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---------------------------------
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Greg asked:
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I have several questions:
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*If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? There must be an edge because it is
expanding into something.
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*Are there an infinite amount of numbers between 2 and 3? For instance 2.3, 2.5, 2.6,
2.6564745645.....?
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*How seriously do philosophers take near death experiences? I think the common themes from each
culture says something.
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*Who let the dogs out?
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=========
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- Let's say that you were a 2-dimensional creature living inthe surface of a sphere. There was no
way you could see off of that surface: light just moved inthe surface. So that sphere is your universe,
and you can go around and around in it; there's noedge, but it's finite. Ok... now, the sphere, let us
say, is expanding. Well, as far as youare concerned, the universe is getting bigger, but it's not
expanding into anything. It's just expanding. Is our 4th-dimensional (or maybe 11th, if string theory is
correct) expanding "into" anything? Well, we'll probably never know ... and if we did, then the problem
would be just pushed back to the next level, wouldn't it? But if there's no way we can get off, or even
seeoff, then we can speculate all we want, but that's all it will be.
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- Yes. You're talking about the "real numbers", and there are an infinite number of them. In fact, a
mathematician named Cantor proved that there are, first, a countably(i.e., you can count them, one
by one) infinite number of integers (the whole numbers: 1, 2, 3... you just can't finishcounting them...
that's why they're infinite); second, a countably infinite number of rationalnumbers (i.e., all fractions);
butthere are an uncountablyinfinite number of real numbers: numbers like pi, square root of 3, and
on and on. If you're trying to count them, you can't ever get from the first to the second, because
there are an infinite number in-between anytwo. In fact, that latter infinity (of reals) is just the second
order of infinity (the first Cantor called "aleph-null", the second "aleph-one"); there are an infinite
number of orders of infinity (I don't know if anyone has proven whether the number of orders is
countable or not). Aleph-two is the number of functions, for example.
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- From my point of view, the validity of near-death experiences (in the literature, NDEs) is not a
philosophical question or issue, but a medical and psychological one. Are they real? Yes. Do they
indicate what people want them to indicate, i.e., that there is "life after death"? Well, you have to look
at the literature for that. My take on it is that they do not; that they are interesting, and due to
somewhat rare conditions in the brain (oxygen starvation and massive release of particular
neurotransmitters — glutamate, mostly) when it and the body are under great stress — like, dying. It
is, of course, extremely difficult to do controlled experiments here (and a little ghoulish, don't you
think?), but it's been tried, and the results seem to be that we don'treally float around, etc., because
people can't really see into closed drawers, etc. When, with the people who were saved, and what
they seem to have seen is investigated afterwards, it seems to have been just inferences. The
accuracy is mere chance. But this is still an open field. The uniformity of the experiences, by the way,
is probably due to the uniformity of the physiological events.
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- Socrates.
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Steven Ravett Brown
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