What is spirit?

jet57 said:

You can call it what ever you like, that's not important. You asked me and I answered you.

What I find off putting here, is that you and Ramoss have taken such a nice, lovely and easy subject and turned it into a pedantic argument.

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Believing that something exists despite a lack of evidence is easy. Some of us have more exacting standards.

ashurbanipal said:

One thing I find odd about this reply (and to be clear, you're not the only one to have thought this way. Some very smart people agree this is a good reply) is that it presumes that talk about the "ethereal plane" must refer to the same thing that was disconfirmed by the MM experiment. Isaac Newton, for example, delineated at least four concepts of aethyr, only one of which would have been disconfirmed by MM.

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The spiritual ethereal plane seems to exist only in the imagination. And I know about Newton's misguided forays into alchemy. Still (no pun intended) the alchemists laid the groundwork for chemistry

zyzygy said:

The spiritual ethereal plane seems to exist only in the imagination.

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Well, maybe. Then again, perhaps that's the plane on which imagination exists. I mean, no one has a flawless (or even very good) metaphysical analysis of imagination...

zyzygy said:

And I know about Newton's misguided forays into alchemy. Still (no pun intended) the alchemists laid the groundwork for chemistry

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You may be unaware, but recent scholarship supports the view that he got most of the concepts for his Optics and the Principia from his alchemical practice. Whether he was actually misguided (i.e. whether the successes Newton claims to have had were illusory) hasn't been decided. But the notion that Newton was a hard-nosed intrepid scientist who dabbled a bit in alchemy isn't correct. If anything, he was an alchemist first after about 1669. About 2/3rds of the Keynes collection is actually about either theology or alchemy, not physics or mathematics.

Anyway, this seems to be beside the point, which was not so much about Newton as about the fact that depending on how you conceive of aether, the MM experiment may or may not be relevant. I once saw Frank Wilczek speak on Quantum Chromodynamics, and he seemed perfectly fine with invoking the notion of aether--it just wasn't the luminiferous aether MM were looking for. The "grid" (his other name for it) is nevertheless something substantival that pervades all space, and QCD is a perfectly respectable theory as far as I can see. Now whether this has anything to do with astral projection or the like, well, who knows? The point is that you can't just dismiss it on the basis of a single 111-year-old experiment. If enough people report out-of-body experience, it should be taken seriously, at least in the sense that it's a real phenomenon. Whether it's veridical (i.e. whether people actually do leave their bodies) is a different question--and I'm not sure mystical experience either confirms or disconfirms the veridicality of out-of-body experience.

ashurbanipal said:

Well, maybe. Then again, perhaps that's the plane on which imagination exists. I mean, no one has a flawless (or even very good) metaphysical analysis of imagination...

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Lol yes your claim exists in imagination.

You may be unaware, but recent scholarship supports the view that he got most of the concepts for his Optics and the Principia from his alchemical practice. Whether he was actually misguided (i.e. whether the successes Newton claims to have had were illusory) hasn't been decided. But the notion that Newton was a hard-nosed intrepid scientist who dabbled a bit in alchemy isn't correct. If anything, he was an alchemist first after about 1669. About 2/3rds of the Keynes collection is actually about either theology or alchemy, not physics or mathematics.

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Sounds like you are spreading rumors. Did you see that on the history channel?

Anyway, this seems to be beside the point, which was not so much about Newton as about the fact that depending on how you conceive of aether, the MM experiment may or may not be relevant. I once saw Frank Wilczek speak on Quantum Chromodynamics, and he seemed perfectly fine with invoking the notion of aether--it just wasn't the luminiferous aether MM were looking for. The "grid" (his other name for it) is nevertheless something substantival that pervades all space, and QCD is a perfectly respectable theory as far as I can see. Now whether this has anything to do with astral projection or the like, well, who knows? The point is that you can't just dismiss it on the basis of a single 111-year-old experiment. If enough people report out-of-body experience, it should be taken seriously, at least in the sense that it's a real phenomenon. Whether it's veridical (i.e. whether people actually do leave their bodies) is a different question--and I'm not sure mystical experience either confirms or disconfirms the veridicality of out-of-body experience.

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Ok you and other believers have taken all this talk of mystical experiences seriously. Just as people who said that they saw bigfoot, ghosts etc or that they were abducted by aliens. WHy should anyone take you seriously when a rational argument would be that you have zero proof of your claims and therefor there isnt a logical reason to believe any of those stories. I mean why can you not offer actual evidence of a mechanism that would explain what you are claiming? You seem content to hide behind what is not know, claiming that since we don not know everything then your claim could be legit. But then if the world worked that way then anyone could claim anything and we would then, what believe that what they claimed was possible because we couldnt prove a negative?

It doesnt matter how many people claim to have mystical experiences when you are unable to define exactly what those are. This telling me that I have to experience it myself does no good. After all I may have already experienced what you have but without your bias it wasnt a mystical experience at all. ANd really I could tell you anything; that I have experienced all knids of things but you would be a fool to believe me just at my word. ANd I would be a fool to take you or anyone else at their word as well.

For backup on the bit about Newton being an alchemist, see:

Dobbs, B.J.T., The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, or: The Hunting of the Greene Lyon, Cambridge University Press, 1975
__________, The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought, Cambridge University Press, 1991
Janiak, Andrew, Newton: (Blackwell Great Minds), Wiley Blackwell Publishers, 2015
Newman, William R. "The Problem of Alchemy," The New Atlantis 44:1 (2015) pp 65-75

And the bibliographies of these works.

ashurbanipal said:

For backup on the bit about Newton being an alchemist, see:

Dobbs, B.J.T., The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, or: The Hunting of the Greene Lyon, Cambridge University Press, 1975
__________, The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought, Cambridge University Press, 1991
Janiak, Andrew, Newton: (Blackwell Great Minds), Wiley Blackwell Publishers, 2015
Newman, William R. "The Problem of Alchemy," The New Atlantis 44:1 (2015) pp 65-75

And the bibliographies of these works.

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Who cares about Newtons private beliefs?

Theists with an agenda for one.

William Rea said:

Theists with an agenda for one.

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I posted the bit about Newton (and several others) initially because of FFA's assertion that mystics are all idiots. There is a time-honored (and provably valid) way of arguing against such universally-quantified statements: by providing counterexamples. Newton was a mystic. But he wasn't an idiot. Ditto Dante, Gandhi, and a great many others.

ashurbanipal said:

I posted the bit about Newton (and several others) initially because of FFA's assertion that mystics are all idiots. There is a time-honored (and provably valid) way of arguing against such universally-quantified statements: by providing counterexamples. Newton was a mystic. But he wasn't an idiot. Ditto Dante, Gandhi, and a great many others.

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Counter examples lol how about you share a living mystic instead of one that was dead before the US became a country? Well you could but they are mostly New Age nuts. And really off ****ing topic. You seem obsessed with preaching about mysticism; why dont you make a thread about it?

This one though is actually about this primitive concept called spirits. The OP asked what real world physical reference can you use to explain what spirit is? Going on about mysticism isnt a real world physical reference. What you are offering is just stories that people like yourself made up and want the rest of us to believe that you are special. Telling me that a bunch of people making the same claim as you proves something, is absurd and isnt a valid argument.


I will counter your argument though with a reasonable conclusion: The handful of people claiming to have had a mystical experience is far outweighed by those that have not had a mystical experience. Given that "evidence" your group is superseded by another group. With the opposing group being made up of billions. It is a mega bandwagon argument that eclipses your minute anecdotal bandwagon argument. And the end of the day you proved nothing other than you are biased by your beliefs in mysticism. No preaching to the choir here; you need to do better than that.