Something Instead of Nothing

[Meno_]

Something occurred re. even before trying to edit the above, that this lengthy explanation is merely trying to refresh and nothing else other than going through inferencial or inferrable patterns of thought. that is why seeking seeking out the bedrock of the motherload here.

Bishop Berekely was asked why he could not walk through a wall of matter which could not exist, no matter, what is angled here is the period of doubt commencing the coming of science, having very reducible concerns such as the basis of identity.

That is, identification. It'slef is sitting on a contradictory premise, therefore introducing contradiction itself as a contradictory premise.


Negation therefore , and nothingness is a predictably false and contradictory logical system , and this makes the problem so simple yet so extremely complex as to boggle the mind.


Therefore, Descartes must have felt the contradiction in asserting identity within conscious thought.


ref: The Logic of Appearance: Dennett, Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis
Jasper Feyaerts and Stijn Vanheule

[surreptitious75]

My own interest here revolves around two particular contexts :

I ] how what we believe impacts our capacity to do the right thing on this side of the grave
2 ] how what we believe shapes our frame of mind regarding I on the other side of the grave

It is just that here it is often difficult to grasp with any precision where human philosophy ends and human psychology begins

I think the real problem here is attempting to find very specific and definitive answers to these profound questions
It therefore matters less what answers one finds for themselves and more that one does not treat them as absolute

[iambiguous]

Maybe the formally defined relation ship between philosophy and psychology would be a better starting point.

And then [perhaps] a "formally defined relationship" between this and something analogous to, say, Platonic forms. And then a formally defined relationship between that and God. And then a formally defined relationship between God and Existence itself.

Nope, "formally defined relationships" are actually the opposite of where I'd like this to go. Instead, I want the definitions here to be connected to the lives that we actually live from day to day.

Human psychology is a "spin-off" embedded in the evolution of life on earth. And who knows what the "spin-offs" further down the evolutionary path might be.

Philosophical existentialism particulates from reduction, of phenomenon, the psychological automaton or equivalence here is regression into broader generalization, or, participation into larger and larger bounded associations of what is understood to belong categorically.

For me the philosophy of existentialism revolves around the assumption that "existence precedes essense". We exist in an already formed "somethingness". And "I" then becomes embedded in the actual lived choices that we make. With nothing essential to fall back on. And it is here that folks like me speculate about "I" as the embodiment of an "existential contraption".

Unless of course there is an essential reality --- God or a wholly determined universe. Or an ontological understanding of existence within reach of the human brain/mind.

But, in my view, you don't/won't go there. Instead, you go here:

At the reduced epoche the undifferentiated or the more transcendental level, symbolism is more literal , logical and determined. The same with the more psychologic. notionless understandable interpretion in terms of more abstract representation, where abstraction can be visualized in its aesthetic sense.

And on and on in the same vein.

I won't ask [again] what on earth any of this this means "pertaining to the lives that we live" because I'm not even entirely certain at this point if you are not just being ironic.

At the reduced epoche the undifferentiated or the more transcendental level, symbolism is more literal , logical and determined. The same with the more psychologic. notionless understandable interpretion in terms of more abstract representation, where abstraction can be visualized in its aesthetic sense.

Note to others:

What do you imagine he might be suggesting here --- by way of grappling with the lives that you live?

I'm not arguing that he is wrong, only that, right or wrong, it is far beyond my capacity to fit into the life that I live.

Just stopping here, to point to the idea that positivists would deny Your claim toward the identity, to solve problems in the existence of 'i' , since the phenomenon , Yours and mine are reducible to the larger, more communal you and I, inasmuch as our Being, is more similar then different from each other.

I grasp this in the sense that, yes, in many profound ways, the continuities embedded in our genetic codes and in the memes that we share historically and culturally out in this particular world, would seem to argue for considerable less conflict in the world. But there it is -- endless confrontation regarding any number of conflicting goods. How to explain this? Well, everyone here knows the components of my own philosophical narrative. All I can do is to grapple with the components of their own "out in the world" that we live in.

Nothingness is assumed to subsist in the lowest realms of cognition, and travel back through reasonable reflection, through re - experience, unavailable, except through psychic break through artificial means, such as psychedelics, which break adopted means of recognition, and through reformulations of adopted patterns.

Nothingness is nothing~but such a state of Being.

Nothing at all exists as one possibility out of which our own particular somethingness..."emerged"? All that other stuff are merely the words that we have invented in order to provide something in the way of an explanation.

But until these words are "illustrated" by way of connecting them to the behaviors that we choose "existentially", they are ever up on the scholastic skyhooks to folks like me.

But, again, sure, maybe that is as far as we will ever be able to go.

Autonomously or not.

[Meno_]

Autonomously or not?

Nominally this parting shot returns into the contradictory nature of the reduced state of mind and modus operans.

That analysis in this mode, failed in most practical purposes, is history by now, however, it is through this recognition. that the newer forms of transcendental awareness became feasable.

That the process of analysis can not totally stop because its relationship to each other, it can not become a primary focus: as a choice between this, OR that.

The existential primary cognition being before its realization can not operate in its self as subsisting In Its Self, its own Being, exclusive Cogito Ergo Sum, because of this existence shown to be not to BE essentially a contradictory relation with its Essence.
The essence and the Existence of Being was originally were appreciated as an Ex- Deus process between God and Man.

ANd god, this assumption can not BE negated by an assumltive adoption of the idea that ' god is dead.

The proposition " god is dead' is tantamount to negating god, as a Nothingness, his being negated, contradicted, as if such nothingness disqualified his being as an existent.

You may interject this by the assumption that the above is too constructive, and less relevant.

Here again the thought has to be again has to be mentioned again, that here again a return ( and it seems again an eternal endeavor) that an absolute basis is sought, to reinforce the idea You are asking for: what is the primary contradiction that the reductive reasoning appears to rest on.?

The logic of contradiction subsists in am adoption of 'if This, then not That'

This is exclusive of That, where the idea that This can include That as exclusive and bounded groups, start on the wrong end.

The inclusive logic of a continuum where boundaries actually can evolve to be inductive / reductive in partial segments , processing from unity toward separation , dos not occur largely until mathematical demonstration by Leibnitz. The logic mathematics pre-empty, any formal argument that a mathematical preference could have founded logic.

In fact, the idea that logic and mathematics can be proposes in an absolute sense as either/or itself begs the question.

At this point to argue about how to bring all this down to earth, is not possibly, at the level of something or nothing ; as absolute choices, since at this minimal level has not been transcended, meaning too large spaces Existed between the attempted jumps, and this is now a-propo in our attempt for Existential Jumps.

In fact the jumps appear as drastic at this level and the abyss to deep and we might as well stay put, where we are.

