What is the Force

Loudzoo wrote: Didn't seem much point in listing the things we already agree on. The discussion has been about things we disagree on for the most part and we've covered quite a bit of ground so to prevent us going around in circles – it seems like a good idea to try and summarise where we might have got to.

I’ll help you out, and quote you on what you’ve written in support of these bullet points:

- For those things that we know to be true but can’t prove - faith is necessary (or some other word that means high degree of confidence)

[quotes of me I'm taking note of, yet omitting reposting for the sake of readability]

I’d be happy to change ‘high degree of confidence’ to ‘beyond any set threshold for reasonable doubt’. Would that be better?

My disagreement with this first bullet point is two-fold. For one, I do not believe that there is anything we know to be true (or accurate, to relax the language) but are unable to prove (or demonstrate, again, to avoid my own nitpicks). If we can't show it, then we don't know it. Some may be suspecting it, find it likely, but the instant they say they know it they must - in my opinion - be able to demonstrate it either directly or by reference to demonstrations provided by others that were sufficient to convince them. The other part of this point is that faith, or high confidence, or indeed any overcoming of reasonable doubt is necessary for things we are unable to demonstrate to our own satisfaction. I am entirely comfortable with not knowing that or whether a proposed illustration is reflective of a demonstrable state of affairs, I can formulate suspicions based on intuition or weak indication, and I am comfortable not having an opinion on a given question at all. It is not necessary to have an answer to everything and it is thus not necessary to generate a conviction any stronger than one's own ability to demonstrate the merits of the statement in question.

- That there is utility in a word that pertains to notions of wholeness, connection, evolution, being, experience, energy, and inspiration.

- On a universal scale, a name for this could be ‘The Force’.

- On a personal scale, a name for this could be ‘soul’.


[for the purposes of readability, I'm omitting quotes of me and the revised version of these points. The response that follows concerns the entire passage, though]

As I said in the quote, I am not convinced that we are doing ourselves any favours by employing terms to refer to these things in such generality. When you say the Force, even to a fellow Jedi, chances are you would have to elaborate that you mean all of those notions all at once by it, and there are precious few sentences you can compose using the word that make any kind of sense if the word means all of those things.
Imagine if I said something rose or fell in the Force. What does that mean? It could be that it broke apart, or that it combined with something else (wholeness). It could be that it detached from or attached itself to something else (connection), it could be that it changed to an elder form of itself or into a novel one (evolution), it could be that it became more or less than its former self by some unspecified metric (being), it could be that it forgot something or learned something new (experience), it could be that it fell to a lower state or was thrust into a higher one (energy), or it could be that it lost some of its muse or was kissed by a new one (inspiration). Some of these intuitively might not apply to people, others may not apply to rocks, but generally speaking, if that is what the Force means, there is no utility in having that word, because when ever you employ it you have to speak a second sentence to express what you actually mean. You could be saying that other sentence and leaving the one with the Force out entirely without losing any part of the conversation.
Soul or personhood may fare better only in that your conversation partner wouldn't question what you mean by it immediately, but if you use it to refer to any of the items you listed rather than the colloquial, commonly expected usage, you are sure to run into a misunderstanding soon enough that could have been avoided if you too employed a common usage or if you had expressed what you meant it some other, less ambiguous way. Confusion is not an aid in my opinion, it is a hindrance.
Additionally, I'm not quite sure I understand the distinction between the universal and the personal scale when it comes to the particular items you listed that these words are supposed to refer to. I don't understand what "experience on a universal scale" or "inspiration on a universal scale" means. My problem with understanding that distinction prevents me from quite understanding the next bullet point as well (What is that interaction? How do we detect it?) and subsequent ones that hinge upon it also.

Shepherd wrote: What is the Force not?

Well said. My thoughts exactly.

I think we are on to something here. Not sure what yet (lol), but it’s a worthy effort so far. Let me add some thoughts on this to try and help further refine it.

