Existence...

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
61

Nonsense! How then would we ever recognize randomness? When we roll a dice multiple times, do we necessarily see a pattern eventually? There have to be “patterns” out there that have no pattern, and even if you’re the type to superimpose a pattern onto it, you must first fail to identify a pattern such that your brain realizes it’s time to superimpose one.

Yes, our consciousness is an extension of universal consciousness, just like a memory is an extension of our consciousness.

Now, why is yellow yellow? I guess because whatever gave rise to it determined that it be yellow.

. ← It kinda looks like that. But even that is more a tiny square than a point. A point, they say, has no dimension, and is better thought of as a mark dividing each side. But in any case, some actually believe the singularity the universe was at the beginning was littlerally all condensed into a dimensionless point. I think this is absurd though I have no idea how far condensing all matter and energy in the universe can go. Can it get absurdly close to a dimensionless point? Only a physicist can tell (or maybe not).

But that’s how scientists would have us see it. I take the view that the physical universe is a representation of consciousness–real only insofar as we experience it–and insofar as our concepts and understandings of the singularity at the BB count as experiences, it is real for those who believe in it (my theory requires relativism when it comes to beliefs). But as a representation, one is pushed to ask “What is it a representation of?” As far as the BB singularity is concerned, I think it represents God’s mind expressed as a sigular thing–what it is in one sentence–and the explosion of the universe into multiple parts and a wide ranging diversity is God’s mind expressed in a much more complicated description–what it is in multiple sentences; It’s kind of like the number one being expressed as 1 or as .25 + .25 + .25 + .25. To bring this back to your question, I think what the BB ultimately represents is not so much a thing that can be described as being condensed into a singularity or a point–God’s mind is far too abstract for such physical/geometric words–but insofar as it is expressed in physical/geometric terms, it ends up having to be described as a singularity at a single point (or as close as physical things can get to that).

In a sense, yes, but the universe today is no long a singularity (as much as we are still in it).

This is a perfect description. Our consciousness is a microcosm inside the macrocosm of the universe in total.

:laughing: Well, now I have to ask you “what is an egg?” I assume you mean our “eternal chicken” is this universal consciousness we’ve been presupposing and the “egg” is the physical universe it gave rise to. Right? Then I don’t really have an answer. :frowning: Some say there are many universes like ours–and the total collection of them all is the “multiverse”–and some say ours is the only one. Some say even single universes like ours can give rise to other universes. Some say that black holes lead to other universes. Or that universes sometimes spontaneous give rise to big bangs at arbitrary points in space, and these universes expand out in another dimension though still anchored to their point of origin.

I agree with you agreeing with my I agrees. And that it’s a long post. What can I say? There was a lot to respond to. And I was having a pretty good day which means I had a lot of writing juice. It wasn’t all addressed to you, so if you want, you can respond only to the posts I addressed to you.

Why call it ‘other’ then? Usually, when one uses the term “other” it means to denote something that is not you. Something that is outside you and has its own agency (or is driven by laws over which you have no control). If you mean to say all is one consciousness, therefore there can be no other, fair enough. But there will always be ‘other’ for us–we limited beings to whom there are other consciousnesses.

62

gib says:

"Show me what a point is in actuality.

. ← It kinda looks like that. But even that is more a tiny square than a point. A point, they say, has no dimension, and is better thought of as a mark dividing each side. But in any case, some actually believe the singularity the universe was at the beginning was littlerally all condensed into a dimensionless point. I think this is absurd though I have no idea how far condensing all matter and energy in the universe can go. Can it get absurdly close to a dimensionless point? Only a physicist can tell (or maybe not)."

me no says:

Saint Augustine implies the particular human being is but a world with a world’s representation of it’s self, implying multitude of near absolute reductions (to a point)

In his ‘Devine Illuminations’

63

This is the story of why I decided to examine the nature of reality and our human understanding of it. The world around me seems too chaotic and crazy right now, overwhelmed with fear and anger that exacerbates nihilism. Nihilism helps no one. So, due to not sleeping and having an abundance of mental energy, I began processing all the ins and outs, the quandaries, surrounding existence. These quandaries always end in a paradox, logical fallacies, or trippy infinite loops. I thought to myself, is understanding the immediate world around me and its order that messy?

