Philosophy Discussion Forums

Sculpture 1
It is a deep mistake, made by the insane to think that any big answers are to be found with self contemplation.

Couldn't help responding to this one. You strong words are provocative.
Self contemplation. I wonder, what is your inspiration behind this? What is a self? And what does it mean to contemplate the self? Big answers? If not in self contemplation, then where? Is self conrtemplation a private affair, of is it innately public? How do you draw a distinction between the two? Where does one's interiority end and exteriority begin?

And so on. You must know that the self is THE mystery, for it is the seat of all understanding. Whatever is not the self can never be known.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑June 20th, 2019, 9:38 am

Sculpture 1
It is a deep mistake, made by the insane to think that any big answers are to be found with self contemplation.

Couldn't help responding to this one. You strong words are provocative.
Self contemplation. I wonder, what is your inspiration behind this? What is a self? And what does it mean to contemplate the self? Big answers? If not in self contemplation, then where? Is self conrtemplation a private affair, of is it innately public? How do you draw a distinction between the two? Where does one's interiority end and exteriority begin?

And so on. You must know that the self is THE mystery, for it is the seat of all understanding. Whatever is not the self can never be known.

Given the breadth of the universe how unlikely do you think it is that the truth lies between your own ears? To steal a phrase the truth is "out there", but it is my view that it is unreasonable to expect that there is any big answer to life the universe and everything. All we can do is to hope that we can find a way to live our lives, and to do that we have to reference the world about us. We have to understand where we are and what we are in relation to the things we can experience. contemplation of our own navels, and the workings of our minds can only lead to self gratification, and self delusion.
As for making the distinction; i've never had any problem with that. It's like the difference between wakefulness and dreaming. I know all experience happens in my brain, but I have never had a problem figuring out what was me and what was outside. The danger with an overdue emphasis on self contemplation is parallel with dreaming; whilst engaging with the world outside of ourselves is more like wakefulness. Dreams have their own way of seeming real at the time, but you have to wake up some time.

Binyamin7 wrote: ↑June 2nd, 2019, 12:55 pm Hope everyone is doing well today. So I have a thought on the list of impossible things we have to believe to be an athiest vs be a thiest. Let's for the sake of this exercise say that an impossible thing is something that cannot be reproduced or observed in any way today and actually looks "impossible" to the best of our understanding.

A theist believes in one impossible thing:
God

An Atheist believes in these things:
-Spontaneous generation of matter
-Spontaneous generation of time
-Spontaneous generation of space
-Getting all the elements through fusion without being able to fuse past iron
-Life developing from non-living matter
-Increasing genetic information from one generation to the next

In your mind does the statistical chances of some sort of Creator really seem less likely than the Spontaneous generation of all matter?

I am a Theist so I am biased. I understand any worldview takes faith, mine included. I just think it would be hard to not strongly consider Theism if you take all this in.

I simply believe the following:

1. Since matter has always existed, it was not spontaneously generated or created
2. There is only NOW. Everything exist within the present moment. Time is a man made concept which is useful but does not exist in nature.
3. Space does not exist, that’s why it is called space. The non existence of space makes room for matter to exist.
4. All elements are created by Stars, through fusion.
5. Life has always existed, just like matter and spreads throughout the universe, seeding planets that are ripe.
6. Genetic information mutates and changes within different environments.

Present awareness wrote: ↑June 20th, 2019, 2:11 pm
I simply believe the following:

1. Since matter has always existed, it was not spontaneously generated or created
2. There is only NOW. Everything exist within the present moment. Time is a man made concept which is useful but does not exist in nature.
3. Space does not exist, that’s why it is called space. The non existence of space makes room for matter to exist.
4. All elements are created by Stars, through fusion.
5. Life has always existed, just like matter and spreads throughout the universe, seeding planets that are ripe.
6. Genetic information mutates and changes within different environments.

