Take your time realunoriginal, I’m always interested in what you have to say.
I think I’m covering so many bases right now because I’m still at an awkward in-between moment in terms of philosophy. I tend to go through phases depending on the latest material I’m reading or the latest conclusions I’ve made. Really, it’s just hills and valleys. Right now I’m sort of in a trough of questions. I’ll be out of it soon. It’s funny because you can tell whether I’m asking more questions than I’m answering on this forum; if I post more threads then I reply to other people’s threads, then that’s an indicator right there.
I didn’t said anything about Nirvana .
You are daydreaming, again … or trying to misrepresent what I said, again, to defend your illusions.
As I’ve never thought nor stated that I gained Nirvana, I don’t fall in your own definition of “fake nihilism”.
Why do you need to bring up “omniscience” and “Nirvana” ?
Do you know what they are? Or are you talking about things you don’t know, again ?
Did I say I have obliterated ALL notions ?
Are you a bad reader or intentionally distorting what I say or both ?
In other words, you don’t read well or (consciously or subconsciously) distort what I say, and then build your badly shaped sandcastle of conclusion upon these illusion of understandings.
Oh well, it doesn’t really take “nothingness” to destroy your arguments … as what you are doing is mere classical bad debating tactics.
Please ask your teacher if you don’t yet understand what you have done.
Does a tomato affirm something ?
I don’t exclude the possibility of that, but I’ve never heard tomato saying something…
By “affirmation”, I usually mean our mental activity of positively asserting certain property, attribute, etc on something.
When we don’t think, we are not affirming anything.
And, I’m not 100% sure if you exist.
I’m not 100% sure if I exist, either.
Unlike those who implies absolute certainty in their thought too easily, too often, I tend to think in terms of possibilities and probabilities.
I don’t feel any need to fanatically affirm nor deny something.
I’m quietly observing and examining about “existence”, these days.
I already know that it takes certain elements to affirm “existence”.
I think it takes something that evaluates and then affirms it.
It takes something to be evaluated.
And that something should have different states.
It also takes something to be used as a criteria or evaluation method or evaluation tool.
If one or more of these elements is missing, we can’t affirm the “existence” of something.
Then, there is a question of the boundary/conditions.
What kind of “existence” are we to affirm?
People who can’t think logically would simply argue about “The existence”, implying the absolute and infinite existence, consciously or subconsciously.
But any attribute that is logically affirmed will be confined and subject to certain boundaries and conditions depending of the criteria or evaluation method employed.
So, we should be aware and be clear about these conditions and boundaries if we are going to talk logically.
Also, there is a question of the subject.
When we talk about the existence of “you and I”, what part of “you and I” are we talking about?
If we don’t define the subject, we can’t clearly evaluate the matter.
There are many people who don’t even think about composition of “I” or “you” and indulge in the illusion that they are thinking about something, though …
Although something like “existence” may seem so obvious to those who stay in the mentality of implied absolute certainty.
But it isn’t so obvious when we start to think and examine all what seemed to be solid and certain.
We are in the world of “uncertainty”, so to say.
As all affirmations are depending on arbitrary premises, criteria, evaluation methods, etc, they can’t be infinite nor absolute.
So, we can’t affirm the “existence”, even that of “you and I”, as easily as you imagined.
And if we manage to do it with all elements clearly defined and verified, it comes with conditions and boundaries of arbitrary nature, and you can’t simply think nor say that “you and I exist” as if it’s sure thing, without mentioning the limitations.
Don’t worry, you don’t sound so snobbish to me.
I guess you are just too certain of too many things to understand the possibilities.
Please keep indulging in your self-images (of whatever the philosopher or snobism) and illusions about others, if you like.
I know you love to indulge in your the messy notion of notion building.
Did I say that I’m a nihilist?
Well, I’m constantly feeling pains. These days, mostly physical pains.
And I stated that I don’t even understand basic notion like number “1” and "division.
I don’t think that qualifies as something “grandiose” based on common human feelings I have observed.
I know “nothingness” in your vocabulary is still “something” in your vocabulary, and that is absolutely certain for your subconscious, most probably.
And I have already explained what I call "Nothing, “nothingness”, “absolute”, “emptiness”, is the lack of all properties, such as “something-ness”.
You are free to stick to your vocabulary and use that as a fake premises to bring absurd conclusion, but that’s … not very logical.
Actually, I do sit in the dark room, sometime, and I enjoy it.
Usually I have enough stupidity in my remaining notions that I don’t have to listen to that of others.
But sometime, it helps me to digest the (subconscious) fear of someone else.
I guess the fear has certain stickiness that they attach to my remaining notions and make them surface easier.
It’s a little like using adhesive tape to clean up the mess left by the old adhesive tape.
I don’t need your sympathy.
Suffering is a bit like energy consumption.
If you feel it and digest, it’s gone. Otherwise it can be transformed, accumulated, and it can stick and stay around.
I only prefer to suffer when the sensations come up, in raw form, as much as possible, because it’s a little easier to consume it.
It’s possible (and more likely) that the way you are living can cause more suffering at the end (if there is an end).
But nothing wrong with that. It’s only a matter of preferences.
I don’t laugh at any possibilities, especially if they have some consequences to me.
Also, I don’t have seen any prove that it doesn’t exist.
So, I remain neutral and keep the possibility floating, till I die.
Also, when I became conscious at the age of 3, I had definite sensation that “what a hell am I doing here?”, or " there is something wrong … I made some miscalculations", sort of impression, which might be indicating the previous existence of some sort before to become aware in this world.