The gradual passage of smaller and smaller , diminished differences are new relatively speaking, of Leibnitz can be considered relatively new: as a modern philosopher.

After all , thousands of years of ancient and classical philosophy, dwarfs the few hundred years of modern thought. And that means, ancient and modern thought are necessarily related, and the adaptation of modern existence needs functional derivatives in terms of both: both kinds of logic in terms a new evolution of them , synthetically, as Hegel, Kant and Marx would have it.

Again how does that relate to the ideas we present mostly in the spheres of the 'i' of the individual caught between am exclusively trapped reality and unreality, between Being and Nothingness?

We have to travel through a shortcut time, where the shortcuts are increasingly codified into more and more inclusive signs, signs upon which and with which modern thought has to deal with.

In fact the whole idea of a derived logic umderstood through more and more diminished particular boundaries push the argument toward less and less particular boundaries, psychology ally regressing the idea of the relevance of the existential notion of the phenomenological reduction.

Imbigious, its not that You have to understand the meanings behind such modern terms as 'alienation' and 'existential jump' . hi then You too, get trapped in an unending loop of what possible answers imply without their derivation.

We as thinkers could not have possibly gotten here, wirhout the development of our mind within larger and larger separation of parts of our mind within a simoltenious participation of others, and it took 2000 some years to find the principle of contradiction. missed the point that the Universal identification was not an assumed basis of.our existence.

Contradiction is the basis of denying circularly individually appearing undesirable traits to another, and it is this defense that uses contradictory arguments to one's advantage.

However a realization of this mode of argument of not self defeating, even self deluding , shows the unwanted even unearned utility for such defense.

Defensiveness is below the realized treshold of a very negative such as that Rousseau rejected, which presumed man as a noble and progressively evolved creation, hiding the fact that without this presumption, we will envision man merely an animal , into which we are condemned to again return . formally and decisively.

It is a.choice between heaven and he'll, but in a scheme with a dead god, we have only ourselves to blame.

This has probably happened eternally, choosing to return over and over.again, with the usual promises to god , that this time, we have really learned, and this time , we will over come the usual mechanics to karmic mechanisms to enable a jump to a totally new Enlightement, bereft of the cruel eternal struggle to leave an infinitely long karmic struggle, which if it were to ever even begin to take off, may benedit merely a civilization very far in the vast future.

Who really can learn the severe and painful lessons of history to be condemned to ever new and most likely failed trials?

Denial should be rejected, as Kant may have and really did point out, and the only thing to fear with identifying us with the ideal God we set up early on, as us included in His realm , is to believe that He will t

[iambiguous]

My own interest here revolves around two particular contexts :

I ] how what we believe impacts our capacity to do the right thing on this side of the grave
2 ] how what we believe shapes our frame of mind regarding I on the other side of the grave

It is just that here it is often difficult to grasp with any precision where human philosophy ends and human psychology begins

I think the real problem here is attempting to find very specific and definitive answers to these profound questions
It therefore matters less what answers one finds for themselves and more that one does not treat them as absolute

I agree. But what on earth does that have to do with, among other things, the real world?

Out there any number of objectivists have concocted any number of moral and political philosophies in order to sustain the psychological comfort and consolation that comes with believing in something that is shared by those scrambling to be thought of as "one of us".

It's just that many stick with God here because it provides a soothing outcome for "I" on both sides of the grave.

For them nothing matters more than sustaining the "very specific and definitive answers" embedded in a God, the God, my God. And then sans the immortality and salvation, the secular renditions.

In fact, I've always assumed this is why I get generally hostile reactions from the objectivists in venues such as this one. If my frame of mind is more reasonable than theirs, then their "I" in turn may well become all that much more fractured and fragmented.

The irony then being that what I go in search of is a way to convince myself that their own frame of mind is more reasonable than mine.

After all, for the bulk of my life, I was one of them!

[iambiguous]

Autonomously or not?

Nominally this parting shot returns into the contradictory nature of the reduced state of mind and modus operans.

That analysis in this mode, failed in most practical purposes, is history by now, however, it is through this recognition. that the newer forms of transcendental awareness became feasable.

That the process of analysis can not totally stop because its relationship to each other, it can not become a primary focus: as a choice between this, OR that.

The existential primary cognition being before its realization can not operate in its self as subsisting In Its Self, its own Being, exclusive Cogito Ergo Sum, because of this existence shown to be not to BE essentially a contradictory relation with its Essence.
The essence and the Existence of Being was originally were appreciated as an Ex- Deus process between God and Man.

ANd god, this assumption can not BE negated by an assumltive adoption of the idea that ' god is dead.

The proposition " god is dead' is tantamount to negating god, as a Nothingness, his being negated, contradicted, as if such nothingness disqualified his being as an existent.

This is just more "intellectual gibberish" to me.

On the other hand, I am more than willing to concede that I am the problem here.

Indeed, this may well be an extraordinary insight into precisely the relationships that I wish most to grapple with.

And that, only when I've come to finally grasp the technical precision of these observations, is there any hope at all of my coming to grips [existentially] with dasein, conflicting goods and political economy "out in the world" that I live in. Let alone a technically exacting understanding of such things as "something instead of nothing" or the role that "autonomy" plays in human interactions.

[Meno_]

Autonomously or not?

Nominally this parting shot returns into the contradictory nature of the reduced state of mind and modus operans.

That analysis in this mode, failed in most practical purposes, is history by now, however, it is through this recognition. that the newer forms of transcendental awareness became feasable.

That the process of analysis can not totally stop because its relationship to each other, it can not become a primary focus: as a choice between this, OR that.

The existential primary cognition being before its realization can not operate in its self as subsisting In Its Self, its own Being, exclusive Cogito Ergo Sum, because of this existence shown to be not to BE essentially a contradictory relation with its Essence.
The essence and the Existence of Being originally were appreciated as an Ex- Deus process between God and Man.

ANd god, this assumption can not BE negated by an assumption of adoption of the idea that ' god is dead.

The proposition " god is dead' is tantamount to negating god, as a Nothingness, his being negated, contradicted, as if such nothingness disqualified his being as an existent.

This is just more "intellectual gibberish" to me.

On the other hand, I am more than willing to concede that I am the problem here.

Indeed, this may well be an extraordinary insight into precisely the relationships that I wish most to grapple with.

And that, only when I've come to finally grasp the technical precision of these observations, is there any hope at all of my coming to grips [existentially] with dasein, conflicting goods and political economy "out in the world" that I live in. Let alone a technically exacting understanding of such things as "something instead of nothing" or the role that "autonomy" plays in human interactions.