No, I understand the order I find in my basic daily observations with most things being constant rather than inconsistent. With simple logic and reasoning, I can expect the sun to rise, a dog to bark, a chair to hold the seated, so where does understanding reality get so messy? Science. I despise reading and have never invested my understanding in the religion of science, so it was not a stumbling block for me to overcome the current beliefs it espouses.

Currently, I frequent two philosophy websites, ilovephilosophy.com and knowthyselforumotion.net, to expand my horizons regarding thought through the use of reasoning and the application of alternative perspectives.

The poster, Satyr, over at knowthyselforumotion.net hammered home the need for me to use my basic observations of reality, the actual, before my head goes up in the clouds of purely abstract ideas that have no concrete foundation, no verifiability. So I did just that and formulated a new understanding of reality, existence.

But where’s the foundation underneath my comprehension? From daily observations, I understand the simple consistency or constant that existence provides. I essentially know what to expect moment to moment by and large. I wondered could the simplicity of my expectations apply to the overarching umbrella that is known as existence?

Yes. It can.

Instead of spinning my wheels on paradoxes, logical fallacies, and the rest of the confusing nonsense, I decided to take a bold approach. Existence is…everything actual. No matter what galaxy or dimension or universe. No matter the form or size or shape of any actual thing, everything falls under the umbrella of existence as all that exists. That means there is only one, overarching existence.

Now I asked myself, I reasoned, if everything exists, how can anything not exist?

It can’t. Non-existence denies the actual…existence. What?

Non-existence is purely an idea, a concept. But non-existence is understandable for we use it to describe death.

Many ideas and concepts are understandable, but that doesn’t mean they make up actual existence in the traditionally understood way. Unicorns are understandable, but do not actually exist. Unicorns are another idea just as non-existence is an idea. There is no non-existence of a unicorn because there was never any existence of an actual unicorn. There are abstractions of unicorns, stuffies, cartoons representations, etc., but nothing actually living as the “animal” is understood.

But death is non-existence. What we are describing as death is change, not non-existence, not the becoming of nothing. I’ll get into this more later.

Can something become nothing?

If something can become nothing, how would existence remain? It wouldn’t, it’d disappear completely. So nothing and non-existence only exist as place holders in our daily lives but in the actuality of existence only occur as ideas in opposition to existence.

To Be Continued…

64

Wendy, I wonder what it is you are looking for in philosophy, if anything.

It seems you want to be sure of stuff, perhaps to be comforted. In my opinion, philosophy is not designed to make you sure of stuff. It is to make you unsure of stuff. It’s not to comfort you, but discomfort you. It’s not to confirm, but to disconfirm. Science, which tries to confirm stuff to the best of its ability, can’t make you sure of stuff, either. Nothing can.

You write:

I’m afraid you can’t. See: David Hume’s Problem of Induction.

You write that nihilism helps no one. Apart from the fact that there are different forms of nihilism, why do you presuppose nihilism is unhelpful? And why would you think that the goal of philosophy is to be helpful in any case?

You say you despise reading. But then how can you learn anything beyond your basic interactions with the world, which we know to be highly misleading? Reading lets us draw on a vast corpus of learning, however tentative, accumulated over centuries. If you despise reading, you can’t hope to understand anything about philosophy or much of anything else.

You call science a religion. It’s the opposite of a religion. Religion relies on dogma. Science rejects dogma. But even so, science can never tell you anything for sure. If you want a final answer on just about anything, you will be doomed to disappointment, unless you make up some final answer in your own mind and find comfort in it. But that’s called the comforting lie. Do you what to find comfort in lies?

Why are paradoxes and logical fallacies nonsense? You give no reason why, you just assert it. Some of them may be confusing, or challenging, but it does not follow that they are nonsense. This smacks of giving up: I can’t understand x, therefore x is nonsense. Consider that x is not nonsense, but the problem lies in your unwillingness to try to understand x. And perhaps x can never be understood by anyone, but so what? Could it not be the case that the attempt to understand is more important than understanding itself? The point is not the destination — it is the journey.

