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[BigBango]

I like Tamminen's shift from Descartes' dialectic "I think therefore I am", which establishes Descartes "dualism", to "I think of myself as an object" which establishes a necessary ontological condition, a relation of subject to object, that the existence of reality requires. It seems obvious that a world that is not the object of a consciousness may or may not exist, but whether or not it does exist is irrelevant. However, this borders on solipsism since one might easily say if "I" don't exist then why does it matter whether anything else exists even if other subjects than "I" do exist. We must then ask does GSC's assertion that the subject is "part of the one" save us from this purely solipsist position?

Let us ask if we as "subjects", that exist eternally as "part of the one", can experience or know other eternal subjects both in and out of relation to matter? I assert that if we can't then what difference does our state of being in "Limbo" matter? The continuity is only made real when the "One" reconnects our "I ness" to the world of matter. To us there is then no passage of time from when we perished to when we are plugged back in. I think this smacks of pantheism. I am not saying that with any kind of derision, just noting. To summarize, we, as subjects, only have a life to the extent that we are in relation to matter.

To me, I think our identity is tied up with our physicality. When we die we shed only our relation to gross matter. The 10% of matter that science knows all about, while the 90% that it has not identified, other than it has mass, remains as dark matter. This is our soul and it can experience, not through its dead sensory organs, but through its more subtle, fractal, physical essence. We then struggle, with our aspirations to plug ourselves back into the higher fractal reality, so that we again can move mountains. We may have to search for a planet with a chemistry that we can start building with because our current home may be ruined. We may have to find a goldilocks planet that is just as good as our polluted world once was but we will find it and we won't wait for the "One" to put us back into endless lives of pure pleasure or suffering. We will search on for our own place and the adventure told to by the great philosopher Joseph Campbell.

[Big Boss]

Nothingness being logically impossible and monism being true implies generic subjective continuity (gsc). My flavor of generic subjective continuity rests within a b theory, eternalist metaphysics, where change/becoming is impossible. All stages of one's life, eg, are static within spacetime. So there's no enduring self, from any two moments, no matter how relationally similar. What gives the illusion of a self that "goes through spacetime" is self referential memory. But here are where the implications get disturbing, and my opinion, horrific. Given monism, you can think of us all being parts of one mind (any non experiential states are irrelevant given gsc), and "you" can only be one moment/stage at a time. Given this, it's best to see death as a junction between two drastically different world lines, where the self refential memory ends for a specific world line, and there being countless "unrelated" world lines that follow spatiotemporally. So we're all one, but can only experience one part at a time. This means we have to "pass through" countless iterations of conscious moments of the highest bliss, worst tortures, and all in between - indefinitely! There might be a transfinite region of spacetime where the threshold of pain/pleasure is less extreme/more tolerable, but there's no reason to believe that those experiences are adjacent to the ones we likely will experience after death. Post death will be very similar to the first moments of your current world line. A feeling of never existing prior, but only because birth/death is break between self referential memory, that which creates the illusion of passage. No one's ever given me a compelling reason why this metaphysics is false. It follow basic laws of logic that are foundational to truth. I don't like the idea of perpetual existence, because "I" don't want to "pass through" countless torturous incarnations, but that's the reality I see being the case.

This was a very interesting post. I think that, in general, metaphysical theories on the nature of reality with the scope such as this one are some of the most fun things to work through in philosophy. Good work!

While I do enjoy your conclusion, you seem to have started by providing us with your conclusion but little to no working as to how you got there. I am not sure if this is out of a lack of confidence or just merely a decision to present a view for the sake of discussion. Whether the former or latter, I think you are justified in doing so as this is just a forum for discussion and not some dissertation. That said, I am most interested in your workings here. Why do you believe nothing is logically impossible? More interestingly, how do you conclude that monism is true? This seems quite an extreme conclusion to take by nature of our senses being able to pick out a multitude of things. You also mention parts, so how do parts factor in to a whole? I’m not trying to suggest that true monism need be some partless whole, ala some interpretations of Parmenides, but how do you define something as a whole or parts? For instance, someone may believe in all the standard scientific views of the universe but say that the whole of the universe is one and we are just all parts. Maybe weirder, but perhaps more philosophically sound, someone could claim that not wholes can exist as a true whole must be irreducible but everything is reducible, at least logically it appears.

Your concept of time seems to be a little ill explained. You have conformed to the B series but seem to suggest that there is some time that there is some further time acting upon that. Like, you seem to suggest that time is one unchanging whole, like a block, but that we only experience each lifetime and moment one at a time. So, that would seem to suggest that time is going by in respect to your changing block and that later ‘I’ will experience being a dinosaur or something. There isn’t any coming into and out of being in your view, but an unchanging whole in which you ‘later’ experience a different life.

I think you are trying to push solipsism here too. If I am right, we are all one consciousness as there is only ‘one’. But if everyone is the same consciousness, and everything is one, isn’t the nature of reality just consciousness or is consciousness part of the one?
I get that no one has given you a compelling argument against your view, but this is sort of a quirk with any metaphysical theory. You can’t prove it or disprove it on empirical grounds, and you can often think of an argument to support your view, even against the most damning of blows.