Loudzoo wrote: - For those things that we know to be true but can’t prove - faith is necessary (or some other word that means high degree of confidence)

I’d be happy to change ‘high degree of confidence’ to ‘beyond any set threshold for reasonable doubt’. Would that be better?

I think the critical word here is “faith” not “high degree of confidence”. Faith is never a path to truth as you try to imply here. This is because by using faith we can come to any conclusion we want to. I can have faith that there is an invisible unicorn in my back yard and there is no way to evaluate that beyond my claim. It does not even require a component of belief. So this is a completely unreliable means to discern value in any claim. So we need to abandon the concept of faith as a tool to arrive at any agreeable baseline in this discussion.

Loudzoo wrote: - That there is utility in a word that pertains to notions of wholeness, connection, evolution, being, experience, energy, and inspiration.

- On a universal scale, a name for this could be ‘The Force’.

- On a personal scale, a name for this could be ‘soul’.

“I can at least appreciate that use of the Force, as an idea, an inspiration, perhaps, "a word that does that for me" as you put it, moreso than as any actual "thing"...”

Yes I agree, we can use any word we want to assign to any concept we can dream up. But the definitions of those words need to be in common usage as well or the term is meaningless. This is because, as Gist says, if you have to explain a word every time you use it, you can just skip the word and go right to the definition. And it is also important to note that these definitions need to be clear and concise definitions or they become as meaningless as well. Terms like ubiquitous or metaphysical or supernatural or ethereal can’t be used because they will require their own precise definitions as to meaning. So yes the utility is important, but that utility must have a meaningful purpose as well or it’s not utility at all.

Loudzoo wrote: As per Kyrin’s suggestion we could call the universal scale “The Universe” – but that tends to be reduced to matter and energy, and doesn’t normally include the universe of being, experience, connection and inspiration. I genuinely think we need a different name to cover all the emergent properties – but ultimately the name doesn’t matter as long as we have a short method of conveying meaning that we can all broadly agree on. I say we stick with “The Force”, we are Jedi after all.

But is there a “universe of being, experience and connection”? Is this a universal emergent property? Or is it just your biased projection of personal experience onto the universe that allows you to believe this? It seems to me that if this universal property existed it would be as common knowledge to all of us as is the common knowledge that the sun exists or that gravity exists. However I have never seen anything or experienced anything convincing enough for me to accept this claim that universal emergent properties of being exist that you want to call “The Force”.

Loudzoo wrote: Likewise, the soul (as a word) has baggage – no question. Again, we can change the name. I’m pretty sure ‘spirit’ wouldn’t be an improvement – perhaps ‘personhood’ would be inoffensive enough?

This is where things start to get a bit trickier. The common usage of the term soul is one in which some component of consciousness continues to exist after death in some form of afterlife. So I think we can abandon that term in favor of the term “personhood” you suggest. As long as we define personhood as that thing that exists in us as experience and sense of self from birth to death and no more.

For each of us as beings that subjectively experience this sense of self we have personal proof of our existence and a personal proof of experience that we prove to ourselves every moment through consciousness. But we can never prove that subjective experience to any other because it has no means of being tested outside our own minds. However we can still accept circumstantial claims of others that they have a similar experience because we have the proof in our own evidence and we have physical evidence that they are also human like us, so we can accept conditionally that they have experiences just as we do that are personally theirs.

Loudzoo wrote: - The personal can interact with that which is universal, and vice versa. In a sense, the personal is an integrated and vital part of the universal.

- personhood is always embodied. It doesn’t exist without a physical presence. Non-duality demands this.

- when we die, as with our cells, the personhood returns to the universal, from the personal. The personhood returns to The Force.

- communion (literally) between personhood and The Force is possible. When this happens, we hold the personal and the universal together and they can merge, at least temporarily. We are always inextricably linked but we feel that link totally. Personhood temporarily evaporates.

