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Old Apr 9, 2008, 12:04 pm   #19 (permalink) (top)
Morality Games
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Location: Iowa
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Quote:
(I know you said you hate the word but still). Potentiality is not an "Illusion." What would that even entail? Change is an illusion. Being is an illusion. All these make sense because anything can be an illusion if our beliefs entail it to be so. Not everything that does not exist is an illusion. Granted only actuality has being and potentiality is the privation of being but in such a way that it is susceptible to become. So it is not wholly non-being but the absence of being with the ability of becoming.
This is part of the reason I dislike the term. Remember that the world can be artificially divided in two -- the 'apparent world' of your mind's eye and the world-itself (actuality). The first is part of the second, but the second goes far beyond the first (aka, the mind, or nervous system, is part of the world -- the mind is part of actuality even as it processes actuality as if it were an entity apart).

If humans were gods, what then? We would probably understand fully the physical processes that characterize existence, down to every nuance and detail -- to us the universe would appear as a system without free will, with no contingency, possibility, probability, or anything of the sort. That is the true condition of reality. Our mind would comprehend the systematic nature of things completely.

Humans lack this "God's perspective" -- to us, even as it acts like one, the universe can never seem like a system (well, artificially under science). We know that things happen, but do not comprehend fully the intricate web of cause-and-effect which allows orderly existence to be. In order to compensate for our inability to make sense of the system, humans (and possibly other living organisms) developed intuitive understandings of things like 'potentiality', 'possibility', 'probability', and 'capacity' (which we can use as a base for developing more elaborate concepts concerning these things). These are instruments for making reality comprehensible on terms appreciable to living organisms, not for mirroring nature point-for-point.

It can be said, even as they are "illusions", human nature is structured to perceive these things as though they had the same existential status as actuality.

I prefer the word 'instruments' to illusions.

Quote:
If the properties of the god-entity are uncertain then the perception of god’s omniscience would also be uncertain.
For all we know, there could be a being which created this universe (or the multiverse) who isn't omniscient at all, that omniscience is not a requirement to be a Creator anymore than a programmar must understand every detail and nuance of a computer system.


A moral being is an entity for whom the disadvantage of others is an issue.
– K.H.Y.
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