[Tamminen]

I think you are trying to push solipsism here too.

I cannot say anything on behalf of Cycswan, but as I understand this hypothesis it is indeed a combination of solipsism and subjective continuity or transmigration, and this makes it something that is almost beyond the possibilities of language. You are extremely alone with it, although I and others have tried to communicate something about it. Language can only make sense in the world of others, and now there are no others. Or: there seemingly are others, and here language works, but where otherness is seen as an illusion, language stops working or becomes sort of poetry, full of paradoxes. If you really get the point of this theory, seeing what it means concretely for the relations between us, who the others are for instance, who you are from my perspective, who I am from your perspective, you must be somewhat embarrassed seeing all this. Embarrasment is in fact the criterion for someone understanding Generic Subjective Continuity, as I see it.

To draw back a bit: others are very real, but they play two roles. This is a version of solipsism that does not deny the existence of others.

[Cycswan]

A lot of what I'm trying to communicate is very counter intuitive and linguistically paradoxical, so forgive me for the confusion. I'll try to address some points. I think nothing changes/becomes. What creates the illusion of change is objects within space-time that refer to virtual clone stages (eg, one-second-ago-me and now-me). This informational similarity (including the phenomenology) gives the impression of a subject that fundamentally passes through time. Whereas in reality there's just virtual clone stages adjacent to each other in spacetime that all agree (assuming no brain damage, etc.) that I am "this person", I've always been "this person", etc. There is no enduring person. One is what one is. However, since all is one (we are all unseparated) and nothingness is impossible/incoherent from a logical standpoint, I can only come to the conclusion, that one can only ever be a subject of experience. Why? There is something. Any something that has zero subjective content is "skipped". That just leaves subjects with experience. I dont believe in a more fundamental time mechanism. I'd call what we experience as "psuedo passage". It's this paradoxical situation that we are all one yet have different informational and phenomenological content - some which feel as though it endures due to the informational similarity and ordering of certain subjects. Admittedly typing this, I feel even more confused, but I hope that this clears up a tiny bit of the issues. I personally wish Tom Clark or someone with an academic philosophy background would address this in a video series

being, change, identity, mereology

[Big Boss]

A lot of what I'm trying to communicate is very counter intuitive and linguistically paradoxical, so forgive me for the confusion. I'll try to address some points. I think nothing changes/becomes. What creates the illusion of change is objects within space-time that refer to virtual clone stages (eg, one-second-ago-me and now-me). This informational similarity (including the phenomenology) gives the impression of a subject that fundamentally passes through time. Whereas in reality there's just virtual clone stages adjacent to each other in spacetime that all agree (assuming no brain damage, etc.) that I am "this person", I've always been "this person", etc. There is no enduring person. One is what one is. However, since all is one (we are all unseparated) and nothingness is impossible/incoherent from a logical standpoint, I can only come to the conclusion, that one can only ever be a subject of experience. Why? There is something. Any something that has zero subjective content is "skipped". That just leaves subjects with experience. I dont believe in a more fundamental time mechanism. I'd call what we experience as "psuedo passage". It's this paradoxical situation that we are all one yet have different informational and phenomenological content - some which feel as though it endures due to the informational similarity and ordering of certain subjects. Admittedly typing this, I feel even more confused, but I hope that this clears up a tiny bit of the issues. I personally wish Tom Clark or someone with an academic philosophy background would address this in a video series

being, change, identity, mereology

Hey, nice to see an attempt at fleshing out what your theory is. I am completely sympathetic to the fact that language may not always be the best at describing reality. I don't think anyone should allow themselves to be constrained to think just in terms of language. If language were perfect then we likely wouldn't have linguists or a philosophy for it.

Something I am really struggling to understand is this idea of what a person is. I understand the whole concept of the block universe in a B series of time in which is segments. I think what you are describing is that the universe or people in it, which are all one, are segmented into stages. If I am correct then you are proposing exdurantism. I get that what you are saying here is something different where each moment in time would have a different twin Socrates occupying the space. So we think we are experiencing a time an unfolding time but we are really just one moment and the other moments are clones. But this seems to betray the monist position you are presupposing. You think there is only one, but then there are countless twin beings of just Socrates in your theory. But earlier you seem to suggest that there is just one consciousness and that you sort of experience everything. So what is the different to one consciousness of Socrates split into countless stages and just one consciousness?

Overall, I am really having fun reading your theory. I think I have probably gone wrong somewhere in my reading, so please accept my apologies as it is late and I am writing this to wind down from study.

[Tamminen]

GSC raises the question about the relation between subjective time and physical time. There can be millions of years of physical time between two successive experiences. The next question is: can subjective time jump to the physical past? I think GSC demands this possibility. And this leads to apparent paradoxes like this: I can kill someone who is in my subjective past. This means that I have no choice: I do what I have to do, because it has already happened. There is no logical contradiction here, though. But for reasons like this the hypothesis has its weaknesses, although it is also very powerful and consistent in other respects.

[Cycswan]

Big Boss

I believe there are two views on b theory mereology - exdurantism being one. I need to look into the differences between the two.