You being the primary object here is of no matter, for I see Your predicament as an important universal theme, shared by a vast human membership, not as erudite, and being able to bring into focus the pain and suffering of the vastly unenlightened and misinformed, whose existential angst caused many of them to short their.lives either by an outside source like disease, war and crime, OR by their very reduced sense of losing their appreciation for the meaning of their very Being & Existence , But, as jump off point, calibrated to change carefully and resulting the least amount of damage, such can be considered as useful.

At the same time, Your & my problem are of philosophical importance, whereby our Being becomes a focus that can be retraced with all manners of existential crisis, and advantaged by much more underlying relevance to those very same who do not experience, except through prima facie appearances of things that may revert to their illconceived understanding.

That is what differentiates that, which in fact has more affinity and resemblance with them, which not have much chance for formulations.



Children especially are to be sheltered from the ravages that such denial and contradictory imposition. of said messages.

This is through this modus operans that ideological differences may and do manifest, and that idea that socialism versus free enterprise, vs. Controlled economy can become.

That a nuke war may commence, when the commies realise that severe commercial competition result in less satisfaction for guaranteed constitutional rights, than before such substantial 'social ' considerations become credible, then previously, , when intolerable political tensions commenced.

Existence prior to essence defeats all arguments for the notion that the nothingness of constitutional ideals, will be easily trumped by the realities of more social synthesis of ideas.

Thereforer, again, its not an either nothing or something argument but an either something and nothing discussion.

It is so logically clear, yet try to bring it down to a globally informed social network, where hyper velocity mega equipped sources of Total universal destruction may leave but a few, the most privileged persons bunkered down to social dreams hoping to survive in a new world order.

The swan song of the era of Soviet/U.S. existential REALITY prior to McChartyism was ' better red then dead' lest we forget that supposed lesson of history, only 50 years of an eye-blink ago

[iambiguous]

Ian Robinson, Philosophy Now magazine

Compare the Old Testament story of the burning bush, and Yahweh’s answer to Moses’ question of who He is: “I am what I am.” This has been treated as a deep and meaningful response. Why don’t we grant the same latitude to the universe and treat ‘It is what it is’ as an equally deep and meaningful response to the question of why there is something? Perhaps existence is a brute fact – the universe just is, and that’s explanation enough.

This however is basically what we are "stuck with". And some are clearly able to just shrug and move on better than others. After all, once you say "it is what it is" regarding Existence itself, how far is that from saying "it is what it is" to everything else?

In other words, how does one configure the answer to the biggest question of all into the answers to all the other questions? The "brute facticity" of existence may well be the default explanation. But don't expect some of us not to be exasperated about it.

Indeed, what kind of explanation could there possibly be? To explain a thing’s existence is to show what other thing or things cause it to be. But how can we explain the existence of the totality of things? By definition, there are no further things in terms of which the totality of things can be explained. To ask for an answer when none is possible seems futile.

But it is the seeming futility of it all that keeps the exasperation churning.

...my own route out of the fly bottle is on the wings of probability. Although there is only one possible ‘nothing’, there are an infinite number of possible ‘somethings’. Thus the initial probability of there being nothing rather than something is one divided by infinity, which is next to nothing, a virtual zero. Conversely, the probability of there being something is as close to one as you can get. So why is there something rather than nothing? Because it always was an odds-on certainty.

A world of words. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if turns out to be a world of words all the way down. Unless, along the way, we actually do bump into God.

But what are the odds that He turns out to be yours?

[Meno_]

As hypo and hyper reality extend, to enclose the sensible, the what is=what is may transform that problem.

At that point the synthetic problem of changing what is to what should be, may no longer serve as a measurable contradiction between opposites, simulated as such, and/or familiar to similar.

Given the possibility that nature will up end human intentionality, the equation of the above quote may itself loose relevance.

Then interpretation itself may deemphasize personhood~identify by the variance between situation and context, by ever more largely spaced intervals.

If not, then life itself will cease to operate except by way of exclusive sophistry and propaganda.

AI will then would be neutralized as of consisting of untrusted intent, and a newer and more profound dark ages will commence.

Therefore, this evolutionary trait, of squeezing reality between hyper and hyporeality must be compensated by other means, albeit synthetic.
In this day and age, deceptive misrepresentation can only be supported within and without limited
spatial-temporal descriptipn.

AI needs to compensate by reversely engineered processes, to change its contradictory functions, to assimulate,
reductive programs.

That is the problem with Trumpism, its REDUCTIVE without a limit or a compensatory program.

It does not recognise it's logical antithesis and tries to de- differentiate into a repressive ambiguity, leaving political dynamics in tact, hoping that the necessary reactions can be later manipulated.

We are heading incredibly toward larger perimeters of conflict.

It is then the larger concern of existential leaps, that socially consciousness will have to be concerned with.

Arminius, if he was still around would need to look at the burst of bubbles.


ref: Peter Sloterdijk

[Meno_]

Ian Robinson, Philosophy Now magazine

Compare the Old Testament story of the burning bush, and Yahweh’s answer to Moses’ question of who He is: “I am what I am.” This has been treated as a deep and meaningful response. Why don’t we grant the same latitude to the universe and treat ‘It is what it is’ as an equally deep and meaningful response to the question of why there is something? Perhaps existence is a brute fact – the universe just is, and that’s explanation enough.

This however is basically what we are "stuck with". And some are clearly able to just shrug and move on better than others. After all, once you say "it is what it is" regarding Existence itself, how far is that from saying "it is what it is" to everything else?

In other words, how does one configure the answer to the biggest question of all into the answers to all the other questions? The "brute facticity" of existence may well be the default explanation. But don't expect some of us not to be exasperated about it.

Indeed, what kind of explanation could there possibly be? To explain a thing’s existence is to show what other thing or things cause it to be. But how can we explain the existence of the totality of things? By definition, there are no further things in terms of which the totality of things can be explained. To ask for an answer when none is possible seems futile.

But it is the seeming futility of it all that keeps the exasperation churning.

...my own route out of the fly bottle is on the wings of probability. Although there is only one possible ‘nothing’, there are an infinite number of possible ‘somethings’. Thus the initial probability of there being nothing rather than something is one divided by infinity, which is next to nothing, a virtual zero. Conversely, the probability of there being something is as close to one as you can get. So why is there something rather than nothing? Because it always was an odds-on certainty.

A world of words. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if turns out to be a world of words all the way down. Unless, along the way, we actually do bump into God.

But what are the odds that He turns out to be yours?

True Iambiguous, words yes but not merely words but signs of consciously tied in connection to the primal ideas manifested by and through words, which will be re-ceaged artificially, so that human beings will not go instinct as human beings by the demise of their conscious awareness of their existence as human beings. Otherwise the regression/reduction will not be capable to evoke an epoche, and all will be lost, even the beginning where the word began.