You ask, How can anything not exist? Then you say: It can’t. But then you say unicorns don’t exist. This seems contradictory. But then your write: “There is no non-existence of a unicorn because there was never any existence of an actual unicorn.” But if a unicorn never existed then it is non-existent by definition. It is, and always was, non-existent, but this tells us nothing about the future. Perhaps in the future unicorns will exist. But in any case, two forms of non-existence are possible: never existed, and existed at one time but then ceased to exist. These concepts are not mutually exclusive, yet as I read what you write you seem to think that they are.

Unicorns aren’t actual, you say. Are you sure about that? Unfortunately you despise reading. If you did not despise reading, I would advise you to read the book On the Plurality of Worlds by the late, great 20th century analytic philosopher David K. Lewis. He argues that all counterfactual worlds are actual, but just not for you and me. Unicorns are actual, talking donkeys are actual, flying pigs are actual, literal Greek Gods are actual, just not for us. But they are actual, Lewis argues. You would have to read his book to consider his argument.

Can something become nothing?

No, not according to our best scientific understanding. The conservation laws (descriptions) of the way the world works show that matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed, just converted into different forms. But this is an empirical observation fleshed out be theoretical constructs. Unfortunately for you science is a religion so you will never get this. Still, this doesn’t mean that something cannot become non-existent. At death, consciousness becomes non-existent, but the physical components of consciousness, the brain, are recycled to become something else. But then we have to ask: Does mind supervene on the brain, as is commonly supposed as if this is an a priori truth, or could it be the other way around: that brains supervene on minds?

Because we cannot even be sure that the external world exists. A mind-independent world fails to exist under metaphysical idealism, in contradistinction to the reigning paradigm of metaphysical naturalism. Science doesn’t seek to prove a mind-independent world but merely to make self-consistent models of what happens in our minds.

If sureness and comfort is what you seek philosophy will not help you. Philosophy is renegade.

65

Tell this man he is basically licking his own asshole…what does it even mean to stick to basic observations of reality before your head goes in the clouds???the idiot is basically praising himself and bragging he somehow knows what is bullshit and what is true…how do you know your head goes into the clouds???is there some fail-proof process to determine what is real and what is not based on what you begin with that all of the civilizations philosophy and science missed??? how does the idea of chaos…a thing you can never actually see…integrate into all this???chaos is even more abstract and in the clouds than god…at least you can concretly define god…what is chaos…it is always what isnt for the idiot who ridicules others for dreaming in the clouds…

66

You have to be a really thick dullard to define chaos as not-order and then blame others for dreaming in the clouds…like defining a tree by saying it is not a rock…give me a break…a paranoid nutter with delusions in a burnt out head, kicked in the balls by life and nearing his end. he was fucking around when he was 30, now he ran out of things to do and sits at home and pretends an authority philosopher to a bunch of autistic neo-nazi dullards with no life who cant get laid and hate women.

67

Mr. Nice Guy,

This discussion belongs in this thread. I’m pulling it back here.

It still seems to me my argument stands against this. I pointed out that order (defined as patterns) exist in nature. They exist regardless of whether there are human minds around to recognize them. The orbit of the planets around the sun is a pattern. Are you saying if human minds didn’t exist, the planets wouldn’t orbit?

Woaw, woaw, woaw! You can’t do that. You can’t put words in my mouth and then say it’s circular reasoning. As I said, I’m going with a definition of order as the existence of patterns (such that natural laws can be inferred). And yes, Chaos is randomness, the lack of any patterns or laws. But if you want a definition of randomness in turn, why would you go back to chaos? That would be circular. So maybe you and I can come up with something together. How 'bout: randomness is the occurrence of events or arrangement of things such that at no point during the occurrence of the events or anywhere in the arrangement of things can one predict what will come next–either based on what came before or otherwise. Feel free to add to this or offer your own definition.

This has nothing to do with knowing. It has everything to do with the actual existence of patterns or lack thereof. More specifically, it has to do with the manifestation of laws.

