Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Sy Borg]

Greta;

That is not envisioning, but abstracting. You cannot imagine it although, as mentioned, I don't think it much matters.

capabilities shaped by evolution that are more helpful for survival than understanding deeper truths.

Greta, is not abstraction born of the Imagination? What about something that is not readily apparent, something that might be envisioned?

Is not the Theory of the Big Bang, the Expanding Universe, an abstraction?

This World of Reality is bound by Absolutely Bad Knowledge, Lies, a variety of Horrors, Great Suffering.

Suffering born of Mother Nature, cause and effect, is Necessary Suffering; However Suffering born of Absolutely Bad Knowledge, Knowledge born of Illusions, is not, is Unnecessary Suffering.

The Big Bang is an abstraction, yes, but it has observational and mathematical underpinning.

Thus we have different kinds of abstractions - works of the human mind - with varying degrees of empirical and theoretical support.

"Suffering due to bad knowledge" is just part of nature too. Just as the first seeing animals perceived little more than a blur of light and dark, just as the first hearing animals would have noticed small and dull bumping sensations in their relevant organ, the fist moralising animals cannot be expected to immediately enjoy crystal clear moral vision. Rather, ours human morality remains a blunt instrument compared with the potential refinement of sensibilities of future beings.

Ironically, I suspect that these much more morally advanced and generally kinder, more decent humans of the possible future would seem overly fussy and annoying about trivial things to most people today.

Your models of reality might be true, or they might not be. Nobody knows.

I will not argue against that!

The existence anything that is not readily apparent, is not measurable as to momentum and location in Space-Time is Uncertain.

Yes that, and the fact that we are tiny beings that live between decades and a century stuck on the surface of a small rocky planet orbiting a main sequence star located halfway along the Orion Spur between the Perseus and Saggitarius arms of the Milky Way, which is part of the local group on the outskirts of the Virgo Cluster, which is somewhere within Laniakea that is within ...

capabilities shaped by evolution are more helpful for survival than understanding deeper truths.

Capabilities such as; Hate, envy, lust, murder, War, the death of innocence.

The evolution of this World of Reality, World of Illusion, is born of Knowledge having a dual quality, Absolutely Bad Knowledge mistaken to be Absolutely Good Knowledge, the Knowledge if Good and Evil, is born of Illusion.

I only see good and evil as relatives anyway. Consider the goodness and evils of feeding one's offspring by hunting and killing a terrified mammal.

Through all those broken dreams, lost innocence, pain, grief, loss, terror, agony and so forth, life continues to consume itself and that constant (and literal) feedback has resulted in ever more complex, sophisticated and morally-capable entities emerging over the last few billion years (it is understood that in the billions of years before multicellular organisms emerged that the microbial populations were still evolving and becoming ever more complex).

[Wayne92587]

Greta;

The Big Bang is an abstraction, yes, but it has observational and mathematical underpinning.

Thus we have different kinds of abstractions - works of the human mind - with varying degrees of empirical and theoretical support.

"Suffering due to bad knowledge" is just part of nature too.

Suffering due to Absolutely Bad Knowledge is not part of nature, is born of the Illusion of Reality generated in the minds of men.

Wayne wrote:

The evolution of this World of Reality, World of Illusion, is born of Knowledge having a dual quality, Absolutely Bad Knowledge mistaken to be Absolutely Good Knowledge, the Knowledge if Good and Evil, is born of Illusion.

Greta;

I only see good and evil as relatives anyway. Consider the goodness and evils of feeding one's offspring by hunting and killing a terrified mammal.

Wayne;
The feeding one's offspring by hunting and killing a terrified mammal is not Evil; this is the way of Nature.

Good and Evil are relative only in reference to the knowledge of Good and Evil; these two being the same, differing in name only as Absolute Bad Knowledge mistakenly issues forth as Absolutely Good Knowledge.

[Tamminen]

Fooloso4:

Esse est percipi is nothing more than theological faith, only your gods are not Berkeley’s.

The subject-world relationship is not a relationship of perceiving, knowing or experiencing. It is a relationship of being. There are many objects in the universe that are not objects of our consciousness or any other subject's consciousness, but their being, and the being of the whole universe, depends on the being of subjectivity and its manifestations as individual subjects. For an object to exist it need not be an object of experiencing, but there must be someone experiencing something.

The being of the subject is an on/off "phenomenon". If the subject is "off", the world is "off", and there is nothing. But if we are not materialists we understand that there is no nothingness. So the subject is always "on". But it can be anywhere any time in the universe, and in fact its being defines all times and places in the universe.

The subject is the absolute, but it is not god. It is me and you, and I do not think either of us is god. There is nothing supernatural in this.

