I’m on a mobile, and unable to respond as extensively and fluently as I’d like. This may be a welcome thing for others. 
Sanjay, you make excellent points, as usual.
Jakob/Sil - I’m crossing a rope bridge with friends. Some of us believe it will hold, some believe it’s a foolhardy risk. Whatever determines whether we make it or not (what most term the “reality” of the situation) is, it seems to me, independent of our beliefs, desires, politics etc… in what way is it grounded in the subjective?
That seems an excellent point. I’m a little curious what the solipsist has to say.
I’m not sure that it has much to do with VO. VO isn’t exactly solipsist despite the use of the word “value”. I am a little concerned that it is proposed that value comes “before” anything else. I’m not entirely sure what that even means. But I agree that no thing can exist for any length of time without a type of self-protection mechanism, a “self-valuing mechanism”. The self-valuing mechanism in RM:AO constructs is entirely due to the lack of alternatives so self-protection is inherent, without the need for support by any other mechanism because it simply can’t do otherwise.
“Experientialism” necessitates no particular explanation of “why” something happens. It is allowing of all such mental creations/associations/realities, with full respect for all the many varied value sets from which each of these particular types of explanations originate.
The ridiculousness of some explanations versus others, in the eyes of whoever is making such a judgment, is merely a reflection of their values rather than any “necessary” correctness on the side of one valuer rather than another. For example, some value sets compromise consistency in fundamental premises, in favour of predictive power (like science). Other sets may settle for limited predictive power, in favour of a sense of much greater emotional fulfillment (like religion). Neither value set is more universally correct.
“Experientialism” provides an open-minded starting point, without prejudice, in order to help eliminate the intellectual dishonesty and irrational defensiveness that comes from individuals competing for the same title of “ultimate solver of objective truth”. Instead, developing individual solutions, and finding common ground only if there is any - rather than forcing it in order to fit everyone into the same box (like objective truths attempt to do) - allows the necessary personal freedom, where one only needs to prove oneself to oneself, for everyone to have their own space to develop subjective truth without the pressure that too often ends in compromised honour and integrity. A philosophy for the modern world.
Whichever explanation best reflects one’s own personal values, the rope is either experienced as breaking, along with you and your friends falling, or it is not.
The explanation itself will necessarily be founded in and of experience also.
This subjective truth is going to be common amongst all those who experience, and never do not, which I predict to be the claim of everyone who analyses in full honesty. Any supposed “lack” of experience by one person is only ever “proven” by another/others experiencing over the course of a supposedly common timeframe, during which the person in question “did not experience”. And still then, nothing is ever fully proven to the person who supposedly did not experience - all they can do is imagine experiences to fill this “gap”. It is curious how such an experience happens after the events are said to have occurred, yet we have no problem inserting it into a previous “time frame” - makes you wonder how much we do that in other situations, perhaps all situations. A common time frame was only ever a social tool anyway, if you value that kind of thing…
I find that to be quite the opposite.
Logic is that “common ground” and also what leads to objectivism. But objectivism does NOT demand the lack of subjectivism. It is NOT a dichotomy. Fear seems to be what drives the solipsist, the fear that there is a good solid reason why they are not allowed to do certain things.
OH - James is right here concerning VO. In your example, falling from the bridge means, very simplistically, to succumb to the valuing of the Earth. And VO does not propose that value precedes reality. Just that “value” is an accurate term to designate the “stuff of interactions” that connect reference-frames. It’s a more conditional, less substantive/positivistic way of designating natural law.
James - I do not grasp the whole propagation issue. I frankly have no idea yet why the speed of light is the limit that it is, or why infinite homogeneity is logically impossible.
I want to hear more.
To the question of why light, if there were no resistance at all, could not propagate at infinite speed, I could only answer that light carries within itself a resistance, and that this is apparently the minimal resistance that would allow for the structural consistency of that affectance - i.e. it not scattering and falling back into infinitesimal, unmeasurable quantities. But that is just my intuitive interpretation.
A better question would be “why are metres and seconds defined in the way that they are?”
The speed of light only appears strange because the above S.I. units are defined in the way that they are.
I would suggest different units for measures such as distance and time, in order to be more compatible with things that actually have physical limits, like the speed of light, the smallest distance possible, the lowest temperature, etc.
Interesting that you have decided that reality either precedes, is equivalent, or is unrelated to value (the logical consequence of not proposing that value precedes reality - unless you have no stance to propose).
You do not agree with my reasoning why value precedes reality?
