I was just thinking about the prime mover, causality n all that as these notions often get brought up in debates etc. there is an impossibility about origins belonging to a causal chain, we cannot built to an infinity and we always need a cause for the next event to occur.
Perhaps we should look beyond finite causal connections and indeed the notion of causality itself. …that the universe/reality is not contained, and that which is uncontained has no cause!
e.g. for a causal chain to exist you have to have a thing which is contained between two given other things, where causality is the function of the exchange or transference of one item to the next ~ be that linear or not. …where It is impossible to have a prime cause to begin a chain, hence we have to have sets, sets do not need beginnings because they can be infinite whilst having a limited and universal expression [see my infinite transmigration ontology].
Moving past linearity and teleological thinking is very difficult sometimes because there’s a way that it feels so counter-intuitive. To get to notions of circular or spiral time, infinity, and non-teleological thinking, I believe that you have to move past language or thought itself and just be. That’s when the mystical experiences can make their appearance and inroads into your mind and thought.
I have been toying with the possibility that reality may be an indivisible single event occurring now, all at once. It could be that the world of separate entities existing in sequential events is purely a function of the way we perceive reality and not features of the reality itself. After all, it makes sense that our senses have evolved, not to perceive reality as it is, but to perceive information that is useful to the survival of the species.
The abstraction of separate objects and events by our senses from an essentially continuous reality would allow us to create and recognize patterns in space and time. This, in turn, would allow us to make predictions (cause and effect relationships) which would have enormous survival value.
It seams science and math are quite the opposite to reality as it describes itself ~ or doesn’t even attempt to. How can an amorphous mass which changes at no particular rate nor direction possibly be defined.
Not that I’ll ever stop trying, that’s the fun of it.
It still seems to me that making things true or untrue, caused or uncaused with words is not the same thing as noting the correlation between worlds and words. Here it seems we are as befuddled now as we were when the first mind thought about these profoundly problematic and mysterious relationships.
It’s stimulating and entertaining to ponder them, sure, but it’s never really gone much beyond that “in reality”.
Correct - as we never contact “reality” but are only exploring ourselves, our mind and the perception-conception mechanisms of consciousness, anything we call “causality” it only a notation refering to a correspondence between observed things (as Hume noted). We infer necessity from this relationship because the “rules of the game”, psychologically speaking, appear to remain mostly stable for us and so observations can be predicted in advance with great accuracy (i.e. science). But this inference to necessity itself, the reification of causality to an ontological status not only does not follow but is a contradiction in meaning. Nothing can be necessary in itself, and necessity as a concept is a human invention like every concept or idea we possess - that is to say, it has meaning within the human framework, in your mind, and nowhere else.
The causality we observe in the world is the consistency of the operations of the psychological system that is “us”.
We can apply these ideas of causality, necessity, infinity etc. to “reality” if we want, and most people falsely do this, but it is merely wishful thinking - in point of fact we never actually attribute anything to reality despite what we may think - rather, such attributions are merely universalized self-attributions, the subjectivity attempting to derive, through metaphor, those consistent elements of itself that (seem to) apply in (nearly) all cases. The fact that any of these ideas, be it causality, necessity, infinity, eternity, beginnings or endings in an ultimate sense lead to obvious contradictions when extended through delimited abstraction, only shows that the idea itself has meaning within the mind alone, indicative of the fact that the perceiving subject is incapable of grasping itself as an entirety, as a whole.
Remember that observation/experience/interaction are possible only through a secondary medium, and as we know this will change the observed and the observer in unknown ways.
Eternity is a perfect example of commonplace human notions pushed to contradictory and impossible limits - what this reveals, to the astute self-observer, are the limitations of subjective experience, of self-consciousness itself. The need to enclose these concepts (eternity, causality, infinty etc) into a well-defined space where they are perfectly explained, to “make sense” of them despite the obvious self-contradictions contained within the notions, reveals only that one still falsely believes himself perceiving a world “out there” and a “reality” that is inherently separate from himself - that is to say, he has yet to grasp that his ideas bear absolutely no relation to anything other than what is going on inside his own mind. This reification or objectification of perceptive consciousness is the error at the heart of all metaphysics, really at the heart of all thinking, philosophical or otherwise.
I think philosophy can operate outside of the realm of mind e.g. for change to occur there has to be a transference between one object and another, and I think we can be sure that occurs in the world ~ or at the very least that it occurs in the subjective world. You would agree it occurs in your subjective world and I in mine, so clearly there is something occurring external to both our subjective worlds?…
In fact can we not begin to describe ’a world’ of the collection of subjects? …even if that doesn’t necessarily correlate with the physical world [as presumed to be].