[Fooloso4]

Tamminen:

The subject-world relationship is not a relationship of perceiving, knowing or experiencing.
The being of the subject is an on/off "phenomenon".

There are no phenomena without experience, no appearance without something appearing to someone, without something perceived or experienced by someone.

For an object to exist it need not be an object of experiencing, but there must be someone experiencing something.

If an object can exist without being an object of experience then its existence is not dependent on someone experiencing something.

Without subjects there would be no phenomenal world, but the jump from phenomena to existence, the dependence of being on the being of a subject, is nothing more than an assertion that cannot be shown to be either true or necessary.

The subject is the absolute, but it is not god.

And yet you say:

The being of the subject is causa sui (Why is there anything, 8/27)

But if we are not materialists we understand that there is no nothingness.

If we are materialists then we understand that there is no nothingness, for materialism presupposes something; but not necessarily a subject. It does not deny subjects, but rather, denies that subjects are something independent of what emerges from matter. The order is reversed: without something there can be no subjects.

[Wayne92587]

Greta;

Greta;

The Big Bang is an abstraction, yes, but it has observational and mathematical underpinning.

My perception of the Beginning has a greater observational mathematical underpinning than does the Big Bang.

[Tamminen]

There are no phenomena without experience, no appearance without something appearing to someone, without something perceived or experienced by someone.

So something can be without appearing to anyone, I agree on this. But as I said, it cannot be without the being of someone. Only the being of the subject makes it exist.

If an object can exist without being an object of experience then its existence is not dependent on someone experiencing something.

I disagree.

Without subjects there would be no phenomenal world, but the jump from phenomena to existence, the dependence of being on the being of a subject, is nothing more than an assertion that cannot be shown to be either true or necessary.

You are right. It cannot be proved, only seen a priori in a phenomenological intuition, the same kind of an intuition as Descartes had in his reasoning, the deep meaning of which has not really been understood, not even by Descartes himself.

Causa sui is not a synonym for God, as far as I understand what God is. But in fact I do not understand what God is.

If we are materialists then we understand that there is no nothingness, for materialism presupposes something; but not necessarily a subject. It does not deny subjects, but rather, denies that subjects are something independent of what emerges from matter. The order is reversed: without something there can be no subjects.

The being of matter and the being of the subject are interdependent, but the being of the subject makes the being of matter understandable.

[Fooloso4]

Tamminen:

Only the being of the subject makes it exist.

What does this mean? How does the subject “make it exist”?

If an object can exist without being an object of experience then its existence is not dependent on someone experiencing something.

I disagree.

You may disagree, but it follows directly from what you said.

You are right. It cannot be proved, only seen a priori in a phenomenological intuition …

"Seen in a priori phenomenological intuition”? What does that even mean?

… the same kind of an intuition as Descartes had in his reasoning

Descartes rhetorical doubt hit an impassable roadblock. The only thing whose existence he could not doubt was his own. This is the problem of judgment in the Meditations - how do we know that our ideas, representations in the mind, correspond to anything outside the mind?

Causa sui is not a synonym for God …

A self caused cause is Spinoza’s definition of God.

The being of matter and the being of the subject are interdependent, the being of the subject makes the being of matter understandable.

You are saying more than this. You are saying that the being of the subject makes the being of matter exist.

How can something that is interdependent be what makes the thing it is interdependent with exist? In order to be interdependent on something the thing it is interdependent with must exist.

[Tamminen]

What does this mean? How does the subject “make it exist”?

I sometimes use metaphorical language. I only mean that if there are no subjects, there is no world.

You may disagree, but it follows directly from what you said.

When something happened in our solar system about 4 billion years ago and Earth and Moon took their shape, I think no one was witnessing this. It was the object of no subject's experience. But the being of that event can be said to exist only because we are here trying to figure out what happened. And if not we, then perhaps some other conscious animal, if evolution had a different course. The being of the subject and the being of the universe and their relationship of being is not the same as their direct relationship where the universe is an object of consciousness for the subject.

"Seen in a priori phenomenological intuition”? What does that even mean?

It only means that the impossibility of the subjectless universe can be seen as obvious, so that it is kind of surprising that others cannot see its self-evidence. I cannot describe it more clearly. It is an intuition of nothingness and its absurdity.

Descartes rhetorical doubt hit an impassable roadblock. The only thing whose existence he could not doubt was his own. This is the problem of judgment in the Meditations - how do we know that our ideas, representations in the mind, correspond to anything outside the mind?

Descartes made the mistake that he interpreted his insight to mean that there is a "soul-substance", res cogitans, but in fact he found the same "metaphysical subject" as Wittgenstein. But we can go deeper than that.

How can something that is interdependent be what makes the thing it is interdependent with exist? In order to be interdependent on something the thing it is interdependent with must exist.

