Why are we Here?

[Silhouette]

I extend my post:

If existence is subjective, ur here for whatever reason u wanna be here for, if anything and if you even want to be here at all. It would depend on the subjective perception of the perceiver and what they compare their reasons for being here to, with their limited subjective logic, imagination and abilities to perceive conceptually that we each learn individually to create our personal values and meanings from. And thus it would be open to subjective interpretation.

If existence is objective, then you can only guess because objective reasons are not provable to a subjective living human mind in the state all our minds are in. For everything to be properly provable when you’re there and not there, you need to experience it (and you can’t when you are dead) and you’d need to experience it objectively with and without conceptualisation (not possible to us) with logic and without logic and all the other alternatives etc. Ie experience everything as though you were everything, ie objectively.

Maybe you can do this when you’re dead through ‘God’ if you really want to, maybe not. Personally I don’t see any point in it or any reason why this would be the case if you could do this when you were dead. Maybe there is one, maybe not. We’ll find out. Or not.

Only subjective existence is provable to a subjective perception because we know we exist since we’re experiencing it and thats what we have dubed ‘proof’. Theoretical proof is based on assumption and limited abilities to perceive, imagine and interpret logically and it is subjective. Hence nothing objective can be proven to it. So we’ll never ‘know’.

To me, everything is just a bunch of stuff that seems to be in constant change according to causality. Everything that everything does is affected by everything else, all decisions are based on a product of experience and a limited hereditary capacity to act on subjectively perceieved experiences that are out of your control because they depend on everything, not just you, and it only ever happens one way. (A little off topic, thats my fate arguement).

I think its there because it always was there, things don’t have to be put somewhere to exist. If god were to have put us here, he’d have to exist outside everything, which would mean he was nothing and hence never existed. Or he is everything, in which case he can’t have made himself from nothing because you can’t make anything if you have nothing to make it from. Unless god was nothing as well, which implies nothing is something which its not. This just goes round in circles and doesn’t make sense and would kind of dis-prove God’s supposed role as the creator. Subjectively at least… (Thats my God argument).

So I assume, using my personal limited subjective perception that everything was always there and it is infinite (since it is everything which has nothing outside it and hence has no boundaries) and therefore can’t have symmetry, hence everything not being ‘perfect’ and seemingly random.

Am I wrong? How would u know? You can only think I am or not subjectively, at least for now.

[askewd]

Hi again. This is for de’trop. But id just like to acknowledge your post Silhouette. You have a healthly attitude!

Right…

I was hoping that idea was not my opinion actually. We should be shooting
for absolutes and facts, not personal beliefs or whims.

Whether or not there are absolutes or only personal perspectives is just the thing we are discussing here, in a roundabout way. My personal opinion is that that the only absolute fact - the only thing i KNOW to be true, is my own being-ness. My own consciousness.

This is good stuff, askewd. It is kinda like a reinactment of the empiricism
contra rationalism debate that spanned four centuries.

What was the result of that debate?

Are you denying that those energies exist so to be sensed? There shouldn’t be much difference between raw energy and the perceptions they constitute. So its not that the “tree” existed before you perceived it, but that the substance of the object which you call a “tree” did. I don’t see a need to separate an object of consciousness such as a tree from other objects such as the energy/being that constitutes the tree.
This is an empirical argument that seems logical and sensible, don’t ya’
think?

I understand this perspective.

The energy would exist.

Earlier I said that the only thing that was absolute was my own being-ness, well what I am trying to say is, in it’s absolutely rawest state, the energy of this “tree” is the SAME energy as our own consciousness. Put simply - the tree is created from the thoughts of the absolute-conscious energy.

That means me, you, the sun, the tree…everything… ALL in my mind. The point being that my mind is not this physical “askewd” vehicle, but the entire consciousness. Me and you are the same one consciousness exploring it’s thoughts (dream) from two different perspectives simultaneously.