I have to say, if VO is the attribution of the term “value” to inanimate objects then I no longer respect it. Value is a human term for humans (with only one’s own values directly provable to oneself at that), which appears to be applicable to other living things too. But not to inactive/unreactive objects. To even attribute to them passive properties is entirely dependent on the human sense that can be made of them, within the bounds of subjective human faculties and values. There is nothing about a human subject that is objective.
Well, let’s clear that one up because it relates directly to the existence of initial resistance.
RM:AO specializes in avoiding proclamations such as “that is just the way it is” or “that’s just the way God made it” or even “it must be that way else there would be no universe”. Although any of those statements might be true, the statement avoids answering that question of “why?”. RM is all about Why, the logic behind the fact.
RM:AO can’t accept the existence of an entity as a priori. There has to be a logical reason for its existence. But as you get more and more detailed in the logic of why things exist and of what things are made, you finally discover that it is all “made of” nothing but logic. Everything can be subdivided down into something that it wasn’t. That is a relatively new thought to Man because not long ago, everyone still believed that if you were to split a piece of wood down far enough, you would end up with merely an “atom of wood”. And that thought applied to everything. Obviously due to the advent of microscopes and technology, it was discovered that such wasn’t the case. Even the atoms could be broken down into small pieces that were not merely smaller atoms, but entirely different.
RM:AO takes literally everything down to the greatest extreme possible. And the result is that the only thing you have left is logic itself and the only reason for existence is that nothing can be what it is and also remain as it is. And that is the beginning and the fundamental cause of the entire universe and everything in it.
The temptation is to presume the existence of some elemental entity and then proceed with the logic. And one can do that as long as that chosen entity just happens to have a logical reason for its existence. Of course at some point, one must go reveal that logic. Without revealing the logic, it is merely superstition, the super-imposing of an inexplicable magical entity so as to stitch together a logical deduction. But superstitions are not allowed in RM:AO.
But in order to explain just about anything, one must start somewhat in the middle (as I think zinnat mentioned) and work your way back. And that is what I have been doing even when I begin with PtA and Affectance. Those have logic behind them as well, but it is a very seriously deep, hard to grasp yet cohesive logic. Before that explanation is revealed, even PtA and Affectance would constitute mere superstition (as has been accused), except for one thing.
In the case of PtA and Affectance, there is no alternative to their existence merely due to the very definition of “existence”. So even without the explanation as to why they exist, we can already know that we know that they exist. Without affect, even the solipsist cannot have any experience with which he builds his picture of “reality”. Experience, much like existence, IS Affectance. Without affects, one could never think at all in order to dream up their picture of reality, their ontology.
So until we get past this speed of affect/light issue, let me begin with the existence of affect, which already necessitates many points of affect because to affect means to change something else. And that something else, in the most reduced form, can only be another affect, as nothing but affects exist at this point.
So in the scenario, we have multiple points of affect. And we know they must be distinct points simply because if there was no distinction at all, they wouldn’t be separate points. But what is distinct about them? The only thing that exists at this stage is affect thus the only thing that can be distinct about them is their degree of affect. And to affect means to change thus the only affecting that can be happening at all is a changing of their degree of affect. And the degree of affect is called “potential to affect”, PtA. PtA is given arbitrary values merely so that we can work through the logic and see where it leads.
So with points A, B, and C, each having its own degree of affect or PtA, we can examine the propagation of affect from one point to another.
If point A is going to affect point B, then point A is going to change the PtA of point B. It happens to be of necessity that there is a limit as to how much A can affect B, but that isn’t our concern just yet. What we need to know is to what value point A is going to change point B. So we can arbitrary choose an example of say, “point A has the potential to change point B to the level of 10 from wherever point B had been, say 1”.
So far merely by our definitions, we know that A is going to change B from 1 to 10. But the question immediately arises as to how fast is that going to occur.
As is turns out, we could pick any arbitrary number for the speed of affect and we would end up with the same conclusions regarding the propagation speed from A to B to C. What we have to resolve is whether that speed of affect could be truly instantaneous. And that answer is “no”. The reason that it can’t be instantaneous is that if it were, point B and point A would already be the same point without distinction. Changing means that there was one state and it progressed to another state. If any “change” is instantaneous, then it didn’t change to some value but was already at that value while defined to be at some other value. Point B would have to be at PtA value 1 at the same instant as at the value 10. Logic doesn’t allow that.
So we can deduce that point B must progress from 1 PtA to 10 PtA. There is no alternative.
And that leaves us with an interesting thought. Point B must progress from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on up to 10. No matter what intermediate value it obtained, the moment it was at that value had to be before it was at the next. Changing has to occur sequentially in values.
But now, already, to the question of resistance; what was it that prevented B from instantly becoming 10 from 1? Was something resisting that change? Why did it take any time at all? The answer is simply that it could not have been what it was and also be what it is going to become at the same instant, by definition (aka “Logic”).