The subject-world relationship is what exists. This relationship got its concrete existence as a totality, so that none of its components was "first". But the essence of this totality is the being of the subject, and the being of matter in the universe cannot be conceived without it. The being of matter as such is an unjustified presupposition of materialism. What would the universe without subjects be like? As I said, you cannot imagine it without being yourself in the picture imagined.

[ThomasHobbes]

A self caused cause is Spinoza’s definition of God.

Not really.

Spinoza's proof of God is a denial of God and an assertion of nature.

[ThomasHobbes]

To expand. Spinoza reduces God to nature.

A key problem with any proof of God, that nothing comes form nothing, will also involve the question, where does God come from. As early as Aristotle this problem has a rather unsatisfactory solution. (1)There is motion in the world; (2) this motion was caused by something else; (3) if everything there is were caused to move by something else there would be an infinite cause of things, which is absurd, (4) Therefore there must have been something that caused the first thing; (5) this first thing is God. However this is unsatisfactory because God is an exception to (2). This problem of infinite regression is the moment where Spinoza starts his Ethics. He starts with definitions;

I. By that which is self-caused (casua sui), I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent …III. By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived though itself; in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.”

These definitions lay the ground for the entire system of philosophy, that there is a non-dependant unitary reality that is accessible through reason, and that this encompasses all that there is. The objection that a self causing cause is inconceivable, in terms of logic as the very existence of substance is reason enough to assert it as causa sui. This technical point asserts that the fact of existence is grounds for its own cause. Thus the proof of God:

God, or substance, consisting, of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists,

is based upon a reflection upon its own possible denial.

If this be denied, conceive, if possible, that God does not exist: then his essence does not involve existence. But this (by Prop. vii) is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists.

This proof hangs solely on Spinoza’s conception of substance, defined above (Def III), and the proof of the proposition (VII) which insists that substance must exist, as it cannot be produced by anything external, as defined as fundamental (Prop VI), and by definition must be self caused.

Spinoza simply removes any doubt of his piety, (so thoroughly protested in his TTP), by rejecting doubt of any kind. Doubt is not even a consideration. However according to Mason (1997; 22), no atheist would be swayed by his proof of God. What Spinoza has proved is that something necessarily exists; that something is everything; and that everything, he claims be called God. To be uncharitable, this line of reasoning must seem somewhat circular, but the consequences of this clever method have staggering implications for the rest of Ethics. The first is that existence of a single substance is the necessary conclusion, and that God is equivalent to that substance, in that God is proved to be that substance. Thus God exists because there is something that exists, but God is only that which is conceivably evident in a physical sense. Thus God being evident as the fundamental substance of the world rejects any claim of transcendence. Transcendence was historically used as the only justification for making the necessary exception to establish a first cause, or prime mover. Spinoza’s God is thus immanent, in the following way. God by necessity looses his transcendence due to Prop III, Axiom V. Thus for God to have a hand in the world he must either be the originator (a deist god) or be the entire world. If his substance is not of the world, having nothing in common, by virtue of not being the same substance he must be that substance: either in the world; part of it (Axiom I); or all there is. Thus God is the substance, the only substance that is nature: Prop V. These interlocking statements support each other and Axiom I can be brought into service to support the claim that God is of one substance, both necessary and immanent, but most importantly extended and comprehensible through the evidence of the world around us. What is especially remarkable is that Spinoza begins by claiming the existence of God is necessary and substantial, and it is this necessity, which forms the basis of God’s character: a character uniquely described. Given that “things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.” In this Spinoza is denying that God has created the world by some arbitrary and undetermined act of free-will, but by necessity.

[Tamminen]

If we are materialists then we understand that there is no nothingness, for materialism presupposes something...

So materialism presupposes something, and this something is the being of matter.
I also presuppose something, and this something is the subject's relationship with matter and other subjects.

Now we have two competing presuppositions, and we cannot prove either of them to be true, only try to make sense of both and then decide which one is more plausible.

Materialism cannot answer the question of why matter exists. There is no way of seeing the being of matter as causa sui. Its being has to be accepted as given and without any reason of being.

The being of the subject can be seen as causa sui, because we cannot eliminate ourselves from existence. And because the being of the subject is not possible without the being of matter, also the being of matter becomes necessary. So I would say that my presupposition is more reasonable.

This way of seeing our ontological situation also answers the question of what consciousness is. It is the subjective side of the subject's relationship with the material world, and its objective side is the subject's body, being itself part of the material world.

[Fooloso4]

Tamminen:

When something happened in our solar system about 4 billion years ago and Earth and Moon took their shape, I think no one was witnessing this. It was the object of no subject's experience. But the being of that event can be said to exist only because we are here trying to figure out what happened.

