Human Knowledge:

Foundations and Limits

http://humanknowledge.net ©Brian Holtz 2005-07-09 This text is memeware:

if you find your copy useful, please propagate it.

See 0.7 Copyright.

Outline

0. Prologue

This living hypertext is a systematic summary of the knowledge attained by human civilization. For each subdivision of human knowledge, the text identifies its fundamental concepts, principles, mysteries, and misunderstandings.

Status. This draft contains

a complete section on philosophy;

a complete section on futurology;

partially complete sections on logic and physics;

a complete section on economics;

some notes and tables on astronomy, biology, political science, linguistics, and history;

over 1500 internal hypertext links.

Copyright. This text is the copyrighted property of the author. Certain forms of copying are permitted and even encouraged; see the Copyright section for details.



Positions

This text aims to assert humanity's analyses and theories that are most valid (i.e. convincing and defensible, as opposed to merely logically well-formed). These analyses and theories are not necessarily the most widely-believed or well-known. Potentially contentious assertions are

biological evolutionism, and technological optimism.

Relatively uncontentious assertions appear as normal text. Potentially contentious assertions appear like this . Denials of widely-held beliefs appear like this . Questions whose answers lie outside human knowledge appear like this.

Innovations

Almost all of the facts and analyses asserted in this text have of course been asserted before by other humans. Nevertheless, there are some things in this text that the author believes may be novel or at least independently original.

Arrangements. The text places various unoriginal pieces of information into some arrangements that might not have been presented elsewhere before. Among these are

a list of humanity's most important questions;

a list of humanity's most important unanswered questions;

a taxonomy of paranormal phenomena;

a summary of arguments against Christianity;

a synopsis of where and how fast Earth is heading in space;

lists of major biological and historical advances;

summaries of the platforms of the major American political parties; and

an extension of the classical Libertarian 2D map of political space.

Analyses. The text gives certain analyses and definitions that, while not wildly original, are nevertheless believed by the author to be improvements on any he had seen before. Among these are

Inventions. The text presents a few notions that may be wholly new. They are

the idea of memeware;

the idea that without quantum indeterminacy one could in principle store unlimited amounts of information within a finite medium;

the idea that the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" might be answered by a combination of anthropic reasoning and the observation that it is not possible for nothing to be possible.

Predictions. The section on Futurology collects, filters, and refines many predictions by other humans, but also makes predictions that the author has never seen clearly stated by anyone else. They are predictions of

Judgments. The author naturally hopes that the most significant innovation of this text is the judgments it makes and the worldview it synthesizes them into. The text asserts a worldview it calls autocosmology that includes by endorsement the positions of positivism, empiricism, functionalism, atheism, capitalism, federalism, evolutionism, and evolutionary psychology. The text also advances as part of autocosmology some slightly customized versions of other positions. They are

a materialist ontology that attempts to build from logic to events to causality to existence;

an extropian axiology that values life and intelligence and the autonomy needed to increase them;

a libertarian ethics that recognizes all persons' right to life and liberty, and all beings' right not to suffer torture or extinction;

a libertarian political philosophy that sharply defines the duties, powers, and limits of the state; and

a futuristic optimism that predicts increasing liberty and prosperity and decreasing ignorance and superstition.

This text aims to survey the foundations and limits of the knowledge attained by humanity since the dawn of civilization. It

the time when it was attained;

the place where it was attained;

the techniques with which it was attained;

the domain to which it applies;

the purposes for which it is used;

the names of its topics;

the thinkers who created it;

the writings that first recorded it.

Science is about truth that is not necessary but rather contingent, because it is based on actual observations and inductions about regular or pattern-following phenomena in the universe. The truths of science should be agreed upon by any thinkers in the universe that observe the same regular phenomena. The most interesting known phenomena in the universe are those concerning persons, and so science is divided accordingly. Natural science studies regular phenomena that do not necessarily involve persons and thus are likely to be universal (although many details of terrestrial life science are inevitably parochial). Technology applies mathematics and science toward accomplishing goals. Technological principles are likely to coincide wherever in the universe there are thinkers dealing with similar phenomena and desiring similar goals. Social sciences strive to induce truths that would apply to any kind of person anywhere in the universe, but this is not always possible because humans know of only one kind of person: humans. Most parochial of all would be topics relating to human arts and leisure, which this text excludes as not involving fundamental knowledge.

0.5. Prologue / Questions Asked

Students could use it to gauge how much they have left to learn, and how a given piece of knowledge fits in with all the rest.

Teachers could use it to show the relationships among the various parts of human knowledge. It could also help them audit how well their course plans cover fundamentals, and help them prepare tests for achievement of basic understanding.

Colleges could use it as a model report required to be written by graduating students.

Educated people could use it to help correct any areas of forgetfulness, incompleteness, or obsolescence in their education.

People building systems of knowledge or opinion could use it as an example of how to address the important and fundamental areas of human knowledge.

Investigators could use its compilation of mysteries to choose a research area available for important contribution.

Present-day futurists could consider it as a worldview toward which humanity might be moving.

Future historians could use it to understand what was known and believed in these times.

Humans from outside of Western culture could use it to help understand Western thinking.

Engineers could upload it to help populate the knowledge base for a potential artificial intelligence.

Archivists could store it to help safeguard human knowledge against catastrophes that might threaten human civilization.

Persons from outside human civilization -- such as extraterrestrials -- could use it to evaluate the state of human knowledge and ignorance.

Persons (such as psychics, spiritualists, and alien abductees) allegedly in contact with non-human intelligence could authenticate their claims by answering some of humanity's unanswered questions listed in it.

This text is memeware. You may reproduce or distribute this text only in complete and unmodified copies, only for non-commercial purposes, and only if you agree to the following memeware license.

If you find this text useless, you owe the author nothing. If you find it useful, you should do one or both of: Propagate copies of it (complete with this memeware license) to at least two people who find it useful and do not yet have a copy, and email the author (brian@holtz.org) some vague indication of who they are.

copies of it (complete with this memeware license) to at least two people who find it useful and do not yet have a copy, and email the author (brian@holtz.org) some vague indication of who they are. Pay the author however much the text is worth to you, via the payment link at http://humanknowledge.net. If the amount ($5? 5¢? 0¢?) is much less than the effort of sending it, then add the amount to your next charitable donation and advise the author of the charity and the amount.

The number of possible valid human knowledge summaries no longer than this text is immense but finite. This text is certainly far from being the best possible such summary. If the goal of approaching such an optimal summary is worthwhile, then an effective method might be to first produce a suboptimal summary and then to continually correct it or replace it outright with better ones. Thus corrections and replacements of this text are welcome.

At the end of this text is a list of some of the references used in writing it. Because this text attempts to say so much, it contains few references for particular statements. The text tries to explain or justify some of its statements, but most it merely asserts, due to space constraints.

Words in single-quotes are being mentioned rather than used. ('Ten' is a word, while ten is a number.) Words in double-quotes are being used verbatim from some source. Words in italics are being used with emphasis. Words in bold and used at the beginning of a sentence are being defined.

Some will find parts of this compendium uninteresting. The author hopes the text will reawaken their childhood curiosity about the big questions, and tap their adult capacity for marvel at what humanity knows and does not know. Aristotle or Newton would probably each have given his right eye for access to the knowledge that most modern humans choose to ignore.

Some will note that while the author is known for his sense of humor, there is no humor in this text. The author believes that humor would be inappropriate in what is essentially a reference work. There are probably funny lexicographers, but you wouldn't know it by reading a dictionary.

Some will say this text has too many definitions and reads like a dictionary. A large part of knowledge is indeed analysis: the carving of nature at the joints.

Some will say this text has too few definitions, in that it uses too many academic or obscure words. For the sake of brevity, this text indeed takes full advantage of the vocabulary of English.

Some will regard the text as grandiose or presumptuous. An assertive summary of human knowledge is necessarily grand in scope and must presume to make judgments. However, the reader should not mistake terseness for any claim to authority or certitude.

Some will not like the way the text organizes and partitions knowledge. There are many useful ways to organize knowledge, but a linear text can only choose one.

Some will quibble with the relative emphasis the text gives to certain subjects. A text this broad must give incomplete treatment to any topic it covers.

Some will argue that the text offers few new ideas. The text strives for truth and not mere novelty. Few (if any) of the ideas in this text may be original, but their systematic assertion may be unprecedented.

Some will consider the text simplistic. As long as it is appropriately categorical and not false or misleading, simplicity will be its virtue and not its vice.

Some will note that the text does not justify many of its assertions. Indeed, this text necessarily devotes its space to conclusions rather than demonstrations, describing the destination and not the path.

Some will disagree with the text's assertions. Reality and history will determine which assertions are true and which are not. The truths advanced in this text may not find widespread acknowledgment in the author's lifetime. But as these truths prevail over the third millennium's first century or two, historians will have trouble (as did the author) finding a prior exposition of the emerging worldview that the text identifies and summarizes.

Some will claim that no valid summary of human knowledge is possible, and that knowledge is subjective to the knower or relative to the context. Such mysticism and cynical relativism can be refuted only by the objective regularity of the universe itself. This objective regularity is the reason why science works.

Some will question the authority or motivation of the author. Indeed, the qualifications and intentions of an author should never be exempt from questioning. However, the truth or falsity of each (non-self-referential) statement in the text is nevertheless independent of who wrote it, no matter how hard some might wish otherwise.

Some will say that this text, so full of second-hand facts and personal judgments, is and will be of no importance. They likely are correct about the text, but not about the worldview it identifies and summarizes.

1. Philosophy

Metaphysics: the study of ultimate reality. Epistemology: the study of knowledge. Axiology: the study of values.

Necessary Questions

Philosophy asks the questions:

What is existing?

What is knowing?

What is good?

The first two questions face anyone who cares to distinguish the real from the unreal and the true from the false. The third question faces anyone who makes any decisions at all, and even not deciding is itself a decision. Thus all persons practice philosophy whether they know it or not.

