Its a paradox, because how could they have an internal “Me”, yet not be Me? It implies a double infinity, ie. a Me that is in one infinity, and crosses that infinity and goes into another infinity, while still in the same infinity, while not actually existing in the infinity it crossed over, except that is existing in the infinity it crossed over to - a super paradox.
My argument was that you cant be sure anything in the universe is sentient except you (solipism.) “it is impossible to be aware of the fact that nothing in the universe is non-sentient.” is a double negative but has a different meaning. It means you can’t prove that an insect doesn’t have consciousness, so how can you prove anyone is a p-zombie? (pan-psychism.) So my conclusion is a mix of the two, some people are sentient some people arent.
My main argument with dawkkins (and the modern atheist) was to discredit their silly notion of eternal nonconsciousness after death, as that has a low probability of happening in a universe that breeds consciousness.
I see - so are you saying that if both 'Me’s 'are whole, self contained, ‘infinite’ worlds, then there should be no way in which the two worlds can cross over or interact with each other?
When in fact, they do both exist and they do both cross over.
If that is what you are saying, I’d call it a dilemma rather than a paradox. Very interesting though.
The only way they could cross over is by rebirth. So if you don’t believe in rebirth but you also dont believe in solipism (like atheists) you are creating a paradox (you call it dillemma).
This is the point in your OP where I started disagreeing with you.
I don’t think rebirth solves the dilemma, I think its just another manifestation of the dilemma itself. How can one self contained universe become another? And we still haven’t solved the problem of their being multiple unique instances of consciousness which are simultaneously extant (me and you, for example).
We solve that by gaining a better understanding of time, that time is determined by consciousness, and not the arbitrary movement of atoms (earth’s rotation.) And what is arbitrary? A seemingly randomly derived result from the complexity of causal chains.
True time is consciousness centric, ie. past and future dont really exist until they are in the temporal black hole of consciousness.
The continuum of ultimate reality would be a roller coaster of one track with many curves, death and rebirth into other lives would not be a paradox but a contiuum of the same timeline. So these two paradoxes you mentioned are not paradoxes, and all sentient lives would be part of the same self-contained Universe.
You can’t use ‘until’ in this sentence, it doesn’t make sense to use a temporal discourse marker here. Also, if time is determined by consciousness, it doesn’t make sense to say that everything happens ‘on one big timeline’ (which implies time is some sort of external measurement).
I also don’t understand whether you are agreeing or denying that there can be two (or more) unique instance of consciousness that interact with each other.
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I did not mean to imply you were a Western Imperialist. I thought it was a good example to show the problems with being aware of non-sentience. Yes, I was stretching with ’women’ but you get my point.
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There are two senses of aware and awareness. One related to perception and one to knowledge. It seemed to me Tixie was focused on perception and you are conflating the two uses of the term. Though I agree that there are problems on his part due to the difference issue. Despite my (now) agreement about the problems with his use of ‘difference’ I still Think that the sentence I quoted of your is problematic. I now understand that you were using the other meaning of aware. I Think that Trixie was not using that meaning of aware, so it becomes a kind of inadvertant equivocation on your part. Further I Think we should avoid using aware for knowledge in most contexts.
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Looking at the problems of conflation between those two meanings in relation to sentience. I think this is a very strange assertion:
Descartes was aware of the non-sentience of dogs.
(especially in the phenomenological sense of the term, but it reads poorly for the other one, so for me sentience is an example of an issue where one must be cautious)
Descartes believed that dogs…
Descartes thought that dogs…
Those seem like reasonable assertions. When describing what is experienced, which I think is what Trixie was doing, one should avoid the other sense of aware.
When you said one can be aware of non-sentience, it is not in the phenomenological, experiential sense.
This second sense of awareness can only be used consistantly if one believes in psyhic phenomena in relation to sentience. One can directly experience sentience and non-sentience, if the latter is real, in that case.
(I happen to believe in psychic phenomena, but I kinda guess you do not)
Let’s look at Descartes again. Descartes did not perceive something about dogs that his neighbor, who thought his dog had subjective experience, did not.
One could, as you say, argue that reallly there is no direct experience. But I would guess in most versions of that it is would still be strange for someone to say:
Descartes was aware dogs were not sentient.
But not strange if one said
Descartes was aware of dog in the room.
I think one should be caseful with the use of aware in the sense of believe, even know. Because it sounds like one is not drawing a conclusion but actually simply observing a self-evident fact or truth. IOW I think aware, in this sense should be avoided in philosophical contexts, and I have to say I encounter awareness mostly in the phenomenological/conscious of sense in philosophy – though my reading is scattered and I may just not notice the other sense.
It may seem unfair to use the Descartes example, since he was wrong, so not ‘aware’ in the knowledge sense. But that’s part of why I Think it should be avoided as a term. Knowledge Changes, and so while we might not feel concerned that sometimes we allow people to state that they are aware , in the sense of know, certain things that turn out to be true, at least claims to knowledge are very clear when using other terms for it. With aware it gets muddy. Is one asserting it is self-evident, perceived, consensus position…? WE can also then have people aware of opposites. A and not A.
I may have misunderstood your earlier points - I think we agree on this, and this was the core of the disagreement.
I believe the conflation happened in the OP - that existence requires a noticeable contrast. This implies the narrower meaning of awareness, whereas the broader use (that I made of it) seems to me to be the bare minimum. However, brevel gave an alternative reading - that we can’t be aware of a universal lack of awareness, that is also (clearly tautologically) true, and may have been the meaning.