(Bang! There goes my brain)

Of course I can not “prove” this, in fact, the only way for you to truly understand what I am trying to say is for you to directly experience it yourself. You may believe you are De’trop but that is false, a guess, a “belief and whim”. You will be stuck with that false belief of who you are (ego?) until you are able and willing to let go of it. Then you’ll wake up and truly know…yourself.

(2nd disclaimer: the purpose of my 1st disclaimer was because I know that this sounds arrogant and I don’t want to sound like a preacher, but for me this is just how it is. It is my truth. I don’t expect you or anybody else to “believe” it, but I do hope that in time many will also know it. I do have tips to speeding up the process if anybody is interested… )

If “dropping dead” meant the end of his consciousness, then - from HIS
perspective - yes.
There might be some problems with this.

For one thing, if that is the case, then the universe that your dead friend
had in his perspective when he was alive was not the same universe you have
in your perspective. But what about that substance that makes up the tree?
Shouldn’t it be perceived by one as it is by all? Then the “you” that he
perceived when he was alive should be no different than the “you” I perceive
right now, in this general sense. And if he perceives the same objects, he’s
most likely perceiving the same universe. So the universe should carry on
after he ceases to be conscious.

No?

Errm, sort of… (sorry about this!) I can’t really add anything or say anything more than I already said in my answer above. I have just realised that if I get to deep into a discussion, it will go on for 400 more years!

Try this:

Imagine you are on a beach.
The sun is beating down. It’s a lovely day.
There are two people who you have never seen before sitting down, eating ice cream, facing each other.

I want you to try to get inside these people. Act out a conversation between them.
Insert your consciousness into them. Get inside their minds and bodies. “take over” them.
Make it as real as you can. (if you did this in trance, you could make it totally real)
When one person talks, see things from his perspective
When the other person talks, see things from theirs.
Have a proper chat, for a couple of minutes between the two of you.

Done that? (yeah right!) Good…

now think about this: The universe you just experienced… now that there is no consciousness in it, does it still exist?
The sun on the beach… is it still shining?

There was one consciousness.
There were two perspectives/separations.

Which aspect of the whole experience was the only thing that was truly “real” ?

I know this seems a bit silly but it’s the only method I have for sharing my thoughts with you.

Thanks for the chat
Ill shut up now.
DALE

[Robleh]

Dale, I find it surprisely that you would analogize the human body and its blood with our presence in the universe and its importance.

Of course the body can’t exist w/o something that circulates its entirety and is at the root of its ability to nourish itself. It is essential! But unless you are arguing as Frank Tipler and John Barrow do in their Magnus Opus: The Anthropic Principle, that we will someday spread our species across the universe and dominate it, then our presence in the universe has no such necessity!

Even they admit at present we are not a significant species on the universal scale.

I see that you are speaking of it in sense that Detrop later referred, that is from the point of view of consciousness not being alive to express all that bloodless reality by just existing (that is being ontological and not epistemological) can’t.

But why assume we’re the only ones? Though the aforementioned physicists do. That is, assume we’re the only intelligent species in the universe.

Again concurring with Detrop, reality needs no observer to be reality. Logical reasoning if it teaches nothing else it affirms this.

To take it a step further, not only would our absence from the universe not matter, IT’S LIKELY WE WILL DIE OUT. In my estimation, at the rate we’re going, consuming earthly resources and making weapons of MD, we will disappear before leaving this planet for other worlds. So, in that sense your question is timely.

I hope you don’t take this response as an offense. I don’t intend it as such. I think you used a not well-defined example of what you meant though.

[Warshed]

Notice the person who asked the question never responded to anything. I think people need to be hesitant to spin into a philosophical fury over such a small question that is proboably posted in one form or another once a month by the newest person on the block.

I would suggest next time asking them questions until they answer it for themselves.

[Robleh]

was I hallucinating or was this a response to my original answer verbatim:

The original topic was “why are we here” followed up by a completely different question “would we be missed” some are answering the first question, and some the other.

