Okay, that’s your bottom line. Mine revolves more around the assumption that, as with many here, you have no real interest in bringing your “technical philosophy” down out of the clouds. You’re just more comfortable with “analyses” that I construe to be largely intellectual contraptions. You present us with assessment after assessment after assessment embedded squarely within the parameters of what I call “general descriptions”.
Arguments, in other words, in which the reasoning is tautological, circular, internal. These words are said to be true because those words define and defend them.
They have almost nothing to do with the lives that we live!
Or, perhaps, like others here, you are more discomfited by the argument that focuses in on the seeming futility of ever pinning any of this down. Why? Because none of us come even close to having access to an understanding of what lies behind existence itself.
So, what then becomes of more importance [in my view] are psychological needs being met in convincing yourself that there are answers and that your own are the best place to start.
And you can always find those in the philosophy community who share your conviction that the answers are there. Only most will assure you that the answers are theirs and not yours.
Unless of course there was never any possibility that you could or would contribute to this exchange in any way other than as you were compelled to by the laws of matter.
How on earth could you possibly grasp the meaning and the nature of time itself?
You may not like me pointing it out but speculation of this sort is no less subsumed in the “unknown unknowns” that stand between what you think you know about it here and now and all that can be known about it going back to how it is wholly integrated into all that can be known about the meaning and nature of existence itself.
We are all stymied here of course.
Now, I make what I construe to be a crucial distinction between what we seem able to demonstrate as in fact true for all of us in the either/or world, and what we cannot. At least Insofar as we interact out in the world from day to day.
But how can that ever be removed from all that I don’t know about the really big questions revolving around threads like this one?
Most crucially though [in my view] we don’t know if the future is something that we can steer in one rather than another direction autonomously.
In fact this point is one that I would make in regard to “I” in the is/ought world. Even assuming autonomy, we can’t possibly grasp all of the variables that came/come together to form the trajectory of our actual lived life. In my opinion, the “self” here can only be reasonably construed as an existential contraption in a world teeming with conflicting goods as we go about the business of interacting amidst an avalanche of contingency, chance and change.
Back to my hypothetical aliens. They note us choosing to do one thing rather than another. But then they point out that on earth everything unfolds in a part of the universe that is wholly determined. We think [psychologically] that we chose freely to eat cheese doodles but there was never really any possibility that we could have chosen not to.
Now, how close is this speculation to all that would need to be known in order to demonstrate that the points here are wholly in sync with that which explains the existence of existence itself.
Come on, I note these things in order to elicit from others reactions relating to their own lives. How are those things deemed to be problems for me not problems for them? How are they not down in an existential hole when their own particular “I” is confronting conflicting goods?
What else can it mean? There is what I think I know about morality on this side of the grave and oblivion on the other side. There is what I think I know about my own capacity to choose things with some measure of volition.
And, in thinking about them as I do, it precipitates frames of mind that trouble me. I come into places like ILP and note this. How then are others either able to empathize with me or instead are completely at a loss in understanding them.
Exchanges commense. And they are either sustained with a mutual respect for each other’s intelligence or they aren’t.
In time, with many of them, one side or the other [or both] will pull out of them. For any number of reasons.
Right, that will make it go away.
Well, here we will just have to agree to disagree. The gap between them is, in my view, enormous.
Well, yes, the gap is always there. No matter the context.
But the part about “existential contraptions” can only be explored as it pertains to a particular context. In other words, there are things we seem able to demonstrate to each other are true for all of us and there are things we seem unable to.
With things like Communism there are any number of facts that are “existential contraptions” only in the sense that actual individuals had actual personal experiences with it in actual contexts.
But when the discussion shifts to judging those experiences as more or less rational and more or less virtuous, that’s a very different kind of “existential contraption”.
Unless, of course, we do live in an entirely determined universe. Then they are essentially interchangeable.
What I mean is that starting with your first point…
“1. Systems are not slaves to the rules that govern their fundamental building blocks… they subsume those rules and build their own rules from them.”
…we focus in on a particular system in a particular context. One that most here will be familiar with. An economic system. A political system. A system that revolves around a business or a sporting event or a social gathering or a religious experience.
A system where actual men and women interact by making choices. Choices that others react to as either reasonable or unreasonable. As either moral or immoral. As either autonomous or determined.
What might constitute slavery in this particular system? What is the relationship between the rules that are or are not followed and what are deemed to be the fundamental building blocks?
What do you mean by a “foundation”?
Do you mean that before we actually bring the words out into the world we must first be entirely in sync with regard to their definitions?
If so, then I am willing to abide by the definitions that you give them. I just want to take the meaning that you do ascribe to them out into the world of actual human interactions.
That 's what the OP could be seen as addressing, isn’t it – existence, eg valuing, eg fighting, or iambs hole, oblivion, retreat into the primordial mud.
signals which transmit at the rate of electromagnetic radiations/signals. … However “speed of light” generally signifies speed of light in vacuum and the brain is no vacuum, therefore no the thinking is not faster than speed of light.
This is relevant to the idea that we can only outguess consequential ideas , relatively speaking.
I don’t pretend to fully grasp the science here but that hypothetical alien was described as either moving away or toward us at a “leisurely pace”. He pedals away from us and his now is our past. He pedals towards us and his now is our future.
The suggestion then being [if I understood Brian Greene] that the past, present and future all exist all the time.
But: How close or how far is what Greene thinks is true here from all that there is to know about spacetime going back to a complete understanding of existence itself?
Yeah, that alien is 10 billion light years away. What does his present have to do with our present, past or future? Nothing.
Sure, he can make some mathematical or computer model and now he thinks he sees a big picture - he has some sort of ‘scientific’ version of a God’s eye view of everything. He can see an alien and human, who are 10 billion light years apart, simultaneously. Let’s call it entertaining fun.
If we are talking about our actual situation, we are talking about people in close proximity, moving slowly relative to each other. The past, present and future is as we experience it. It is within grasp of our understanding.
You’re living life sequentially. It’s demonstrably true for everyone. Why deny it?