1. Possibly.
2. Time is the measure by which things are ordered. It might not exist as you conceive it, but if it does not exist it would be necessary to invent it; otherwise I'd never be able to tell when to stop working!
3. Space is the measure of the distance between objects. As the universe expands, so to does the space needed to accommodate it. Like time, if it does not exist it would be necessary to invent it; otherwise I'd not be able to type different letters in the keyboard and my post would look lifkekndosidflkndfkkcnsokdjrfa.
4. So much is known
5. Just no. Like we know where the elements come from , we also know there was a time when there was no life on earth. Since earth provides us with the only evidence of life, was simply are not qualified to be able to say that is life elsewhere and certainly not "always existed".
BTW you are contradicting yourself, since point 5 uses temporal and spatial references, though you say neither such things exist.
6. Genetic information mutates regardless of the particular environment. It is the survival of living things which make or break those mutations persist or falter. since only successful mutations continue to the following generations. Environments do not inform the mutations.

Sculptor wrote, regarding the concept of his self:

I know all experience happens in my brain, but I have never had a problem figuring out what was me and what was outside.

But you aren't a brain in a vat. Your brain-mind is the same system as your body. Your body is the same system as the society and the natural environment in which it lives. You know which is you and which is not-you because you can feel pain and discomfort, an ability common to all sentient organisms which preserves the life of the individual.

Sculptor1
Given the breadth of the universe how unlikely do you think it is that the truth lies between your own ears? To steal a phrase the truth is "out there", but it is my view that it is unreasonable to expect that there is any big answer to life the universe and everything. All we can do is to hope that we can find a way to live our lives, and to do that we have to reference the world about us. We have to understand where we are and what we are in relation to the things we can experience. contemplation of our own navels, and the workings of our minds can only lead to self gratification, and self delusion.
As for making the distinction; i've never had any problem with that. It's like the difference between wakefulness and dreaming. I know all experience happens in my brain, but I have never had a problem figuring out what was me and what was outside. The danger with an overdue emphasis on self contemplation is parallel with dreaming; whilst engaging with the world outside of ourselves is more like wakefulness. Dreams have their own way of seeming real at the time, but you have to wake up some time.

Well, you won't go over the deep end if you maintain standards of reasonable thought, such that you know if your mind starts leaning irrational, that is toward unjustified belief. One must be acutely watchful. But that does not preclude serious systems of thinking that resist common sense. After all, what is common is, if anything, a good sign that it does NOT represent something that penetrates more deeply into things. One can expect discussions about, say, the foundations of apprehending the Real, to clearly be outside the margins of what is common. Philosophy si nothing if not outside the common understanding of things.
Having said this,I will say that the term 'brain' is an interpretative term, as are all. When you make this foundational, you beg the question: how can one acknowledge the brain as what it is and does other than through the processes of the brain?

Hereandnow wrote: ↑June 20th, 2019, 9:38 amWhat is a self?

Recommended reading:

Eric Olson: There is no Problem of the Self (PDF)

"Abstract: Because there is no agreed use of the term 'self', or characteristic features or even paradigm cases of selves, there is no idea of 'the self' to figure in philosophical problems. The term leads to troubles otherwise avoidable; and because legitimate discussions under the heading of 'self' are really about other things, it is gratuitous. I propose that we stop speaking of selves."

Note that to reject the ontological concept of a self is not necessarily to reject the phenomenological concept of self-experience!

"There's a distinctive kind of experience which I'll call 'self-experience'. …In the ordinary human case it's experience of oneself as being an 'inner' subject of experience or locus of consciousness—inner relative to the human being that one is considered as a whole. More generally, it's experience of oneself as something which is not the same thing as a human being considered as a whole; experience of oneself as a specifically mental presence of some sort, a mental someone or something.
…
Self-experience can exist whether or not selves do, just as pink-elephant-experience can exist whether or not pink elephants do.
Let me repeat this: self-experience exists, as a form of experience, whether or not selves do. 'Self-experience' is a strictly phenomenological term. It's a name for an aspect of our existence of how things are that exists whether or not things are that way in fact. Self-experience may turn out to be illusory in so far as it purports to be experience of an existing entity properly called a self, but its phenomenological reality—its reality as a form of experience, a way of conceiving or apprehending things—is not in doubt."
(pp. 1-2)

"…self-experience—the experience that people have of themselves as being an ‘inner’ locus of consciousness, something that is essentially not the same thing as a human being considered as a whole; a specifically mental presence, a mental someone, a mental something that is a conscious subject. It’s a particular way of experiencing oneself that comes to every normal human being in early childhood, and it is by definition experience that an experiencing being has of itself and only of itself."
(p. 36)

(Strawson, Galen. Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.)