As for your point Robleh:

Quote:
2. If our species died out, no, it would not matter in the least to this universe. That is to say, it would not stop existing.

Maybe, but you can’t be sure of that. I don’t believe we ARE the main purpose of the universe, but I do imagine that we are an important part that if you removed could bring the whole “tower of cards” down. Take a look at the human body for instance - all the little blood cells may ask “would the body miss us if we were gone”, unaware of the important part they are playing. The body wouldn’t even BE if it wasn’t for the blood, and all the other parts that made it up.

The universe knows itself through us. We enable the universe to be self aware, seeing itself from our human perspective. We are conscious beings. If there was no consciousness, then would the universe even exist at all? To Whom? and if you are sure you know the answer, why are you so sure?

I thought it was. or maybe I imagined this.[/i]
I was responding to this comment sir?

[JoeTheMan]

Alright, not trying to bring the flames on, but the pathetic truth is that there IS a meaning if we NEED a meaning! If we do need “it”–some kind of “cause” or “reason,” little more ultimately than an inadequate fantasy which fails to erase our fear of the dark–if we DO need some kind of fantasy, we create it ourselves, or rather, as some have already pointed out, collectively, which is why such “meanings” are always so disappointing, so fundamentally defective.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s be clear about what we mean! Robleh says we are not a “significant” species on the “universal” scale–but what (or whose?) universe, and “significant” for whom? The universe as such can only “signify” when it manifests itself with a theme, which it does not fail to do, but signification only arises in specific and historical, not cosmic, enunciation. To admit the existence of an absolute reality which is external to any observer means admitting a separation between consciousness and being, between thought and existence. But then, of course, we have to rely on logic and reason to generate true conclusions, right? We have to assert, not despite but on account of “logic,” that there “exists” some fundamental connection between being and thought.

In a narrow sense, Robleh is absolutely right: we can’t go around making statements like “the only thing that is absolute is my own being-ness”; this anti-skeptical assertion disrupts rationality completely. This sort of Zen impulse belongs to mysticism; as far as I can tell, this is an idealist assertion of absolute synchrony on the basis of a common substrate (energy or some such.) The problem is that this is completely against logic; if Being CAN be spoken about, we must admit it can only be spoken about in ONE sense, right? In other words, we don’t have to be idealists like Robleh to realize that our existence (individually and collectively) is absolutely irrelevant to the “universe,” but this is only at the cost of wrenching our existence apart from the rest of the Universe, at the cost of abandoning the Other which limits us beyond our ability to perceive a horizon. We abandon the Other only at the cost of a stable Same, that is, as soon as we assert our meaninglessness, we abandon any sense of “our”–and really, this is the essential paradox here in question.

[Mr_Reasonable]

I think we’re here to wonder what the hell is going on around us. It seems that people have a tendency to postulate order onto thier surroundings so that maybe they can have something understandable enough to them for it to have any meaning at all. I wish people could just let go of the security blanket or rationality and reason and just FEEL. That’s what it’s all about. FEELINGS!!! That’s why we’re here.

[Warshed]

I’ll give you something to feel Scott.

[Mr_Reasonable]

If you’re not female then I’m worried.

[Warshed]

Just messing with ya. I just couldn’t help myself.

[detrop]

Alright, not trying to bring the flames on, but the pathetic truth is that there IS a meaning if we NEED a meaning! If we do need “it”–some kind of “cause” or “reason,” little more ultimately than an inadequate fantasy which fails to erase our fear of the dark–if we DO need some kind of fantasy, we create it ourselves, or rather, as some have already pointed out, collectively, which is why such “meanings” are always so disappointing, so fundamentally defective.

Yeah but all that is too complicated. I’ll tell you what the perfect life consists of, briefly. The perfect man/woman would be the person who devoted their life to murdering liars. The great thing about this is that it is a falesafe plan which would work with or without God.