Why not? It’s chaos! It’s suppose to produce random things. Everything that comes out of it is new–in defiance of whatever pre-exists. If you’re expecting that a pattern that is created be already there in the source of creation, you are expecting order. You are expecting chaos to abide by rules and structures. But that would make it anything but chaos.

Well, back up a second. I’m only speculating on whether or not order can come out of chaos. I made an argument that it can. This doesn’t mean I believe in chaos or that the world actually did come out of it. I’m just speculating on what sort of thing chaos is–what we mean by it–and also what order is, and based on the two, whether chaos is the kind of thing that order could come out of.

Are you saying that either way it contradicts its own nature? As in, it is reliant on cause and effect, and in the case where it came from nothing, it came without a cause? In the case where it always existed, it has no cause (at least not a first one)?

Why a paradox? A paradox means a state of affairs that leads to two or more contradictory conclusions. What contradictory conclusions can you draw from the concept of infinity?

Well, first you have to establish that there is more to existence than our universe. Otherwise, the scientific answer is as good as any other. But sure, we could go with other answers, doubting science, and base our speculation on semantics and logic only.

68

Stop begging the questions, petitio principii. And stop repeating yourself as if I did not already address what you have, by now, said twice.

So, to sum up: order exists independently of human cognition yet the definition you give for randomness, which you claim to be the opposite of order, is: randomness is the occurrence of events or arrangement of things such that at no point during the occurrence of the events or anywhere in the arrangement of things can one predict what will come next–either based on what came before or otherwise.
Which, by the above definition, cannot exist without human cognition.

Knowing has nothing to do with patterns and laws?

You are ascribing order and laws to a thing you define as a lack of order and laws you in the same sentence.

Thats fine but I have no clue what you are talking about.

No, because nature, law, order and chaos are not things of themselves, independent of human cognition.

That it either never ends or eventually leads to an end.

You have no clue what either science or philosophy is.

69

Your editing choices were good ones.

Now what is it we disagree on concerning existence?

70

I dont have patience for this shit…

71

That makes two of us.

72

I am looking to prove that the nature of reality is understandable. Without paradoxes, without logical fallacies, without infinite loops of reason (such as anything created was created by a creator.< unnecessary nonsense).

I am trying to share a new understanding of the nature of reality. I am offering up progress in the form of a different perspective than is customary.

What are you doing?

73

A dullard thinks science is a philosophy and ends up doing neither…the short bus seems to be full nowadays.

74

I’m doing philosophy. What are you doing?

75

How are you “doing” philosophy? I’m creating new concept in philosophy. Duh.

76

gib,

I might say that that might be a possibility. Who would be there to discover that and to know that? Just a possibility.

If human minds did not exist, that might just change something else from becoming "real. One thing different could make such a difference.
Perhaps the planets would not orbit.
#-o

77

If one isn’t contributing to the growth of philosophy, if one isn’t creating philosophy, how are you “doing” philosophy?

78

Since I’m in my cranky pants today, if you have any questions about what I’ve covered so far, I’m begging for your post to be short with only one or two questions, a few sentences. I love ya Gib, but no Gib length posts. Please? Pretty, pretty please?

79

Things are not actually things…From Aristotle…forms…what is a tree???is it a sum of its atoms???is it what you see looking at it from the west???from below???above???is a tree its history, what it came from???is a tree what it does???you people are simply not getting that what you see is not what is…twofold…first, because of basic epistemology…secondly…because you people seem to be unable to realise that things and their classes and distinctions are not so obvious…take an idea of a leaf???what, beyond basic atomic structure, is a leaf???I am sure an autistic dullard like Sculptor will come and say that a leaf, DUHH, is what A HUMAN DEFINES as a leaf…showing how dull he is…but to cut him the trouble…this is exactly what I am saying…a leaf is a result from an interaction of reality with an observer…it is reality plus what a human does with it…a hybrid, an outcome…neither literal nor fantastical…

80

Well, so you say. It seems to me all you are doing is window-shopping for the best furniture that you think will make you feel better. Each to his own. As I noted, for me philosophy is renegade, so I don’t look for it to comfort me but challenge me.