[iambiguous]

You being the primary object here is of no matter, for I see Your predicament as an important universal theme, shared by a vast human membership...

Quite the contrary. I have come upon very few people who even understand my predicament -- let alone embody it.

Instead, the preponderance of human beings seem content not to dwell on these things -- these relationships -- at all. Or, when they do, they leave it up to God or to one or another religious/secular denomination to show them the way. And on both sides of the abyss.

Most people have either been indoctrinated by others or have created their own psychologically soothing narrative. An objectivist frame of mind allowing them to make that crucial distinction between true and false, right and wrong, good and bad.

And then saved or damned.

Some will simply go farther [on threads like this one] and convince themelves that even with regard to the really big questions -- something instead of nothing, autonomy instead of determinism -- they have thought through to the most likely explanations.

And I applaud them for being among those very few who will at least make an attempt at understanding these things beyond the lowest common demoninator mentality of the vast majority of those around us.

I just can't share their level of enthusiasm for having dug down the farthest, for having come up with answers they are actually able to convince themselves are the most reasonable of all.

In fact, any number of existentialists and nihilists seem to convey that self-same attachment to a dichotomy that seeks to convey thoughts and feelings and behaviors as either authentic or inauthentic.

As though something like this can actually be known!

Or can it actually be known?

I always come back to that gap between "I" and "all there is". This is basically the source for my own grim assessment. I don't know, I won't know, I can't know...what exactly?

And for reasons that are, in turn, beyond my capacity to understand, this has become important for me in a way that is not at all important to most others. It's just all embedded like everything else in "what is".

[surreptitious75]

Out there any number of objectivists have concocted any number of moral and political philosophies in order to sustain the psychological
comfort and consolation that comes with believing in something that is shared by those scrambling to be thought of as one of us

It is just that many stick with God here because it provides a soothing outcome for I on both sides of the grave

For them nothing matters more than sustaining the very specific and definitive answers embedded in a God the God my God
And then sans the immortality and salvation the secular renditions

In fact I have always assumed this is why I get generally hostile reactions from the objectivists in venues such as this one
If my frame of mind is more reasonable than theirs then their I in turn may well become all that much more fractured and fragmented

The irony then being that what I go in search of is a way to convince myself that their own frame of mind is more reasonable than mine

After all for the bulk of my life I was one of them !

Everyones particular God no doubt provides them with emotional comfort but not sharing their belief is not the same as falsifying it however
Everyone is free to seek what ever gives them the most philosophical / psychological satisfaction but no one really knows what the answer is

They all think that their world view is right otherwise they would not be holding it in the first place
But it is logically impossible for everyone to be right where there are fundamentally opposing views

Everyone can very easily convince themselves that they are more reasonable than anyone else even where certainty cannot be demonstrated
This is why I avoid certainty myself in such matters as there is always the possibility that I could actually be wrong [ but without knowing it ]

Also absolute certainty regarding metaphysical / unfalsifiable questions is intellectually very dogmatic
I have zero desire to seek out definitive answers when I have no idea how definitive they actually are

[iambiguous]

Everyones particular God no doubt provides them with emotional comfort but not sharing their belief is not the same as falsifying it however

I couldn't agree more. But, in turn, their own claims about their own beliefs are not the same thing as verifying it.

For example, on another thread someone posted this:

I was checking out Wikipedia's definition of gnosticism. The idea that matter is evil turned me off. I am an Earth creature, a natural being. I believe the evolution of DNA constructions is the handiwork of a creative God. We evolve in knowing.

Now, how on earth would I go about falsifying it? On the other hand, and far more crucially from my point of view, how does this poster go about verifying it?

Look, it would seem that "for all practical purposes" the bottom line has to be this: the extent to which we are in fact able to demonstrate that what we do believe [about God or existence or anything else] is something that we can demonstrate.

Sure, we can argue endlessly over the validity of the demonstration being made, but it is something either able to go beyond what we simply believe "in our head" or or it is not.

It's just that with God, demonstrating what we believe is true could not possibly involve higher stakes. Why? Because with God we have that crucial transcending font on this side of the grave to differentiate right from wrong; and, on the other side, that crucial transcending font for establishing both immortality and salvation.

Everyone is free to seek what ever gives them the most philosophical / psychological satisfaction but no one really knows what the answer is

Maybe. Maybe not. In a wholly determined universe, this psychological "freedom" is somehow made compatible with metaphysical determinism. Unlike mindless matter, we choose our behaviors. But like mindless matter the choices that we make are ever only in sync with whatever brought into existence existence itself.

They all think that their world view is right otherwise they would not be holding it in the first place
But it is logically impossible for everyone to be right where there are fundamentally opposing views

Here though I make the distinction between a world view derived from "I" as an existential contraption, and "I" derived from the optimal or the only rational understanding of human interactions.

"I" in the is/ought world is endlessly confronting conflicting goods out in a particular world where [ultimately] what counts is who has the political power to enforce a particular set of behaviors.

In what I presume to be a No God world.

Everyone can very easily convince themselves that they are more reasonable than anyone else even where certainty cannot be demonstrated
This is why I avoid certainty myself in such matters as there is always the possibility that I could actually be wrong [ but without knowing it

Me too. I just have no way in which to demonstrate that even this is that which all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to share.

Instead, my "I" here remains as fractured and fragmented as ever. But how to explain this to someone able to convince themselves that their own "I" is anything but. They have the decided advantage of sustaining a psychological sense of being the "real me" able to properly discern "the right thing to do".

So, the extent to which they begin to think like me is the extent to which they become more and more fractured and fragmented themselves. And all I can do is make the attempt to reconfigure my own sense of identity such that I might actually become less and less fractured and fragmented in turn.

Also absolute certainty regarding metaphysical / unfalsifiable questions is intellectually very dogmatic
I have zero desire to seek out definitive answers when I have no idea how definitive they actually are

I'm basically in this boat myself. Only I wouldn't argue that I have zero desire to get out of it. All I can do is to remind myself that I am no less an existential contraption. I have no way in which to grasp with any degree of certainty how new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge, might reconfigure "I" yet again.

The "definitive answers" either are or are not out there. It's the not knowing which gnaws on me the most. And the not knowing whether I am even able to not not know.

Instead, I can only point out that in the interim I am able to sink down into distractions -- music, film, food, imagination -- that bring me considerable pleasure, satisfaction and fulfillment.

[Meno_]

You being the primary object here is of no matter, for I see Your predicament as an important universal theme, shared by a vast human membership...

