Do we simply adopt the system that validates our experience the most?
And, as a result, our minds and our lives develop a kind of feedback system, where based off past experiences we predict future events, which in turn come to be. But they mostly come to be because we’ve narrowed our mind to such a point that the things we predict become the only things which we can focus on and experience. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Some thoughts come to mind, but not a real answer.
There is this recurrent suggestion of philosophy as some convoluted rhetorical device accommodating own feelings and beliefs and desires - sooner or later a word like “narrative” comes up in these circumstances, but possibly will-to-power too.
Well, not that I like it, but I could not say that it’s false. In a way this statement is trivial for those not acknowledging universal objective truths at hand.
My impression is that this kind of position is normally used as the premise for relativistic and fundamentally nihilistic arguments. Because what does that mean after all? That philosophy is a form of sophisticated - or convoluted - autobiography, which, regardless its face-value, has to be considered as a proof of the “inescapable” nihilism, because the very fact that philosophy is functional to a specific person means that it’s nothing but a puerile attempt to establish universal values where there can be none.
Of course, here a new declension of the liar paradox is in order. If every philosophical statement ultimately relies on a person and on nothing but this very specific person, its unique bearer, then this position containing a universal claim would have no fate different from the rest of philosophy, it’s relative to that person and has no universal validity.
OK, but then all the better: given the premise this would be no objection, just one more case supporting it.
Is it possible to see things differently?
Well, there are different philosophical takes, and not necessarily by those acknowledging the existence of universal objective truths. But, on the other side, it is clear that similar considerations have pushed many philosophers in a sort of micro-management thinking. Looking at the history of philosophy in the XX century, it seems that indeed, in order to push this “ipsissimosity” away, many have cornered their philosophy to where they thought some form of inter-subjectivity was available. Personality in philosophy became persona non grata, to be quickly merged into and hidden by more universal or useful concerns, ranging from political theory to theory of knowledge, or methods in science. There are also forms of nihilism more refined than existentialism, as historicism or structuralism. The implicit bottom-line seems to be something like “it’s clear that whenever philosophy encompasses life, that could only be my own petty life that can’t possibly encompass universal truths”. (And I do not mean they were wrong).
Can we interpret the interpretation? Why not, that’s what philosophers do.
Philosophy as wholly determined by own motives, so that not only one’s personal past but also the foreseeable future is enshrined in a universal truth? Is that a form of absolution?
“Absolution” here is not a neutral word. Is it possible to consider this a form of Christian atavism?
If every life used to be a march to God, if every life was the unique instance of a superior judgement, it was unique yet valued on the basis of a universal and necessary set of criteria.The idea that one’s life was worth a philosophy, that each one of us could have a central role in the universe, made sense as long as this life made sense to God, but, as God is dead, it just becomes unique and unspeakable, there lacks now the common reference which made it part of a universal whole. So life would be only a directionless ricocheting is some time and some place.
Maybe this idea, in some form or another, made its way to the wearied souls of many workers in the trade of philosophy, so that they could perceive a value in their unfulfilling lives as long as their efforts were devoted to something as away as possible from their actual lives.
Yet, is the job done? I mean if this is so, why sticking to the idea that my life and experiences are so unique? Is there any evidence of that? Is there any evidence justifying this persisting “atomism of souls”? And if there is none, then… should not we frame the question differently?
Largely true and for pretty good reason. But there are ways to avoid the implied self deceit involved.
Great observation.
Yes, life must limit the amount of “stuff” it needs to process in order to stay efficient. There is a balance between environmental sensitivity and environmental non-sensitivity, meaning that “human” like any life-form is a complex system of input/filter, focus/dissect, output/expect, and remember/imagine. There is a finite amount of energy throughout the system and all its parts, therefore too much on one side will cause the other side to be lower. You get a life-form that is very sensitive and open to its environment with less pre-emptive filters and biases, but then this life-form cannot focus or dissect very well, and its outputs and expectations will be less well-formed, and/or it will experience energy drain from other areas to compensate; and the opposite is true also, for life-forms with very low sensitivity and openness to its environment.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) life-forms exist only because they have “survived” natural selection in the past, which means that all that stuff above about balancing the needs with finite energy is conditioned to survivability (meaning we are literally the product of such a situation, but not meaning that we must continue to be only such a product, if possible to “be something else/more”). And survivability is conditioned to the situation of the environment with respect to the needs and capacities of the organism. Therefore all life-forms are a kind of “self-fulfilling prophecy” as you say, because this is the definition of what it means to be a life-form. We are that “feedback system” (well technically consciousness is the feedback system, and “we” are one aspect-process of that consciousness).