There are some friends who claim to have memories of reincarnations and middle zone, too.
I don’t believe them blindly, but I don’t deny them blindly, either
As I don’t have enough data to make any quality evaluation on the subject, I prefer to let them afloat, just like many many other subjects.
Holy crap, Nah, you are making a Nietzsche-ite out of me all over again. Just when I thought I was out, his bushy mustache pulls me back in!
What I was implying was that you seem (emphasis on seem) like you feel as though you’ve unlocked some “hidden knowledge” that no other has. As if you know more than we lowly souls do. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems quite passively arrogant. Hence the rhetoric and aggression.
You do realize that you aren’t the greatest of writers, right? Aside from trying to conceptualize what exactly you’re trying to say, I have an equally difficult time trying to decode the tone you’re trying to exude. You write in short bursts of sentences without putting any extreme effort into fleshing things out on a point-by-point basis. It can get pretty convoluted.
What relevance does a tomato have? See, Nah, you need to type down your ideas in a way that we can understand. This tomato thing just came out of nowhere. Write in entire paragraphs, it makes it easier to comprehensively express yourself.
Agreed. Which is why a true nihilist can’t exist.
Okay, I’ll buy that. I think where we differ is you are Nagarjuna and I’m Nietzsche; you affirm nothing or very little without any certainty because of the infinite possibilities of the Universe(s), I affirm things with some level of certainty all the while acknowledging that they are falsifiable because I accept that as finite creatures, we can only grasp finite answers.
This block of text is a little hard to understand but I think I get what you’re saying… In other words, to affirm something like existence itself we need to be able to reduce it to its fundamental properties. That’s basically what I’ve been saying this whole time. What happens is those fundamental properties are in themselves subject to reduction and it goes on forever. Thus, we never affirm anything 100% because all affirmations baseless.
See, if you would’ve said this before, I would’ve agreed with you. The way you put it was that you affirm nothing, making yourself look like some nihilist. I agree with fractional affirmation; that is, affirmation of things with the acknowledgment of their futility.
So it turns out that you and I completely agree. I humbly retract all accusations. Now we can argue about who’s fault this misunderstanding was: me for misunderstanding you, or you and your horrid inability to articulate yourself.
I think the subject serves a good communicative purpose as I said to Ingenium. Granted, “I” doesn’t really exist according to the definition of “I”, but for the sake of expression and thought (and thus affirmation) it is useful.
I’m 99.999999999999% sure existence exists. That’s still a fraction of certainty though, I’m sure you’d agree.
You need to seriously realize that how you write it is different than how we read it. Yes, you honestly made yourself seem like a pretentious, exuberantly ostentatious nihilist.
This is where you sound like a nihilist (up until the very last sentence).
Okay, here’s an equation for you.
Probability = Possibility x Locality
What that means is anything is possible but possibility is contingent upon locality producing probability. The possibility that a unicorn exists could very well be high, but it’s probability local to Earth is extremely low.
Isn’t a person who’s asleep and dreaming both a being-in-itself and for itself (if other people in the dream to whom he talks represent his own self-awareness towards himself)?
Can we also not say, for example, that an artist achieves a state of being “aware†being-in-itself?
An artist may become immersed in creative activity to such an extent that he “forgets himselfâ€. While being engaged in the process, he may become oblivious to his hunger and not eat, or to fatigue and not sleep, he may lose track of time and his surroundings. He may even forget who he is and where he is. Many artists even claim that, in such a state, they do not control the creative process but rather it controls them. Can we not say that, an artist, in a sense, loses his self and temporarily becomes a being-in-itself?
Should such artistic self-abandonment be compared to someone who chooses to achieve a loss of self by other means? Can we compare an artist with an alcoholic, for example, who chooses to forget his self through inebriation? Or a person under hypnosis who later does not remember anything? Can we not say that an artist, unlike others, stays aware of/(towards) his state of being-in-itself?
P.S.: Can we likewise, compare an abandonment of self through creative process with abandonment of self through religion, such as when people see their selves in relation to god’s will (beings-in-itself / objects-for-the-other / God’s servants)? Is the state achieved through self-abandonment via religion the same as the state of self-abandonment that is achieved via immersing one’s self in a creative process? (are both aware beings-in-itself?)
You declared that without any reserve.
If you were indeed trying to imply something, then I think you articulated very poorly.
And that was coming from someone who has been “accusing” others for poor articulation.
And are you calling me “arrogant”?
Basically, you lied repeatedly in this forum about my words.
And in the first reply to me, you said this : Wow, I totally agree. That was a great way of putting it, Nah.
Then, you are accusing me of poor articulation, arrogance, etc.
What kind of “writer” are you, huh?
Yeah, but then you went on this weird tirade about “absolutes” and “nothingness” which confused the fuck out of me. I did admit that it could’ve also been attributed to my misinterpretation of you. Probably a mixture of both. Either way, it doesn’t really matter now, so…
Yeah, all right. You were so confused and you took the words in your hallucination as something I said … really ?
And what about the absolute and nothingness? Basically, it’s pretty easy.
You just went into total denying mode, somehow, and started reacting strangely.
Possibly, subconscious mind could understood some implications of what I said and stated to have a bit of fear.
And then, the surface mind of yours might have pulled out these reactions by (old) habit.
It’s not rare to see some reactions, but someone totally hallucinating about what I said, repeatedly, was the first time.
Well, at least, there was a small bit of not so long lasting entertainment value/meaning for the pleasure seeking part of my mind.
