scholarly journals The Implantation Argument: Simulation Theory is Proof that God Exists

Metaphysica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Grupp
Keyword(s):  
Infinite Divisibility ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Inner Experience ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
External Reality ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Independent Reality

Abstract I introduce the implantation argument, a new argument for the existence of God. Spatiotemporal extensions believed to exist outside of the mind, composing an external physical reality, cannot be composed of either atomlessness (infinite divisibility, atomless gunk), or of Democritean atoms (extended simples), and therefore the inner experience of an external reality containing spatiotemporal extensions believed to exist outside of the mind does not represent the external reality (inner mind does not represent external, mind-independent, reality), the mind is a mere cinematic-like mindscreen (a mindscreen simulation), implanted into the mind by a creator-God. It will be shown that only a creator-God can be the implanting creator of the mindscreen simulation (the creator of reality), and other simulation theories, such as Bostrom’s famous account, that do not involve a creator-God as the mindscreen simulation creator, involve a reification fallacy.

The Philosophy of a Christian Virtuoso ii

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Physical Nature ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Philosophical System ◽  
The Mind

Although Locke’s Essay is primarily a discourse in logic, he says enough about the physical nature of things to construct a theory of the nature of things. As a virtuoso, physics replaces metaphysics in his philosophical system. His ontology, however, includes not only bodies, but God and finite spirits, and its major achievement is to prove the existence of God and demonstrate his immateriality. Perhaps encouraged by reading Cudworth, Locke was confident that our faculty of reason is sufficient to refute materialism and atheism. As to the nature of bodies, Locke finds empirical evidence that solidity or impenetrability is their most evident quality. The idea of superaddition is central to Locke’s speculative or divine physics. But although such insights may elevate the mind to God, Locke’s physics is theoretically sterile, although it may have beneficial practical uses.

Etymology and Semantic Spectrum of adhimukti and Related Terms in Buddhist Texts

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29
Author(s):  
Giacomo Benedetti
Keyword(s):  
External Reality ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Meditative Practice ◽  
Stable Representation ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Objects

The action noun adhimukti derives from the verb adhi-muc, not attested in Classical Sanskrit but in P?li. It is regularly used in the passive, with the original meaning ‘to be fastened to’, and then ‘to adhere’. This meaning is not used in a concrete sense, but in a metaphorical one, referred to mind and mental objects, so that adhimukti can be used to express inclination, faith in a doctrine, and also intentional and stable representation of an image or an idea in meditative practice, sometimes with the effect of transformation of external reality. The common feature appears to be adherence or the fixing of the mind on its object.

“What makes a reasoning sound” is the proof of its truth: A reconstruction of Peirce’s semiotics as epistemic logic, and why he did not complete his realistic revolution

Semiotica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (221) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Dan Nesher
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Logic ◽  
Inductive Logic ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Perceptual Judgment ◽  
External Reality ◽  
Complete Proof ◽  
Abductive Logic ◽  
Pure Mathematics ◽  
True Representation ◽  
Logic Of Evaluation

AbstractCharles S. Peirce attempted to develop his semiotic theory of cognitive signs interpretation, which are originated in our basic perceptual operations that quasi-prove the truth of perceptual judgment representing reality. The essential problem was to explain how, by a cognitive interpretation of the sequence of perceptual signs, we can represent external physical reality and reflectively represent our cognitive mind’s operations of signs. With his phaneroscopy introspection, Peirce shows how, without going outside our cognitions, we can represent external reality. Hence Peirce can avoid the Berkeleyian, Humean, and Kantian phenomenologies, as well as the modern analytic philosophy and hermeneutic phenomenology. Peirce showed that with the trio of semiotic interpretation – abductive logic of discovery of hypotheses, deductive logic of necessary inference, and inductive logic of evaluation – we can reach a complete proof of the true representation of reality. This semiotic logic of reasoning is the epistemic logic representing human confrontation in reality, with which we can achieve knowledge and conduct our behavior. However, Peirce did not complete his realistic revolution to eliminate previously accepted nominalistic and idealistic epistemologies of formal logic and pure mathematics. Here, I inquire why Peirce did not complete his historical realist epistemological revolution and following that inquiry I attempt to reconstruct it.