What is existing? Reality consists ultimately of matter and energy and their fundamentally lawlike and unwilled relations in space-time. To exist is to have a causal relationship with the rest of the universe. The universe is the maximal set of circumstancesthat includes this statement and no subset of which is causally unrelated to the remainder. Humans do not know why the universe exists or what it is for. The universe operates without supernatural intervention and according to lawlike regularities that can be understood through empirical investigation and without special intuition. Humans have no credible evidence of any supernatural agency or unity. Humans have no credible evidence that any minds enjoy eternal existence.

What is knowing? Knowledge is justified true belief. Truth is logical and parsimonious consistency with evidence and with other truth. Meaning is the context-sensitive connotation ultimately established by relevant denotation and use. All synthetic propositions (including this one) can only be known from experience and are subject to doubt. A synthetic statement is propositionally meaningless if it is in principle neither falsifiable nor verifiable. A mind is any volitional conscious faculty for perception and cognition. Minds and ideas consist ultimately of matter. Mental states are functional states consisting of causal relations among components for processing information. Consciousness is awareness of self and environment. Intelligence is the ability to make, test, and apply inductions about perceptions of self and world. There are no forms of reasoning or kinds of knowledge that are in principle inaccessible to regular intelligence.

What is good? As autonomous living intellects, we persons value intelligence and life and the autonomy they need to flourish. A person is any intelligent being with significant volitional control over how it affects other beings. All persons have the right to life and liberty. All beings have the right not to suffer torture or extinction. Liberty is volition in the absence of aggression. Aggression consists essentially of 1) coercion or 2) damage to a person's body, property, or rightful resources. Coercion is compulsion of one person by another through force or threat of aggression. Justice is the minimization, reversal and punishment of aggression. The purpose of the state is to effect justice, provide aid and sustenance to persons in mortal danger, protect species in danger of extinction, and prevent torture.

Autocosmology is a synthesis of metaphysical naturalism, ontological materialism, epistemological empiricism and positivism, mental functionalism, theological atheism, axiological extropianism, political libertarianism, economic capitalism, constitutional federalism, biological evolutionism, evolutionary psychology, and technological optimism. Autocosmology is the worldview asserted by this text.

Human Answers

Faith is belief based on revelation and exempt from doubt.

is belief based on revelation and exempt from doubt. Mysticism is belief based on private and direct experience of ultimate reality.

is belief based on private and direct experience of ultimate reality. Skepticism is belief that is always subject to doubt and justified through objective verification.

is belief that is always subject to doubt and justified through objective verification. Cynicism is the absence of belief.

A skeptic believes what he sees. A mystic believes what he feels. A fideist believes what he hears. A cynic believes nothing. Thus faith fails in not questioning others, and mysticism fails in not questioning the self. Skepticism succeeds by exempting nothing from questioning, while cynicism fails by exempting no answer from disbelief.

Darwin made faith essentially indefensible among Western philosophers. Modern Western philosophy is broadly divided into two traditions, each of which starts with skepticism and takes it to a certain extreme.

Analytic philosophy is popular in English-speaking nations and focuses on logical and linguistic clarification. The Analytic tradition has spawned two major schools:

philosophy is popular in English-speaking nations and focuses on logical and linguistic clarification. The Analytic tradition has spawned two major schools: Logical Positivism is an analytic school holding that meaningful propositions must be either logically provable or empirically verifiable, and that propositions about metaphysics and ethics are therefore nonsensical or at best emotional.

is an analytic school holding that meaningful propositions must be either logically provable or empirically verifiable, and that propositions about metaphysics and ethics are therefore nonsensical or at best emotional.

Ordinary Language Analysis (or Oxford philosophy ) is an analytic school holding that the meaning of propositions lies in how their constituent terms are used in ordinary language.

(or ) is an analytic school holding that the meaning of propositions lies in how their constituent terms are used in ordinary language. Continental philosophy is popular in France and Germany and attempts to directly confront human existence and ethical freedom without any preconceived notions or categories. The Continental tradition has spawned several major schools:

philosophy is popular in France and Germany and attempts to directly confront human existence and ethical freedom without any preconceived notions or categories. The Continental tradition has spawned several major schools: Phenomenology is a Continental school emphasizing intuition and raw sensory experience.

is a Continental school emphasizing intuition and raw sensory experience.

Existentialism is a Continental school emphasizing that the ethical freedom of raw human existence precedes and undermines any attempt to define the essence or nature of humanity.

is a Continental school emphasizing that the ethical freedom of raw human existence precedes and undermines any attempt to define the essence or nature of humanity.

Deconstructionism (or Post-Structuralism ) is a Continental school that questions even the basic notions of objectivity and rationality.

(or ) is a Continental school that questions even the basic notions of objectivity and rationality.

Critical Theory (or the Frankfurt School) is a Continental school that uses Marxist and Hegelian theory to question the social structures underlying traditional rationality.

Analytic philosophy takes skepticism to an extreme by saying that philosophy is only about necessary answers (logic and mathematics) and not necessary questions (metaphysics and axiology). Continental philosophy fails by turning methodological skepticism into mysticism (Phenomenology, Existentialism) and cynical relativism (Deconstructionism, Critical Theory).

Ontology: the study of being. Theology: the study of universal being and knowing.

Reality

Reality is everything that exists. Reality consists ultimately of matter and energy and their fundamentally lawlike and unwilled relations in space-time.

Theories of Reality

Nature is the aspects of the universe governed by lawlike and nonvolitional regularity.

is the aspects of the universe governed by lawlike and nonvolitional regularity. Spirit is anything mysteriously volitional or otherwise not governed by lawlike regularity.

Supernaturalism is the thesis that the fundamental laws of physics make irreducible reference to, or were created by, some agency's volition.

is the thesis that the fundamental laws of physics make irreducible reference to, or were created by, some agency's volition. Theism is the thesis that the universe is affected by supernatural agency.

is the thesis that the universe is affected by supernatural agency.

Polytheism is the thesis that the universe is affected by supernatural agencies.

is the thesis that the universe is affected by supernatural agencies.



Monotheism is the thesis that the universe is affected by a single supernatural agent, God.

is the thesis that the universe is affected by a single supernatural agent, God.

Pantheism is the thesis that the universe constitutes a supernatural agency.

is the thesis that the universe constitutes a supernatural agency.

Deism is the thesis that a supernatural agency created the universe and lets its laws operate without interference.

is the thesis that a supernatural agency created the universe and lets its laws operate without interference. Naturalism is the thesis that reality exists and operates without supernatural intervention and according to lawlike regularities that can be understood through empirical investigation and without special intuition.

is the thesis that reality exists and operates without supernatural intervention and according to lawlike regularities that can be understood through empirical investigation and without special intuition. Atheism is the thesis that supernatural agency does not exist.

is the thesis that supernatural agency does not exist.

Agnosticism is the thesis that one does not or cannot know whether supernatural agency exists.

Fideists usually believe in theism or deism.

Theism stems from the human propensity to take any mysterious phenomenon as an indication of supernatural intentionality. Primitive humans invented supernatural explanations for:

the daily cycle of the Sun; the motions of the Moon and planets;

the seasons; rivers, currents, winds, thunder, lightning, precipitation and drought;

the genesis, design, and diversity of life; success in farming and hunting;

the human mind; evil, misfortune, disease, pestilence, war, and death.

However, the Scientific Revolution had established by the middle 1800s that physics, chemistry, astronomy, meteorology, and physiology could be understood in naturalistic terms. Supernatural explanations still seemed necessary for the origin and mechanism of life and mind, and for the origin of the universe itself. In the subsequent century, science outlined the basic answers for these questions, and theism began to be abandoned by serious thinkers. Always hoping that the gaps in scientific knowledge are about to miraculously stop shrinking, some fideists clung to a theism based on an increasingly irrelevant "God of the gaps".

Deists retreat directly to the last trench, and use God only to answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Deism is unparsimonious, because it cannot answer the question of why there is God rather than not God.

Mystics usually believe in pantheism or outright idealism. Pantheism and Idealism are incorrect because they too are unparsimonious. They infer spiritual aspects of reality from psychological phenomena that can be explained more parsimoniously in materialist terms.

Skeptics usually believe in naturalism. The varieties of naturalism differ primarily according to their explanation of how matter relates to mind. While naturalists do not know why the universe exists, there is no credible evidence or convincing argument that its existence implies supernatural agency. Parsimony demands that supernatural agency be held not to exist until shown otherwise. Agnosticism constitutes either ignorance of this demand, or a redundant restatement of the principle that synthetic propositions are subject to doubt.

Paranormality

Beings

Ra, Anu, Ashur, Ormazd, Baal, El, Yahweh, Jehovah, God, Zeus, Jupiter, Brahma, Amaterasu, Viracocha, Quetzalcoatl, Great Spirit, Lugh, Pele, Allah, Odin



Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, Loki, Osiris, Shiva



souls, spirits, demons, vampires, werewolves, hobgoblins, bogeymen



Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy



angels, fairies, leprechauns, gnomes, elves

Places or States

Heaven, Elysium, Olympus, Asgard, K'un-lun, T'ien



Hades, Tartarus, Orcus, Acheron, Hell, Gehenna, Jahannam, bhumis, Jigoku



Sheol, Styx, Purgatory, Valhalla, Limbo



nirvana, buddhata, satori

Forces or Substances

Good, Spirit, atman, ch'i, prana, karma, life force, Godhead, Nous



Evil, Thanatos



ether, humours, ectoplasm, elan vital, phlogiston, polywater



antigravity, cold fusion, perpetual motion, free energy, orgone

Apparitions

auras, bio-energy, chakras, Kirlian photography



ghosts, reincarnation, samsara



miracles, stigmata, speaking in tongues, possession, spontaneous human combustion



UFOs, alien abductions, crop circles, Bermuda Triangle

Powers

voodoo, witchcraft, sorcery, magick, shamanism, wicca



telekinesis, astral projection



crystals, pyramids



faith healing, alchemy, homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic

Knowledge

astrology, tarot, palmistry, numerology, phrenology, enneagrams, dowsing



I Ching, feng shui



prophecy, fortune-telling, Nostradamus, Bible codes

Perception

clairvoyance, telepathy, channeling

Humans have no credible evidence for these phenomena. Over time these phenomena will recognized as delusions, hysteria, myths, nonsense, and hoaxes.