Now let us go one stage further and ask; what is of the subject?! Are e.g. is the qualia of colour as perceived by the subject of the subject when they are experienced by everyone?
In the end I always arrive at the notion that nothing is of the subject and everything is of the world ~ even where a given thing is presumed to be mental [like colour and information].
There are no subjects.
Equally the op is asking if reality/the universe is contained, we can ask that no matter what the world is. Can we not assume there is a reality, and describe what that could possibly be, and arrive at the exact same basis? After all we have to go beyond scientific description to get at that basis [as I see it. …that reality is more than its material components], so we are describing a world designed around principles and ideas either way.
Nothing is going on inside our own minds, there are only things going on in the world. How can it possibly be so that reality is an amalgamation of subjects bobbing around in a void, it just makes no sense to me.
If not then describe something that is going on only in the mind!?
These are interesting possibilities and quite plausible from my perspective. Anyway, if that is the case, then how is it that each of us perceives and deals with a reality that is filled with discrete units of time and space that proceed forward in a linear manner, when in fact they really don’t? If the why is survival, then what is the how?
Our senses detect limited ranges of information. For example our sense of sight detects a limited range of wavelengths of the full spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Our sense of sound is sensitive to a limited range of sound frequencies. All of our senses are like this. Then there is the probability that there exists information that none of our senses detect (even taking their technological extensions into account). Hence, it is possible that we sense only limited aspects of the whole and this accounts for the apparent world of separate entities. In a world of separate objects space (areas occupied by and between objects) and time (intervals between positions of objects moving in apparent space) are introduced. Thus we have the experience of apparently separate objects moving in sequential events.
Supposing that there is information not immediately available to what we think of as the physical five senses, but is available to those who have paranormal sensitivity and awareness. I think that the way into this kind of experience lies outside the bounds of physicality, language and thought; and it is achieved through complete stilliness of the mind, through meditation, or altering through means of chakra sounds or drugs.
An interesting POV. If the senses via technology were unlimited we would see the entire ‘string’ of events or more that we wouldn’t limit things to ‘events’.
That’s my assumption. However, it’s not something that would have developed naturally since having an omniscient point of view is not conducive to the persistence of individuality. What I mean is that if entities did not experience themselves as separate, independent entities but, rather, as continuous with the whole there would be no “motivation” to persist as phenomena and they would not survive to evolve through natural selection. Our partial perceptions are required for the continuance of what we think of as our species.
I would not agree with that, not necessarily. The idea of the external is necessitated by the assumption that oneself is not the sum of all existence. However, the mere fact of an external does not shed any light upon it. The point, however, is not to dismiss or deem irrelevant the concept of external reality, nor to demonstrate that this reality does not exist, or even that it does not exist as we (think we) perceive it, although such demonstration is of course necessary. No, the real end is the utility of this perspective, of this knowledge of subjectivity itself. The intimate knowledge of the fact and means of subjective experience has value in itself to us, in how it reshapes us and our relationship with the world (with ourselves, with other people), how we think and form conceptions and ideas. For one thing, it has a wonderful effect on undermining false notions and beliefs, and for making oneself more genine and one’s conceptual frameworks more consistent and articulate.
At no point does one who holds this perspective “invalidate” reality itself, or feel “inferior” or doubting of existence “itself”; rather, these issues do not come up as anything other than abstract intellectual thought. One learns to make use of one’s ideas, beliefs and all manner of experience to his own ends of personal growth - this growth may take the form of increased self-honesty, increased capacity for self-expression, or self-understanding, or refining one’s conceptual tools, or ridding oneself of false notions or enslavements to paradigms or memes, seeing through the maya of social realities, and learning to habitate deeper regions of life and inter-human relationships, to sense and explore within himself larger spaces where emotions are deeper, life has more flavor and wonder, and one’s intellect soars to new heights of understanding. In otherwords, it edifies the philosophical impulse itself.
Indeed we may do so, but if this perspective arises from anything other than a complete understanding of the subjectivity of experience, then it is false, a contradiction with that perspective. One understands subjectivity and the creative-imaginitive nature of perceptive consciousness, one understands that the entire world and all the universe is his own creation and construction, that he himself is the author of this vast world of experience, that all that exists does so by virtue of himself, of his consciousness… now, once this perspective has been affirmed and understood, any further wonderings, abstractions or ideas as to the possible relationships or nature of the relationships between such experiencing entities as oneself, are of course fine and good. But you may be surprised how much these ideas change when one becomes aware of the truly self-experiential nature of all consciousness.