- such experiences can occur at any time but are encouraged by meditation / contemplation practice

- these experiences can be called mystical / enlightenment / nirvana etc etc
[/b]

So this leaves us with the rest of your points and this is where the real issues start to emerge. By my reckoning we can conditionally accept personal experience as a universal trait of all humans but we have no reason to accept this “being of experience” as a globally universal trait that exists in all matter. This leaves me being forced to reject your claim that we as persons can interact with some universal force. I am a conscious being and I accept your claim that you are a conscious being, both capable of acts of will. But you have not demonstrated any truth that the universe itself also has this capability or is conscious in some form and can enact a will to “interact”. And you have not demonstrated any truth in the fact that when we die this conscious experience I subjectively believe to exist in myself leaves my body and returns to this universal force.

So based on this evaluation I can only conclude that this sense of connection we experience is not between myself and universe, but between you and I (human to human). It is our experience of each other and the oneness we feel in our emotions that drives us to experience our sense of wholeness in connection through our personal subjective emergent property of consciousness. We share those experiences not with some cold place driven by forces of nature but with each other. And beyond that I can make no claims because I have no evidence that any such claims are true in any sense of the word beyond a metaphorical representation of my personal subjective experience.

There is not a physical component to this either. It is all in the mind. So what I see from this is that the force does not create us, we create the force in that tiny fraction of time in this vast universe that we actually exist as corporeal beings. Whether that experience is real or imagined does not matter, what matters is that I feel it. And when I am dead it will cease to exist just as it did not exist before my birth because it is not driven by some cosmic universal metaphysical force but from within my own conscious mind.

Words, words, words, you will not find the Force in words.

Or anywhere else either apparently. :dry:

Real to the subjective is not the same meaning as real as the objective sphere. Everything within the mind is a creation of the mind, even the representation of other people, history, experience, thoughts etc and so we create a functional distinction to work with the different dynamics at play in what we call the outer objective and the inner subjective.

I'd say its the same concept mind you (no pun intended), being a normalised relation within a domain. But since the objective's domain is based outside and therefore more restrained, less fluid.... it cannot make great variations without breaking those relational connections. Meanwhile the subjective domain is capable of being more fluid and less restrained, the variations can be greater without breaking the underlying stability of relations.

And so its the relations which define the difference in the domain.... the laws are different. The objective sphere is based purely in those things science endeavors to define, and the subjective is based on that which the mind can contextualize in meaning to its impact on itself.

I'm sure others know more about this then me, but part of the reason perhaps Karl Popper created his World 3, to understand the impact that the learnings of World 3 from the objective sphere (World 1) has on the subjective sphere (World 2).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper%27s_three_worlds

As such societies expect people to behave in a normalised manner by applying World 3 to World 2 so they can interact with others in the World 1. While someone who was in a mental asylum would be stuck in World 2 having abandoned World 3 such that there was no longer any capacity to function safely in World 1. That is an extreme example though, and you don't need to be 'normal' to function in World 1, and indeed spiritual paths probably aim to engineer World 2 for maximum benefit in living in all Worlds.

Edit; so a Jedi would have view of the Force existing in World 1, as dictated by the rules governing that domain, but also a view of the Force existing in World 2 as dictated by the rules governing that particular domain... and that they would work with both when able, but revert to World 3 quite often depending on practical circumstances which does not really relate to the Force much in its own terms because its not actually a domain but a reference to the domain of World 1. As such expecting World 3 to define the Force is a category mistake IMO, but also why Jedi are most usually hard aligned to being pro-science and not dogmatically stuck in an alternate 'World 4' of pure metaphysical dogma. But because of all this, it can have the appearance of that.... (a confusing sentence read out of context!!) and so makes it an easy target because Jedi (at least here) doctrine (different from dogma) in the military context of doctrine (not the religious context of doctrine) serves to guide World 2 to relate the Force into World 1 much like 'World 4' forces dogma into World 1 :silly:

Thanks Adder - interesting stuff. I hadn’t come across that from Popper before.