Consul
There's a distinctive kind of experience which I'll call 'self-experience'. …In the ordinary human case it's experience of oneself as being an 'inner' subject of experience or locus of consciousness—inner relative to the human being that one is considered as a whole. More generally, it's experience of oneself as something which is not the same thing as a human being considered as a whole; experience of oneself as a specifically mental presence of some sort, a mental someone or something.
…
Self-experience can exist whether or not selves do, just as pink-elephant-experience can exist whether or not pink elephants do.
Let me repeat this: self-experience exists, as a form of experience, whether or not selves do. 'Self-experience' is a strictly phenomenological term. It's a name for an aspect of our existence of how things are that exists whether or not things are that way in fact. Self-experience may turn out to be illusory in so far as it purports to be experience of an existing entity properly called a self, but its phenomenological reality—its reality as a form of experience, a way of conceiving or apprehending things—is not in doubt."
(pp. 1-2)

"…self-experience—the experience that people have of themselves as being an ‘inner’ locus of consciousness, something that is essentially not the same thing as a human being considered as a whole; a specifically mental presence, a mental someone, a mental something that is a conscious subject. It’s a particular way of experiencing oneself that comes to every normal human being in early childhood, and it is by definition experience that an experiencing being has of itself and only of itself."
(p. 36)

Thanks you for that Consul. The self is not just a confusing part of philosophy, it is central to everything. If I even begin to go into my thoughts it will take a long time. For me, the most compelling thoughts about the nature of the self come from, first, Kant, then, Kierkegaard, then Husserl, then Heidegger, then Levinas, then Rorty, then .....Most recently I read Caputo's Radical Hermeneutics (fooloso4 recommended it), not about the self as its thematic center (or is it? All roads lead to Rome, the self), but it is a massively interesting analysis of interpretation and language and Heraclitean flux against Parmenidian Being: Is the self ever given as a presence, intuitively apprehended. Or is knowledge of the self bound to language (the house of Being, Heidegger called it) and as such bound to interpretation. Is there nothing of what we acknowledge about the self that is free of the power of language to disclose? Anything Real in the Kierkegaardian sense: actuality, the seat of the soul and God in the eternal present?
And so on..

Hereandnow wrote: ↑June 24th, 2019, 10:49 am

Sculptor1
Given the breadth of the universe how unlikely do you think it is that the truth lies between your own ears? To steal a phrase the truth is "out there", but it is my view that it is unreasonable to expect that there is any big answer to life the universe and everything. All we can do is to hope that we can find a way to live our lives, and to do that we have to reference the world about us. We have to understand where we are and what we are in relation to the things we can experience. contemplation of our own navels, and the workings of our minds can only lead to self gratification, and self delusion.
As for making the distinction; i've never had any problem with that. It's like the difference between wakefulness and dreaming. I know all experience happens in my brain, but I have never had a problem figuring out what was me and what was outside. The danger with an overdue emphasis on self contemplation is parallel with dreaming; whilst engaging with the world outside of ourselves is more like wakefulness. Dreams have their own way of seeming real at the time, but you have to wake up some time.

Well, you won't go over the deep end if you maintain standards of reasonable thought, such that you know if your mind starts leaning irrational, that is toward unjustified belief. One must be acutely watchful. But that does not preclude serious systems of thinking that resist common sense. After all, what is common is, if anything, a good sign that it does NOT represent something that penetrates more deeply into things. One can expect discussions about, say, the foundations of apprehending the Real, to clearly be outside the margins of what is common. Philosophy si nothing if not outside the common understanding of things.
Having said this,I will say that the term 'brain' is an interpretative term, as are all. When you make this foundational, you beg the question: how can one acknowledge the brain as what it is and does other than through the processes of the brain?

Brain is interpretive. Is "car" interpretive? Not sure what you are driving at here. The last question was of great concern to my schizophrenic brother who had to try to understand his own illness through the mentally damaged organ which was at the heart of his problem.
However, for looking at others' brains, the problem is not so acute, since brains can be easily objectified, and examined.
It's not like I have to diagnose the problems of a car engine whist driving.

To give more material to discussion, here are some of meditations from Wittgenstein's Notebooks 1914-1916:

The thinking subject is surely mere illusion. But the willing subject exists. If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which we call the I, and which is the bearer of ethics.