The procedure would be to simply monitor your subject until they lied, and then kill them. The only problem would be determining if the lie was with good intentions or bad, and this is a bit tricky. Now to do it the right way would be to murder the person who caused the subject to have to lie, but this would entail murdering just about everyone. So, we don’t bother with the “who started it” games. The alternative to murdering the person who lies with bad intentions would be to offer a partnership in murdering people who lie with bad intentions. In a sense this is a kind of “second chance”, and you are allowing the person to live under contract. However, if they fail to murder a liar with bad intentions as well as failing to offer the alternative (contract), they breach their own contract and should be murdered.

Business should be good if my calculations are correct. There are a few “good” people left in the world, although they are disorganized and spread out randomly, while the liars are overwhelming. The perfect family or clan would travel the world murdering liars, and for extra credit, they would provide charity and voluntary labour for those less fortunate.

If there is a heaven…this is how you get there. If there is not a heaven…this is how you clean up the only world there is.

So, what are you waiting for?! Get out there and start murdering liars! Unless of course you are one of those liars. In that case…run. I need to practice my aiming anyway.

[Mr_Reasonable]

Detrop, let’s start a death squad. I’m so totally in man. Seriously.

[Warshed]

Let the hijacking of the thread begin. I say we should just weigh them down with stones and throw them in the water like they did the Salem witches. If they sink then they are not a lier and if they float then they are a lier.

[detrop]

Detrop, let’s start a death squad. I’m so totally in man. Seriously.

Its not that easy buddy. One does not organize such efforts on the public internet. Do you actually think I would build a group of vigilantes over a fed infested internet? Please.

If you qualify for the position, you will know if you are accepted. Keep your eye out for “signals”, which will be placed accordingly. You’ll know them when you find them. If the clan approves of you you will be notified outside of a public context.

Over and out.

[Warshed]

Careful, I think you guys may be labelled terrorists and put in Guantonimo Bay. I am sure the Feds have this thread wire tapped. Actually I bet the head of the CIA is reading the thread right now.

I can see it now, the media will say “Two alleged terrorists planning to kill all liers on the Ilovephilosophy forum were put in Guatonimo as enemy combatants. More on that story at 11.”

[someoneisatthedoor]

@Warshed

Careful, I think you guys may be labelled terrorists and put in Guantonimo Bay. I am sure the Feds have this thread wire tapped. Actually I bet the head of the CIA is reading the thread right now.

I can see it now, the media will say “Two alleged terrorists planning to kill all liers on the Ilovephilosophy forum were put in Guatonimo as enemy combatants. More on that story at 11.”

Do you need a FISA warrant for that?

Besides, having this website under surveillance by some two-bit intelligence agent will only boost our hit rate and google rating.

[Robleh]

This topic has long since burned down to embers.

Kinda disappointing. But, reading JoeTheMan’s response likening me to an idealist, I chuckled. That’s one philosophic stance I’ve often tried to avoid, but I do accept wholeheartedly idealism in mathematics. That is, I do as the Platonist schools does, accept that there are idea forms which don’t need human knowledge to ‘exist’ conceptually. A circle is a circle regardless if some engineer uses a physical calibration to determine that
f(x) as the locus of pts equidistant from a given pt. It needs no physical reality to be formally true and yes that’s idealistic.

But, I thought when I affirmed our insignificance on the universal, I was being a realist. I mean if a quasar went off 200,000 light years away from Earth, that would be significant in the REAL sense that the gravity wave it would create would knock countless galaxies. Quasars are significant on the universal scale (I mean the Standard Model of Relativistic physics here too, by universal scale). But, a bipolar, conscious species on one planet in a limited quadrant of this galaxy affecting the entire Magilla, come on…

But, wait I know, we can never know in the future whether we will have an affect on the whole universe. I admit this. This is like the God existence problem, you can’t prove the Being doesn’t exist and you can’t prove It does exist. All you can DO, is get enough rationalism believers to agreee with you that it’s UNLIKELY that we are major players in the universe at least for the present. And if you get them to accept that, go on like enivronmentalist do, to say if we don’t stop killing ourselves by our actions on this our only habitat now, we won’t be. That’s not idealist! That’s pragmatic.