But as (relatively) self-aware life-forms we can understand all this, and add means into ourselves and/or our environments to counteract the detrimental effects of being a feedback loop, and augment the beneficial effects. We can learn to spot trends and correlations that are negative or harmful, reduce or remove these, and likewise spot trends that are positive or helpful and increase or add these. That’s the whole point, really, of “self”-consciousness.
To OP:
Yes. I said as much in Joy, Pain and Influence
MM,
I agree with you on all accounts bar the end.
The Universe doesn’t intend for anything or anyone to survive, or to die. The Universe lacks intent. There was no point for origination of self consciousness. It just so happens that beings with this attribute were influenced strongly into survival, hence why we’re here.
It is no failure, relative to the Universe, if something lives or dies. It’s completely neutral. If something is influenced to survive, it perpetuates itself. If something isn’t influenced to survive, it doesn’t; hence why we’re surrounded by shit that perpetuates itself. Shit had ample time to assert itself on the environment.
The only thing that applies points and values is life, and life didn’t create self consciousness with intent, therefore, no point.
Everything is “conscious” even so-called non-living matter. Consciousness is not a property or a quality, but a quantity. It is a quantity of responsiveness, or of “sensation” (changeable-ness).
Does everything have intent and will?
You would need to define intent and will first. This is not as easy as it seems, because these are misleading terms that we take for granted.
Once you try to define these, you can see how mystifying they tend to be. They are useful, but not all that accurate to what is really going on.
A rock has no “intention” or “will” like a human has, but then again a human doesn’t really have these things either, based on how most people think of it (e.g. “free will”, naive subjectivity). However in another sense, if we define intention and will as parallels to consciousness, then rocks do have intention and will, however at a close to minimum level. This means that a rock can only intend or will “one thing”, and that one thing is basically “as close to nothing as you can get, without actually being nothing”.
Point - An objective or purpose to be reached or achieved, or one that is worth reaching or achieving
Intend - To design for a specific purpose.
Will - A desire, purpose, or determination - The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action
The Universe is a circle we draw around all affect, and we give the contents of the circle a name.
All relevant effects contributed to the outcome of self consciousness, but there was no communication and plan among all affects to push toward this outcome. There was no intent or will. It was not the objective of all influences, therefore, survival wasn’t the point of self consciousness, just a consequence.
If you have an alternate definition of the word point, feel free to share, but to my mind, it implies intentionally designing something to achieve a goal, the goal being the point.
Given this, I would disagree strongly that a rock has intent. Or the Universe.
To intend something is to interpret in such a way to cause a certain outcome to occur. This interpreting takes place as a consequence of what the organism/thing is that is doing the interpreting. I believe you may be reifying intention and “purpose” too much, making these some kind of extra- or non-physical, non-real sort of thing.
Basically it is simple: intention is a certain kind of flow-pattern of energy (physical causality) that produces certain kinds of effects; one of these effects is that the outputs of the act of “intention” will bear some correspondence to the inputs of the act, to the system itself (the “flow-pattern of causality”).
In humans, our “system of intention” is very large, complex and cavernous, meaning it has many parts with which to divide, segment, recombine, store and retrieve inputs and outcomes (“energy”, physical causalities - in terms of physics, chemistry, etc.). In the rock, its “system of intention” is very small, simple and one- or zero-dimensional, meaning it has very few parts with which to to divide, segment, recombine, store and retrieve inputs and outcomes (“energy”, physical causalities - in terms of physics, chemistry, etc.).
The difference is quantitative and based on the structure, how the structure handles inputs and produces outputs-- what is going on inside the “black box”.
Take a rock for example: you strike it with a hammer, what happens inside the rock? The energy is transferred into the material structure of the rock, and some of it also passes through and out of the rock. Some of that energy disperses in waves throughout the rock’s structure and agitates the material structure, causing physical changes in the atoms and putting added pressure on molecular bonds. If these changes are strong enough they will overpower the strength of the molecular bonds, causing the rock to break apart. This is the rock’s very limited ability to “intend” something: it “intends” to stay together (to resist outside forces), and it accomplishes this by interpreting force with respect to what it is, namely, with respect to its material structure, which happens to be very simple compared to a human.