Understanding of reality and existence is built up according to experience from elements provided by logic: terms, their properties and relations, and the attributions and inferences that can be made among them. From these can be derived the ontological notions of causality, existence, time, identity, and space.

Causality

A circumstance is a set of terms and their fixed properties and relations that as a whole can be distinguished from other such sets and identified with itself. A change is a relation between an ordered pair of distinguishable circumstances and is defined by the two circumstances that it relates. An effect is a change that can be attributed. A cause is that to which an effect can be attributed in whole or in part. An influence is that to which an effect can be only partly attributed. Attribution is a fundamental concept that underlies the notions of both ontological causality and logical properties.

A necessary cause is one which can be inferred from the effect. A sufficient cause is one from which the corresponding effect can be inferred. To determine is to be the necessary and sufficient cause for. Possibility is the property of not being contradicted by any inference. Logical possibility is the property of not contradicting the laws of logic. Physical possibility is the property of not contradicting the laws of nature.

Is causality an illusion? Does every effect have a cause, or do some effects have no cause? Can there be a cycle of causality, in which an effect both precedes and contributes to its cause? Can one know the answers to these questions?

Existence

The universe is the maximal set of circumstances that includes this statement and no subset of which is causally unrelated to the remainder. To exist is to have a causal relationship with the rest of the universe. An entity is any term that exists. Two circumstances are causally unrelated if neither could ever influence the other.

It is unparsimonious to say other universes exist. One could imagine a set of circumstances causally unrelated to the maximal set that includes this sentence, and could choose to consider it a separate universe. But to say those imagined circumstances "exist" is to cheapen existence from causal reality to mere imaginability. An imagining does not establish the existence of the thing imagined.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Is there an objective purpose for that which exists? How could one recognize an answer to these questions? Are these questions meaningless?

Humans do not know why there is something rather than nothing, or if the question is even meaningful. If this question has a parsimonious answer, it must consist in a self-explaining fact or cycle of facts. A candidate for such a fact would be the concept of God in the Ontological Proof, but that proof is not convincing. Humans do not know any such fact(s), or even if they could possibly exist. If it is asserted that non-existence is more likely or natural than existence, one could ask why this asserted tendency (toward non-existence) itself exists.

A possibly meaningful (but unparsimonious) answer to the Ultimate Why is that the universe exists (more precisely, is perceived to exist) roughly because it is possible. The reasoning would be as follows. Absolute impossibility -- the state of affairs in which nothing is possible -- is itself not possible, because if nothing truly were possible, then absolute impossibility would not be possible, implying that at least something must be possible. But if at least one thing is possible, then it seems the universe we perceive should be no less possible than anything else. Now, assuming that physicalism is right and that qualia and consciousness are epiphenomena, then the phenomenology of a mind and its perfect simulation are identical. So whether the universe we perceive existed or not, it as a merely possible universe would be perceived by its merely possible inhabitants no differently than our actual universe is perceived by its actual inhabitants. By analogy, the thoughts and perceptions of a particular artificial intelligence in a simulated universe would be the same across identical "runs" of the simulation, regardless of whether we bothered to initiate such a "run" once, twice -- or never.

Thus, the universe might merely be the undreamed possible dream of no particular dreamer.

Time

An event is a change that cannot interestingly be subdivided into constituent changes. Time is the ordering of events according to the potential of some events to causally influence other events. If (as in this universe) causal influence propagates through space only at finite speed, then some events can be far enough apart in space as to be in principle unable to influence each other. In this case time is a partial order on events instead of a total order.

An instant is a point on a linear continuum onto which events have been associated in a particular reference frame according to their order in time. Duration is a measure of the separation between two instants in time determined by counting intervening events of the kind that recur in proportional numbers to each other. Examples of such events are the swings of a pendulum or the vibrations of an atom.

Eternity is an entire linear continuum of instants. Thus by definition there is between any two instants another instant. However, it is not necessary that between any two events there is another event. Nor is it necessary that there be a first event, even if the past is of finite duration. Just as there is no smallest positive real number, there might be no first event, because there might be no event associated with a first instant (t=0). Instants are mathematical constructs that do not always have an associated actual event.

The future is, from the perspective of a particular event, the set of all events that the event potentially influences. The past is, from the perspective of a particular event, the set of all events by which the event is potentially influenced. The present is, from the perspective of a particular event, the set of all events simultaneous with it. Simultaneity is a relation enjoyed by two events if and only if they share identical sets of past and future events.

Hypertime. Time is often said to pass or flow or to be moved through. This metaphor of motion is misleading, because motion is spatial displacement over time, measured for example in meters per second. But a 'motion of time' measured in seconds per second is nonsensical, and so temporal displacement 'over time' requires a notion of hypertime, measured in seconds per hyper-second. This is no help, because hypertime too will be said to flow -- through hyper-hypertime. There is no reason to posit an absolute or universal or extra-temporal or distinguished present that flows or passes or marches and continuously turns absolutely future events into absolutely past ones. Past, present, and future are relations with a particular event and are not absolute properties in themselves.

Changing the future. The present can affect a future event, but it cannot "change" a future event. An event is itself a change and time is no more than an ordering of these changes. If changes themselves can change, these hyper-changes are hyper-events that can be ordered into hypertime. Events cannot change over time because events are defined by their pre- and post-conditions. To talk of different post-conditions for an event is really to talk of a different event, just as to talk of different cardinality for a number is really to talk of a different number. This does not imply determinism, because determinism is a statement about inference and not about inevitability.

Determinism is the thesis that a sufficient knowledge of any particular set of circumstances could be used to completely infer any subsequent circumstance. Some humans take determinism to be the thesis that the future is already decided, that the present was always going to be the way it is, that statements about probability and possibility are merely statements about one's incomplete knowledge, and that only actual possibility is that which is already inevitable.

Such a notion of ontological determinism is different from epistemic determinism only if there is a hypertime in which different points of normal time can "already" coexist. A notion of ontological determinism that is strictly different from epistemic determinism can have no practical consequences. As a difference that makes no difference, ontological determinism is a thesis that parsimony demands be rejected. Adopting the thesis makes as much sense as adopting the thesis that the universe is five minutes old. It is inconsequential -- and thus meaningless -- to say the future is already decided.

Some humans argue that if determinism is true, then no argument is to be considered valid as it is simply a train of statements following a predestined track. First, this misconceived argument applies as well to itself as it does to any other argument. Second, even in a deterministic system there can arise processes that tend to produce certain results. If viable organisms can arise, reproduce, and evolve due to natural selection in a deterministic universe, then surely viable arguments can arise, reproduce, and evolve due to competition in a marketplace of ideas. The viability of an idea or argument is closely related to its epistemological validity, and so the opposite misconception could occur: an argument might be considered more valid merely because it is at the end of so many predestined tracks.

Time Travel. Time travel would imply the existence of either hypertime or circular causality. Humans have no reason to think either exists.

Temporal Anisotropy. In a short video clip showing two billiard balls bouncing off each other, forward and backward in time are indistinguishable if one ignores friction and inelasticity. In a longer video of a billiards break, the future is the end in which the balls are no longer in a nicely ordered triangle. If causes can be attributed to effects as easily as effects can be attributed to causes, then causal laws do not distinguish past and future, and the future for an event is the direction of increasing disorder in the system. Traces and memories of the past are a localized increase in order at the expense of an increase in system-wide disorder. Due to statistical considerations, some systems can cycle between order and disorder. In such systems the direction locally considered to be future can vary over the timeline of the system.

Temporal anisotropy is not determined by the expansion of the universe, nor by the direction of electromagnetic radiation. For electromagnetism, the attribution of influence works equally well in both time directions. There is no inherent difference between the absorption and emission of a photon. Boundary conditions are logically possible in which photons are set in motion without having been emitted from anything, and which converge in shrinking spheres on an anti-emitter.

Identity

A given entity is identified through time with its closest close-enough continuous-enough continuer. A continuer is an entity which is similar to a previous entity and exists because of it. A continuer is close enough if it retains enough of the original entity's properties. A continuer is closest if it retains more of the original entity's properties than any other continuer. A continuer is continuous enough if there is no extraordinary discontinuity in its relationship to the original entity.

Space

Do space and time have absolute existence independent of their contents? Or are they simply a system of relations among entities and events? Is there a way to answer these questions, or would any answer not make a difference?

God

God is supernatural agency or unity, often considered necessary, perfect, timeless, omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent, and personal. A deity is

Divinity is the property of being supernatural and sacred. Sacredness is the property of being worthy of reverence or worship.

Humans have no credible evidence or convincing proof of any deities, including a God, Creator, First Cause, Perfect or Necessary Being.

Humans have proposed philosophical proofs of God as an alternative or supplement to historical revelation of God's existence.

Ontological Proof . God is the most perfect idea. If God did not exist, then the idea of god would be imperfect in its existence, and would not be the most perfect idea.

Cosmological Proof . All effects must have a cause, and an infinite regress of causes is impossible. Therefore, God is the First Cause.

Teleological Proof . The universe (or its set of physical parameters) is evidently designed, and therefore must have a Designer.

Anthropological Proof . Humans have a universal sense of morality and spirituality, and the cause of this effect is God.

Mystical Proof . God can be experienced directly.

Pascal's Wager. Blaise Pascal argued that it is a safer bet to incorrectly believe in God than to incorrectly disbelieve in God.

The Ontological proof assumes without evidence that ideas can exist independently of minds, or that universals can exist independently of instances, or in general that logical necessity is the same thing as ontological necessity.

The Cosmological proof is unparsimonious. If God can be self-caused, then so can the universe. Also, an infinite regress of causes is as logically possible as an infinite progress of effects.

