I think, therefore I am… God.
God could not have said or thought that unless He existed.
Although I greatly admire both, it’s times like these that I’m glad Heidegger strangled Descartes with the entrails of Kant.*
I think it’s somewhat true that ‘common sense’ is but the remnants of old philosophy. Hopefully one day people will stop living under the shadow of Descartes, stop with this solipsism/dualism pap and come join Heidegger and Nietzsche to laugh at all the logocentrics and their ‘substance theories’.
[size=75]*a reference to Denis Diderot, who said ‘man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.’[/size]
couldn’t agree more Ponty
Such theories are derived from one’s ability to elaborate. If you are unable to grasp the concept beyond the way in which it is described, then it is lost to you.
I want you to imagine nothingness. Despite nothingness being impossible and what-have-you, imagine there is non existence. There is only presence, this being what I will deem ‘god’. No capital G, for this is not the God of religious propaganda (for lack of a better word). This is a god which merely represents the inherent state of will.
With this will exists what I will call thought. Again, don’t be confused with the thought you are experiencing right now, for this is thought that exists timelessly in a subjective bond with god.
Only through god’s thought do you exist. Looking back on a previous post I made in this thread, it is very easy to label this as dreaming. God is merely dreaming your existence, thus allowing you to interpret the physical reality you experience independently.
If you want me to prove there is a god just ask.
None of us exist. Only you are real.
Do you know that anyone exists in the way that you know you exist?
We are a highly sophisticated illusion here to help you along your journey.
Or… you can realize it’s impossible to picture nothing because attempting to picture nothing is attempting to picture something, which nothing isn’t.
Nothing is but a negation of something. The reason you can’t picture ‘it’ is because it’s not an ‘it’. Yet you see negation all the time: take the legs off of a table, saw it in half and throw it into a fire and it’s no longer a table. Where has the table gone? Nowhere! But don’t confuse nowhere for somewhere and don’t confuse nothingness, a negation, for something! This is where it is shown your ‘theory of presence’ is merely a misunderstanding of nothingness.
If you literally mean to picture it in your mind’s eye, then you know that is impossible and you’re playing mere sophistry, because nothingness is but a negation. However, to simply ‘talk’ about no things existing is the easiest of all things to do: you simply say nothing (which is to say you don’t say anything).
Now the idealist or solipsist will say ‘try and picture something where you’re not picturing it’ and ‘try and picture a world where you’re dead’. This is the same sophist trick. It’s true that we can only experience with our senses and that it’s impossible to tell whether the world is identical to how you sense it ‘in itself’, but you can still picture a world where you’re not in it or don’t exist. Don’t confuse you yourself, the imaginer, for the imaginary representation of yourself in the world where this imaginary representation doesn’t exist.
All you’ve done is played a word game, much like George Berkeley. He criticized the concept of ‘matter’ behind the images, only to replace it with ‘God’s mind’ in an attempt to get rid of scepticism and atheism, which ironically itself leads to solipsism (yet another word game where external world is merely renamed ‘mind’).
Want to know why Berkeley, Hume, Schopenhauer, Fichte and possibly Kant all lead to solipsism if taken to their logical conclusions? Because of Cartesianism, which has been a dogmatic paradigm for far too long and traps you in your mind by making assumptions I thank Heidegger for drawing out.
Ironically, ‘matter’, ‘will’, ‘mind’, ‘god’, the ‘thing-in-itself’ are all a case of logocentrism, of the metaphysics of presence.
It’s just a word game, a meaningless gestalt switch. Just choose whichever one makes you comfortable and stop this pointless bickering that has been going on since Plato, so we can finally move on to something of some importance! Damn… however, I would argue that the minute you start arguing for the presence to be something like ‘god’s will’ then you’re making massive assumptions and it can automatically be pulled back to solipsism, making the option to be between three presences: mind, where you state everything out there is a product of your mind alone; matter, where you say everything, including your mind, is a product of matter and there really are things out there, or ‘thing-in-itself’ where you either say you don’t know or there is something else, but I don’t know what it is. But remember, it’s all just a word game, a perspective! You’re just giving the signified a different signifier.
Personally, if stuck in this Cartesianism, I choose ‘matter’ because I don’t believe there is a God, think pantheism is just a word game and am uncomfortable thinking I am the only thing that exists. However, like Heidegger, I try not to think about it, I try to get out of this pointless dualism and so I just talk about Dasein (although don’t think of me as a Heideggarian, I have much more in common with Foucault and the ‘post-structuralists’).
I’m disappointed to say that I expected you to refute nothingness before continuing on to understand what I was explaining. Moreso I feel as if you’re trying to force your frivolous opinion out.
You’re response suggests that the entire purpose of my last post was to insist that “nothingness” exists. This leads me to believe that you didn’t read beyond “I want you to imagine nothingness.”
Perhaps you should reread what I’ve said, and allow your mind to think for itself. If you do you’ll find that I’ve made no assumptions. Nor have I made any use of word play, in the context of which you’re referring, seemingly to glorify your knowledge of philosophers.
