Or [perhaps]: Here’s what we were never able not to know…that we were compelled to invent the word “autonomous” in order to describe something that we were compelled to find in the world.
The things we used that word to describe are real, even if we don’t yet or can’t ever know how they work.
Or [perhaps]: These things are real only to the extent that we can grasp them ontologically given a complete understanding of existence.
If your understanding of the word is NOT in reference to something we find in the world… then and ONLY then does it make sense to question whether or not it CAN be found in the world.
Finding something in the world autonomousy and deluding ourselves psychologically [autonomically] that we are finding something in the world autonomously — how are they the same or different? How would we go about telling them apart?
A unicorn for example, is an imaginary magical animal… we can meaningfully ask whether or not unicorns can be found in the world.
But a horse is NOT, with a horse we point to the damn thing and say THAT is a horse… It’s then pointless to ponder whether THAT really is a horse or not.
Or, again, it might be true that it is pointless to ponder whether any of this exchange about unicorns and horses could have been other than what it must be. The mind of the one imagining the unicorn or pointing to the horse embodying only the illusion of doing this of its own volition. The mind of the horse then being closer to a purely genetic, instinctive matter.
On the other hand, you may well be pointing out something here that is in fact more reasonable than the manner in which I try to think it through. But I can’t quite wrap my mind around the idea that, in a wholly determined universe, I can only wrap my mind around it as the laws of matter dictate.
What I believe you are asking, and no one here can provide an answer to, is whether or not we are made of more than matter… I don’t know the answer any more than you do.
Exactly. Is mind “matter plus”? How do we account for mindless matter evolving into mindful matter that may or may not be autonomous?
I have good reason to believe matter exists, but I can’t say the same for any spirit dimension nor do I have good reason to suppose anything supernatural or magical is going on…
and in the absence of compelling reasons to believe I do the only reasonable thing to do, which is to not believe they exist… which leaves me only matter to work with, pending further information.
I basically agree. I only stipulate that this information would seem to take us all the way back to why there is something instead of nothing. And why this something and not another.