Would monism allow for the infinite stages of being to be parts of the one/whole? Basically the universe being one thing, but with infinite parts. Nothing being separate from each other. Some things being more relational similar/dissimilar in many regards.

I believe I'm a neutral monist. I think logic/structure are one aspect of being, just as phenomenology is another aspect of being. I don't think consciousness is outside logic/structure, though. Or vice versa. I think each conscious stage of experience is embedded within a given part of space-time. To your question, I think Tamminen's post on being (linked in one of the earlier replies) makes a distinction between different "levels" of self. I don't want to mischaracterize his views. I think consciousness is an aspect of being, and that we're all one (not fundamentally separate from each other) yet individuated. I think this question of simultaneity (one yet individuated), in regards to mereology is where the confusion is, and also huge part of where many potential issues with the theory arise.

[Tamminen]

I think Tamminen's post on being (linked in one of the earlier replies) makes a distinction between different "levels" of self.

The distinction you probably refer to is between the present in subjective time abstracted from its content, and the present with its content referring to earlier contents, which makes me an individual, a project called 'Tamminen', with these memories and this body. When there is no such reference, I am someone else. This is how I see the GSC. I do not know if there are several versions of it.

[ubojico]

I think Tamminen's post on being (linked in one of the earlier replies) makes a distinction between different "levels" of self.

The distinction you probably refer to is between the present in subjective time abstracted from its content, and the present with its content referring to earlier contents, which makes me an individual, a project called 'Tamminen', with these memories and this body. When there is no such reference, I am someone else. This is how I see the GSC. I do not know if there are several versions of it.

I am resurrecting this topic to tell you (Tamminen and Cycswan) that what you are saying is the exact same idea I couldn't shake for years and years and then I found out about Schopenhauer who cemented this view completely for me.

It is amazing that so many of us, completely unaware of each other, came to the same conclusion. I think this should be a sign to those who are still unconvinced.

I have one thing to add as well. I'm not sure if it necessarily follows, but I believe eternalism fits here naturally, so our next incarnation can experience life in 100 BC, 1512 AD., or any random year, past or future. So solving morality today does not guarantee a suffering-free next incarnation in the future, as our future can be what is today known as past. We are stuck being alive forever, so to speak. It is wonderful and dreadful at the same time.

[ubojico]

I think Tamminen's post on being (linked in one of the earlier replies) makes a distinction between different "levels" of self.

The distinction you probably refer to is between the present in subjective time abstracted from its content, and the present with its content referring to earlier contents, which makes me an individual, a project called 'Tamminen', with these memories and this body. When there is no such reference, I am someone else. This is how I see the GSC. I do not know if there are several versions of it.

I am resurrecting this thread as I found it while searching for others who came to the same conclusion as I did years ago. For the longest time I felt like this makes sense and accidentally stumbled on to Schopenhauer who cemented this view for me (and also made him my favorite philosopher). Now I found this thread and I am just amazed how many different people independanlty come to the same conclusion. This is a major indication we are onto something.

I would also like to add that I believe this view goes hand in hand with eternalism, although maybe not necessarily. But I think our next incarnations can just as easily be in what we today consider past, so solving morality today does not save us from human inflicted suffering in next life, so to speak.

This whole view is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. Death is obsolete, but being stuck in eternal loops of life is frightening. But I am convinced this is true.

I am happy I found this post. There are more of me!

[Tamminen]

We are stuck being alive forever, so to speak. It is wonderful and dreadful at the same time.

Right, you cannot escape from existence. Not a very optimistic view though. I must read some Schopenhauer, thanks for your recommendation.

[Tamminen]

For the longest time I felt like this makes sense and accidentally stumbled on to Schopenhauer who cemented this view for me (and also made him my favorite philosopher).

Schopenhauer comes close to Indian philosophies. This is how I see existence:

Being is subjective.

A subject presupposes an object for its being.

The object for a subject is the world.

The world consists of material objects and other subjects.

Material objects are the subject's relationship with other subjects.

So the essence of the world for a subject are other subjects.

Others are not really others but the subject itself, separated by subjective time and connected by generic subjective continuity. The eternal present wanders through reality, adopting all its individual manifestations in due time. Subjective time is asymmetric: it had a start but has no end.

This means that the world, and all reality, is a reflection of my own nothingness, a reflection of the necessity of my meaningless existence and my desperate seeking for its meaning. Nothingness in itself is self-contradictory, but as the ultimate object for the subject it is a good candidate, as the concept of nirvana suggests.

[Tamminen]

Being precedes time: time is an internal property of being. Therefore a finite past does not contradict eternal being, because we do not have to be in the past, but a finite future contradicts it, because we have to be in the future. Asymmetric time is a very consistent structure, because if there had been an experience before each experience, I could not be here now.

[ubojico]

I agree with you except that time has a start. I would say time is infinite in both directions.

[Tamminen]

I agree with you except that time has a start. I would say time is infinite in both directions.

I speak about subjective time. An infinite subjective past is logically problematic, although asymmetric subjective time is somewhat counterintuitive.