With ego I mean the current contents of one's identifications. My knowledge, my profession, my idea of science, all my things I have got in 'my' life. Short: Anything that is associated with 'my' and these things are changing. Until no THING is left anymore sooner or later... Without to be identified with something no one could relate to 'own' knowledge. That is individual, though. The question is: Does one to have to describe reality (by means) to know it? Or: Does one to have to study science to 'know' the reality? Do you think there is absolute truth/reality? To 'religious' people it is God, that's all. Furthermore they claim that this truth is within oneself and IS accessible. By accessing it they 'discover' the same attributes within and their real Self as eternal. By thinking this (using the categorizing relating intellect) it loses its totality/ absolute since one makes an own RELATION. This applies generally, not to science only. Also religious fanatics are not aware of this. They claim to know God=absolute truth an have to 'tell' it others (sometimes violently, because religion has less Reason) And yes there is progress within the time. And yes science can relate to reality in a more and more complex way.
I think so, yes, in the frame of reference that defines your daily life. You should know enough about reality for any of your endeavours. If you go skydiving, you should know your safety measures and how to verify them, you should know about wind and aerodynamics, etc. You don't need quantum physics to skydive. You don't even need to study meteorology. You can use the results of the scientists. But you should acknowledge that they are right. Reality is described by so much information today, that there is not a single human who can claim to know it all. You can spend a lifetime in a very narrow specialization of physics alone. I think by definition, to make such a claim would mean to know that there is nothing left that is unknown. But to even determine whether there actually is anything that is unknown, would also mean to indirectly know it already and to be able to tell in advance whether you can ever know it. Can you ever know the position _and_ momentum of a particle at the same time? Right now, it doesn't look that way and I think it's not even clear if there is a path to that knowledge. That's what unknown means. You don't know it and you don't know whether you can ever know. That's what makes science exciting. You never know in advance what plausible possibilities a formula might reveal so that you can study in the direction of that unknown. To claim an unchanging "true" reality - that we work towards with science - is IMHO to claim to know it already. I know one thing: an absolute reality that is completely known, with nothing left to discover, would make scientists really sad. That's too cheap. Reality suprises us in such unintuitive ways that to claim such a thing is just lazy and arrogant. I don't doubt that religious experiences are real. There is just no evidence that they hint at any unknown part of reality at all, and they are better explained by evolutionary biology and sociology. The basic fear of the unknown produces a dangerous thing: the overwhelming desire to fill it. Some fill it with knowledge, some fill it with superstition. But you don't have to run away from the dark anymore to survive. You can grab a flashlight and delve into it. I don't know how people even envision the afterlife, for example. Hitchens adequately described it as a party that you can't leave and where you are ordered to be happy, for eternity, by a father that never leaves you, that never allows you any grief. I wouldn't even want such a thing. Sounds like hell to me. Who would really want to be an eternal conscience?
Science is a description of reality, the quantifiable part, the rest is self describing. At least that's my understanding of it!
Yes. That is even the point. Would there be only conceptual knowledge there would be no creativity and intuition. That what you name self describing cannot be grasped by the categorizing intellect which relies on a finite amount of (own) relations (from the past). In other words it requires another consciousness. Humans are able to be creative/intuitive. But 'later' the categorizing intellect is doing its work. It appears as if 'the new' would come from the intellect itself. By this process 'the reality' is reduced to that what can be related=(it becomes) conceptual knowledge relative to time. Self-describing is now beyond becoming, because reality is real (already). How would you say humans become aware of that what you name self-describing 'rest' (also feel free to say it is different to you as I've posted) ? Scientists/intellectual people get 'only' what is left after reduction as conceptual knowledge as determinable/quantifiable left-over. Religious people are assigning this self-describing reality to an entity=God. Spiritualists are practising measures to become aware of this consciousness (which is not a part of 'thinking').
I don't agree with your description of making a distinction between the quantifiable and self describing knowledge, this is a mistake I think. The first thing to realize is that all of it is knowledge and is absolute. The difference comes in the understanding process. The intellectual people look for links from one process to the next in order to reach a conclusion. For example The Standard Model, you can make inferences for the next thing on the Model like what was done with the Higgs Boson. It's like receiving a jigsaw puzzle, which doesn't tell you how many pieces it has, however in fixing it you will find that in places you will know something has to fit but you don't have it yet. Self Describing knowledge doesn't have inferences, it's like a standalone program, no dlls dropped here and there and no registry entries just one exe to run. As such it needs to be understood holistically and there is a good chance that some of it may never be understood. The deterrent to understanding it may be that humans just aren't capable of understanding it.
Do humans know everything there is to know? Will they ever reach that level? I highly doubt it. Humanity will always know only one piece of the puzzle through science, thus it will never know all there is to know through science, simply because science applies to a single piece of the puzzle. The puzzle is not like an ordinary puzzle in 2D, but a multidimensional one, where science from "2D puzzle" simply doesn't apply.
