Philosophy Discussion Forums

Tamminen wrote: ↑July 31st, 2018, 10:03 am

Greta wrote: ↑July 31st, 2018, 6:39 am Thanks for that clarification. So the emergence of consciousness was inevitable given the configuration of physical reality from the start. Certainly when once considers the odds and the scale of the universe/reality, and given our example, consciousness seems to have been inevitable.

Of course, if we didn't have our own example to draw on for this fundamentally post hoc conclusion ...

Consciousness did not emerge from anything. Something emerged from the necessity of the being of consciousness, namely the complexity of our universe, to make consciousness concretely existing in the concrete world, because there cannot be consciousness in itself, floating around in emptiness. So God did not create the world, the subject did for its own project of being, whatever that project is. Consciousness is the manifestation of this project. If we think of it carefully, what else is there but us?

I do not understand. How does that differ from the pantheist notion of the universe being God creating itself?

Why would there be a necessity to be conscious when virtually all of reality apparently is not conscious?

The Way of the Universe as it is with Consciousness, is that, the beginning of a Creation is born of a Random Generator.

Now do not get excited, you to now know the way in which Randomness is Generated.

Numbers that have relative, a numerical value of One-1 or more are not Random.

Consciousness as it was with the beginning of the Creation of the Universe was, is, an accident waiting to happen.

The word God is a metaphor for the Random Generator.

The Nature or the Random Generation of the beginning of the creation of the Universe, pure unadulterated Energy in its simplest form is everlasting, eternal, changes, but never ceases to Exist.

Now do not get excited, you do not know the way in which Randomness is Generated.

Halc wrote: ↑July 31st, 2018, 4:30 pm Yes, and I've said that I've given up trying to figure out what you mean by 'presence' beyond 'being awake', or why existence is logically absurd without it.

And I have tried to clarify it in a dozen of my recent posts, but obviously failed. Could you ask a specific question? You do not seem to see the difference between conscious and non-conscious and why it is an on-off phenomenon.

You were the one saying it was a logical absurdity that a universe could exist without this 'presence' property. Now you're saying it isn't really a conclusion reached via logic.

Yes, my expression was not clear. I meant that the intuition, which is clear in itself, is not easy to put into a precise logical form. By the way, presence is not a property in the sense we usually speak of properties. It is something much more fundamental, part of the basic ontological structue of reality.

To answer your question, maybe there is something else with its own 'presence' that makes its utterly disjoint place exist, despite the complete lack of relationship with us here. That's how you could post that possibility.

It seems that you do not quite get what I mean. There are places with which we have no relationship, but this lack of relationship is a lack of relationship with us. If there are no 'us', there is nothing with which we lack relationship, and its being can only be posited as an abstraction with no real meaning. We cannot say anything about its being or non-being. In this sense it cannot exist, in another sense of existing than the existence of objects. Now you may say that I posit its non-being, but in fact I posit the absurdity of its being, which is practically the same thing. I do not believe in the existence of absurdities.

No one has witnessed the big bang,

Can't let this go, but I beg to differ. You can still see the thing, not at the instant it happened, but the brilliant 'fireball' (is isn't really fire) just afterwards. The bang itself is obscured by matter in a form that is opaque.

Yes, I know. Should have given a better example.

No, an uninhabited universe is an uninhabited universe. An abstraction is a mental construct, and an uninhabited universe is not such a thing.

I disagree. An uninhabited universe is a mental construct, nothing more.

Greta wrote: ↑July 31st, 2018, 6:01 pm I do not understand. How does that differ from the pantheist notion of the universe being God creating itself?

We need no transcendent God. The absolute is in us. When I spoke about the subject's project, and did not say what that project is, that was deliberate. You are the subject. Ask yourself what you want. Do you want to live for ever? Do you want to die for good? Do you want to understand what existence is, what others are, what the universe is, what is the sense of all this if any? Perhaps the subject wants to understand its own being through the world and others. And who are the others? But you are the subject. You should know. I do not know. But as the subject, I cannot escape existence, and this original situation is perhaps the origin of this mysterious phenomenon of living in this mysterious universe.

Sort of free-floating thoughts.

Why would there be a necessity to be conscious when virtually all of reality apparently is not conscious?

Because the non-conscious universe is a logical impossibility, as I have said. This insight has far-reaching metaphysical and existential consequences, which I have tried to describe in almost all of my posts on this forum.

Tamminen wrote: ↑August 1st, 2018, 4:32 am

No, an uninhabited universe is an uninhabited universe. An abstraction is a mental construct, and an uninhabited universe is not such a thing.