But really, the point is not to validate the common notions of multiplicity or experienced external reality - these cannot be invalidated in themselves, as they are structurally necessary concepts to what it means to be an experiencing human subjectivity. Properly, we do not care one way or another about the validity or lack of these abstractions, per se; what we care about is unfolding and grasping the intricacies and depths of the implications surrounding the fact of subjective experience, “the world as self-experience”. When one remains too bound by his need to validate or invalidate so-called external reality or the multiplicity or lack thereof of other individuals other than himself, he remains limited in how far into the subjective perspective he may progress. We can rest assued that one will not entirely rid oneself of the ingrained categories of experience, such as external experienced reality of the multiplicity of other individuals, as these are essential components of the human. But, on the other hand, abandoning being bound to these categories frees one to explore the otherwise inaccessable truths of subjective self-experience, for it otherwise keeps oneself grounded in the illusions of perception, rather than transcending to the level of perceptibility itself.
I arrive at the opposite notion. Every life experiences color differently, and indeed even humans experience colors differently. Normally we are all hard-wired in sufficiently similar ways so that we see one color as the same across individuals, but this will never be exactly the same, and we know there are many variations among individuals. So is one variation more accurate than another, more correct? Is one species experience with color, or lack of experience, more real? Does the bat, which sees sound in the manner that we see light, more or less truthful in its perceptions? Of course, the answer is neither, that no perspective or more or less truthful, all are merely capturing data and changing it internally, to render back to itself an internally constructed image which it can then seek to make sense of. And as the received information, whatever is “out there” in reality, is the same for every experiencing subject, of whatever species it may be, then we must conclude that all difference among species, all difference among perspectives and experience, of species or even individual human differences, is the result of internal differences of that organism itself. That there is one “reality” to which all consciousnesses are subject. Now, we therefore conclude that each subject, each consciousness is experiencing this “same” reality in different ways; thus, as this reality remains in itself (whatever it may be) the same, what each subject is experiencing is not this reality itself, but rather the subject itself, its own forms of consciousness. It does this through the medium of this external reality, by representing it within itself, and of course each represented thing (every perception, idea, belief, sensed object, feeling, etc) is a mental construction made based on the components and intricacies of that specific consciousness’s rules and organic structure - its whole being, as it were.
This leads one to conclude that every consciousness (if we are indeed to assume the existence of consciousnesses other than ourselves, which, as I wrote above, is of course perfectly fine) lives in its own self-created world, a world which is metaphor and representation of its deeper and unconscious structures and states.
Not sure if I understand what you are getting at here…
It isnt in a void; we may assume some sort of energetic system, in the most vague and non-defined manner. And it isn’t that we assume there is nothing going on ourside of our minds, but rather that something is going on outside of the mind, but that we cannot know directly what it is, nor is it relevant to us at all. Accepting this is a crutial part of the idea. We do not need to worry about this other reality, because we will never contact it ourselves. There is “something going on” outside of our mind, sure, and we can assume that whatever it is, it in some manner or another is represented accurately through our perceptions of this external world… but, as a thought experiment: take your experience of the world, all your senses and perceptions - now, remove everything subjectively human from them, one at a time, i.e. all colors, felt textures, pleasures and pains, sounds, concepts and ideas, emotional attachments. Try to remove every human conditional perceptive qualia from your experience, and see what is left over. Not very much. That is the sort of perspective I am trying to get at here, one that affirms that something is going on outside the mind, but realising that everything we experience ourselves is within the mind… reconciling these two perspectives then becomes the task at hand, which is my chief concern here.
Gödel believed that CH is false and that his proof that CH is consistent only shows that the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms do not adequately describe the universe of sets. Gödel was a platonist and therefore had no problems with asserting the truth and falsehood of statements independent of their provability. Cohen, though a formalist, also tended towards rejecting CH.
Historically, mathematicians who favored a “rich” and “large” universe of sets were against CH, while those favoring a “neat” and “controllable” universe favored CH. Parallel arguments were made for and against the axiom of constructibility, which implies CH. More recently, Matthew Foreman has pointed out that ontological maximalism can actually be used to argue in favor of CH, because among models that have the same reals, models with “more” sets of reals have a better chance of satisfying CH (Maddy 1988, p. 500).
Another viewpoint is that the conception of set is not specific enough to determine whether CH is true or false. This viewpoint was advanced as early as 1923 by Skolem, even before Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem. Skolem argued on the basis of what is now known as Skolem’s paradox, and it was later supported by the independence of CH from the axioms of ZFC, since these axioms are enough to establish the elementary properties of sets and cardinalities. In order to argue against this viewpoint, it would be sufficient to demonstrate new axioms that are supported by intuition and resolve CH in one direction or another. Although the axiom of constructibility does resolve CH, it is not generally considered to be intuitively true any more than CH is generally considered to be false (Kunen 1980, p. 171).