Thus the passing of what we call “time” is a logical necessity even between two infinitesimal points of affect.
Of course so far, we haven’t any reason to conclude that such a change would take “X” amount of time, anything specific. All we can deduce is that time must pass during that change. So let’s speculate a bit concerning how fast it could have changed.
Not having any specific number but wanting to imagine the fastest conceivable, let’s call it “infinitely fast”, meaning faster than anything we could imagine. And then see where that leads.
So now we have point A changing the PtA of point B, “affecting”, infinitely fast.
In an unimaginably short time, point B becomes a replica of what point A was. Point A had the potential to change point B to a value of 10 and that is what defined the PtA value of A as “10”. So now point B is our PtA of 10. And point C is the very next point beside point B. If point C had been at 1 PtA, the same amount of time would have to be consumed for B to change C as it took for A to change B.
Thus no matter how fast a change can take place between points A and B, it must take twice as long for that change to transfer to C. Our unimaginably fast change is now half the propagation speed that it was for merely a single point change. And again, there has been no resistance involved.
And now, how many points are between any two given locations? An infinite number.
No matter how fast A can affect B, for any real distance to be traveled by the affecting of A the propagation speed is going to be infinitely slower. If A affected B infinitely fast and there are an infinite number of changes to be made along a line, we have infinity divided by infinity as our propagation speed.
Infinity dived by infinity doesn’t give us a precise number. All we have said is that even if an affect is unimaginably fast, for that affect to propagate it must do so unimaginably slower than however fast A affected B. And in mathematics, that resolves to be merely “some number”, but not infinite.
What number would that be? Well actually at this point, we can call it anything we like, say, “c0”. In the long run, we will deduce that the sizes and distance of the entire rest of the universe is directly determined by that number. In other words, what we call “1 meter” is only what it is because of that c0. All measurements are relative.
But the definition of a meter did not cause c0, rather c0 caused the meter. And also, people defined a meter as something relevant to them before they figured out that any c0 existed at all. So now c0 is expressed in physics in terms of meters per second. In a more logic based ontology, such as RM:AO, the meter would be defined in terms of that c0, which would be assigned as merely “1”. A meter, for example would be “1/ 299,792,458” (that’s assuming their measures are accurate).
Note that no “resistance” came into the picture at all, merely the logic of affect and existence.
So starting from the top… questions (and sorry for the long introduction)?
Well spotted.
I am aware that this is your position.
Logic was born from the most extensive abstract reduction of experience, until it barely resembled the concrete at all. It is an example of a human disability turned species-wide advantage.
To arrive at a “pure” understanding of forms and their relationships to one another is such a compromise of truth, in favour of social cohesion, that people could actually agree on things near enough exactly.
It was only by retreating from realities and engaging imaginations that people could find ground so common that it might even appear universal. This inversion became truth for many.
We have since become very adept at physically distorting our environments such that parts of it come to resemble abstract forms, allowing us to create tools and machines that actually mostly reflect our abstract imaginations of a world that made sense. The tending of our hyperbolic success towards the asymptote of perfect emulation of the abstract with the concrete, mirrors the futile mental battle to escape concrete reality, into an abstract heaven.
All this while it has been impossible to imagine an abstract form without a concrete representation in mind or in view. They are a confusion of particulars such that we might fool ourselves that we are imagining a universal. The more one sees experience as one indefinite whole, the more meaningless and illogical it seems, and the more irrational our actions. This simulates our humble beginnings, before we began seeing the world as it is not, so that it might make sense and appear logical.
Fear tends to be whatever drives those who you disagree with these days…
Whether or not there is a necessary and single reason why I can’t seem to do certain things, I still can’t seem to do them. The reality is the experience of not seeming to be able to do these things and I have no trouble accepting experience. Any explanation of “why” is irrelevant to what actually is - “why” is transcendental to actual consequences that might actually affect you.
I might turn this one around and say that fear seems to be what keeps people from accepting Solipsism. Living it, as I have, is the only way to properly understand it. Until people do, they will continue to misunderstand from a distance - that which they don’t even dare to get to know.
I think that is a common misunderstanding these days.
It is true that logic is an abstraction. But it is not an abstraction from experience as you have been told. What we call “Logic” today was born out of Aristotle’s dialectics which was all about communication and rhetoric, how to relay an idea (a concept) to others. Plato was more into the idea that forms are the only truth and all of that kind of thing, but Aristotle and dialectics wasn’t really all that much about physical reality as much as mental reality and communication.