The Teleological proof is undermined by unrelenting progress in reducing the number of those initial parameters and by anthropic arguments for why they should allow the development of life and intelligence.

The Anthropological proof is undermined by other, more plausible naturalistic explanations for the origin of human nature.

The Mystical proof is undermined by other, more plausible naturalistic explanations of mystical experiences.

Pascal's Wager provides no method for choosing among conflicting actual and possible religions, and invites one to follow false hope and blind fear rather than clear reason. Some religions might offer some hopes (e.g. that good behavior will be reciprocated) that may in fact be justified (even if on grounds other than those the religion offers). But the primary hopes offered by all major religions -- of afterlife, or communion with a consequential ultimate reality -- are false.

There is no credible evidence that any such revelation has been competently attempted by any god(s).

Afterlife

Humans have no credible evidence of reincarnation or any kind of afterlife.

Faith

It is possible (but unlikely) that this epistemological belief could one day stop yielding satisfactory results. For example, if God appeared and started violating physical laws, predicting the future, punishing infidels, and rewarding believers, then faith would suddenly be more satisfactory than skepticism. Until such a development, skepticism continues to be more satisfactory than faith.

Faith is not simply an absence of doubt, because tautologies are beyond doubt and yet are recognized not revealed. Faith is not simply any confident reliance on authority, because an authority can be relied upon even confidently without being held exempt from all doubt. Faith is not simply any provisional hypothesis believed without complete evidence, because a proposition can be provisionally believed without being held exempt from all doubt. Faith is not simply any affirmation of values, because to affirm a value is not to posit a proposition but to make a valuation. Faith is belief based on revelation and exempt from doubt. Fideists often say skeptics too have "faith" in science or reason, but this corrupts the definition of 'faith'. Faith must be embarrassing if its only defense is the claim that everybody is guilty of it.

Origin of faith. Humans' propensity for faith derives perhaps from their dependence on teaching by parents and society. In the absence of a biological mechanism for offspring to inherit knowledge directly, a predisposition for unquestioning belief in authority might help spare each generation from having to rediscover or verify everything.

Mysticism

Mysticism is belief base on private and direct experience of ultimate reality. Mysticism holds that belief can be justified simply by the intensity or directness of an experience, and without a showing that the experience has any objective basis or consequences.

Rejecting objectivity and the distinction between the experiencer and the experienced, mysticism thus mistakes feeling for knowing. Mystics are forever free to claim that anyone who doesn't feel what they feel is somehow "doing it wrong". The conclusions of mysticism are usually unfalsifiable or inconsequential and thus propositionally meaningless.

Some mystics compare meditation to advanced mathematics and claim that both yield conclusions that can only be verified by adept practitioners. This claim is misleading. It is true that creating and even comprehending advanced mathematical conclusions usually requires specialized training. But all mathematical demonstration is by definition subject to verification through mechanical symbol manipulation. This symbol manipulation is not necessarily private or "interior" like the experience of a mystic, but is expressly public and exterior.

Origin of mysticism. Humans' propensity for mysticism derives perhaps from their nature as intelligent social animals who survive by detecting patterns and especially intentions in an environment dominated by their social interactions. Humans appear biased to see intentionality not only in friends, foes, predators, and prey, but also in weather, the heavens, or the universe itself. This bias is perhaps related to the general human tendency (known in psychology as the Fundamental Attribution Error) to incorrectly emphasize intentional explanations over situational or circumstantial ones.

Religion

Religion is any system of belief based on faith or mysticism,

Science and Religion. A common misconception is that science might be an alternative to religion for answering questions about meaning and value. Those questions are the domain of philosophy, whereas science deals with objective phenomena. Science depends on the epistemological principle of skepticism, and any "conflict" between science and religion is really a conflict between skepticism and faith (or mysticism). Religion can be made superficially compatible with science by restricting itself to questions that are a) scientific but unanswered or b) philosophical. However, faith- or mysticism-based religion can never be compatible with the skepticism on which science -- and all epistemologically valid philosophy -- is built.

Belief Systems

death : personality ceases at death.

: personality ceases at death. judged : the quality of an eternal afterlife is determined by a judgment of one's mortal behavior.

: the quality of an eternal afterlife is determined by a judgment of one's mortal behavior. rebirth : personality is after death recycled into a new organism, usually according to one's mortal behavior and with a loss of memory, and sometimes with the possibility that with good enough behavior or insight the cycle can be broken into communion.

: personality is after death recycled into a new organism, usually according to one's mortal behavior and with a loss of memory, and sometimes with the possibility that with good enough behavior or insight the cycle can be broken into communion. commun : personality ascends after death to a higher plane of (perhaps non-personal) communion with the universe.

: personality ascends after death to a higher plane of (perhaps non-personal) communion with the universe. immort: personality graduates after death to (usually disembodied but conscious) immortality.





Belief System Millions % Where When Founder Scripture Deity Fate Christianity 1960 34% West c30 Jesus New Testament God judged Roman Catholicism 981 17% c30 Paul, Peter Protestantism 404 7% Baptist 100 2% c1611 Thomas Helwys Lutheran 76 1517 Martin Luther (95 Theses) Anglican 70 England 1534 Henry VIII Episcopalian 3 USA 1789 Methodist 50 1738 John Wesley Reformed 1536 John Calvin (Institutes...) Presbyterian Pentecostal 9 USA c1880 Charles Parham Church of Christ 1.6 USA c1832 Campbell, Stone Society of Friends USA 1650 George Fox Eastern Orthodox 123 4% 1054 Michael Cerularius Mormonism 11 Utah 1831 Joseph Smith Book of Mormon Jehovah's Witness 1.4 US USA 1878 Charles Russell Christian Science 0.4 USA 1879 Mary Eddy (Science & Health) Islam 1130 19% Mideast 600 Muhammad Koran Allah judged Sunni 16% Shiite 3% Sufism (Agnosticisms) 887 15% non death Hinduism 793 14% India 1000 BCE (Aryans) Vedas, esp. Upanishads poly rebirth Hare Krishna Buddhism 325 5.6% E. Asia 525 BCE Buddha Tipitaka pan rebirth Zen Buddhism Amidism (Atheism) 222 3.8% anti death Chinese folk religions 221 3.8% China Confucianism China 500 BCE Confucius Analects; I Ching non death Taoism China 550 BCE Lao Tzu Tao-Te-Ching poly immort Asian New Religions 106 1.8% Animisms 103 1.8% Shamanism Voodoo Sikhism 19 0.3% Punjab 1604 Guru Nanak Adi Granth Sat-Kartar rebirth Judaism 14 0.2% Israel 1800 BCE Abraham Old Testament Yahweh death Spiritism 10 Bahaism 6 Persia 1863 Baha Ullah Kitabi Ikan Allah? Jainism 5 India 550 BCE Mahavira Purvas et al. pan rebirth Shintoism 3 Japan <500 (Japanese) poly commun Cao Dai 3 Vietnam 1919 Ngo Van Chieu God? rebirth Tenrikyo 2.4 Japan Scientology 1 USA 1954 L. Ron Hubbard Dianetics (aliens) immort Unitarianism 0.8 Rastafarianism 0.7 Zoroastrianism 0.2 Persia 1000 BCE Zarathustra Avesta Ahura Mazda judged Parsee 0.19 Mandaeanism 0.045 Iraq c300 Haran Gawaita mono? immort Other 1.9 Eckankar USA 1965 Paul Twitchell God immort Heaven's Gate USA 1971 Marshall Applewhite (aliens) immort Mithraism Persia Raelianism France 1973 Rael True Face of God (aliens) Rosicrucianism West 1614 Johan Andrea Confessio rosae crucis Santeria Cuba Satanism

Fideisms

BCE

BCE

Zoroastrianism is the Persian monotheistic fideist religion founded by Zarathustra (c628-c551 BCE ) and which teaches that good must be chosen over evil in order to achieve salvation.

Christianity is the West Eurasian monotheistic fideist religion professing that Jesus of Nazareth (c6 BCE - c30 AD) is the descendent of Abraham and the Son of God whose sacrifice for humanity's sins was recorded in the New Testament (c50-100), and who fulfilled the prophecies of the divinely inspired Old Testament.

Islam is the Middle Eastern monotheistic fideist religion professing surrender to the will of Allah (God), whose revelations in the Old and New Testaments were superseded by the Koran revealed to Muhammad (c570 - 632-06) for his chosen people, the children of Abraham's son Ishmael (c1800 BCE ).

Sikhism is the Punjab monotheistic fideist religion founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539) and whose sacred Adi Granth (1604) overlays a spartan righteousness onto Hindu cyclical cosmology.

These religions place unwarranted faith in purported revelations for which there is no credible evidence of authenticity or validity.

Mysticisms

BCE

Taoism is the Chinese polytheistic mystical religion based on the Tao-Te-Ching ascribed to Lao Tzu (c550 BCE ) and which advocates a path (tao) of minimalist serenity and reverence for various deities.

Shintoism is the Japanese polytheistic mystical religion involving mainly the observance of customs and festivals honoring various deities.

Jainism is the Indian pantheist mystical religion founded by Mahavira (599-527 BCE ) and which blends monastic asceticism with Buddhist cyclical cosmology.

Buddhism is the East Asian nontheistic mystical religion founded in India c525 BCE by the Buddha, who taught that existence is cyclical suffering caused by desiring and can be overcome by the "eightfold path" of right thought and deed.

Confucianism is the Chinese nontheistic mystical religion based on the sayings of Confucius (c500 BCE ) recorded in the Analects, and which teaches social order, scholarship, filial reverence for family and ancestors, and divination.

These religions posit entities (such as gods or spirits or forces) to explain subjective mystical experiences which have simpler naturalistic explanations. These religions allege phenomena (such as rebirth and divination) for which there is no credible evidence. Of the belief systems in the world that currently have mass followings, Buddhism and Confucianism) are the least misguided. For this reason, thet are attractive to Westerners who recognize the bankruptcy of revelation-based religion but who are still looking for an off-the-rack worldview rather than learning enough philosophy to assemble one themselves.

