There is a rather large whole in your logic there. How do you know that you are experiencing everything that really exists? There could be a great, great many things that exist yet you/“we” don’t have the capacity to experience them.
Even granting the use of machines, how do you know that the machines are experiencing all of the kinds of things that exist? Science can only tell you what the machines tell them.
And further, how do you know that you are not experiencing something that really does not exist?
And your argument is basically that thinking has never served you, only observations (and believing what “they” tell you). Okay, if thinking doesn’t serve you and you have to just believe what you are told, then RM is not for you. But everyone isn’t that way. Not everyone is religious.
And since thinking doesn’t serve you, what good are your arguments concerning … well, anything?
Re: James
I wish to raise two points.
One thing I am driving at is that there are different kinds of difference - absence of homogeneity is not a sufficient definition of the type of difference/ differing we are dealing with; how can things be both different from each other and yet work on the same terms? How can two billiard balls both transmit their forces onto each other and yet retain structural integrity? Because they do two things at once, in the final analysis; ‘self-value and value in terms of self-valuing’. They hold themselves together by absorbing the others self-valuing to the nature and degree that they share terms in that moment.
Secondly; You once said that every point of affectance affects every other point, of course to lesser degrees the farther down any dimensions the relative distance may be. This is consistent with a Newtonean view as well as with a certain Nietzschean view to which Magnus Anderson is a proponent; the idea that true isolation can not exist. But I am not certain that you still uphold this view. It is correct to say that everything meaningful is affectance, but it does not follow that affectance can be quantified homogenously, as you would when you work with those infinitesimals in Jack, the project that you brought up as a demonstration of RM’s success in reproducing reality.
Exactly a qualification of differing values when reified or not integrated within self and other valuing is not absolute. there are degrees of assimilation, and when the probability of functional derivative (of self value) becomes manifest in terms of an understanding of perception of them, then they are understood in terms of self rather then assimilated value. It only means that a closer integration has not occurred within the context. it’s affectance has not been effective.
The ontological element we have is “affect” and locations. Each location has an affect of a “different” value (PtA - potential to affect). Or you can say that there is a different affect of a different amount in every location. All you have to work with is the degree of affect and locations. At that base level, nothing else exists at all to “work with”. As it turns out, that was all that was needed.
They are only different by their location and degree/amount of PtA. They work “on the same terms” because they are the exact same kind of thing.
That is a different issue. But you have objects both self-valuing and also sharing/transferring their self-value - “two things”. I have affects both giving and receiving PtA = “two things”.
I’m not sure what you mean by “quantified homogenously”. I agree that true total isolation to an infinite degree is not possible, although isolation to any particular, finite, practical degree can be done. And Jack had nothing homogeneous about any of it. The 200,000 afflates were all randomly valued and positioned. No two of them were alike.
You are really confused about all of this eh, that would explain why you got stuff backwards with you methodology and the weird questions you keep asking.
There is no “really existing” or “really not existing”… to know if something exist you go verify if that something meets the criteria of the definition. In this case, if it can’t be observed in no way, it doesn’t exist, because that’s what the definition of ‘to exist’ is. That is all there is to it. There is no hole in my logic, because i’m not making any claims about ontology, metaphysics, really real reality or other things in themselves… i’m just splitting experience up into concepts that can be of use in some way. Do you understand this?
Sigh… no that is not my argument. My argument was that without experience no information is added. Thinking is plenty usefull for structuring, conceptualising, etc… of information, but it needs something to work on.
And yet ontology is prior in more sense than simply being a historical precedent. Much theory has evolved out of basic philosophical tenets with proximate closeness to logical certainty. That is the hypothetical of paradigms assumtions, and it validation has been more affirming logical hypothesis then not.
an interesting example is of the debunking of the existence of ether, yet new realizations have shed new light on this, and other early, intuitive ideas.