Quite the contrary. I have come upon very few people who even understand my predicament -- let alone embody it.

Instead, the preponderance of human beings seem content not to dwell on these things -- these relationships -- at all. Or, when they do, they leave it up to God or to one or another religious/secular denomination to show them the way. And on both sides of the abyss.

Most people have either been indoctrinated by others or have created their own psychologically soothing narrative. An objectivist frame of mind allowing them to make that crucial distinction between true and false, right and wrong, good and bad.

And then saved or damned.

Some will simply go farther [on threads like this one] and convince themelves that even with regard to the really big questions -- something instead of nothing, autonomy instead of determinism -- they have thought through to the most likely explanations.

And I applaud them for being among those very few who will at least make an attempt at understanding these things beyond the lowest common demoninator mentality of the vast majority of those around us.

I just can't share their level of enthusiasm for having dug down the farthest, for having come up with answers they are actually able to convince themselves are the most reasonable of all.

In fact, any number of existentialists and nihilists seem to convey that self-same attachment to a dichotomy that seeks to convey thoughts and feelings and behaviors as either authentic or inauthentic.

As though something like this can actually be known!

Or can it actually be known?

I always come back to that gap between "I" and "all there is". This is basically the source for my own grim assessment. I don't know, I won't know, I can't know...what exactly?

And for reasons that are, in turn, beyond my capacity to understand, this has become important for me in a way that is not at all important to most others. It's just all embedded like everything else in "what is".

The mere use of the word 'they-, who , implies those, who can not understand Your predicament. This feels as. something important here, that we might have overlooked , and may help to clarify .

The other day I noted am abstraction, and it resembles the multitude of 'others' who inhabit, will inhabit, and did inhabit this universe.

Then thought about all the different worlds who are concurrently residing , against a backdrop of consciousness, and finally , about one solitary man, such that is trying to fathom a singular idea.

And then somehow pulled myself out of this meta meditation. since it leads to the absurd contradiction that Descartes must have felt himself to be, thinking and existing, a move of desperation , which can lead only to an evil genius, creating today's simulated world.

Simulation is on its way big time, silently , like a thief in the night coming through the back door, we completely taken by surprise.

That the whole of what we seem I'm/sub conscious consists of the formal elements we talked about earlier, is but the intellectual contraption which fascinates us, and gaining substance, as our future is slowly unflowong as the manifestation of our past.

This simulation is a necessary substantial requirement that nature fills in to compensate those of us, who do not have an nominal idea of our, - Your, mine, and some others who do.

We are fragmented individually , because we can not communicate our Being with the existence of others.

But this may be a misnomer, because we do have a very unique language here, that of philosophical discourse, and we are able to use this language, and this language , as rarefied as it is, is becoming more and more, toward subliminal understanding, creates a divide with those vastly more numerous who so not care to understand, they experience the world in a way that doesent show any interest or concern with it, they simply exist as acting out behaviorally.

I believe I get a lot of brotherhood in the company of the former, regardless of the present state of our mind, and in my mind, and theirs, thought through consciousness unifies temporal differences and connects former and informal elements.

Their difference caused the differentially to evolve and make conscious and objective this language , so that we can communicate in this different language.

By the way we think about our fragmentation, we are actually using the language of conscious participation in filling the somethingness with nothing while using that nothing to fill something tremendous. The formal informal and the informal formal integrate the vast abyss to become our springboard , from which we can leap into faith.

It must work, because it has worked , and even if it has lost credibility for moat people, some holdouts appreciate this as nature's absolute guarantee for the continuum ad infinity that life, particularly human life consists of.


This is a striking example of how the dilemma is formulated:-------------------

always come back to that gap between "I" and "all there is". ------------------------------------

The gap in other words is a cut off part, a disassociated conscious manifestation that results in the cross between two logical systems. Deduction/reduction and induction.
The assumption of a unity and wholeness underlies all thinking, for we can cut out Platonisn as a modus operans, try not to think in a manner of modeling, hence becoming a sub conscious part of our psyche, but the sub conscious works even when we are not aware of it.

The inductive method works backward , it particularises factual material using the most recently acquired knowledge, and the further it descends in memory, the less substantially material is codified in terms of bounded signification, the gaps increasing more as we get to the least substantial.

The language if the ancients signified thoughts much more literally, the doubtful ideas negated logic into flat denial, contradicting everything not belonging in the primary idea, that absolutely including it's self and excluding everything else.

So for instance, a 'table" was a table, and not an early symbol to manifest the top surface of a written statement, or a list of 'tabled' signs.

Now thinking backward, we assume what the ancients may have included in these and other type of ideas, and lets see how this went down.

I don't know if this study into Ancient Greek etymology is something to concern with within the context of this forum, and although I am far from being a classical scholar, but it is interesting to note that Nietzsche was primarily concerned and involved in this.

And coincidentally, his sense of nothingness is directly involved with the nothingness in nihilization.

What goes down in years of study of etymology, leads us philosophetdcto assume the many many connections necessary to differentiate multitude of meanings, into the capitulated idea of the relevance of nihilism into 20th century existentialism.

The modern existentialist made such assumptions, on bases of long and involved studies into the theory of meaning, most formidable of Greek and Roman derivatives.

While we can disclaim the formal/informal , various interpretations of the classics, they do firm a dependence of the modern on the classic. We may be able to consciously cut off the deivetive from the derived, but our minds work on lower conscious levels.

[Meno_]

Forgive the above written very late at night without glasses lost for the moment , will edit later, time permitting, leaving tonight on a trip.

[iambiguous]

Paul P. Mealing in Philosophy Now magazine

We inhabit a universe we believe to be around fourteen billion years old. Proto-human consciousness only came into being about six million years ago, with Homo sapiens arriving on the scene only very recently – roughly 200,000 years ago. But here’s the thing: without a conscious entity to perceive the Universe, there might as well be nothing.

This is something I come back to time and again. How does one wrap their mind around the existence of a universe in which there are no conscious entities able to be aware of this existence? To note it, to discuss it, to debate it?

This would appear to be the "brute facticity of existence" on a mind-boggling scale. But only because I and others are around to note it.

Back [always] to the part that revolves less around how mindful matter came into existence and more around why.

Einstein famously said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it’s comprehensible.” Many scientists, if not most, believe that the Universe and our status within it is a freak accident. Paul Davies in his erudite book The Goldilocks Enigma calls this interpretation ‘the absurd universe’.

And this will inevitably bring some around to God. The universe only appears to be a freak accident [absurd] to those unable to grasp it from an omniscient [ontological/teleological] point of view. And what else but God is applicable here. In other words, the "Goldilocks Effect" is just another manifestation of God.

Similarly...

