Not sure how is randomness even possible? We call it randomness because we don’t know why. Within our way of thinking - objective randomness shouldn’t make any sense. That’s pure magic. Just because one invented a phrase “collapsing waves” still means nothing. It’s magic. We might as well use religion - it’s pretty coherent, explains things.
How to define 2R. We need the clarity of analytical philosophy. "Continental" is part of the problem
I start from first principles. I am now regretting using Eastern terminology at all. All it has achieved is to derail this discussion, which is rather unfortunate.
I am talking about the root of all Being. Pure Being. Please forget all references to Eastern concepts.
I am not an idealist. I do not equate “Being” with “consciousness”. Hindu idealism does do this, and it is problematic in some ways, which is why Buddhism was invented.
Why can’t it be possible? I believe some of what appears random – most of it probably – really is random. Not all of it, but most of it.
We call it randomness because we don’t know why.
Then it is hidden determinism, not randomness.
Geoff, imagine we want to conjure objective randomness. How would one do it? How can one mix random and deterministic paradigms? How does one deal with causality and non-causality? Just because you draw a line? Well, you can - but that’s magic to us.
As a kid, learning about mutations as in genetics - I never understood what “random” meant or the lack of the evolutionary prime mover - that’s all unknown variables without which models wouldn’t stand. They are those magical beans. Just like the number Pi - pure magic. That’s something that I come across in your ideas - that you happily gloss over some assumptions and yet criticise others.
I might be wrong about everything above, I’m happy to listen 
Does Vedanta have a different ground of being than your ground of being?
“The term for this impersonal, transcendent reality is Brahman, the divine ground of being.”
How can you “improve” on this? Why “being” doesn’t equate to “consciousness”?
Plenty of philosophers, Hegel, Kant, Scopenhauer. Not sure why is this controversial that consciousness can give birth to material world… Metaphysics is a realm of wild ideas.
We set up a Geiger counter, with a radioactive source which has a 50% probability of emitting a particle in a given time. Then we wait and see whether a particle decays. If the cosmos is objectively random, then this is how we “extract” it. We don’t need to “conjure” it, because in that scenario that’s just how the cosmos works.
How can one mix random and deterministic paradigms?
Very easily, thanks to quantum mechanics. The deterministic part is the evolution of the wave function. For believers in MWI, that’s all there is, but for everybody else we have to explain how the evolving superposition is “collapsed” to a single observed outcome. Depending on which interpretation is involved, that is where the random element can be found.
How does one deal with causality and non-causality? Just because you draw a line? Well, you can - but that’s magic to us.
It isn’t me who has drawn that line. The line exists because the mathematics of quantum theory described the probabilistic evolution of the wave function – it describes an MWI-like cosmos – but we do not experience an MWI-like cosmos. We experience a single timeline.
If you aren’t clear about this then we need to discuss it in greater detail, because it is of central importance to everything we are discussing. It might be worth another thread (on praeternaturalism vs hypernaturalism vs supernatualism).
As a kid, learning about mutations as in genetics - I never understood what “random” meant or the lack of the evolutionary prime mover
This is exactly what Nagel’s book is about. What does “random” mean in genetics if we’ve been forced to conclude that the evolution of conscious organisms was teleological – that conscious animals were destined to evolve? The only possible answer is that the apparent randomness that led to that evolutionary pathway was not fully random. Instead, something must have been loading the quantum dice. The implications of this are world-shattering. It’s the core of what 2R needs to be.
When you talk about an “evolutionary prime mover” it sounds like intelligent design. I don’t think that is going to fly either. There is a much better explanation available.
No. But I absolutely do not want to get dragged into a load of terminological confusion by introducing concepts from Vedanta into this conversation. We need to Westernise the vocabulary, because we are doing this in the 21st century, not the 8th century BC.
If 2R was as simple as saying “Hinduism is right” then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. We need much more nuance and precision if we are going to integrate modern science into 2R.
Equating being with consciousness is just assuming idealism is true. It is no better than equating being with physical reality (which is what materialists do).
Being doesn’t equate to consciousness because the cosmos existed for billions of years before there were any conscious beings in it. It’s not consciousness because we’ve got no reason to believe most physical objects are conscious. Only animals appear to be conscious.
You’re not sure why a concept from modern-era Western philosophy might be problematic?
Yes, metaphysics is a realm of wild ideas, and quite a lot of them have turned out to make no sense. I stated in the opening post that I believe the schism in Western philosophy was based on a mistake made by Kant in the CPR. Well…to be clear, it wasn’t really a mistake at all, because Kant cannot be held responsible for not knowing about quantum theory. But if you start with QM instead of Newton then the CPR no longer makes sense, and neither does any of the line of philosophy that led from Kant, through Schopenhauer and Hegel, to Nietzsche and on to postmodernism. All of it is based on a philosophical mistake and all of it is incompatible with science. Hegel thought evolution was impossible, because it clashed with his own system. Does that mean we should just side with Hegel and dismiss evolution?