Correct, but this does not take away that in order for there to be affectance, there must be both affected and affecter; i.e. 2 self-valuings.
Affectance is always sufficient to itself. Just not necessarily to the terms of all self-valuings.
I am talking in purely psychological terms of affect and affect, The physics and the metaphysics may singularly argued in terms of degrees of probability of sufficient self VO. When realized, it is an assumed certainty, albeit not truly definitive within its own self understanding. When merely at the level of a singular assumtion, it is a believe it when I see it attitude. This weights in Kant’s argument, and the stage of trying to affirm both, albeit synthetically, shows the attempt,of the logical assumtion’s need to -not to reject the primal law of identity, in favor of the new logic of exclusion,more difference.
Oh you are the one who has it backwards and you just proved it.
You have to see that “it” fits the definition. What is that definition?
You want to say that it fits the definition if you can see it.
But when did you see that definition? When did you see that the definition fits the criteria of existing? How do you know that seeing it fits the definition of existing?
You might want to consider that the quintessential property that must be present in order for an object to be observed is that the object must affect something. If it affects nothing, I say it doesn’t exist and you cannot see it. In some cases, I already know that you could never see certain things, without me having to look = knowledge without observation.
And you might also want to consider that they defined a Higg’s boson before they went looking for it. They didn’t see one laying around then say, “Oh, look. There’s a Higg’s boson. Let’s define what it is”.
That is very true. And my “Affectance” is very similar, but not quite identical, to their “Aether”. And my Affectance is unquestionably existent.
We make up definitions James, they are not written in the stars or the fabric of reality. So asking things like “how do you know that the definition fits the criteria of existing” is completely absurd, as if existing means anything on itself outside of it’s definition.
If you want to refine the definition because it doesn’t account for all what you want to fall under it, that’s fine… but don’t go on pretending you derived the defintion purely rationaly out of thin air.
Exactly my point. We invent the ontology, mostly merely from defined concepts that might or might not fit reality. Later, we make deductions based upon our chosen definitions and test our hypotheses against what “we should see” if our hypothesis (which came first) is matching reality. If it doesn’t match well enough, we explore other possible thoughts concerning conceptual entities. The electric field or gravitational forces, for example, were never seen. They were concepts that seemed to work out well when tested through hypothetical issues.
We first define what concepts are meaningful to us. THEN we observe to see if anything fits.
Animals do that by hard-wiring. Their brains, like yours, are pre-wired to identify specific types of patterns and movements. That pre-wiring is the physiological form of “pre-defining”. In thinking humans, cognition allows for even greater defining of concepts that the pre-wiring didn’t already cover, such as the statistical entities in quantum physics that aren’t physically real, merely mathematical entities, usually averages, virtual particles, or peak values and are never seen, yet still taught as real entities of “science”.
There is no pretending at all. I DID rationally derive the definition that I use “out of thin air”.
My thought was that I don’t care about anything that has no affect upon anything, so why should I say that it exists. That allowed me to restrict anything worth calling “existent” to whatever might have affect. Many people argue with me about that. It is strictly a rational choice because including things that I might already know don’t have any affect at all is irrational to my goal of understanding the construct of reality.
It is epistemology, the construct of knowledge. Combined with logic, knowledge can be derived.
For example, I know beyond any doubt that there can never be any portion of space that has no affectance (ultra-miniscule EMR pulses) within it. An absolute nothingness can never exist, never has, never will. I certainly didn’t observe that. But it is a logical impossibility, much like a square-circle oxymoron, a definitional contradiction. Thus I know merely through careful thinking that nothingness cannot ever be the state of the universe nor of any portion within.
I gained that knowledge and even the certainty of it purely through definitions and logic … no science involved at all and anyone could have done the same 10,000 years ago (and perhaps did).
We make up definitions, yes, but not out of thin air… Need everything be spelled out?