scholarly journals The Possibility of a Scientific Approach to Analytic Theology

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 178-198
Author(s):  
Andrew Torrance
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The University ◽  
Independent Reality

A question that is often asked of analytic theologians is: what, if anything, distinguishes analytic theology from philosophy of religion? In this essay, I consider two approaches to what is called “analytic theology.” I argue that the first approach, which I associate with the common practice of analytic theology in the university, is very difficult to distinguish consistently from philosophy of religion. I also argue, however, that there is another approach that can be more clearly distinguished from philosophy of religion (generally understood). Following Aquinas, I associate this with a scientific approach to analytic theology: an approach that is distinguished by a specific commitment to understanding the mind-independent reality of God and all things in relation to God. The primary aim of this essay is to present an account of this latter approach and ask whether it might be possible to take such an approach in the contemporary university.

On the Veiling and Unveiling of Experience: A Comparison Between the Micro-Phenomenological Method and the Practice of Meditation

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-77
Author(s):  
Claire Petitmengin
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Phenomenological Method ◽  
External Reality ◽  
Buddhist Meditation ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

Abstract Both Buddhist meditation and micro-phenomenology start from the observation that our experience escapes us, we don’t see it as it is. Both offer devices that allow us to become aware of it. But, surprisingly, the two approaches offer few precise descriptions of the processes which veil experience, and of those which make it possible to dissipate these veils. This article is an attempt to put in parentheses declarative writings on the veiling and unveiling processes and their epistemological background and to collect procedural descriptions of this veiling and unveiling processes. From written and oral meditation teachings on the one hand, micro-phenomenological interviews applied to meditative experience and to themselves on the other hand, we identified four types of veiling processes which contribute to screen what is there, and ultimately to generate the naïve belief in the existence of an external reality independent of the mind: attentional, emotional, intentional and cognitive veils. The first part of the article describes these veiling processes and the processes through which they dissipate. It leads to the identification of several “gestures” conducive to this unveiling. The second part describes the devices used by meditation and by micro-phenomenology to elicit these gestures.

A Reality Based on Consciousness

DIALOGO ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-217
Author(s):  
Stephan A Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Early Humans ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind

"This paper addresses the central idea of nonlocal consciousness: that all life is interconnected and interdependent, that we are part of a matrix of life, but even more fundamentally than spacetime itself arises from consciousness, not consciousness from spacetime. It is not a new idea. The excavation of burials dating to the Neolithic (≈ 10,200-2,000 BCE) has revealed that early humans had a sense of spirituality and some concept about the nature of human consciousness. It discusses the bargain made between the Roman Church, and the emerging discipline of science in the 16th century, one taking consciousness (packaged as “spirit”), the other spacetime, and how this led to physicalism taking root as a world view and becoming the prevailing materialist paradigm. It describes the emergence of a new paradigm that incorporates consciousness and lays out the four relevant descriptors helping to define what this new paradigm will look like. They are: • Only certain aspects of the mind are the result of physiologic processes. • Consciousness is causal, and physical reality is its manifestation. • All consciousnesses, regardless of their physical manifestations, are part of a network of life which they both inform and influence and are informed and influenced by; there is a passage back and forth between the individual and the collective. • Some aspects of consciousness are not limited by the time/space continuum and do not originate entirely within an organism’s neuroanatomy. "

Buddhist Psychology

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-72
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bommarito
Keyword(s):  
Buddhist Psychology ◽  
External Reality ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind

This chapter studies the importance of examining the nature of mental habits—the normal ways of perceiving, thinking, and feeling. The source of the problem is a mismatch between the usual way of relating to the world and how it really is, so it is important to closely examine mental habits and understand how exactly they obscure reality. Some Buddhists take this even further: It is not that one's mental projections do not match reality, they will say, but it is that there is no reality aside from an individual’s projections. For them, the problem is not a mismatch. The projections themselves are defective, obscuring not an external reality but the nature of the mind itself. The mental habits that distort reality are often called hindrances or poisons. These are things that the mind does that prevent an individual from seeing reality clearly.