A number of physicists and cosmologists have further pointed out that there are constants pertaining to fundamental physical laws whose size permits complex life-forms to evolve. Even small variances in these numbers, up or down, could have made the Universe lifeless. And as the cosmologist John Barrow has pointed out, the Universe also needs to be of the mind-boggling scale we observe to allow time for complex life – meaning us – to evolve.

So, are you and I to be explained by that "freak accident" of nature? All the variables falling [almost miraculously] into place in order that "complex life" could even exist at all? But here all we have are the various leaps that both religious and non-religious folks take to conclusions ever bursting at the seams with those gnawing "unknown unknowns".

Brandon Carter coined and defined two anthropic principles on the basis of these ideas. The weak anthropic principle says that only a universe that contains observers can be observed (which is a tautology). The strong anthropic principle says that only a universe that permits observers to emerge can exist. To be self-realised, a universe requires consciousness, otherwise it’s effectively non-existent; in the same way that a lost manuscript by Shakespeare would be non-existent.

Always we come back here to matter evolving into minds evolving into matter able to bring these things to our attention in the first place.

It is what it is. Or it is only as it appears to be to minds never really able to grasp it any other way.

The absurd universe.

[Meno_]

Paul P. Mealing in Philosophy Now magazine

We inhabit a universe we believe to be around fourteen billion years old. Proto-human consciousness only came into being about six million years ago, with Homo sapiens arriving on the scene only very recently – roughly 200,000 years ago. But here’s the thing: without a conscious entity to perceive the Universe, there might as well be nothing.

This is something I come back to time and again. How does one wrap their mind around the existence of a universe in which there are no conscious entities able to be aware of this existence? To note it, to discuss it, to debate it?

This would appear to be the "brute facticity of existence" on a mind-boggling scale. But only because I and others are around to note it.

Back [always] to the part that revolves less around how mindful matter came into existence and more around why.

Einstein famously said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it’s comprehensible.” Many scientists, if not most, believe that the Universe and our status within it is a freak accident. Paul Davies in his erudite book The Goldilocks Enigma calls this interpretation ‘the absurd universe’.

And this will inevitably bring some around to God. The universe only appears to be a freak accident [absurd] to those unable to grasp it from an omniscient [ontological/teleological] point of view. And what else but God is applicable here. In other words, the "Goldilocks Effect" is just another manifestation of God.

Similarly...

A number of physicists and cosmologists have further pointed out that there are constants pertaining to fundamental physical laws whose size permits complex life-forms to evolve. Even small variances in these numbers, up or down, could have made the Universe lifeless. And as the cosmologist John Barrow has pointed out, the Universe also needs to be of the mind-boggling scale we observe to allow time for complex life – meaning us – to evolve.

So, are you and I to be explained by that "freak accident" of nature? All the variables falling [almost miraculously] into place in order that "complex life" could even exist at all? But here all we have are the various leaps that both religious and non-religious folks take to conclusions ever bursting at the seams with those gnawing "unknown unknowns".

Brandon Carter coined and defined two anthropic principles on the basis of these ideas. The weak anthropic principle says that only a universe that contains observers can be observed (which is a tautology). The strong anthropic principle says that only a universe that permits observers to emerge can exist. To be self-realised, a universe requires consciousness, otherwise it’s effectively non-existent; in the same way that a lost manuscript by Shakespeare would be non-existent.

Always we come back here to matter evolving into minds evolving into matter able to bring these things to our attention in the first place.

It is what it is. Or it is only as it appears to be to minds never really able to grasp it any other way.

The absurd universe.

Absurd or contradictory, , my choice is the latter. The absurd is so close to ridiculous, yet contradiction is merely negation. It sounds more palatable.

And if solving. contradiction doesent work, then transform it into absurdity
Which comes through beat in very hidden and absurd comic effect, to avoid real embarrassments, like Trump is prevy to and dealing with it oh so very unsuccessfully.

[iambiguous]

The mere use of the word 'they-, who , implies those, who can not understand Your predicament. This feels as. something important here, that we might have overlooked , and may help to clarify .

The other day I noted am abstraction, and it resembles the multitude of 'others' who inhabit, will inhabit, and did inhabit this universe.

Then thought about all the different worlds who are concurrently residing , against a backdrop of consciousness, and finally , about one solitary man, such that is trying to fathom a singular idea.

And then somehow pulled myself out of this meta meditation. since it leads to the absurd contradiction that Descartes must have felt himself to be, thinking and existing, a move of desperation , which can lead only to an evil genius, creating today's simulated world.

Simulation is on its way big time, silently , like a thief in the night coming through the back door, we completely taken by surprise.

That the whole of what we seem I'm/sub conscious consists of the formal elements we talked about earlier, is but the intellectual contraption which fascinates us, and gaining substance, as our future is slowly unflowong as the manifestation of our past.

This simulation is a necessary substantial requirement that nature fills in to compensate those of us, who do not have an nominal idea of our, - Your, mine, and some others who do.

We are fragmented individually , because we can not communicate our Being with the existence of others.

But this may be a misnomer, because we do have a very unique language here, that of philosophical discourse, and we are able to use this language, and this language , as rarefied as it is, is becoming more and more, toward subliminal understanding, creates a divide with those vastly more numerous who so not care to understand, they experience the world in a way that doesent show any interest or concern with it, they simply exist as acting out behaviorally.

I believe I get a lot of brotherhood in the company of the former, regardless of the present state of our mind, and in my mind, and theirs, thought through consciousness unifies temporal differences and connects former and informal elements.

Their difference caused the differentially to evolve and make conscious and objective this language , so that we can communicate in this different language.

By the way we think about our fragmentation, we are actually using the language of conscious participation in filling the somethingness with nothing while using that nothing to fill something tremendous. The formal informal and the informal formal integrate the vast abyss to become our springboard , from which we can leap into faith.

It must work, because it has worked , and even if it has lost credibility for moat people, some holdouts appreciate this as nature's absolute guarantee for the continuum ad infinity that life, particularly human life consists of.


This is a striking example of how the dilemma is formulated:-------------------

always come back to that gap between "I" and "all there is". ------------------------------------

The gap in other words is a cut off part, a disassociated conscious manifestation that results in the cross between two logical systems. Deduction/reduction and induction.
The assumption of a unity and wholeness underlies all thinking, for we can cut out Platonisn as a modus operans, try not to think in a manner of modeling, hence becoming a sub conscious part of our psyche, but the sub conscious works even when we are not aware of it.

The inductive method works backward , it particularises factual material using the most recently acquired knowledge, and the further it descends in memory, the less substantially material is codified in terms of bounded signification, the gaps increasing more as we get to the least substantial.