We experience things and have a memory of those. It’s not like we can abstract away everything we experienced and make up definitions in a vacuum. We define what concepts are meaningful to us in relation to that background of experience. There is no strict hiërarchical priority, but rather a back and forth…
And are you seriously making claims about how my brain works, and how you are in a special seperate category of thinking humans? In the category of delusional douches, that’s were you belong.
Not really. You put yourself there when you proclaimed that thinking never adds to your knowledge.
Really.
You can’t experience anything at all until you have pattern recognition. And pattern recognition requires pre-conceived abstract notions, “definitions” of shapes. A new born could be totally isolated from the world and yet those definitions are already within his brain. If they were not, he would never be able to see or feel anything at all.
The brain must have pre-wired recognition patterns, definitions, before it can observe anything. Else how would it sort anything? The distinctions between things of interest are already defined within him (and every animal).
When it comes to far more complex things that thinking people get involved with, they intentionally come up with other definitions unknown to the unconscious. From those new defined concepts, new understanding arises, new knowledge.
You are the one saying that you can’t do that, when so many throughout history have been doing it.
Please show research or show me in some other way that definitions are allready predefined in humans. That would contradict the findings with feral children whose language seem underdeveloped.
And why wouldn’t we be able to feel or see anything without definitions? That seems totally off to me, children ask question about things they have no conception of all the time… “What is this? What is that?” How could they ask questions about something they can’t observe?
Obviously children are not tabulae rasa. The human brain is, to a degree, prefigured to accept and understand the world around it in some way. If it were not the case then sensory input would just be some much white noise.
Humans. for example have the capacity to learn language, and as there are clear grammatical universals at lay across the human species it is thought that we all share the capacity to learn language in some way.
So innate formative structures provide capacity and potential. What is utterly ridiculous is any notion in which children come pre-quipped with specific words and definitions. For meanings, concepts and factuality we have to engage with the natural, social and family environment. The structures of the brain continue to form throughout life, as each new understanding is integrated into the last.
Any child from any parents is capable of learning the language of any and all other parents world-wide. Ideas of customs, politics, nationality, language, race, creed, religion as so forth is the poison we pour into children’s heads; they do not come prefigured with that stuff.
I am talking about the mere ability to distinguish sounds, colors, edges, surfaces, flavors, and so on. Those are physiologically pre-wired distinctions, “physiological definitions” for the brain to use in order to observe or learn anything else.
That is exactly right.
The brain cannot notice something interesting or make any observation unless it is already wired to make distinctions between the qualia of noise that it receives from the world. It would not be able to function at all.
That is why you keep getting it backwards. You seem to not be able to recognize that the mind/brain must be already capable of discerning its right from its left, bright vs dark, pain vs pleasure, hot vs cold, up vs down, and so on. The brain must already know those distinctions before it can figure out that it observed any of them or anything involving them.
It is much like the BIOS in you computer, the firmware. The software cannot be uploaded from the disk until the BIOS knows what a disk is and how to upload.
That is what that firmware is - definitions preceding a list of what to do with them; “This is what loading is. This is what a disk is. This is what software is. This is what to do … Load the software from the disk.”
Being able to distinguish things is mandatory for any kind of intelligence before it can begin to learn or observe. Definitions are spelled out distinctions between each thing vs everything else.
“Did you find it?”
“What’s ‘it’?”
“It. Did you find it?”
“What is ‘it’?”
“Well how can I tell what it is until you find it?”
Or from my real experience in college; “The mind doesn’t exist!”
“What did you mean by ‘the mind’?”
“Well, how can I tell you what it is if it doesn’t exist, Fool!!”
“… how in the hell can you tell me that it doesn’t exist if you don’t know what the fuck it is, Ass.”
I never argued about that, offcourse we have that capacity and potential, like Lev said.
But for the order of your methodology to make sense, exact definitions, of for instance ‘to exist’, would need to be hardwired. And that is not the case… so all of this doesn’t changing anything about the argument in question.