Evidence For Christianity

Since Christianity is the most prevalent belief system among humans, it deserves special attention. The best evidence for the Christian doctrine of a divine Jesus is:

Epistles c.50-60CE

Paul's letters broadly confirm the teachings and miracles of Jesus, and specifically his resurrection [1 Cor 15].

Gospels c.60-90CE

The veracity of the gospel accounts is supported by their mutual aggreement and their inclusion of embarrassing and vivid details.



The gospels are unanimously persuasive that Jesus died, and report many vivid accounts of encounters with the risen Jesus.



The gospels describe in vivid detail Jesus' miracles (many healings, three reanimations, etc.) and their acceptance throughout Judea and Galilee.

Extra-biblical evidence

The 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus confirms the historicity of Jesus by mentioning him as the brother of the martyred James.



Non-Christian writers like Josephus and Celsus agree that Jesus was known for his "feats" and "wonders".



Christianity as a movement survived even in Palestine among the people who would have had the best available opportunity for refuting its claims.

Arguments Against Christianity

There are at least eight insurmountable problems within the extant evidence that each independently refute the

Christian doctrine of a divine Jesus

:

Jesus' endorsement of the murderous immorality of Yahweh in the Torah;

Jesus' doctrine of "eternal punishment" in the "eternal fire" of Hell;

Jesus' failure to claim actual divinity;

Jesus' failed prophecy of his imminent return;

Jesus' failure to competently reveal his doctrines (concerning e.g. salvation, hell, divorce, circumcision, and diet) in his own written account or that of an eyewitness;



Jesus' failure to perform miracles the accounts of which cannot be so easily explained as faith-healing, misinterpretation, exaggeration, and embellishment ;

Jesus' failure to attract significant notice (much less endorsement) in the only detailed contemporaneous history of first-century Palestine;

Jesus' failure to recruit

anyone from his family,



any acquaintance from before his baptism,



a majority of Palestinian Jews, and even



some of those who heard his words and witnessed his alleged miracles.

An omnipotent omniscience benevolent deity competently attempting a revelation would have foreseen and corrected all of these problems. The existence of any one of them implies that Christian doctrine is false.

The reasons

not to believe the Christian doctrine of a divine Jesus can be divided into four categories:

the alternative naturalistic explanations of the existing evidence;

the missing evidence needed to prove such divinity;

the implausibility of such divine activity; and

the cascading implications of accepting such evidence.

In addition, the Christian gospels themselves are suspect because of their sources, contradictions, and apologetics.

Naturalistic explanations. Jesus of Nazareth was a faith healer and self-proclaimed divinely-special savior who tried to reform his native Jewish religion. However, the evidence about Jesus is less likely to have resulted from divinity than from misinterpretation, exaggeration, rationalization, delusion, deception, and mythologizing. Indeed, perhaps the greatest weakness of the claims for Jesus' divinity is the gospels' reliance on and vouching for the Old Testament, a patchwork of folklore, legends and myths about a tribe whose patriarch Abraham turned to monotheism because of fertility problems. Jesus was a Jewish prophet who affirmed Jewish law [Mt 5:17-18; Lk 2:27,39; Jn 10:35], observed the Jewish calendar [Lk 4:16, Mt 24:20], and preached about the God of Israel [e.g. Mk 12:29] in Jewish synagogues [Mk 1:21, 1:39, 6:2; Mt 4:23, 9:35, 13:54; Lk 4:15, 4:44, 6:6, 13:10, 19:47; Jn 6:59, 18:20] exclusively for Jews [Mt 10:5, Mt 15:24]. Jesus no doubt echoed the Torah theme that "all nations" would witness the majesty of Israel's God, but his only command to actually convert and baptize "all nations" is in a post-Easter speech alleged only in one gospel [Mt 28:19] (and in an appendix later added to Mark [16:15]).

Miracles. In the gospels Jesus heals the sick (possession, blindness, skin disorder, bleeding, fever, paralysis, withered hand), revives the recently deceased, calms a storm, multiplies food, and walks on water. The miracles ascribed to Jesus seem not to have been very convincing [Mt 11:20, Lk 10:13, Jn 6:66, 10:32, 12:37, 15:24], and seem explainable by a combination of conventional faith healing, exaggeration, and mythologizing. The three people Jesus allegedly reanimates [Mk 5/Lk 8; Lk 7; Jn 11] might not actually have been clinically dead, and the gospels report not a single indication supporting such a diagnosis. Any cases of blindness, paralysis, or demonic possession cured by Jesus could have been psychogenic. Jesus apparently admits [Lk 11:24-26] that his cures for demonic possession are often not permanent, and in the synoptic gospels there is only one mention [Mt 21:14] of a cure being performed in Jerusalem. The one case of congenital blindness is recorded as disputed, and only in the latest gospel [Jn 9].

God? The Christian doctrine of the "trinity", attempting to reconcile Jewish monotheism with Jesus' self-revelation, holds that Jesus 1) is both fully human and fully divine, and 2) is God (in a different "person"). The former is a contradiction, and the latter has no scriptural basis. In the gospels Jesus never claims identity with God or even explicit divinity, but rather a divinely special status as "the Son of God" and the "Anointed One" (Hebrew: messiah; Greek: christos). Jesus repeatedly distinguishes himself from God:

Why do you call me good? No one is good--except God alone. [Mk 10:18, Lk 18:17, Mt 19:17]

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. [Mk 13:32]

And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. [Lk 12:10]

Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done. [Lk 22:42-43]

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. [Lk 23:46]

the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son [Jn 5:22]

By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. [Jn 5:30]

I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. [Jn 8:28]

I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. [Jn 8:42]

If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who is glorifying me, of whom ye say that He is your God. [Jn 8:54]

I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. [Jn 12:49]

The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work [Jn 14:10]

If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. [Jn 14:28]

I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me. [Jn 14:31]

Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. [Jn 16:25]

I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father himself loves you [Jn 16:26-27]

I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. [Jn 20:17]

As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. [Jn 20:21]

When Jesus' opponents say his assumption of authority could be interpreted as a claim of divinity, all three synoptics agree [Mk 2:10, Mt 9:6, Lk 5:24] that Jesus merely asserted "authority on earth", and none intimates that his accusers concluded he was affirming their accusation. In the one instance in the gospels [Jn 10:33ff] in which Jesus' identity with God is explicitly discussed, Jesus cites a Psalm [82:6] as a precedent for his metaphor, and hastily retreats to his formulation of being "God's Son", adding vaguely that "the Father is in me, and I in the Father". However, 1 Jn 2:15 says this is true of anyone who acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, and Jesus used the same mutual inclusion poetry about him and his disciples [Jn 14:20]. When at another time [Jn 5:18ff] the Jews characterized the "Son of Man" title as "making himself equal with God", Jesus answered not by claiming identity but by drawing distinctions:

the Son can do nothing by himself

the Father loves the Son

the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son

the Father sent the Son

the Father has granted the Son to have life in him

the Father has given him authority to judge

I seek not to please myself but him who sent me

Thus Jesus retreats the only two times he is accused of claiming identity or equality with God. In the Passion story, Jesus was mocked or accused as a faith healer, prophet, king of the Jews, Messiah, and "Son of God" [Jn 19:7] -- but never as divine or as a god. When Jesus died, onlookers are said to have exclaimed not that Jesus was God, but rather the "Son of God" [Mat 27:54].

The title of 'God' is never reliably applied to Jesus anywhere in the New Testament. (In many translations of 2 Pet 1:1 and Titus 2:13, the description "God and Saviour" is seemingly applied to Jesus, but the scholarly consensus regards these two letters as late and pseudoepigraphic.) Acts quotes [2:22, 2:36, 3:13, 10:38, 17:31] Peter and Paul describing Jesus in terms of a man appointed to an office, but never calling him God. The gospel authors never explicitly claim Jesus to be God, and the closest they come is the vague language of Jn 1: "the Word was God" and "became flesh". John quotes Thomas exclaiming [Jn 20] "my Lord and my God", but immediately states [20:31] as a creed merely "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God". The "mystery" of Jesus' nature was hardly clarified by the Apostles [e.g. Phil 2:6, Rom 1:4, Col 1:15, Col 2:9], whose epistles never claim Jesus has any kind of identity with God. (Christian scribes tried to change that; cf. the differing manuscripts for Rom 9:5, Acts 20:28, and 1 Tim 3:16.) Even the alleged angelic annunciation of Jesus to his parents ommitted [Lk 1:32, Mt 1:20, Mt 2:13, Mt 2:20] the claim that Jesus was Yahweh incarnate.

Thus, just as Jesus failed to leave clear teachings about salvation, hell, divorce, circumcision, and diet, he also did not effect a competent revelation of who precisely he was. Depending on e.g. various 4th-century Roman emperors, there waxed and waned such christological heresies as Ebionism, Docetism, Adoptionism, Dynamic Monarchianism, Sabellianism, Arianism, Marcionism, Apollonarianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, and Monothelitism. The doublethink of the "trinity" is not found in the Bible, but instead was invented to reconcile Jewish monotheism with Jesus' idiosyncratic Sonship claims.

"Son of God". Jesus seems to have been illegitmate, and to have been known to be such in his community [Mt 1:18-24, Jn 8:41]. His only recorded words before his ministry concern his disobedience [Lk 2:48,51] at age 12 to his mother and stepfather, whom he denied [cf. Mt 23:9] by calling the Temple "my Father's house". He spurned his stepfather's trade of carpentry to take up a ministry proclaiming himself the son not of Joseph but of God. Despite angelic revelations [Lk 1:32, Mt 1:20, Mt 2:13, Mt 2:20] to Mary and Joseph, Mary's knowledge [Lk 1:34] of the virgin conception, and Mary's witness of at least one miracle [Mk 2], they (and Jesus' siblings) did not believe in him [Jn 7:5, Mt 13:57] and thought him "out of his mind" [Mk 3:21], leading Jesus to repeatedly stress [Mk 3:33, 10:29; Mt 10:37, 12:48, 19:29; Lk 11:27-28, 14:26] that one should choose God over one's biological family. Only on the day of his death do the gospels record a single friendly word [Jn 19:26] from Jesus to his family.