The language if the ancients signified thoughts much more literally, the doubtful ideas negated logic into flat denial, contradicting everything not belonging in the primary idea, that absolutely including it's self and excluding everything else.

So for instance, a 'table" was a table, and not an early symbol to manifest the top surface of a written statement, or a list of 'tabled' signs.

Now thinking backward, we assume what the ancients may have included in these and other type of ideas, and lets see how this went down.

I don't know if this study into Ancient Greek etymology is something to concern with within the context of this forum, and although I am far from being a classical scholar, but it is interesting to note that Nietzsche was primarily concerned and involved in this.

And coincidentally, his sense of nothingness is directly involved with the nothingness in nihilization.

What goes down in years of study of etymology, leads us philosophetdcto assume the many many connections necessary to differentiate multitude of meanings, into the capitulated idea of the relevance of nihilism into 20th century existentialism.

The modern existentialist made such assumptions, on bases of long and involved studies into the theory of meaning, most formidable of Greek and Roman derivatives.

While we can disclaim the formal/informal , various interpretations of the classics, they do firm a dependence of the modern on the classic. We may be able to consciously cut off the deivetive from the derived, but our minds work on lower conscious levels.

Again, I can only note that while this may well be a brilliant insight into whatever it is that you are trying to convey, my own understanding of it is such that in no real substantive way am I able to construe a connection between it and the points that I raised above.

This part in particular:

...the preponderance of human beings seem content not to dwell on these things -- these relationships -- at all. Or, when they do, they leave it up to God or to one or another religious/secular denomination to show them the way. And on both sides of the abyss.

Most people have either been indoctrinated by others or have created their own psychologically soothing narrative. An objectivist frame of mind allowing them to make that crucial distinction between true and false, right and wrong, good and bad.

And then saved or damned.

All I ask of folks, however, is that when we bring this intellectual contraption down to earth, we entangle it in a particular context which most of us are likely to be familiar with.

A context such that 1] given our own particular something and 2] assuming some measure of autonomy, we interact, precipitating particular behaviors that come into conflict.

What then is the limit [if any] of rational thought and logic?

[Meno_]

keeping vagueness in the narrative by closure of both ends. ( through tying up the gap between contradiction-nihilism) and absurdity, especially through hidden humor-Dark Victory.


In very general terms.

[Meno_]

The mere use of the word 'they-, who , implies those, who can not understand Your predicament. This feels as. something important here, that we might have overlooked , and may help to clarify .

The other day I noted am abstraction, and it resembles the multitude of 'others' who inhabit, will inhabit, and did inhabit this universe.

Then thought about all the different worlds who are concurrently residing , against a backdrop of consciousness, and finally , about one solitary man, such that is trying to fathom a singular idea.

And then somehow pulled myself out of this meta meditation. since it leads to the absurd contradiction that Descartes must have felt himself to be, thinking and existing, a move of desperation , which can lead only to an evil genius, creating today's simulated world.

Simulation is on its way big time, silently , like a thief in the night coming through the back door, we completely taken by surprise.

That the whole of what we seem I'm/sub conscious consists of the formal elements we talked about earlier, is but the intellectual contraption which fascinates us, and gaining substance, as our future is slowly unflowong as the manifestation of our past.

This simulation is a necessary substantial requirement that nature fills in to compensate those of us, who do not have an nominal idea of our, - Your, mine, and some others who do.

We are fragmented individually , because we can not communicate our Being with the existence of others.

But this may be a misnomer, because we do have a very unique language here, that of philosophical discourse, and we are able to use this language, and this language , as rarefied as it is, is becoming more and more, toward subliminal understanding, creates a divide with those vastly more numerous who so not care to understand, they experience the world in a way that doesent show any interest or concern with it, they simply exist as acting out behaviorally.

I believe I get a lot of brotherhood in the company of the former, regardless of the present state of our mind, and in my mind, and theirs, thought through consciousness unifies temporal differences and connects former and informal elements.

Their difference caused the differentially to evolve and make conscious and objective this language , so that we can communicate in this different language.

By the way we think about our fragmentation, we are actually using the language of conscious participation in filling the somethingness with nothing while using that nothing to fill something tremendous. The formal informal and the informal formal integrate the vast abyss to become our springboard , from which we can leap into faith.

It must work, because it has worked , and even if it has lost credibility for moat people, some holdouts appreciate this as nature's absolute guarantee for the continuum ad infinity that life, particularly human life consists of.


This is a striking example of how the dilemma is formulated:-------------------

always come back to that gap between "I" and "all there is". ------------------------------------

The gap in other words is a cut off part, a disassociated conscious manifestation that results in the cross between two logical systems. Deduction/reduction and induction.
The assumption of a unity and wholeness underlies all thinking, for we can cut out Platonisn as a modus operans, try not to think in a manner of modeling, hence becoming a sub conscious part of our psyche, but the sub conscious works even when we are not aware of it.

The inductive method works backward , it particularises factual material using the most recently acquired knowledge, and the further it descends in memory, the less substantially material is codified in terms of bounded signification, the gaps increasing more as we get to the least substantial.

The language if the ancients signified thoughts much more literally, the doubtful ideas negated logic into flat denial, contradicting everything not belonging in the primary idea, that absolutely including it's self and excluding everything else.

So for instance, a 'table" was a table, and not an early symbol to manifest the top surface of a written statement, or a list of 'tabled' signs.

Now thinking backward, we assume what the ancients may have included in these and other type of ideas, and lets see how this went down.

I don't know if this study into Ancient Greek etymology is something to concern with within the context of this forum, and although I am far from being a classical scholar, but it is interesting to note that Nietzsche was primarily concerned and involved in this.

And coincidentally, his sense of nothingness is directly involved with the nothingness in nihilization.

What goes down in years of study of etymology, leads us philosophetdcto assume the many many connections necessary to differentiate multitude of meanings, into the capitulated idea of the relevance of nihilism into 20th century existentialism.

The modern existentialist made such assumptions, on bases of long and involved studies into the theory of meaning, most formidable of Greek and Roman derivatives.

While we can disclaim the formal/informal , various interpretations of the classics, they do firm a dependence of the modern on the classic. We may be able to consciously cut off the deivetive from the derived, but our minds work on lower conscious levels.

Again, I can only note that while this may well be a brilliant insight into whatever it is that you are trying to convey, my own understanding of it is such that in no real substantive way am I able to construe a connection between it and the points that I raised above.

This part in particular:

...the preponderance of human beings seem content not to dwell on these things -- these relationships -- at all. Or, when they do, they leave it up to God or to one or another religious/secular denomination to show them the way. And on both sides of the abyss.