At least two other axioms have been proposed that have implications for the continuum hypothesis, although these axioms have not currently found wide acceptance in the mathematical community. In 1986, Chris Freiling presented an argument against CH by showing that the negation of CH is equivalent to Freiling’s axiom of symmetry, a statement about probabilities. Freiling believes this axiom is “intuitively true” but others have disagreed. A difficult argument against CH developed by W. Hugh Woodin has attracted considerable attention since the year 2000 (Woodin 2001a, 2001b). Foreman (2003) does not reject Woodin’s argument outright but urges caution.
Two axioms formalizing the concept of inverse power set has been proposed to give an extended setting where CH can be proven or disproven depending on the choice of the extended definition of cardinality (St-Amant 2010). It is yet not proven that the two axioms are inconsistent with parts of ZF. If proven consistent with ZF or a modified Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, the concept of inverse power set would extend ZF with new types of sets in a way that is analogous to extending the integers with fractions or extending the real numbers with complex numbers.
As before, this CH is a perfect example of what I am trying to get at, and of which Kant also spoke: the inherent contradictoriness of human perception. When one is asleep, one may (perhaps) be able to determine this fact of the dream-state of his existence by locating contradictions within the dreamed perceptions, for which he has no explanation. He may see things which he knows otherwise to be impossible, for example. Many of these will be rationalized from within that dream perspective itself, but we can assume that will come a point where the inquiring mind will be faced with contradictions such that it is unable to reconcile them; at this point one will either choose to ignore the contradictions as irrelevant, or will conclude that one is in fact dreaming.
This same logic may be applied to every day experience. We know that structurally a dream and a waking experience are identical, in the mind: represented sensory-perceptive information under the forms of cognition and from within the categories of conscious experience (time, space et. al.). These persist as the forms of experience whether one is dreaming or awake. Now, we then must ask ourselves, in this waking experienced world, can we push into it far enough where impossible contradictions are discovered, for which no reconciliation is possible? Certainly we can. The continuum hypothesis as stated above is a perfect example, and in fact, we find these inherent contradictions when we stretch our perceptive experience to its limits, for example, in either expanding or contracting to the limits of experience. In quantum physics, the smallest limits of perceptibility, we find impossible contradictions, things being in more than one place at a time, in motion and at rest at the same time, in dual exclusive states of matter, “teleporting” from one location to another, and even being exempt from the directionality of time. These are all contradictions that, were we to experience them in a dream, would perhaps allude us to the the fact that we are dreaming. This can also be found at the outer limits of perception, when we look at notions of infinite extension of space, eternal time, or ultimate beginnings or endings of either time or space, as well as the notion of causality itself and the mutually exclusive and equally nonsensical notions of either a first cause or infinite causal chains.
Such inherent contradictoriness in our perceptibility reveals the same illusoriness and unreal nature as a dream does to the dreamer, if indeed the dreamer attains enough lucidity while dreaming to comprehend on a high enough level the absurdities of the dreamed reality. Likewise, through philosophy and understanding of the subjectivity of experience, as well as psychological understanding of how dreams and “waking” experiences are constructed in the same manner, we can come to see how our perceived “waking” world is equally a conditional and imagined mental construction, as is any dream.
Three Times Great - I don’t think that the quantumphysics example suffices to put dream and reality in the same category of self-contradicting experience. In normal life, none of us has to do with singular electrons, the paradoxes realted to them only apply when we use an enormous instrumentarium of both machinery and mathematical interpretation… which in itself may well be interpreted as causing a reality very different to a normal waking state. Are there contradictions in waking reality besides on a subatomic level?
This would hold water only if “our mind and the perception-conception mechanisms of consciousness” was not itself subject to what we know of causes and effects. The cause-effect paradigm does not merely exist within consciousness, as general language does, but grants us the power of altering, creating and terminating consciousness.
Of course it is empirically undisputable what you say - as I cannot fire a bullet into my brain and say to you: “see, now my perception-conception mechanisms of consciousness doesn’t work anymore!” But since that is the only hard argument for categorizing cause and effect as merely a product of the imagination (to simplify your statement), the case for the objective existence of the cause-effect mechanism, such as the whole of human technology, by far outweighs that which can be presented as evidence for its arbitrary-subjective nature.
I don’t know what you mean by technology here. What do you have in mind? In any case, people can already get access to the reality beyond what is limited to the five senses… and I have named some of the ways that happens. Technology is not even needed. Multi and extra sensory perception is part of our heritage and our birthright.