Claim: Evidence: 0 If there is no effect of these "higher dimensions" in our "dimension", i.e. they cannot possibly be observed or predicted by us ever, then what's the point? The claim becomes useless. Like the teapot that orbits Jupiter or the leprechaun at the end of the rainbow, if its effect on the reality we observe and predict is and always will be non-existent, then why bother with it at all? Then 9-dimensional realms exist, unicorns exist, all gods exist, the Hulk exists, Spiderman exists, everything you can think up exists. Ah, but then you might say that you gain insight, it guides you, it speaks to you, you travel there in your sleep etc. But then it _does_ enter our world and thus has to be subject to the laws of our Universe. Your brain is not outside of the laws of this Universe, so if something affects it, this also must be part of a reality that can be subjected to scientific inquiry. You cannot claim something exists that is outside of scientific inquiry, because that implies you know _something_ about it. Otherwise, you have to admit you just made it all up. Which is most likely the case here and the troll of course knows it.
So a 3D finger protruding 2D space would form a circle. You wouldn't know where the circle came from unless you knew about the 3D world and how projections of that would look in your world. Just like a 3D object can create a 2D shadow on the wall. That shadow, when crossing a 1D line, would still form a projection on it. A 4D object would "project" into our world as a 3D "shadow". However, it would still project into our world, visibly and investigatably. And that 3D "shadow" could project a 2D shadow and so on. So, to reduce the metaphysical to simply a higher dimension is too cheap a shot. If it were just that, we could observe projections of it, even if we understand nothing else about it. Where are the projections of the 4D that is a projection of the 5D that is a projection of the 6D ... in our world? And let's totally ignore the fact that the 2D being in the video could talk to the 3D being, because the 3D being had a direct and measurable impact on the 2D world. So the video doesn't even make the claim that you can _never_ understand higher dimensions, but merely that you don't understand them right now, until you know more. Doesn't sound like being outside the scientific inquiry at all. If your point was something completely different, then please elaborate and don't just post a link.
The point is that at this point you, like the 2d character, simply can not comprehend another dimension... The simplest, and most overlooked, of which is the dimension of time, not that that has any relevance to the topic at hand other than God is the Alpha and the Omega. The more relevant portions, in my opinion, have to do with fractals and ϕ. Don't ask me to explain that because I am unable to put that into words... And suddenly the phrase "Beyond words" has new meaning.
The fallacy here is to claim that you can know that thing of which you claim it is unknowable or not understandable and that it is forever completely outside of our knowledge. You are pointing a finger at something that you claim isn't there, but then you also act like it _is_ there and _you_ somehow understand it. It makes no sense whatsoever.
@JFKI: I keep saying this for the last few pages, but...is futile. TCM wants "proof" of a higher dimension but he just ignores the fact that his "4D brain" cannot process let alone understand 5D, 6D and so on...
But I _do_ understand these dimensions. I just wouldn't be able to explain them back to you, because your brain is one step simpler. See how that works?
Correct... You do make no sense whatsoever. Picture this, Our solar system is but an electron of an atom of one of God's farts. Of what relevance does that make you or I in the grand scheme of things ?
The distinction I made to relate to your differentiation of 'quantifiable part' and 'rest'. I agree with you. The human intellect isn't able to understand it. And when the holistic approach is applied by it, it sooner or later ends in one thought entity THE ONE....so no matter what is thought, there are ideas of THE ONE left. Maybe m-theory, who knows. But one can be it (the absolute reality). The 'holistic' approach must be made beyond thoughts. But it cannot work when it is an approach that does include more and more objects and becomes more and more complex by doing that. It can only work when the mechanisms of separating / categorizing / reduction stop by including AND transcending. One remains oneself. Without to get conceptual knowledge one knows 'all'. The universe is self-describing /self-reasoned ‘everywhere’ through ‘us’. I prefer the term consciousness, though since it includes the manifest and the un-manifest. Short: One cannot know it, but be it by finding out what one is NOT. (The mentioned introspection) One is recognizing oneself as not different to this absolute consciousness. Self-awareness is ‘completed’. And ‘this’ is accessible by any human. Deterrent is rather the self-esteemed superiority of the intellect by claiming for reason/evidence, lol. This is the major statement of eastern meditation.
Have 2 meditating people half a globe apart ever been able to contact each other or "meet" in this absolute reality? Does everyone have his own absolute reality? If yes, how is it absolute? If not, why can't you ever meet other minds there? Just because you wish something, doesn't make it reality.
The answer is paradox. Any AND no at all Consider that you perceive the universe and the grand scheme of things. Without you, no universe for you and no grand scheme for you. Also no fart of God.
That is clear. The issue we all have at this discussion is that we have to relate to express 'things'. The questions actually are: Have they ever been able 'outside' of the absolute reality at all? Can somebody have an absolute reality? No. But can one be it? Anything is a matter of perspective. When the reality is absolute there is no place to relate to it. When somebody has an idea of oneself one relates to this idea. The perceived reality becomes own reality. There are as many own realities as individuals with their own relations. But when the idea of oneself and the resulting relative reality emerges even from the absolute reality one has to follow an approach where the differentiation has not happened yet. If there is a way or not one has to find out by oneself. To 'wish' is just fooling oneself.