Now take a human: you can make up any stimuli you like, but basically it acts upon the senses somehow and triggers a VERY complex and derivative process of chemical reactions, leading into the brain where further material reactions produce changes in neurons etc. that alter our ideas, feelings, assessments and perceptions, and cause changes in the emergent behavior known as “consciousness”, or “life”. We are that emergence, at the far end of a very huge chain of causes, but in effect we are no different from the rock; we both “intend” to be “what we are”, and we only intend that because that is what it means to “be” something-- to self-value, which means to be a material structure which interprets everything with respect to what it is.
Every act of (supposedly different from a rock’s) human intention is just one vast, complex process within processes of the exact same kind of thing as is happening inside the rock, too. The whole “designed for a specific purpose” is a consequence of such systems, and the more QUANTITY of “consciousness” or “intention” systems have, the more their outputs/effects are going to look like a correlate of their “what they are”.
I understand what you’re saying, but that definition of intent complete defeats the purpose of the word in the first place. By your definition, everything that’s ever happened in existence is intended. Nothing in existence is unintentional.
Why have a word that means nothing?
Actually it means that everything that has ever happened in the universe was NOT intended, too. It depends on your perspective. And a lot of words exist which have no formal meaning but are only functional in nature, although intention does have some formal (conceptual) meaning.
The word exists because human experience includes a responsiveness to this capacity for “intention” itself. We experience what it is like to experience, whereas most other things just experience without also experiencing how or that they are experiencing. So-called intention touches upon the reciprocal and reflexive nature of human-like consciousness, with its many loops and cross-patterns and multi-dimensionality. We sense also that we are sensing, we respond also to our responses and even more so (thanks to language) to the FACT that we are responding. All this makes responsiveness a whole lot more complex and “real”, meaning it has more literal reality to it.
We are quite different and “more” than a rock, obviously. But in another way we are no different than a rock. Both are the case. It is a mistake to overlook either perspective.
Self-consciousness is a kind of super-complex self-responsiveness and self-imaging. The content of our conscious experience is literally “ourselves responding to ourselves, responding to ourselves…” and all this continuous ACTIVITY (consciousness is a behavior, a continuous activity, and not a “state” or static “thing”) generates things like perceptions, feelings, ideas, reactions, desires, memories, etc. But you must also see this entire conscious system is just as “natural” and “non-intentional” as is the rock, or a plant, or a hydrogen atom.
I believe you’re conflating influence and intent, which have different implications.
Influence - A power affecting a person, thing, or course of events, especially one that operates without any direct or apparent effort
Intend - To design for a specific purpose.
I would say by these definitions self consciousness’ influence is as you described earlier, but that there was no intent to enable self consciousness as a means to enable further efficiency in adaption to one’s environment.
If you can agree with this statement, based on the definitions above, then all is well. I just don’t feel it’s necessary to use intent (implied by point) in this context, because it confuses the issue. Again, I’d much rather use the influence where you’re currently using intent.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
To design means that the outcome existed more or less explicitly as a virtual, “expected” aspect of the system from which it came. When a human designs something this is an act of causalities giving form to some inner representation and logic of relations existing within the human “mind”. The difference between influence and intention is a matter of to what extent the idea/representation of a thing exists before and participated in the creation process that gives rise to the thing. The difference is not qualitative, moral or fundamental but rather is quantitative, an aspect of what we call “memory” and “imagination”. (And all differences of kind, “quality” always emerge from prior differences of degree, “quantity”).
Further, all materials have some degree of each, rather in a minimal collapsed form or a more derivative form. This is because if a thing did not possess “memory” (the capacity to hold adequately to its form over an interval of time) or “imagination” (the capacity to receive stimulus energy and convert/change it and the outcome-effect, as interpretation, based only on the structure-need of the thing itself) then a thing could literally not exist.
Requirements for existence include 1) possessing a “form” (loose, at least minimal organization of changes) and 2) holding that form together (interpreting incoming changes in light of one’s form).
In VO this is called “self-valuing”.
All this however within the limits of one quality - PtA. Or: the hermetic reciprocity of the valuing and the valued.
I don’t believe in free will, but I do believe in the will. I’m a determinist who says will is required for intent. Whilst our will is completely determined by factors beyond and within us, our will still consciously designs and puts in practice methods to alter the environment to accord with one’s will. All the factors that influenced one to be in a state of willing, aren’t themselves all consciously designing and intending to assert a will on the environment or to mold it to their values or desires. Rocks don’t have will, intent or desire.