To begin with it would appear our perceptions of separateness are actual [physical] rather than purely of mind, so to take the perception beyond that emancipates us from it?
Tis only a choice once we know what the choices are.
Three Times Great & Calrid
Caldrid I hope your reply and my answer to that is contained in the resolution to this… below and below in my response to TTG…
We may not be able to derive a CH via math, which makes sense because math is concerned with limits [which are the opposite] as metaphors not unlimitedness as an ‘actual’ metaphor.
Must all things come to an end? If they did, then did history never happen? These and a whole plethora of paradoxes arise without a continuum. Equally reality must be infinite and the shape of that is a continuum in a moment.
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Unless we can prove to ourselves that we are infinite then it is not an assumption. Unless we can determine what divides us from the ‘outside’ there is no inner/outer? This is why I ask if there is a subject or rather a world, the subject then is a perspective within that world ~ as if we are all a load of points on a piece of paper.
I agree of course that subjectivity is a good means to argument, yet it can equally detract from one. One could deny any argument by it, but here I was simply attempting to make a reasonable argument against the prime mover/original cause, and to ask if the philosophical space we call reality can be contained in anything. That same space exists even if only you the subject exists and some part of your mind is writing this down for another part to read lols.
Nicely put. You see I having not been particularly schooled in this way tends to think only of ‘reality’ where the subject is irrelevant [as like the self is in Buddhist thinking]. I think reality has to be of its own self defining logic e.g. it exists in a ‘space’, is/isn’t contained, is infinite and expresses as limited etc, and so we draw the reality map. I feel as we do that we define the philosophical space and I don’t consider our minds to be anything other than an instrument rather than the thing of that space [the subject as sum of all existence etc].
Why cant the subject know the object? *We have >object, qualia/subject, archetype, where’s the line? What divides one element form the next and are they not all interchangeable? I understand there can be misinformation e.g. as with an optical illusion, yet this occurs due the lack of efficiency in the instrumentation of sight, then equally frequencies etc are converted to information which is then described within the mind as we think about it. If we record info magnetically on a tape [even if that is not info as such because info only occurs in the mind and otherwise does not exist] we can then play back that recording perfectly each time, why then can the brain not do a similar thing. …or am I missing the point of subjectivity here? I still don’t know what the subject is lols.
*all forms of energy are interchangeable as are all forms of qualia, then both energy and qualia may transform one another, thus the collection = world!
We all agree there are 7 basic colours, no one thinks there are more unless we add infrared and ultraviolet etc, I do believe that unless the human machine is broken or deficient it will read reality in exactly the same way as any machine be it human or camera. You take a photo of a still image over and over and get the exact same results, so why not open ones eye and get the same results? Please excuse as I am not trying to be unnecessarily pedantic, but I don’t wish to be left with no way to describe reality unless there is no way for sure ~ hence I must go over seemingly simplistic things.
For more complex creatures yes, but what of the most mundane insects which have no capacity of such reflection? Do we change it or read it? I would say that sometimes we change the info and other times we simply watch it flow past in our minds eye as if watching a film.
I would say that each entity is experiencing the same reality [not always consciously] and reading it according to its instrumentation. Some are less efficient at doing that and in differing ways [dogs with smells and vision and humans in the opposite way], they all get some level of reality in different resolutions. What is interpreted is I agree of the subject [even if there isn’t a subject], yet an interpretation is a process, perhaps one that can be and is inverted thence being a communication. This can be a communication within the eye of the beholder or between two or more entities, you are reading this and not necessarily misinterpreting it thus the process of interpretation is being achieved correctly.
This is our shared world, and it seams to me that if you follow an entire set of processes and transformations from the outside to the inside and back again, there are no breaks, the whole things is a multiple circuit. The subject then, occurs where part of that circuit is changed and not put back out again ~ becomes unique in contrast to the reality on/of/in the circuit, mostly we try not to do this to often [especially with animals as they rely on nature more] but is essentially the workings of the imagination as opposed to perception. Even then I am unsure if we can say the subject exists, more that some transformations are circular [perceptive per the actual] and some not directly so [they have been changed].
Can we describe a reality ~ or ‘the’ reality as a map of possible e.g. must be infinite or there is something else remaining beyond what we presume it to be, has expression because we are that even if we are only subjects, etc, etc. like geometry can be described by math, reality can also be described. Am I a Platonist perhaps?
I think we can deal with your last paragraph in the above. I am struggling with an inside and outside seeing only the outside and only the inside by perspective where both are the same world.