scholarly journals Symmetrization, Mirroring and External Reality: An ‘Inner’ Perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Rosapia Lauro Grotto
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Clinical Evidence ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
External Reality ◽  
Psychoanalytic Literature ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Neuro Imaging ◽  
The Mind

In the last two decades, mirroring systems have been detected in the monkey and in the human brain. The mirroring mechanisms have been considered as the neural basis for social cognition and interpersonal reactivity, and they have been assumed to support imitation, sharing of emotional states and empathy. Here I would like to compare ‘mirroring phenomena’ to ‘symmetrization phenomena’. In psychoanalytic literature, the construct of symmetrization has been proposed in the context of the Bi-Logic theory by Matte Blanco in 1975, on the basis of clinical evidence obtained in the psychoanalytical setting and following a theoretical analysis derived from the Freudian distinction between Primary and Secondary Processes. I will consider two different types of behaviours, empathic social interactions and the creation of transitional objects and spaces as defined by Winnicott in order to argue that symmetrization, in Matte Blanco’s terms, cannot be reduced to mirroring. I will then sketch a hypothesis on the interplay between the symmetric aspects of the mind and external reality in the development of higher relational functions of humans, also taking playing, arts and creativity into account. Finally I will describe the paradigmatic shift in neuro-imaging studies that was introduced with the discovery of the ‘Default Mode Network’ and its potential relevance in the research on the symmetric and asymmetric aspects of the human mind.

scholarly journals An Exploratory View on Congregating God and Science through Variegating Perspectives

2020 ◽  
pp. 41-48
Author(s):  
Mr. Jaswin Kumar N. R.
Keyword(s):  
String Theory ◽  
Higher Dimensions ◽  
Scientific Thinking ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Conceptual Paper ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Scientific Ideas

Science is often associated with atheistic ideologies. The field of science is thought to be as one of the disciplines, wherein only rational and logical theories are often applicable. Moreover, anything that cannot be explained in terms of logical scientific theories or formula is termed as supernatural or irrational. This has also created a stereotypic notion among people that whoever is a patron of scientific ideas ought to be an atheist. Some scientists have been a fuel to this stereotype by openly embracing atheism. Furthermore, rationalism has gotten us far in the field of science. However, the ground reality is that the answers to seemingly impossible-tosolve questions cannot be discovered with logic alone. Hence, we refuse to believe in something, which is not scientific. Also, we may consider things, which we think as „beyond science‟ to make further developments within it. The reason being, it enables the mind to embrace creativity and look at various possibilities from different perspectives. This perspective of scientific thinking might even help us to resolve paradoxes and provide answers to questions like „Does God Exist?‟ Keeping these aforementioned notions, this conceptual paper overlooks on scientific theories with an exploratory view from a variegating perspective by substantiating the „String Theory‟ concepts to understand the possibility of existence of higher dimensions (up to 10th dimension) and facilitates to explain the existence of God.

scholarly journals Mime Language. From Singularity To Community

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-175
Author(s):  
Ioan Mateiciuc
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Empathy ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Cultural Performance ◽  
External Reality ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Stage Performance ◽  
Social Mind ◽  
The Mind

AbstractThis article approaches the subject of theatrical language in mime, aiming to identify the mechanisms and resources of stage performance, referring itself to the silence/speech binomial. Can mime impose a valid theatrical language? Will a type of structuralism, through a reduction of complexities, manage to encompass the essence of the implications of stage acting within social structures? We will see the extent to which theater can trace a pattern of collective mime language socially and the extent to which such an approach will manage to encompass the interaction of the mind with an external reality, while also analysing the ability of the performer – when the latter understands their own mind or creates maps of their own mind or of the community – to create a sort of cognitive empathy, resulting in an extraction of a theory of collectivity, which is, most often, ignored in such a cultural performance as mime, and its protagonists may or may not find a place in a social mind.

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