To say it’s intended because it looks so, doesn’t follow. It’s influenced so, but not intended so.
Philosophy the ability to think.
What did Philosophy think about…how we were created. Philosophers are known astronomers.
Philosophers looked at the state of the created act = O a circle and they factored the difference of timed intervals between light and darkness (not space)
Current day Philosophers are a different astronomer they look at space, not the reality of their own life, therefore they altered the purpose of Philosophical discussion.
Our life belongs to Earth, the interactions of the atmosphere, the moon and the Sun.
Why would any Philosopher today propose that the ancients knew about space?
The ancient Philosopher knew that the atmosphere went dark at night, and this is not space it is darkness, enabling you to review space and star bodies.
Philosophers therefore were only discussing the re-creation of Earth after her Fall “In the Beginning” as their argument.
The argument involved the Immaculate conceiving function, how mass in the atmosphere produced sound that caused the conceiving = oxygen the Spirit of Life, the Spirit Breath.
The argument as a theory involved 0, mathematicians against philosophers.
Philosophers proved to the mathematician that the Christ Spirit was a 1 to 1 value as 1000 against 1000 (no zeros involved).
The mathematician believed in the 0 zero, the spirit
Philosophers proved to the mathematician via predictions that they were removing the atmospheric MASS produced by the body in origin (beginnings), that there was no holy spirit creating, it was created (once only as mass) via the Sacrifice of the previous Earth body.
Philosophers demonstrated that time was 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-1-11-12 with no 0 zero, and that applying 10 X mass multiplication they stole from the body mass and caused natural disasters (earthquakes Carpenter tectonics).
The Holy Christ Act was an act of protecting the atmosphere against Satan (radiation) as a 1 to 1 body as a total cancellation function. This allowed the MASS to immaculately conceive to continue to produce OXYGEN, the function of generation via its angelic sound body through a held mass condition. If the Mass is lost, then oxygen will no longer be created. The Philosophers therefore had to prove this fact to the mathematicians.
Mathematicians placed the Christ as 0 2AD to 33AD (31 years)
Philosophers placed the Christ as 1 to 31AD (31 years)
Proving this was to predict the 17AD LYDIA prediction of the preceding Christ Joshua earthquake
Proving this was to predict the Christ Death at 31AD to forecast the next 31 year earthquake in Pompeii 62AD (31+31).
That the Timed Interval for (1) is January or janus face (2 faces or 2 bodies of Christ) as Christ is the 1st and the Alpha position being 31 DAYS…the term for DAYS = DIES.
The Janus faced theory implied that the Holy Man (Christ) as the 1st alpha in the preceding sacrifice of Adam/Eve fallout was placed into the Earth via the 1-1 situation of keeping radiation trapped inside the tomb (dead cell of Earth).
This enabled the Holy Birth of immaculate conception to continue to mass produce oxygen via keeping the DEAD RADIATION SIGNAL trapped inside the Earth.
Mathematicians involved in the building structures for Ancient Temples used for PHI calculations and sound LEVI tation practices were demonstrated via the calculations by the Philosophers that they were unlocking the dead cell of the Christ (uranium sealed oxygen body/signal) and releasing it after it had been placed in its HOLY TOMB for a purpose of a holy sacrifice, ensuring life continuation on Earth.
They were releasing the JAILED CHRIST as JESUS, the “other” Jesus who was a criminal. Hence the criminal Act depicted that they were releasing a DEAD SPIRIT (radiated evil body) purposely entombed that was attacking the LIFE SPIRIT (atmosphere/holy spirit breath).
This was the THEORY of ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.
Joe, I don’t really “disagree” with you, so much as I am operating on a different level of ideas and logic. For me, “will” (and to an extent too, “intention”) are only very vague approximation terms, they are basically non-defined terms and are used (by people who use them, such as yourself) to engage in a semblance of thinking which is not actually thinking as it lacks both accurate perceptions and accurate concepts and conceptual relations.
You’re on the right track, more so than most people, but you need to increase the precision and accurateness of your terms. Without doing so you merely create a situation in which your thinking can (and therefore will) manifest only a rudimentary and inadequate (to the reality of what is going on) logic.
You may not disagree with me, but I do you.
I gave definitions for the terms, which your terms implicated. Then I responded to the implications of your terms.
I’m fine with agreeing to disagree over whether the terms have been defined, -directs you to previous posts-, but I feel compulsed to make my disagreement known.