Most people have either been indoctrinated by others or have created their own psychologically soothing narrative. An objectivist frame of mind allowing them to make that crucial distinction between true and false, right and wrong, good and bad.

And then saved or damned.

All I ask of folks, however, is that when we bring this intellectual contraption down to earth, we entangle it in a particular context which most of us are likely to be familiar with.

A context such that 1] given our own particular something and 2] assuming some measure of autonomy, we interact, precipitating particular behaviors that come into conflict.

What then is the limit [if any] of rational thought and logic?

context such that 1] given our own particular something and 2] assuming some measure of autonomy, we interact, precipitating particular behaviors that come into conflict.
-----
What then is the limit [if any] of rational thought and logic?[/quote]

----
some measure of autonomy

--through some, not all measures of autonomy, there is a fine line or a grey area wherewith that limit is reached.
How? I guess by trial and error a line can be drawn, by a satisfactory consensus, at least for the time being

[Meno_]

being such consensus having no absolute basis, more often than not, such determination can be gleaned appearing as more phased in autonomically, or determined and with diminished singular effectivity.

People who may afford a singular determination, may like individuals who can overcome the abyss, at least tangentially, are usually privileged in the effort, nut are usually stymied to convince too many others to participate.

However then newer gaps and fissures develop, appearing new conteadictions at times turning absurd, and hence taxing the instinct for humor.

The other hand, sans humor, the situation can get out of hand.

[surreptitious75]

the preponderance of human beings seem content not to dwell on these things - these relationships - at all
Or when they do they leave it up to God or to one or another religious / secular denomination to show them the way

And on both sides of the abyss

Most people have either been indoctrinated by others or have created their own psychologically soothing narrative
An objectivist frame of mind allowing them to make that crucial distinction between true and false right and wrong good and bad

And then saved or damned

All I ask of folks however is that when we bring this intellectual contraption down to earth we entangle it in a particular context which
most of us are likely to be familiar with

A context such that I ] given our own particular something and 2 ] assuming some measure of autonomy we interact precipitating particular
behaviors that come into conflict [ with each other ]

What then is the limit [ if any ] of rational thought and logic ?

I dont know how true it is to say that mostly everyone will have been indoctrinated by others or have created their own psychologically soothing narrative
Some try to understand the human condition as openly as possible with as free a mind as possible with no ulterior motive other than to find the actual truth
But a psychologically soothing narrative doesnt mean it is necessarily false. I would only reject something lacking in logic or reason not emotional satisfaction
No matter how nihilistic the answer might be if it is perceived to be the truth there should be some degree of emotional satisfaction at having had it discovered

[iambiguous]

Absurd or contradictory, , my choice is the latter. The absurd is so close to ridiculous, yet contradiction is merely negation. It sounds more palatable.

The absurd does appear to be more a subjunctive reaction. On the other hand, a first person subjunctive frame of mind revolves around moods and moods are always particularly problematic. The universe seems absurd to some because there does not appear to be a way in which to capture it either rationally or viscerally. There are simply too many aspects of existence that are mind-boggling.

There it is...but then what? To me It seems equally absurd to exist and to not exist. Then for those of us more comfortable with the word "absurd", it's just a matter of how far removed things seeming absurd are from things seeming ridiculous.

Sure, "contradictory" can work too. But, to me, this denotes a frame of mind in which existence is either one thing or another. And that connotes the sort of precision that seems beyond the reach of "mere mortals".

Though no less an "existential contraption" when we go out this far on the metaphysical limb.

[iambiguous]

I dont know how true it is to say that mostly everyone will have been indoctrinated by others or have created their own psychologically soothing narrative
Some try to understand the human condition as openly as possible with as free a mind as possible with no ulterior motive other than to find the actual truth

Yes, some do. And I tried to address that here:

Identity is ever constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed over the years by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of variables---some of which we had/have no choice/control regarding. We really are "thrown" into a fortuitous smorgasbord of demographic factors at birth and then molded and manipulated as children into whatever configuration of "reality" suits the cultural [and political] institutions of our time.

On the other hand:

In my view, one crucial difference between people is the extent to which they become more or less self-conscious of this. Why? Because, obviously, to the extent that they do, they can attempt to deconstruct the past and then reconstruct the future into one of their own more autonomous making.

But then what does this really mean? That is the question that has always fascinated me the most. Once I become cognizant of how profoundly problematic my "self" is, what can "I" do about it? And what are the philosophical implications of acknolwedging that identity is, by and large, an existential contraption that is always subject to change without notice? What can we "anchor" our identity to so as to make this prefabricated...fabricated...refabricated world seem less vertiginous? And, thus, more certain.

But we will still need a context in which to explore the extent to which any individual narrative is as a result of indoctrination or as a result of acknowledging the indoctrination and then moving on to one's own more "thought out" frame of mind. Utilizing both the tools of philosophy and [where applicable] science.

And then the part that revolves around objectivism. The belief that however one has derived his or her own moral and political agenda, it is deemed to be that which all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to share.

But a psychologically soothing narrative doesnt mean it is necessarily false. I would only reject something lacking in logic or reason not emotional satisfaction

I agree. But that only takes us back to the extent to which logic and reason can be properly distinguished from emotional satisfaction. In other words, what may well be the limits of logic and reason relating to both the is/ought world and to questions as big as the ones being explored on this thread.

My point is only to suggest what appears [existentially] to be clear connection between objectivism and a soothing psychological font for "I".

No matter how nihilistic the answer might be if it is perceived to be the truth there should be some degree of emotional satisfaction at having had it discovered

Sure, if the nihilist is convinced that "here and now" her argument reflects the most reasonable set of assumptions about the "human condition", a sense of satisfaction can be had. But this nihilist sees that as just another "existential contraption".

And there is still plenty of room for dissatisfaction:

1] the hole on this side of the grave
2] oblivion on the other side of it

[Meno_]

Absurd or contradictory, , my choice is the latter. The absurd is so close to ridiculous, yet contradiction is merely negation. It sounds more palatable.

The absurd does appear to be more a subjunctive reaction. On the other hand, a first person subjunctive frame of mind revolves around moods and moods are always particularly problematic. The universe seems absurd to some because there does not appear to be a way in which to capture it either rationally or viscerally. There are simply too many aspects of existence that are mind-boggling.

There it is...but then what? To me It seems equally absurd to exist and to not exist. Then for those of us more comfortable with the word "absurd", it's just a matter of how far removed things seeming absurd are from things seeming ridiculous.

Sure, "contradictory" can work too. But, to me, this denotes a frame of mind in which existence is either one thing or another. And that connotes the sort of precision that seems beyond the reach of "mere mortals".

Though no less an "existential contraption" when we go out this far on the metaphysical limb.