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LOLOL!!!

I try to be "typo-free"; but that hardly ever seems to happen. Maybe I should fire my copy editor (me)? LOL! :<))

Referring back to an earlier post from you: Seriously dear MNR, I really do take your meaning, that Truth is an "abstract." From the standpoint of mind, I think this is so. The point I was trying to make earlier was that any abstraction the mind subjectively makes rests for its validity on something REAL of which it is the reflection. (Otherwise we may be dealing with psychosis.) An abstraction from or mental image of Reality is tested for its Truth in the degree it corresponds with the objectiveTruth already in-built into the world.

So this makes Truth at once both (abstractly) "ideal" and (substantially) "real." I believe this is the fundamental presupposition of Natural Law Theory:

I've put up this image — heavily influenced by the great mathematician and theoretical biologist Robert Rosen — before. A picture speaks a thousand words....

It really all comes down to my belief that the LOGOS is "in" the world, and is what "structures" (but does not fully "determine!") the world — from Alpha to Omega and everything in-between.

In short, that is a "'worldview" — which is at once both classical Greek and Christian (Christianity has integrated much of Greek thought into its theology).

Needless to say, I am NOT a materialist who believes that:

"Nothing x 4.7 billion years —> Everything"
(via "undirected" or "random" processes)

If the materialists are right, then the natural world is senseless and, that being the case, would be inaccessible to the human mind. (Not to mention that science itself would then have no ground to stand on.)

Well, them be my musings, FWIW.

I do so enjoy speaking with you dear sister! Thank you so much for writing!

"Nothing x 4.7 billion years —> Everything" (via "undirected" or "random" processes)

If nothing x 4 billion years achieves an intelligible result by random processes, it tells you that there is an underlying logic that biases the results.

If the result is intelligible, it tells you that your mind is formed based on the same underlying logic.

It may not take 4 billion years, though, when the random processes are saturated by intelligence. Its my view that, as you begin to see the principles involved, at some point you begin to glimpse the intelligence behind them.

If you study the evolution of the diesel engine, you'll see that it has truly evolved from raw iron ore to what you see under the hood of a truck. All it required was the application of intelligence.

You had written:

Referring back to an earlier post from you: Seriously dear MNR, I really do take your meaning, that Truth is an "abstract." From the standpoint of mind, I think this is so. The point I was trying to make earlier was that any abstraction the mind subjectively makes rests for its validity on something REAL of which it is the reflection. (Otherwise we may be dealing with psychosis.)

Sorry to post a counter-example, but

HC SVNT DRACONES.

What becomes then of imagination -- from anticipation of future "real" events ("I can hardly wait for the Hawaiian vacation next week") to wishful thinking of unlikely, but physically possible events ("What if I got to talk to Ann Coulter on the next Free Republic Caribbean cruise and we started dating?") -- to imagination ("Lord of the Rings" including Hobbits, Dwarfs, Elves, Orcs, Nazgûl, Wizards, and, yes, I'm saying it, Dragons, but interleaved with a supposed historical past (the Rohirrim seem to have included a great deal of Old English thought and words in their history) -- on to pure imagination without any tether in reality and thence onto hallucination?)

(Note two things: C.S. Lewis referred to Christianity in his atheist days as "lies breathed through silver" and then after conversion to "myth become fact"; whereas the atheists insist (falsely) that anything not in accord with the currently understood laws of physics must be dismissed as lies, legends, wishful thinking, or madness.)

Also -- imagination need not merely be a reflection of the "real world" but also help create it; to borrow a page from Tolkien (his essay On Fantasy ascribes imagination as the greatest power in which Man is like God); God spoke the world into being from nothing (bone of contention with atheists, presumably because there's not enough math in Genesis); the Elves have to power to project the verisimilitude of reality upon mortals (not physical reality but touching the mind of the one affected in the same way -- compare and contrast the episode in C.S. Lewis's Perelandra in Chapter 16 where Ransom considers the various "appearances" of the Oyarses:

"But a flush of diverse colours began at about the shoulders and streamed up the necks and flickered over face and head and stood out around the head like plumage or a halo. He told me he could in a sense remember these colours - that is, he would know them if he saw them again - but that he cannot by any effort call up a visual image of them nor give them any name. The very few people with whom he and I can discuss these matters all give the same explanation. We think that when creatures of the hypersomatic kind choose to 'appear' to us, they are not in fact affecting our retina at all, but directly manipulating the relevant parts of our brain. If so, it is quite possible that they can produce there the sensations we should have if our eyes were capable of receiving those colours in the spectrum which are actually beyond their range."

); humans have the ability to mold reality, inspired by their imagination: the Apple iMac, the iPhone, etc., all were once gleams in the late Steve Jobs's eye.

(Sorry for the rant, you caught me on a philosophical bender as I am procrastinating on writing a couple of more essays to follow up on The Internet and Social Dynamics...)

Cheers!

Otherwise we may be dealing with psychosis.

Isn't that a skin rash caused by stress? I think reading these threads is causing me to break out.

All communication, whether words, mathematical symbols including numbers, signs, or whatever, are abstractions representing thought. For that matter, we even think in symbols for our thoughts are either images or subvocal language. Even thoughts of nothing, as in meditation, are images of a blank screen in a soundless environment. Therefore, everything, subjective and objective, abstractions in themselves, is an abstraction.

So, that brings us back to:

The point I was trying to make earlier was that any abstraction the mind subjectively makes rests for its validity on something REAL of which it is the reflection. (Otherwise we may be dealing with psychosis.) An abstraction from or mental image of Reality is tested for its Truth in the degree it corresponds with the objectiveTruth already in-built into the world.

The mind works, according to the latest I have read, through perceiving, organizing into patterns, associating, storing, and then starting over again with new perceptions, organizations and associations, all forming an ever growing data base of "knowledge." We first remember the patterns and associations as we recall things. "New" ideas are just new associations of old ideas.

Our imaginations, just like reading fiction or seeing movies, allow us to increase our database without actually experiencing things in real life. Imagination allows us to learn, or project, vicariously. All of this was organized and set in place by the Logos.

Either we cannot directly experience the Logos, only its abstractions, or conversely, we are always experiencing the Logos because we are immersed in it. You said

It really all comes down to my belief that the LOGOS is "in" the world, and is what "structures" (but does not fully "determine!") the world — from Alpha to Omega and everything in-between.

so I suppose you believe the latter. To me, it is both. We are immersed in Truth and we interact with it in everything we do. Yet, we cannot know the essence of that with which we are interacting. It is too vast and too powerful for us to comprehend except for our right-now, earthly needs. We can comprehend the things being discussed here but there is much more than we will ever know while in this plane. We are individual rooms of ignorance which will be filled with knowledge later.