Delusional Schizophrenic? Jesus began his (apparently one-year) ministry as a follower of John the Baptist (whose embarrassing baptism of Jesus is played down or not mentioned in the later gospels). In the earliest gospel (Mark), Jesus never calls himself Christ/Messiah, is reluctant for his special nature to be known, and (as he does in Matthew) despairs on the cross. (By contrast, in the later Luke and John, Jesus asserts he is Christ, and confidently assures a co-crucified convict of their impending ascension.) Jesus "could not do many miracles" in his hometown [Mk 6:5, Mt 13:58, Lk 4:24], and he at times was considered mad by other Jews [Jn 8:48, 10:20]. Jesus' movement seems not to have been joined in his lifetime by a single family member or prior acquaintance, but only by strangers. Jesus satisifed the diagnostic criteria of paranoid schizophrenia:

hallucinations: hearing or seeing God, Satan, demons, and angels;

delusions of grandiosity: belief that he is the salvific Christ/Messiah with miraculous powers and apocalyptic foreknowledge;

delusions of persecution: temptation by Satan; opposition by demons;

an insidious reduction in external relations and interests: nomadic asceticism; estrangement from his family.

However, Jesus was not so mentally ill as to believe he was omnipotent. The gospels say repeatedly [Jn 7:1, 8:59, 11:53-54, 12:36; Mt 12:14-15, Mk 3:6-7, Lk 13:31,33] that Jesus retreated from or avoided danger. He was secretive and evasive about his special nature [Mk 3:12, 8:30, 4:41; Lk 9:21, 10:22-24; Mt 16:20; Jn 2:24, 8:25-29, 10:24-38, 12:34], and reluctant to have his powers tested [Mk 8:12; Lk 11:29, 23:8; Mt 4:7, 12:39, 16:4; Jn 2:18]. He was likely neither liar nor lunatic, but rather a preacher, faith-healer, and apocalyptic prophet who in the months leading up to his anticipated execution came to believe he was the Jewish Messiah and even the divinely-special savior of mankind.

Resurrection. At his death the apostles abandoned Jesus in panic, even though they should have been expecting his resurrection if they had indeed witnessed his miracles, heard his divinity claims, and heard him say at least four times [Mk 8:31, 10:34; Mat 16:21, 17:23, 20:19; Lk 9:22, 18:33, 24:7, 24:46] that he would "rise from the dead" or be "raised to life" "on the third day". The New Testament accounts of the resurrection appearances develop over time from silent to vague to contradictory to fantastic. The Empty Tomb story could have resulted from a discreet reburial or removal -- perhaps by a disciple, as in a rumor reported in Mt 28. Possible conspirators were Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene, a longtime disciple [Lk 8:2] "out of whom [Jesus] had driven seven demons" [Mk 16:9, Lk 8:2] and who (unlike any apostle) attended both the crucifixion and entombment. She was the first to visit the tomb on Easter [Mt 28:1, Jn 20:1], and the possibility of removal [Jn 20:2,14,15] was not unimaginable to her. She weepingly lingered [Jn 20:11] after the apostles left the empty tomb, and thereupon was the first [Mk 16:9, Mt 28:9, Jn 20:14] to claim seeing an appearance. The appearances were suspiciously exclusive: "He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen" [Acts 10:40-41] "Why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?" [Jn 14:22]. Many of the "appearances" seem to have been unimpressive to the disciples who heard about them (and should have been expecting them) and even to those who witnessed them:

But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like idle tales. [Lk 24:11]

When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it. Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them [Mk 16:11-12]

These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either. [Mk 16:13]

When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. [Mt 28:17]

Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. [Lk 24:15-16]

she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. Thinking he was the gardener, she said ... [Jn 20:14-15]

Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. [Jn 21:4]

What probably happened is that some disciples began having epiphanies, perhaps involving the occasional dream, ecstatic vision, encounter with a stranger, case of mistaken identity, or outright hallucination (or fabrication). The disciples in their desperation and zeal initially interpreted these experiences as manifestations of a triumphant and vindicated (but not necessarily reanimated) Jesus, who had apparently predicted that he would in some sense return or at least that his ministry would require but survive his death. If a tomb had in fact been found empty, that doesn't necessarily imply that these early manifestations were initially interpreted as experiences of a physically reanimated corpse. The disciples might have just believed that Yahweh had “raised” Jesus' body to heaven so as to not “abandon [it] to the grave” and to “decay” [Ps 16:10, cited in Acts 13:35-37]. An empty tomb belief would greatly have helped the early epiphanic experiences be misinterpreted, exaggerated, and embellished over the subsequent half century into the reanimated corpse stories that appear only in the two oldest gospels (Luke and John).

The gospels themselves give precedent for the idea of a dead person being “raised from the dead” [Mk 16:14] by inhabiting the body of some other person currently living. When some [Mk 6:14, Mk 8:28, Mt 16:14, Lk 9:19] -- including Herod [Mk 6:16, Mt 14:2] -- thought that John the Baptist had been "raised from the dead", at least a few of these people would have known that Jesus' body had (like the Easter gardener's) been animate before the Baptist's death. There is no record that anyone ever considered checking the Baptist's body (the grave of which was known to his disciples [Mk 6:29, Mt 14:13]), and there is no record that anyone wondered why Jesus' neck did not show signs of John's earlier beheading.



Missing evidence. A divine Jesus could trivially create new miracles to unambiguously vouch for some modern school of Christianity. For the gospel accounts of Jesus to be believable, two kinds of evidence would have to surface:

Textual discoveries that Jesus did not believe in the literal truth of the entire Old Testament, and that the unjust Christian notion of eternal damnation is a misunderstanding.

Compelling corroboration of gospel miracles through physical artifacts (e.g. the Shroud of Turin) or historical records (e.g. of the three-hour darkness on Good Friday).

However, available extra-scriptural records do not corroborate the gospel miracles. Christian apologists often claim that if false, the gospel traditions would have been refuted and discredited by skeptics in 1st-century Palestine. However, there is no indication that the Jesus movement was important enough then to merit the sort of early written debunking that would have been preserved despite skeptical apathy and Christian hostility. Except for the stolen-body rumor denied in Mat 28, the earliest records of anti-Christian skepticism date after the first century and are preserved mainly as excerpts in Christian rebuttals. Celsus (quoted by Origen) dismissed the miracles as the "tricks of jugglers" that he said are "feats performed by those who have been taught by Egyptians", and the Jewish slander reported by Tertullian claimed the empty tomb was faked.

The 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus is hard to count as anti-Christian, even after discounting his affirmation (unnoticed by all of his earliest Christian commentators) of the resurrection as an interpolation. Josephus may have written that Jesus "performed surprising works" and even that Jesus was believed to have been resurrected, but the (possibly interpolated) mention is only in passing. Josephus devotes more space each to John the Baptist and James, and while reporting much minutiae over the entire period during which Jesus lived, does not mention:

the Christmas Star that disturbed Herod and "all Jerusalem" [Mt 2:3], Herod's massacre [Mt 2:16], Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem [Mt 21:8-11], the Good Friday earthquake [Mt 27:51], the Good Friday resurrectees that "appeared to many people" in Jerusalem [Mt 27:53], or the Good Friday 3-hour darkness "over all the land" [Mk 15:33, Lk 23:44, Mt 27:45].

These events in fact went unnoticed by every non-Christian writer, including the historians Seneca and Pliny the Elder. Contrast this with the supernova of 1006CE that was noted in China, Egypt, Iraq, Italy, Japan, and Switzerland.

(Syncellus quotes a lost text of the Christian historian Julius Africanus which itself cites a lost text by Thallus: "Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse". The identification of Thallus' eclipse with "this darkness" might just be in the mind of Julius Africanus, and Thallus at any rate cannot be reliably dated as writing independently of the gospels.) The Alexandrian philosopher and commentator Philo outlived Jesus by 15 or 20 years, and as a visitor to Jerusalem should have met witnesses to the Easter miracles. His silence suggests that Jesus and his followers did not make the early impression that they should have if the gospels were true.

Implausibility. The gospel story o f a secretive unpublished family-resenting bastard faith healer in the rural outback of a peripheral province of a regional empire seems an u nlikely self-revelation for the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Creator of the universe:

Why such ambiguous and picayune miracles? Why not raise a new mountain in the desert, or install a new star in the heavens?

Why such vague and equivocal claims of divinity?

Why after his resurrection appear so ambiguously, so briefly, and to only his disciples? Why not -- after perhaps a more convincing execution, e.g. beheading -- march back to Pilate and Herod and ascend in front of Jerusalem assembled?

Why not write his revelation himself, and ensure that it survive in perfect copies? Why not include in it indisputible authentication, e.g. by predicting a fundamental physical constant?

The God of the Torah's holy scrolls is far too pedestrian in his works, parochial in his concerns, petty in his decisions, and primitive in his policies.

Works. In the gospels Jesus heals the sick, revives the recently deceased, calms a storm, walks on water, and multiplies food. The god of the Torah makes appearances, speeches, promises, and predictions; raises the dead; and takes credit for various plagues, fires, floods, astronomical events, victories, healings, and deaths. It is implausible that the Creator's works would be so confined to ancient times and so apparently constrained by ancient imaginations.

Concerns. After creating billions of galaxies in Genesis, the god of the Torah is implausibly obsessed with the family of Abraham and the Jordan valley where they live. It seems implausible that an omnibenevolent, omniscient, infallible deity would entrust a few fallible men in a backward corner of the world with such paltry evidence and then demand that everyone else either hear and believe them or suffer eternal damnation.