Is the 21st century uniquely Western? Do Indians, Chinese, Muslims, Africans, or anyone else get to contribute?
That depends entirely on whether they are willing to clean the slate and start with 21st century science and reason. If instead they want to include ideas from several centuries ago, without subjecting them to the test of contemporary science and reason, then their contributions aren’t going to be any use. Islam in particular has very little to offer. With Christianity it is more complicated, but the mainstream version isn’t much more use than Islam. Abrahamic religion in general is part of the problem.
And what if 21st century science and reason include ideas from several centuries ago? Shall we rubbish them also on account of ancient roots? For example, your notion of Being as a first principle was arguably articulated first by Parmenides centuries ago. Is Being therefore an unexamined ancient prejudice? Why is your version of Being any better than the Permenidean version, and why are either of them superior to the notion Brahman (ancient or contemporary?)
https://thethinkinglane.medium.com/being-is-all-there-is-3de88d1bc9d5
To everybody:
2R cannot work if it is internally incoherent. Everything has to add up. It all has to make sense as a single integrated system. It is very clear that currently we are nowhere near this. Kastrup’s idealism is completely incompatible with Henriques’ “tree of life”, and both of them are incompatible with Nagel’s position in Mind and Cosmos. At most, only one of these three cosmological-metaphysical systems (though Nagel’s is only part of a system) can make it into the final version.
It is no use just making “the ecosystem” as large as possible. There has to be a way of deciding what makes it into the actual Second Renaissance and what doesn’t.
I think we need to start with modern science and reason. That is why I begin with Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel and Mindful Universe by Henry Stapp. Both of these books are groundbreaking attempts to bring consciousness into a scientific view of reality from which it has always been missing. What I am trying (and clearly failing spectacularly) to explain to you all is that these two books, with their remarkably similar names, have only failed to set the world alight because each of them only presents half of the theory we need. Nagel’s book is a forensic analysis from the perspective of evolutionary theory, which is aiming to preserve naturalism. Stapp’s is a reformulation of von Neumann’s interpretation of quantum theory.
I realise I might be coming across as rather mad. But in all the time I have been developing my own position, I have never run into a single other person who has read both of these books. But that’s exactly what you need to do to arrive at the answer – read both these books and figure out how to fit both of them into our reality and THE ANSWER doesn’t just appear – it explodes into glorious technicolour. This is not like UTOK, where you have to wade through vast amounts of complicated ideas to arrive at the end at “hopefully this might help us to make progress on the hard problem”. 2R requires much more extensive and conclusive progress than that. The Hard Problem has to be relegated to history and so does all of the confusion about quantum mechanics.
I am not “rubbishing” anything. I am saying we need to start again with 21st century science and reason. That includes everything that includes, where-ever and whenever it came from.
For example, your notion of Being as a first principle was arguably articulated first by Parmenides centuries ago. Is Being therefore an unexamined ancient prejudice? Why is your version of Being any better than the Permenidean version, and why are either of them superior to the notion Brahman (ancient or contemporary?)
I don’t care what Parmenides said. I am not starting from ancient Greek philosophy. I am starting from 21st century science and reason. Why is Parmenides even remotely relevant?
I start from Consciousness exists. I know it exists, because I am conscious.
I also start from science works and that our goal must be to figure out how to make civilisation ecologically sustainable.
I’m sorry Geoff, your example doesn’t prove that this randomness is really objective. It cannot prove that radioactive decay is not caused by any deterministic factor. But I’d rather not continue with this.
This is probably as old as Permenides. Definitely older than Decartes
As defined by whom? That problem was essentially the entire life’s work of Jürgen Habermas and any others. Habermas, in particular, noticed that “reason” is not especially obvious or transparent, and his recent volume contrasting traditions like that of Parmenides with that of other Axial cultures involves a concerted effort to explore to what extent Western appeals to “reason” are a sort of cultural special pleading. “Reason”, in any case, seems rather impotent in the face of the metacrisis, so casting a wider net can hardly hurt.
It will be a real shame if we stopped at this point, because it is rather important. We are just about to make some real progress.
I did not say I can prove that the randomness is objective. All I am saying is that it is metaphysically and physically possible – that this is one of the options. I am also saying that neither science nor pure reason will ever be able to conclusively prove which interpretation of QM is correct. The impossibility of ever conclusively answering that question is built into my system. It is an epistemological system, and this is one of the questions that cannot be answered with science and reason.
My proposal is a New Epistemic Deal. A new agreement on what we know and what we don’t know. This is one of the things we don’t know – or at least we cannot know it objectively, and therefore we cannot know it collectively. The only way the answer to this question can be known is by direct experience of praeternatural phenomena (such as synchronicity).
Have you ever experienced such a thing? And I don’t mean “maybe”. If you were in any doubt, it wasn’t synchronicity.