There is a god whether you like it or not. We exist through the presence of a being (don’t let the word being confuse you, it’s not word play). Something must exist outside of our own existence, (our universe, and the laws which govern it) in order for us to be here right now. We exist as a result of this beings will. Again, don’t mistake the word will for wordplay. This being’s will is what permits us to remain in this existence, devoid of nonexistence, as you have so humbly explained it.
Simply put; Without said being, you could not be.
Why does this being have to be external to us? Could we not all exist as results of a multitude of beings acting in concert?
Existence requires no proof.
The sun does not require our faith before it is capable of shining.
Proof doesn’t matter;
“Lack of proof”, as a concept, was fabricated by the ignorant.
I have ideas as to ‘self’ and I feel as if I exist. But I can’t think of what I can say to defend it to others. 
There is no way that you can experience what it is like to feel like I exist and I can never know what it is like to be JoeTheMan. (I’ll bet it’s awesome!!! 
)
Basically, I can give you relative reasons why I think anything exists, but they will always be relative. 
I DON’T think, therefore I DON’T am… Wait a minute, that didn’t work out right!
This being is external to us for two reasons. It existed before us, and it is not bound by the ‘laws’ of our existence.
In response to your second question, perhaps the word being is too easily misinterpreted. This being, or presence, is not a self aware, free willed creature. Instead it is a presence which is independent of existence. This means that it does not function as a knowledgeable, omnipotent ‘higher power’. This may be loosely analogous, but it is the sub-conscious of existence. Such a presence could not consist of multiple beings, because there is nothing to separate.
Congratulations for doing nothing but repeating what I refuted and insulting my intelligence. I get what you are saying and it’s a very poor argument for the existence of a God which is similar to Berkeley’s.
May I ask why something must exist outside of it? You’ve not given a good reason yet, and I’m getting the feeling this is but a god of the gaps argument.
If it’s independent of existence then it doesn’t exist. You also seem to be making the mistake of treating existence as a property or substance. You are also doing exactly what I said you are doing in my earlier post, you’re being logocentric and positing a thing-in-itself.
This ‘presence’ is nothing but the fact that we cannot picture nothing, but always something, because nothing is nothing but the negation of something. You’ve not proved there is some god-will, just a superstition (and a massive assumption, at that) imposed upon how the mind works.
Get him Ponty. Get HIM! I’m standing with you with my pitch fork and burning torch. We need to smoke em out, all these logocentrics, and show them that the Cartesean path leads to nowhere.
All I got out of your post was that nothingness is impossible, I’m playing word games, and I need to stop bickering.
You shouldn’t be insulted if you’re going to try to overwhelm my imaginings with irrelevant nonsense. You should expect I would reply in such a manner.
You asked “May I ask why something must exist outside of it?” Exist outside of what? I assume you mean why something must exist outside of our universe. This is because our universe has not always been. There is something that had to exist before it, in order to create it. In order to create our universe, that something must have been above its limitations, thus existing independently of our existence. Am I right or am I wrong? I would assume this to be irrefutable logic, but you seem to think you can defy everything I say.
I’m not treating existence as a property or substance. I’m also not treating this presence as a property or substance, which is the point I’m trying to get across to you.
Lets break this down together, shall we? If the universe does not exist, there must be something in order to create it, later. RIGHT? This something can’t exist to us, or our existence, because we don’t exist yet, nor does our existence. Still on track with me here? In order for this something to be, it has to have presence. In order for this presence to create what we call existence, it has to have will. The reason it has to have will is because without will there would be no reason for existence.
Now is there crap falling out of my mouth, (not literally, just to clarify things) or do I have a point?
Yes, Ponty, I just repeated myself for a third time. It may be pointless, but I’m clinging by a thread that this will click for you.
My definition of ‘universe’ is everything that is, was and will be. Therefore there is no before the universe. But if you’re talking about what came before the big bang, then we don’t know and there’s no point making baseless assumptions like ‘god’s will’.
This is an assumption. You’ve just made the god of the gaps I said you would earlier.
I’m not trying to be cruel, but your attitude gets my back up. And the problem was obviously that you didn’t explain your point well enough (that or you’ve just changed it after I refuted it).
Your definition is false. I urge you to go to dictionary.com, and enlighten yourself.
Call it an assumption if you will, but It is impossible for a presence not to exist before the big bang occurred. Will is not an assumption either, as the universe would not have a reason for being, if its creator didn’t willfully intend so.
My attitude is only derived from your original forceful remark directed solely at me. So let us declare a cease fire, shall we? My only intent is to share my philosophy, and learn that of others. So if I’m wrong here, please do explain why. Being told that I’m a logocentric follower of Berkeley does not clarify anything, it only creates tension.
–noun
- the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; the cosmos; macrocosm.
- the whole world, esp. with reference to humanity: a truth known throughout the universe.
It’s not.
(1) you assume it needs a reason in the manner there’s a reason a child opens a Christmas present (because it wants to get inside) and not a mere scientific reason - i.e. a description. I hope I’ve made this clear enough.
(2) you assume it has a creator, yet this explains nothing since it doesn’t explain what created the creator. It is possible the universe always was, or that the universe popped into existence through some form of abiogenesis as nothing but something very tiny and ‘insignificant’ that via it’s existence caused a causal game of dominos, but not through any metaphysical notion such as ‘will’.
(3) you assumed a will is required for the creation of the universe.