I agree mostly. When I initially created this thread, I would have agreed wholly.
At this point, I think for the purpose of thought, your metaphysical fusing is very important to gain insight into our thinking and how it works. But if we are attempting to describe life and what we should make of it more accurately, then the “objective” should be considered ‘that which exist outside of thought’. It can be experienced, and as such does exist, but it can’t be known through thought. Of course, we can only come to that understanding through thinking about it. The paradox continues.
Since not a single effort you made to put together a logical argument succeeded, I have to take it that logic is beyond your grasp. Such is pretty common on the internet forums and makes logical discussion pretty pointless. Emotional rhetoric is the only hope toward any progress with such people and itself is so misleading that such holds very little hope. Pointless babble is, well… pointless babble.
“New ideas” that are merely irrational imaginings are “pointless babble”. So the question is really, “why are You here.”
Well, there are many things I consider ‘outside of thought’ yet still in the mind. Emotions are a prime example. Sensation, like pain, are even better. Physical objects, in my metaphysics, are nothing more than projections of our visual experiences. Insofar as we can treat these as ‘objectively real’ (given the ways in which this term must be modified in light of the current considerations) we can say they taken on an independent existence from thought, for thought, I maintain, is but one component of the human mind among a vast array of many others.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t say that any of these can’t be known - to experience them, I say, just is to be able to know them (through thought). But like I said in my previous post, I believe in an extension beyond the human experiences, and therein lies a myriad phenomena that cannot be known (except, perhaps, that they are there - and even then I hesitate to call it ‘knowledge’ per se). But the question of whether these things are objectively real comes right back to my assessment about the subjective/objective distinction made earlier - namely, that these are merely two different ways of treating, or thinking about, the same thing. So if we choose to treat those things beyond the human mind of which we can have little, if any, knowledge as nothing more than beliefs in our minds, then they are subjective only. If we choose to give in to that belief and treat it as an accurate picture of the way reality actually is, then they are objective (in virtue of the fact that we make them objective).
Well … some way of knowing and thinking about the world has to be functionally workable. Thus, we would have to derive from a common fund. But surely, the value assigned to functionality applies to the maintenance of an arbitrarily manifested reality.
The physical life of the organism has within it a functioning that is unknown to ‘consciousness‘. That is to say a consciousness that has not been given knowledge. Once consciousness is fitted with knowledge, and the appearance of a subject “I” is believed in, then we can sense a discrete entity (“self”) surrounded by other inner and outer things. This is accomplished simply by translating sensory signals arriving at the brain.
There is light. If the light is not there you have no way of looking at anything. The light falls on an object, and the reflection of that light activates the optic nerves, which in turn activate the memory cells. When the memory cells are activated, all the knowledge you have about that object comes into cooperation. It is that process which is happening there that has created the subject. And the subject is the knowledge you have about it. There is nothing there other than the knowledge (word) you associate with the sensory translation, but there is no subject there at all at any time. There is no subject creating the object.
While you are living, the knowledge that is there does not belong to you. So, why are you concerned as to what will happen after what you call “you” is gone? The physical body is functioning from moment to moment because that is the way the sensory perceptions are.
I agree mostly. I don’t subscribe to the view that thought has to be understood or abstracted consciously (I’m not saying you do, but I am pointing out a differentiation).
Basically, what I am pointing to is that I believe, on some rudimentary level, sensate experience must be told what to do. So when we feel something, there is a communication or recognition of what to do. Nerve cells and their signals are the empirical substrate of this communication, but how do they know what to do? We can say its evolutionary, and I would say yes, that is a description. But if we go further into how evolution works, I come to the place of understanding that in order for this process to play out, there must be some form of internalization or abstraction which propels the nerve cells. They must “know” to do what they are supposed to do, and they do it. This knowing sits at the base of our knowing, and therefore, we don’t “know” or “think” about what it is like consciously (just as the mind doesn’t consciously know everything that perception is taking in), we just “feel” it.
Just as our thoughts can create feelings (a negative thought can make an angry feeling), our body components thoughts can create feelings, or more aptly described, sensations.
Right… we dont know them through “our” awake thought, but they are known through our experience of them (our feeling them). The thought is there, it is not conscious to us.
I agree completely. It is a matter of reference, for the mind to use and make “sense” of whatever we are describing.
Us, as subjects, are not creating the object. But the object is created, through a deeper mind or larger subject (which allows for the possibility for a static existence in the first place; this subject could be considered god if we wanted to use a description so as to understand the properties of it (omniscience and what not, minus the man in the sky stuff)). Let’s not say it is a subject, that might scare people into thinking I’m being religious. But there is a mind beyond ours (which is what allows our little individual ones to be possible), which we can describe through the process of evolution (the contents of this mind are a result of the interactions between aspects of the cosmic soup; the reactionary interactions bounced between mental and physical propelling the process, a sort of feedback loop very much like we experience today).
Because you are using what you think is produced by mind (thought), you talk about what is there when this whole arbitrarily agreed upon stuff is put aside. But there is only thought creating the thing you are trying to put aside and simultaneously trying to put aside the thing it has created by itself.
Thought then, compounds itself, in order to separate itself from itself; thinking something else of itself into existence (so as to have an existence beyond what already exist). Yeah?
The knowledge which operates in the form of thought has set up a parallel empire of its own, in contradistinction to the ways of nature. But thought subtly ‘knows’ its ephemeral nature, and the fear of its fleeting existence propels it to erect a marvelous structure of culture, civilization, religion, politics, the various institutions and values that govern our lives, and, in fact, everything that we can conceive of.
All these facets of human life are nothing but props through which thought tries to enthrone itself in permanence. In other words, what we call ‘I’ or ‘you’ is thought seeking permanence in innumerable activities. Only when, by some miracle or strange chance, the living organism is freed from the stranglehold of the empire created by thought, can the body, with its extraordinary intelligence, free the human being so that he can ‘fall’ into his ‘natural state’.
Maybe in contradictions to the ways of nature, but I’d describe it as just thinking itself separate from the ways of nature. It creates its own ways (thinking itself separate) through the ways of nature more accurately. After all, it did arise “naturally”.
The fundamental mistake that humanity made somewhere along the line, was to experience this separateness from the totality of life. At that time there occurred in man, this self-consciousness which separated him from the life around. He was so isolated that it frightened him. The demand to be part of the totality of life around him created this tremendous demand for the ultimate. He thought that the goals of truth, or reality, would help him to become part of the ‘whole’ again.
But the very attempt on his part to become one with or become integrated with the totality of life has kept him only more separate. Isolated functioning is not part of nature. This isolation has created a demand for finding out ways and means of becoming a part of nature. But thought in its very nature can only create problems in this area and cannot help us solve them.
This is like saying eighty-five percent of nature doesn’t exist. We are both the illusion and the truth; we can’t help but be and do what we are. It’s just that we are viewing that doing through the illusion, so it seems out of sync, and from that perspective, it is. What we are though ultimately, is “perspective-less”, and being so, all pseudo perspectives are a part of it. All of this of course hinges on if your definition of nature is referring to that which is natural.
Perspective-less life has no beginning and no end; it is a beginningless and endless movement, and you are only an expression of it. You are only an expression of life, like a bird or a worm or a cloud.
You are conscious of yourself through thought (by which I mean not just conscious thought, but that conditioning which transforms the life that passes through you into feelings, into pleasure and pain). And this thought is not yours; it is what you have learned from others, it is second-hand, it belongs to everybody. You belong to everybody. If the natural thing is accepted, all falls into its own rhythm: there is nothing to do, there is nothing to control, there is nothing to ask. You don’t have to do a thing. You are finished.