Decisions. In the gospels Jesus damns entire towns [Mt 11:23], compares non-Israelites to dogs [Mt 15:26], and affirms even "the smallest letter" [Mt 5:18, Jn 10:35] of the Torah. The god of the Torah tests and torments his followers, commits mass murders of e.g. Noah's flood victims [Gen 6:7, 7:21] and the firstborn sons of Egypt [Ex 12:29], creates linguistic division for fear of an ancient construction project [Gen 11:6], and curses mankind because Adam dared to "become like one of us, knowing good and evil" [Gen 3:22]. It is implausible that the Creator of the universe would be so petty and wicked.

Policies. The god of the Torah promotes or demands extravagant worship, dietary taboos, animal sacrifice, repressive sexual codes, human mutilation, monarchy, subjugation of women, slavery, human sacrifice [Lev 27:29, Jud 11:30-39, cf. Heb 11:17, Jam 2:21], and mass murder of even infants [Gen 6:7, 7:21, Ex 11:5, 12:29, 1 Sam 15:3, cf. Heb 11:7,28]. In the gospels Jesus affirms the Torah [Mt 5:18, Jn 10:35], endorses the murderous flood of Noah [Mt 24:38, Lk 17:27], and promises sinners not a thousand years' unrelenting torture, nor a million or a billion, but an eternity of excruciating torture by fire [Mk 9:43, Mt 18:8, 25:41, 25:46]. It is implausible that a competent and benevolent deity would in his revelation allow the endorsement of such heinous crimes and evil policies.

Cascading implications. If the existing evidence about Jesus of Nazareth is considered a convincing proof of his divinity, then many other things can be proven with similar evidence.

Miracles were reported commonly in ancient times and are attested in many other religions. Christians might argue that competing miracles were wrought by demons, but those very miracles could be used by a competing religion to justify the same claim about Jesus' miracles.

Martyrs have been common throughout human history. If dying for a belief can show the belief is true, then the kamikazes of Japan showed that Emperor Hirohito was divine. Note that Peter and James are the only alleged resurrection witnesses who the New Testament names (John 21:18,19, Acts 12:2) as martyrs, but there is no evidence that recanting their alleged belief in physical resurrection could have saved them. They probably just died for their very sincere belief in some Easter-related experiences that they interpreted as evidence of a triumphant and vindicated Jesus. All other Christian martyrs died for what they were told about the alleged resurrection and not for what they witnessed about it.

Prophecies. No non-trivial prophecy in the Bible has both a) been documented as having been made before the predicted event and b) had its fulfillment documented independently of the Bible itself. If self-fulfilling prophecy is considered valid, then for example the Book of Mormon is a valid prophetic text.

Gospel sources. The gospels were stitched together decades after the crucifixion by non-eyewitness zealots freely borrowing from oral traditions and now-lost earlier texts.

Other gospels . At least a dozen other gospels (e.g. of Thomas and Peter) are known from whole texts, fragments, and ancient references, but were not deemed by the early Christians to be divinely inspired.

Differing manuscripts show that the gospels have undergone insertions, deletions, additions, and revisions.

Copying . Matthew and Luke are based in part on copying from Mark and in part apparently on a now-lost earlier compilation of Jesus sayings.

Anonymity, Contemporaneity . The gospels were written 35-60 years after Jesus' death, and (unlike every other intact work of classical nonfiction) no authors are identified in the earliest copies. Only about a century later did the gospels become associated with the names of their alleged authors. Writing extensively twenty years after Jesus' death, Paul gives no hint that any gospel had yet been written down.

Mark was written c.65-70 by an unknown author who later church tradition said was an associate of the apostle Peter. The earliest copies of this gospel end abruptly at 16:8 before any visions of the risen Jesus, which were added later in various differing endings.

Matthew was written c.70-80 by an unknown author who later church tradition identified with the apostle Matthew, but the text heavily quotes the non-eyewitness Mark rather than providing an independent eyewitness account. Matthew changes (21:5 vs. Mk 11:7) or embellishes (2:15, 2:23) its narrative to make it fulfill Old Testament prophecies.

Luke is a second-hand [1:2] account written c.80 by a supposed companion of Paul. Luke is confused (4:23, 31, 44; 24:12) about Palestinian geography. Writing after the fall of Jerusalem, Luke in 21:8 modifies Mark 13:6 to say the end is not necessarily near.

John was written c.90 by an unknown author who is ambiguously identified (in the third person: 21:24) with the apostle John only in the final chapter, which is itself an apparent addendum.

Gospel contradictions. Among the many minor contradictions and inconsistencies in the gospels are several that cast significant doubt on the gospels' central message of a divine messiah foretold by the prophets.

Genealogy . Wildly contradictory genealogies for Jesus are given in Mt 1 and Lk 3, which cannot even agree on the father of Joseph.

Birthplace . Lk 2:4 and 2:39 say Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth before Jesus' birth, but Mt 2:23 says Joseph only later moved his family to "a town called Nazareth".

Birthdate . Luke says Jesus was born during [2:2] the census of Quirinius and before [1:5] the death of Herod. The census was in 6 CE, but Herod died in 4 BCE.

Chronology . John indicates Jesus' ministry lasted two or three years, while the earlier Synoptic gospels indicate one. John says Jesus cast out the money changers at the beginning of his ministry, while the Synoptics say it was right before his crucifixion.

Second coming . Jesus said [Mt 16:28, Lk 9:27] some "standing here" would live to see "the kingdom of God". Jesus also said [Mk 13:30, Lk 21:32, Mt 24:34] that "this generation" would not pass away before the "see[ing] the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory" as well as a "distress" "never to be equalled". Jesus' audience of course saw no such "kingdom" or "coming", and no "distress" like e.g. the Black Death or Holocaust.

Appearances. The poor geographer Luke places resurrection appearances only around Jerusalem [Lk 24:33,49], while the other three gospels [Mk 16:7, Mt 28:10-16, Jn 21:1] report Galilee appearances.

Gospel apologetics. Certain assertions and omissions in the gospels seem to either suspiciously deny or unwittingly create embarrassing alternative explanations for the claims therein.

Self-fulfilling prophecy . The gospels repeatedly relate [Lk 2:4, Mt 2:15, 21:4, 27:9, Jn 19:23, 36] hard-to-verify (and easy-to-fabricate) details and then cite them as fulfillment of prophecy. Each of these details is in only one gospel.

Vouching . The author(s) of John protest (19:35 and 21:24) that the testimony quoted in this gospel is true, and admit (20:31) it has "been written so that you may believe". The 2nd letter of Peter claims [1:16] the gospels are not "cleverly invented stories", then warns [2:3] that "false prophets" will employ "stories they have made up".

John dies . John 21:23 (in the appended final chapter) makes an excuse for Jesus' apparent promise that John would not die before the second coming.

Empty tomb . Alone among the gospels, Matthew [27:64] alleges an order by Pilate that Jesus' tomb be guarded to prevent his disciples from secretly removing his body. Matthew 28 reports a widespread story of such a secret removal and attempts to discredit it by saying Pilate's guards were bribed. In the other gospels the first disciples to check the tomb encounter no guards.

Appearances . In order of writing, the gospels give accounts of Jesus' resurrected appearances that are increasingly elaborate. None of the alleged (and almost certainly pseudepigraphic) letters of Peter, James, Jude, and John mention an empty tomb or a physical resurrection, even in contexts [1 Pet 3:18, 1 Pet 5:1, 2 Pet 1:16] where one might expect them to. The first written account of appearances (1 Cor 15) vaguely lumps them together with post-ascension manifestations to Paul in a discussion of spiritual resurrection, making them suspect as accounts of bodily resurrection. Original Mark claims an empty tomb but describes no appearances. Matthew says simply that the two Marys and later the Eleven "saw him" but "some were dubious". Luke elaborates on both of these episodes, building the latter into an account that approaches the full Doubting Thomas story finally told in John. Thus, reports of the resurrection become more assertive as the accounts grow more removed from the actual events.

Eyewitnesses. There is no reliably first-hand testimony to the physical resurrection of Jesus. Paul does not claim to be such a witness. Original Mark contains no appearances at all. Matthew is anonymous and contains no assertions of first-hand witness by the author. The anonymous author of Luke admits he was not an eyewitness. In what appears to be an addendum, the anonymous author of John vaguely refers to "the beloved disciple" in the third person as "the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down" [21:24], and otherwise makes no assertions of his own eyewitness.

Philosophy Of Mind: the study of the faculty for thinking and knowing. Philosophy Of Science: the study of scientific knowledge.

Knowledge

Knowledge is justified true belief. Belief in a proposition p is justified if 1) it is developed though a process that reliably yields truth, 2) it is appropriately caused by the fact that p is true, and 3) it would generally not be held if p were false. The reliability criterion entails that synthetic (i.e. inductive) knowledge is always provisional. The causal and counterfactual criteria entail that whether a true belief counts as knowledge depends on inherently imprecise judgments concerning whether the believer is accidentally right. Operationally, a belief is justified if and only if it is convincing and defensible.

Truth

Truth is logical and parsimonious consistency with evidence and with other truth. Evidence is any and all perceived circumstances.

The Principle of Parsimony (or Occam's Razor) is that the simpler of two explanations is to be preferred when they are otherwise equivalent.

Humans have proposed several criteria for truth.

The Correspondence Theory of Truth is that the terms of true propositions map to elements of reality in a way that validates the proposition.

is that the terms of true propositions map to elements of reality in a way that validates the proposition. The Coherence Theory of Truth is that true propositions are those in the system of mutually coherent propositions that is more complete than any rival system.

is that true propositions are those in the system of mutually coherent propositions that is more complete than any rival system. The Pragmatic Theory of Truth is that true propositions are those that are most useful to believe and that are thus "fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate".

The Correspondence Theory begs the question by assuming we have access to reality that is sufficiently direct and certain to dispose of the problem of the nature of truth. Depending on the meaning of 'complete', the Coherence Theory either reduces to the Correspondence Theory, or it makes truth a purely social (or divine) construct. The Pragmatic Theory either underdetermines the truth of certain propositions, or it reduces to a variant of the social version of the Coherence Theory. The proper notion of truth is coherence grounded in correspondence, and its propriety is justified by the pragmatic meta-consideration of which truth theory to endorse (as opposed to which particular propositions to endorse as true).