Your version of “reality” is actually the same as it was for the Hebrews and the rest of the religions wherein they were of the mind that the mind forms reality, “mind over matter” and the eternal consciousness that formed the world (ie “God”). Objectivism came more from Europe and adopted Aristotle’s dialectics into “Logic” and mathematics and eventually into objective physics and Science.
Quantum physics is actually a return to the confusion between mental issues and objectively physical issues leading to their famous “observer causes the wave to collapse”. It appears to be an intentional effort to create dissonance in Science for the same reason “God destroyed Babylon” (they were getting too close and powerful). A war against the intellectuals broke out and you are living in the confused remnants of it.
I wouldn’t disagree with that (and have given that lecture myself at times), but that wasn’t what I was referring to. I was talking about what you are not allowed to do, not what you were not capable of doing.
As far as I can tell, I understand it. I just think that I have better understandings to rely on.
James.
I think that you missed this post of mine.
posting.php?mode=reply&f=1&t=183537#pr2418915
Or, you do keep it pending intenionally for a while? Though, i am OK with that.
With love,
sanjay
Oh sorry, Sanjay.
When I read that post, I had too much to say and seemingly all of it in disagreement. Some of it I couldn’t say that I disagree with because I couldn’t figure out what you were trying to say. When that happens, I try to give myself some time to see where to begin or if there is anything that I can agree with.
But now rereading it, I still can’t find anything with which to agree. It kind of hurts my brain to sort through an ontology that seems too disjointed or incoherent. The point to having an ontology is merely for your own benefit. Trying to confirm it as “truth” is another matter and often unimportant.
The whole “consciousness can only come from consciousness” just reminds me of the age old mindset that only recently got kicked to the curb. Until recently Man was happy believing that everything, such as wood, was made merely of smaller bits of wood. It wasn’t until molecules were discovered and then electrons and protons that such a thought got removed from being a “truth”. It seems that you are trying to hold onto it.
In reality literally everything is made of something that it isn’t. On the most fundamental level, we are left with only Logic itself as what all things are made from.
That thought is not actually new. At least the Chinese had figured that out very long ago and it has been said many times by many peoples. They didn’t say it in those words, but rather, “spirit is the only true reality. Physical things are just an illusion.”
Unfortunately they often conflate “spirit” with logic and thus one can’t be certain which they really meant. The Greeks and Persians were more into the logic and concepts game and less into the activity, behavior, or “spirit” game.
My point is that I could never accept the priori thought that consciousness only comes from consciousness and I have many reasons why. Conscious thought is made from non-conscious thought. Everything is made of what it isn’t… even Affectance.
A house isn’t made of merely smaller houses and a mind isn’t merely made of smaller minds, although such smaller assemblies might be included.
James,
I was expecting that, because, ultimately it comes down to evidence/proof.
So, let us keep it aside and move on.
This is not a Chinese premise, but very much Indian, exported through Buddhism to China.
Taoism and Buddhism were contemporary in China and very much influenced each other, though Confucianism was established before that, but, it was more like philosophy than religion.
The oldest traces of Taoism in China is said to be around 2-3 centuries before Christ in Han Dynasty, and the same emperor saw a pale and glowing man in his dreams. He inquired about it and came to know that he saw Buddha in his visions. So, he ordered his monks to bring Buddhist texts to him. These texts were bought from India on White Horses, on which the famous White Horse Temple was named.
It is also said that the Buddhism was spread in China through The Silk Route by missionaries as early as 4th century BCE, during the era of Asoka the Great, who owns the credit of spreading Buddhism throughout East-Asia.
The only civilization that matched its Indian counterpart in dates and development is Babylonian/Mesopotamian one, or perhaps it predates Indus Valley Civilization to some extent, but it was eliminated for some unknown reasons.
with love,
sanjay
I didn’t mean to imply that China invented it.
I was aware of that.
Destroyed for getting too close to the truth.
What truth?
And, even more important the question is why, and by whom?
with love,
sanjay
That truth.
In everyone’s life there are things seen and unseen.
One can’t be a god until he can control both… unseen… in broad daylight.
With love,
sanjay
By all of those ways that you wouldn’t believe.
The very best way to keep a secret…
… is to make it simply impossible to believe.
And you are asking to know what got a nation destroyed by the knowing?? 
There is one very darkest secret of them all…
… how to keep a secret.
with love,
sanjay
It takes a very rare society wherein one can speak of the most insidious things without destroying the society. That is what the story of Lot in the Bible is all about (amongst other stories). Saying that they are going to all die anyway is like saying “you are going to die anyway, so why not kill yourself now to see what it feels like?” That somewhat defeats the whole point in being alive in the first place, doesn’t it?