In order for something to happen something must exist. What can be said to have happened is dependent on us, but the event itself is not.

But the being of that event … The being of the subject and the being of the universe and their relationship of being …

You are using the term ‘being’ in an idiosyncratic way.

"Seen in a priori phenomenological intuition”? What does that even mean?

It only means that the impossibility of the subjectless universe can be seen as obvious …

In other words, an attempt to give credence to your unsupported claim by burying it in jargon.

It is an intuition of nothingness and its absurdity.

‘Intuition’ has various meanings. It is not a question of nothingness but of the role of the subject in what is.

The subject-world relationship is what exists. This relationship got its concrete existence as a totality, so that none of its components was "first".

And yet you say “something happened”, the formation of the sun and moon “took shape” prior to the subject world relationship. This something is not nothing, the sun and moon and whatever happened in order for the sun and moon to take shape must have existed.

The being of matter as such is an unjustified presupposition of materialism.

And yet, it is a presupposition that you cannot escape without claiming the very thing you say is an absurdity, nothingness.

[Fooloso4]

ThomasHobbes:

Spinoza's proof of God is a denial of God and an assertion of nature.

It is the denial of traditional concepts of God. It is an open question whether his use of the term ‘God’ was merely rhetorical.

[Tamminen]

In order for something to happen something must exist. What can be said to have happened is dependent on us, but the event itself is not.

As I have said, everything is dependent on the being of the subject. No subject, no being.

You are using the term ‘being’ in an idiosyncratic way.

I use the term 'being' as opposed to 'non-being'. Non-being of the subject implies non-being of the world.

In other words, an attempt to give credence to your unsupported claim by burying it in jargon.

If this is jargon, what is your claim that the universe without subjects is possible? It is more than jargon, it makes no sense. We can always appeal to adequate intuition, but not to imagination that is inherently inconsistent.

It is an intuition of nothingness and its absurdity.

‘Intuition’ has various meanings. It is not a question of nothingness but of the role of the subject in what is.

Perhaps you missed the point above.

And yet you say “something happened”, the formation of the sun and moon “took shape” prior to the subject world relationship.

It happened prior to the being of any subject in the physical spacetime, but it did not happen independent of the being of any subject at all, anywhere, any time in the universe. It could only happen in such a universe where there are conscious beings. And other kinds of universes are not possible universes.

And yet, it is a presupposition that you cannot escape without claiming the very thing you say is an absurdity, nothingness.

As I said, the being of matter is necessary, but impossible without the being of the subject.

[Fooloso4]

Tamminen:

As I have said, everything is dependent on the being of the subject. No subject, no being.

I use the term 'being' as opposed to 'non-being'. Non-being of the subject implies non-being of the world.

As I said, you use the term ‘being’ in an idiosyncratic way.

If this is jargon, what is your claim that the universe without subjects is possible?

You may not agree with my statement but it is not jargon, unless, of course, you also choose to use the word jargon in an idiosyncratic way as well.

We can always appeal to adequate intuition, but not to imagination that is inherently inconsistent.

“Adequate intuition”? Again, the term is used in different ways. What makes an intuition adequate?

It happened prior to the being of any subject in the physical spacetime, but it did not happen independent of the being of any subject at all, anywhere, any time in the universe. It could only happen in such a universe where there are conscious beings.

If it happened prior to the being of any subject in the physical spacetime then it does not follow that it could only happen in such a universe where there are conscious beings. It happened. The fact that there are now conscious beings capable to talking about what happened has not bearing on the fact that it already happened prior to the being of conscious beings.

And other kinds of universes are not possible universes.

Are you claiming that ours is the only possible world or that all possible worlds must have subjects? There are various senses in which something can be said to be possible. What is possible in our universe is contingent on the way things are in our universe. It is because there is gravity that pigs can't fly, but not because a restaurant serves pork ribs. A possible world may be one in which the conditions of our universe do not apply. Further, a possible world other than our own may be an actual world. The multiverse is a possibility. What exists in some other possible world is not contingent on what exists in our world, but is contingent on the initial conditions of that world. Since the initial conditions of that world need not be the initial conditions of our world, there is nothing that precludes the absence of observers in that world. That world may be completely removed from anything we will ever be able to observe.

As I said, the being of matter is necessary, but impossible without the being of the subject.

Yes, so you have said, many times. What you avoid addressing is that what you have said leads to the conclusion that things happened prior to subjects but that nothing existed to happen because there were no observers. Now you may appeal to some questionable notion of time to explain this, but by doing so you will have to reject the concept of time you now make use of when you talk about what was prior to observers.

Now I suspect that none of this really makes a difference to you because above all you wish to retain your “intuition” above all else.