Origins of Knowledge

Analytic propositions are those whose truth value can be deduced from only the definitions of their terms.

are those whose truth value can be deduced from only the definitions of their terms. Synthetic propositions are those whose truth value cannot be deduced from only the definitions of their terms.

Epistemic Provisionality. All synthetic propositions (including this one) can only be known from experience and are subject to doubt. It is logically possible that all experience is deceptive and that the world is illusory. The only absolutely certain truths are true analytic propositions and the synthetic proposition that something exists.

Cogito Ergo Sum. Descartes argued "I think, therefore I am". However, "I" could be illusory, and the fact of my thinking only warrants the certainty that something exists: cogito ergo est.

Meaning

The meaningof a term is the context-sensitive connotation ultimately established by its relevant denotation and use.

The Verifiability Principle holds that a statement is propositionally meaningless (i.e. states no proposition) if it is neither logically decidable nor empirically verifiable. Positivism is a stricter form of Empiricism that asserts the Verifiability Principle.

Theories of Meaning

The Referential Theory of Meaning is that the meaning of a term is the things in the world it refers to.

is that the meaning of a term is the things in the world it refers to. The Conceptual Theory of Meaning is that the meaning of a term is the properties and concepts associated with it.

is that the meaning of a term is the properties and concepts associated with it. The Behavioral Theory of Meaning is that the meaning of a term consists of the behaviors and dispositions associated with it.

The Referential Theory is confounded by terms that have the same referent but different meaning, such as 'morning star' and 'evening star'. The Conceptual Theory reduces to dictionary-like circularity for many concepts that can only be described by the word(s) to which they help give meaning. The Behavioral Theory is undermined by behaviors and dispositions that underspecify the meanings they are supposed to impart.

Theories of Knowledge

Rationalism is the thesis that some synthetic propositions can be known from reason alone and independent of any experience.

is the thesis that some synthetic propositions can be known from reason alone and independent of any experience. Empiricism is the thesis that all synthetic propositions can only be known from experience.

Rationalism incorrectly assumes that existence arranges for reason to discover the nature of reality through introspection alone.

1.2.1. Philosophy / Epistemology / Philosophy Of Mind

Minds and ideas, like all of reality, consist ultimately of matter. Mental states are functional states consisting of causal relations among components for processing information.

Theories of Mind

mind (or spirit or soul): that which can think and perceive;

ideas (or universals or forms): that which can be thought; and

matter (or substance): that which can be perceived.

Human theories of mind differ according to how they explain these phenomena in general and the Mind-Body Problem in particular. The Mind-Body Problem is the problem of explaining how mindless unconscious matter can give rise to or interact with mind and consciousness. Human theories of mind include:

Idealism is the thesis that reality consists ultimately of mind and ideas rather than matter.

is the thesis that reality consists ultimately of mind and ideas rather than matter. Dualism is the thesis that reality consists ultimately of both the material or physical and the ideal or mental.

is the thesis that reality consists ultimately of both the material or physical and the ideal or mental. Substance Dualism is the thesis that the material and the ideal or mental constitute two different and fundamental kinds of objects.

is the thesis that the material and the ideal or mental constitute two different and fundamental kinds of objects.

Property Dualism is the thesis that the material or physical and the ideal or mental constitute two different and fundamental kinds of properties. Property dualism can be a form of materialism if it says that mental properties are nevertheless fundamental material properties (analogous to mass or charge).

is the thesis that the material or physical and the ideal or mental constitute two different and fundamental kinds of properties. Property dualism can be a form of materialism if it says that mental properties are nevertheless fundamental material properties (analogous to mass or charge). Materialism is the thesis that reality consists ultimately of matter.

is the thesis that reality consists ultimately of matter. Logical Behaviorism is the thesis that mental states can be fully and best explained in terms of behaviors and behavioral dispositions.

is the thesis that mental states can be fully and best explained in terms of behaviors and behavioral dispositions.

Identity Theory is the thesis that mental states and brain states are identical.

is the thesis that mental states and brain states are identical.

Functionalism is the thesis that mental states are functional states consisting of causal relations among components for processing information.

Idealism is incorrect because its explanation of matter is either inadequate or unparsimonious. Dualism is incorrect because it unparsimoniously posits a realm of the ideal. Logical Behaviorism is unsatisfactory because behavioral explanations are too unwieldy. Identity Theory is incorrect because it holds that the essence of mind is its construction instead of its function.

A mind is any volitional conscious faculty for perception and cognition.

Cognition

Cognition is the process of learning, reasoning, and knowing.

Perception

Perception is the process of organizing sensation into experience

Sensation is the process of external influence on a monitoring or control system.

Consciousness

Consciousness is awareness of self and environment.

Volition

Volition is the power or act of making decisions about an agent's own actions. A decision is the causing by a system of events which were not physically determined from outside the system but rather were at least somewhat contingent on the internals of the system, and which were not predictable except perhaps by modeling the internals of the system.

Free will is either of the doctrines that human choices are a) determined internally rather than externally (volitional free will) or b) not pre-determined at all (indeterminate free will). Determinism is incompatible with indeterminate free will, but is compatible with volitional free will if agents have internal state that influences (and thus helps determines) their actions. Volitional free will is also compatible with forms of indeterminism in which the acausality is not so rampant as to undermine agent self-influence. Indeterminate free will requires indeterminism, but degenerates into uncaused chance if acausality confounds not only prediction of effect but also attribution of cause.

Since most effects seem caused rather than uncaused, and since the complexity of minds makes them hard to predict, minds appear to have at least weak free will. Weak free will is sufficient for assigning ethical responsibility to decision-making systems even in the face of complete determinism.

Do minds have strong free will, or can their decisions in principle be inferred from sufficient knowledge of prior circumstances?

Anti-materialists posit an immaterial soul or will that is free from both deterministic causality and random acausality. This notion violates the law of the excluded middle. Either the immaterial will is subject to (perhaps probabilistic but nonetheless causal) causes, or it is not. The same is true of material minds. The actions of an immaterial will could be said to be caused by its own internal causal processes, but the same can be said of material minds.

Subjectivity

Subjective experience consists of complex associations among perceptions, and necessarily occurs in systems having such associations. If a subjective experience is not "like" anything (i.e. not associated with any other perceptions), it is not a subjective experience at all.

Physicalism is the thesis that all facts can be described in physical (and thus non-subjective) terms. Some humans have what they call a "natural belief that collections of cells do not generate minds" [McGinn 1999] and that therefore physicalism must be false.

Such a belief seems only as "natural" as the belief that collections of atoms do not generate life, and just as unjustified. The operation of e.g. the human brain does not mysteriously causeconsciousness, but rather it simplyconstitutes consciousness.

Qualia are ineffable intrinsic subjective qualities of perception, such as the redness of red, beyond the functional or dispositional properties of perception. Qualia are taken by opponents of physicalism to be a mysterious phenomenon that physicalism cannot explain.

However, qualia do not exist, because the functional and dispositional properties of perception can, in fact, explain the subjective qualities of perception. The functional role of certain sorts of perceptions in a conscious system necessarily and understandably entails that the system will report qualia. Thus there are no ineffable intrinsic subjective qualities of perception beyond its functional qualities.

The Knowledge Argument is an argument made by Frank Jackson in 1982 purporting to show that physicalism is false because knowledge of all the relevant physical facts does not include, for certain experiences such as the redness of red, knowledge of what it is like to have them before they are had. Jackson hypothesizes in the distant future a brilliant neuroscientist Mary spending her whole life in a colorless room learning all the physical facts about seeing the color red. Jackson claims that only when Mary sees something red can she learns the new fact of what redness is like, and that therefore physicalism is false.

Jackson's argument fails because it ignores the difference between memorizing an algorithm and executing it. The experience of the redness of red consists in the operation of a complex set of functional components for processing information. While we can conceive of Mary having serial access to arbitrarily many memorized facts about such components, we cannot conceive of her having a large enough working memory or a fast enough mind to "manually" perform the operations "in her head" in order to recreate the experience of redness. Similarly, Mary could memorize the sequence of pixels in a monochrome bitmap and yet still not be able to mentally visualize what the bitmap will look like -- even if it is an image of a favorite drawing which she had already memorized in arbitrary detail.

A zombie is a hypothetical creature that is stipulated to lack subjective experience but is behaviorally and physically indistinguishable from a human. The conceivability or logical possibility of zombies is taken by opponents of physicalism to show that physicalism is false.

It seems impossible to conceive of a creature that lacks subjective experience but nevertheless exhibits all the self-reporting behaviors of humans that help us to ascribe subjective experience to them. Therefore, zombies are inconceivable and do not show physicalism to be false.

Intentionality

A system has intentionality by virtue of its potential and actual causal relations with the world.

The Chinese Room is a thought experiment devised by John Searle in 1980 to show that there cannot be intentionality or understanding in a formal symbol manipulation system such as a room in which a speaker of English manually executes an algorithm allowing the room to pass the Turing Test in Chinese. Searle claims that intentionality "is a biological phenomenon, and it is as likely to be as causally dependent on the specific biochemistry of its origins as lactation [or] photosynthesis". Searle charges that functionalism is a form of dualism because it says mind is in principle independent of the specific biochemistry of the brain.

The human in the Chinese Room does not understand Chinese, but the human running the algorithm implements a system that does indeed understand Chinese. The system has intentionality by virtue of the causal relations that allow it to correctly answer questions posed to it in Chinese. Intentionality is a formal or informational property, whereas lactation and photosynthesis involve chemistry and energy. Simulated thinking can indeed produce understanding, just as simulated musical composition can indeed produce a sonata. If a functional explanation of mind is "dualistic", then so is a functional explanation of long division or carburetion.

Affect

Is affect indeed an inevitable property of any volitional system with complex motives?

Mind and Object

Realism is the thesis that universals are essences that have existence independent of any instances.

is the thesis that universals are essences that have existence independent of any instances. Conce