting than hand held fillet knives"

i mean probably an automated laser is way better than i would be but i cant blame you for not having an automated laser in your kitchen

but to say "you dont need stories to understand ethics" and then go on to use a story in order to express an ethical point is, i think, hypocritical

am i being unreasonable?

i do have a habit of doing so and im working to mitigate that

for the record Khaos ive enjoyed the podcasts you shared with me and you seem like a pretty cool dude

sorry if im being a d**k, its not my wish