All the deep philosophic introspection about the Other and presumably the subjective aside, I was addressing a concrete issue. At least I thought I was.

Okay Knight 1 to Bishop two, your turn[/i]

[Robleh]

Well it’s been a long time since I checked in but I’m here.

Some of us in this thread seem to think that the universe is a living conscious thing that we express ourselves thru. What could be more anti-rational? The universe is an existing non-conscious phenomenon. We interpret and understand it but never is it like us: conscious, reflecting, studying, deducing, etc.

Kant made this flawed argument back in the 18th century. He identified God as the a priori, the first-order existence that encompasses everything, and well— us-- we were the second-order creations that experienced things. We were never Things-in-themselves. Dich-in-Sich in the German. Example: a cup is a cup, but we only experience the cup, but really never know the first-order existence of the cup, we must be the cup to do this. We must be a ‘cup’. But we can’t be the things we experience or observe, we can only know them as separate things outside ourselves. But, oh this God guy can, 'cause he’s the all-knowing encompassing being that is both the existing thing, and the thing that knows. He is ontological and epistemic. But how can a being both be the thing that exist as well as know it’s the thing that exists? If the thing that exists know itself, it must have a higher level above itself to reflect on itself. This is paradoxical. It’s why we as human beings are paradoxed by our states of being. I can’t both be me and know me. The moment I reflect on my state of being, I am then being the person that is reflecting me, and not being in that state. Which is why it’s so damn hard to make an artificial machine that’s like btw. But, lets not go there.

Now, we see this flawed argument applied to the universe at large. It is not just an existing ‘thing’ but it is its own essence. The universe has some universal consciousness that it’s developing…oh non-existent God gimme a break…such reasoning is circular and doomed to failure.

The correct stance on this debate is to reject the Kantian argument and affirm that we are an intelligent species understanding an external non-conscious, material universe, that is quite complex, but not conscious.

As an addendum, I’ve tried recently to look at this from a set theory point of view. I tried to prove that this: can a set that is operated upon by a relation encompass the relation that is operating upon it? I’ve found it can’t! If I have a set say X= (2,3,4,5,…) and use + to add more members to X, the relation + can’t both augment X and define X. The + operation augments X, but X can’t know, it’s being augmented. Some use an argument like this to say…see that’s God…I say oh nooooo.

[15_and_Thinking]

Heres my theory
We are here to percieve, interpret, and give purpose to the universe
And the universes purpose is to give purpose to life (not just human life)
This theory also means that without purpose, life cannot exist
This also means there can be no “nothing”
Which also annoying means in the beggining of life, there could not just be something that evolved
Which means there had to be a creation, however I am clueless about what could create life
The obvious answer is God, but I am anthiest ( hence why I said which also annoyingly means…)

[Robleh]

Okay now let me get this straight, you’re an atheist? I am a committed existentialist-atheist that sees no purpose to existence. I confirm existence for sure. I reject solipsism that believes we can just be dreaming we exist, and there is no real existence, save in our minds. That’s the stuff of sci-fi. But I can’t see how you come to the conclusion that the universe has ‘purpose’ from knowing it exists? This argument is non-sequitur. It does follow from existence that we meet purpose. For instance I know that numeration exists. I see objects all around me: houses, cars, people, leaves, offices, clouds, and my minds has a series of thoughts in number, they all have number and are great in their multitude, but I don’t go on to reason that because of multitude there is purpose. No sir, there IS numerated existence but no purpose to it. I’m not making a conclusion here, I just saying that I can’t make a conclusion.

I posit that there is not purpose to existence, and will agree I can’t PROVE it. You sound more like an agnostic not an atheist. And that’s not too bad. Your theory started off with an indefensible assumption.