What is good and evil is essentially the I, not the world.

The I, the I is what is deeply mysterious!

The I is not an object.

I objectively confront every object. But not the I.

So there really is a way in which there can and must be mention of the I in a non-psychological sense in philosophy.

Sculptor1
Brain is interpretive. Is "car" interpretive? Not sure what you are driving at here. The last question was of great concern to my schizophrenic brother who had to try to understand his own illness through the mentally damaged organ which was at the heart of his problem.
However, for looking at others' brains, the problem is not so acute, since brains can be easily objectified, and examined.
It's not like I have to diagnose the problems of a car engine whist driving.

Consider: one cannot "see" the eye, for in the seeing, the conditions of sight that you are trying to examine are part of the "observation" in receiving data. It seems like observing the eye is gathering observational data that is without second guessing, but this is not just in the seeming. With the brain, it would appear that thought about things actually includes what the thing really is, in a hard realist way. But what happens when one "looks? What is it that makes the thought match the sensible intuition? What does thought know and how does it know it? Problem not so acute?? It is the most acute, for when the eyes take in the thing, the thing never crosses the threshold of perception: we are here, it is there. But even this observation of the distance between a thing and me, the knower, looses ground much earlier, for the moment the question even arises, that same question leaps to mind: is the thought in my "head" that examines whether there is a thought in my head a genuine thought of "aboutness" in which case can i even imagine how thought is about anything? Pragmatists think along these lines. They are strict hermeneuticists (sp?) who believe the aboutness of talk about things is entirely a pragmatic affair: there is no aboutness in the usual way. Aboutness, rather, is reducible to what works. And that knowldge you have of the brain is no more a "knowing" than a dent in your car "knows" the offending guardrail. Language is "where" knowing occurs. Things themselves never enter into the understanding.
Such philosophy sounds a bit like something your brother has to go through in his unique interpretations of the world. But I have always said, being enlightened philosophically requires the annihilation of common sense, and this can put serious distance between a person and the world.

Consul and other materialists seem to think like this: I am a material object in itself, but a special kind of object that becomes an object for itself. Now we have two versions of the same object: the original material object in itself that I am, and the same object as it appears to the material object that I am. So I am transcendent to myself, as part of the genuine transcendence known as the material universe. And my existence, the appearing of the world, depends on the being of the world, i.e. transcendence.

This comes close to some kind of theology. But it is not as absurd as it looks at first sight, because we are clearly dependent of something, i.e. the being of the material universe. What makes it absurd is the ontological claim that the appearing of the world, the existence of the subject, is something accidental, so that ontology without the subject would be possible. The appearing of the world must be an essential component of any rational ontology: the subject's existence in the world.

Now that we have concluded that transcendence is a meaningful concept only as transcendence for immanence, and that the being of the subject is a necessary component of reality, we can go further and try to figure out if it is possible that also transcendence, the being of the material world, could be interpreted in terms of immanence, the self-evident existence of the subject. I have tried to speculate on this elsewhere.

The universe seen as a totality is like God: our existence depends on it. But without our existence God, if there were something like that, would lose its reason of being. The same would happen to the world if the subject were removed. So materialism, at least as it is presented by Consul and others here, is even less plausible than the God hypothesis, because nobody has claimed that God without the subject's existence means anything.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑June 24th, 2019, 7:09 pm

Sculptor1
Brain is interpretive. Is "car" interpretive? Not sure what you are driving at here. The last question was of great concern to my schizophrenic brother who had to try to understand his own illness through the mentally damaged organ which was at the heart of his problem.
However, for looking at others' brains, the problem is not so acute, since brains can be easily objectified, and examined.
It's not like I have to diagnose the problems of a car engine whist driving.

Consider: one cannot "see" the eye, for in the seeing, the conditions of sight that you are trying to examine are part of the "observation" in receiving data.

I'm sorry to have to inform you, but Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, Orthoptist and Opticians have no problem here.
You objection is empty.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑June 24th, 2019, 10:49 am Having said this,I will say that the term 'brain' is an interpretative term, as are all. When you make this foundational, you beg the question: how can one acknowledge the brain as what it is and does other than through the processes of the brain?

You still have not said what you mean by this, or why it is important, or special.