I disagree. An uninhabited universe is a mental construct, nothing more.

It cannot be a mental construct. It has no mental to construct it. That was the point of the example.

Halc wrote: ↑July 31st, 2018, 4:30 pm Yes, and I've said that I've given up trying to figure out what you mean by 'presence' beyond 'being awake', or why existence is logically absurd without it.

So I guess you want me to tell the difference between conscious and non-conscious. The reason why I have not done that as clearly as you want, is perhaps because we all know the difference. The phenomenological difference is the same as the difference between being awake and being in dreamless sleep. In sleep we skip a piece of physical time within our subjective time, and a stone has no subjective time. So the question is sort of a pseudo question. And as to the physiological correlates of this difference, we should ask neuroscientists. However, the conscious-nonconscious question cannot be reduced to physiology or physics.

I think I have explained the absurdity question so many times that new formulations do not help.

Halc wrote: ↑August 1st, 2018, 8:44 am It cannot be a mental construct. It has no mental to construct it. That was the point of the example.

It is our mental construct. It is an abstraction from our inhabited universe, which is the only universe there is, by definition. And we cannot posit anything beyond our universe, because it has no place in the logical space. As I said, we can easily posit the existence of unicorns in our universe, because there is a logical and spatiotemporal place for them. But we cannot find a place for a subjectless world, because when we think we have found it, we must admit that we have only found a place within our own logic, which presupposes our existence. I am not sure if I said this clearly enough.

Tamminen wrote: ↑August 1st, 2018, 9:18 amIt is an abstraction from our inhabited universe, which is the only universe there is, by definition.

Oh now the definition changes. Another universe that has the presence of different conscious beings does not exist because only us Earth inhabitants count. It isn't presence, it is our presence. Your definition of universe and existence is now moving from a relational one to a more anthropocentric one.

And we cannot posit anything beyond our universe, because it has no place in the logical space.

You mean it has no place in your intuition. You've presented no logic behind this assertion. A lot of posters were asking for that logic until you said it wasn't really a logical stance. This is a philosophy forum, where assertions are expected to be backed by evidence (or at least the absence of counter-evidence) and logical consistency, not by intuition. Without that backing, your personal beliefs are no different than the woman up the street who believes she used to be Cleopatra, but she's not here asserting that it would be a logical inconsistency for it be otherwise.

Halc wrote: ↑August 1st, 2018, 10:38 am Oh now the definition changes. Another universe that has the presence of different conscious beings does not exist because only us Earth inhabitants count. It isn't presence, it is our presence. Your definition of universe and existence is now moving from a relational one to a more anthropocentric one.

If we speak of another universe with another type of presence, it is really the one and only universe we have, by my definition of the universe, as if the two universes put together to make the real universe. And this universe can only have one type of presence, because there is only one type of presence, the one which makes the distinction to non-presence. I am speaking of the hypothetical and logically inconsistent universe with no presence, which means no inhabitants.

Halc wrote: ↑August 1st, 2018, 10:38 am You mean it has no place in your intuition. You've presented no logic behind this assertion. A lot of posters were asking for that logic until you said it wasn't really a logical stance. This is a philosophy forum, where assertions are expected to be backed by evidence (or at least the absence of counter-evidence) and logical consistency, not by intuition. Without that backing, your personal beliefs are no different than the woman up the street who believes she used to be Cleopatra, but she's not here asserting that it would be a logical inconsistency for it be otherwise.

No, logic presupposes existence, and if we are speaking of the universe as a whole, we cannot logically posit a universe without existence. This is logic. And this is intuition. They are not opposites. You cannot even logically prove that you exist. But I believe you do because you send these replies to my posts. Of course I could write some syllogisms, but they would not say anything more than I have said using ordinary language. Seeming nonsense sometimes turns out to be a source of deepening understanding if the context of sentences gets opened up. I think you miss something. But my verbal abilities are restricted.

And I think you put so hard restrictions to a philosophical discussion that you cannot obey those restrictions youself.

What I am saying is extremely simple and obvious, but it is so close to our existence, being in fact at the core of existence itself, that no one seems to get the point. But it has important consequences.

I do not know how to continue this discussion.

The word presents as a Singularity, is insignificant.

One must have "presents" of Mind, must be conscious, in order to experience the 'world of Reality, his or her own Existence, Reality.


God when speaking to Moses answered all of Moses's questions about Existence, all that God said is, I am, declaring the Existence of God's presents of Mind, Consciousness, Existence.

God's consciousness, the Immortals Spirit of God, as is Man's Consciousness is not Physical, ( or reducible to Physicality.)