Kyrin - i’m genuinely pleased to hear that you feel The Force between us and other people. I feel it too. Something to consider: if our connection is only personhood to personhood then music, dogs, homes, ideas (to name but 4) could also be personhoods too? I’m genuinely surprised to hear you say that mind has no physical component - I’d be keen to hear more on that . . .

It’s been a couple of weeks since we had that discussion about ‘interesting conversations’ that led to this thread, then then led to the faith thread, that also spawned the soul thread. Can you now see why they don’t happen as much as you and I would like?

Gisteron - I appreciate the time you’ve taken and the good faith with which the conversation has mostly been conducted presumably that faith was accidental as you don’t believe in it! Faith in people (or dogs, . . . or dogma) is where the path often starts.

Due to offline life flooding back I have no chance of keeping-up with you over the next week or two, but hopefully the conversation continues.

Loudzoo wrote: Gisteron - I appreciate the time you’ve taken and the good faith with which the conversation has mostly been conducted presumably that faith was accidental as you don’t believe in it! Faith in people (or dogs, . . . or dogma) is where the path often starts.

Yea, I bet that shameless equivocation is sure to contribute so much to the integrity of that conversation... cheers.

Loudzoo wrote: Kyrin - i’m genuinely pleased to hear that you feel The Force between us and other people. I feel it too. Something to consider: if our connection is only personhood to personhood then music, dogs, homes, ideas (to name but 4) could also be personhoods too? I’m genuinely surprised to hear you say that mind has no physical component - I’d be keen to hear more on that . . .

Music, homes and ideas can’t have experiences so no I would not say they possess "personhood". Dogs do experience sentience but they lack complex self-awareness. For example they have no concepts of morality or such things as revenge. Lacking these things leaves them only capable of generating "personhood" in a different sense than we could ever understand because we are not dogs and so we have no baseline (i.e. personal experience of being a dog) from which to generate a concept of true personal connection. But that is not to say that we don't form bonds with those sorts of things that are characterized by emotions such as affection and trust. But this is limited to specific emotions. For example my dog and I could never have this conversation and we could never have romantic feelings for one another. (Weird fetishes aside lol ).

I never said that mind does not have a physical component. It does in the brain. I said that our experience of The Force has no physical component. So our concept of the force has the ability to be infinite but our minds, like our brains, are very finite. And like our minds, we are definitely finite creatures existing in a corporeal world. Our ability to imagine things outside of the finite is imperfect. So when we encounter concepts that are outside these finite realms we develop wonder and awe at the personally mind boggling magnificence they represent to us. We look into the blackness of the night and are taken aback at the concept of infinite space, we look into infinite time and marvel at where we might have come from or where we are going, we contemplate our own deaths but want to be like these infinite things.

We are curious and envious creatures in this way but we are also creatures scared of the dark and the unknown. To ease our minds of these incomprehensible concepts we make stuff up to allow ourselves to feel like we have the answers to these questions. We invent Gods and Forces that mimic these infinite ideas and are sympathetic to our plight. We imagine these Gods and Forces must be governing these things that we know we will never have even the slightest ability to comprehend or control and we imagine they are creating a safe place for us to exist. But these things are really just lies we tell ourselves and our children to ease that fear. Like a bed time story.

People say we are on the edge of a new age of enlightenment when these Gods and Forces will be revealed to us and we can interact with them as a species in harmony. I think just the opposite. I think we are on the verge of facing that fear of the unknown and realizing its OK to not know the answers to the greatest questions we will ever ask. That we are realizing we are really on our own because there is nothing out there beyond our own ability to create a personal sense of purpose in our lives. It is our passion for this that will bind us together as one species and we will be able to shed the superstitions of Gods and Forces that don't really exist and we can finally stand on our own and say, “We are not afraid”!

Why do we keep asking the question?

We keep beating this dead horse to a second death. Pretty soon we'll have cooked horse (a la the slapping the chicken meme).

Why not just experience it for yourself?