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

[Wayne92587]

Presents, the relativity of Time and Space, the "Here and Now, Now is the time, Point Singularity. 0/1, the" Event Horizon", the moment in Time, the point in Space, in which Nothing becomes Something, Existence begins, Time and Space become Relative.

Your Reality begins when you declare your existence by saying that, I am conscious, "I am",
I have presents, I exist.

Your Consciousness is convoluted, as is the Physical existence of you Brain, Your Philosopher's Stone.

[Wayne92587]

I have Presents of Mind!

[Tamminen]

To sum up: Positing the possibility of something we need a logical space in which to posit it. Our logical space is within the structure 'the subject – the world'. Logic does not reside in a Platonic heaven. So, if we want to posit the possibility of the whole universe, whatever its content, we must posit it somewhere within that basic structure. Its place may vary within this structure, meaning that the facts of the world can be anything, but it must always have the structure 'the subject – the world'. Therefore a subjectless universe is logically impossible.

Remember that there is only one universe, by definition.

If there are weak points in this reasoning, I am always ready to discuss about them.

[Wayne92587]

Tamminen;

The world it must always have the structure, Therefore a subjectless universe is logically impossible.

Remember that there is only one universe, by definition.

If there are weak points in this reasoning, I am always ready to discuss about them.

There are no weak points in your reasoning, however that are realities that are left out of your reasoning.

My understanding is that there is more mass, subject, in the Universe than which can be detected, discussed.

The Universe can not exist without mass, subject, or can it not?

I believe that before Creation, that which would later be called the Universe was subjectless, existed without mass.

What do we call, what name do we use, how do we identify, this something that has no mass, that was subjectless.

Before the beginning moment of the Beginning of the creative process, this state of Existence is now by many, referred to as Nothingness.

We must be able to speak of this Nothingness which encompasses the same area of Space that exists as the area which the Universe now encompasses.

What do we call this part of the Universe that is now occupied but was once subjectless, a massless part of what is now the Universe.

You say that a Great Void, a State or condition which is massless, subjectless is logically impossible.

Remember that there is only one universe by definition and there is only a Single Space, Great Void, in which both Nothing and Something both Exist.

[Sy Borg]

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.

You are thinking of panentheism.

pantheism: a doctrine which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God.

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?

I suggest that what we want doesn't matter in the big picture scenario - we still end up getting what we get.

Dear Dinosaurs of the Cretaceous, do you want to be wiped out by a giant asteroid? Noooooo!! Bad luck, here it comes ...

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.

This winding approach, trying to weasel into the very hub of existence, reminds me of the German existentialists. It seems to comes down to a focus on subjective being.

Sure, Tam, we - as chunks of the universe constructed of energies that can neither be created nor destroyed are, as PDGT said, "star stuff".

In that sense we are all 13.8 billion years old and we have developed from being the mayhem of the early universe, and we have been parts of stars and planets, various floating energies and electron clouds. We were there as the first rock eaters started the process of transforming most of the Earth's surface into biology. We also were the archaea and mitochondria who found themselves in a fateful symbiosis. We were the trilobites, the dinosaurs, the apes, early hominids, parts of violent early civilisations - and now we talk on forums without buildings.

Evolution is simply growth as viewed from an inside perspective. The difference depends on the scale of the perspective. Trouble is, we don't remember any of it because most of the time we were not conscious. Hence many dismiss such ideas as silly, mostly those who believe the universe was created by a large, male humanoid spirit.

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.

Maybe, as long as you treat deep sleep and coma as only relative non existence.

It will be interesting to eventually know if your claim is true or not, but I am in no rush to find out!

[RJG]

if there are no conscious beings in the universe seen as a spatiotemporal totality
then there is nothing…

1. If there are no perceivers, then why does this mean there are no objects?
2. If I close my eyes, does everything disappear (i.e. no longer exist)?
3. If all the conscious beings in the universe went to sleep (unconscious) at the same time, does the universe poof into nothing? ...and when we all wake up (if that were even possible), how does the universe pop back into existence?

Sorry Tam, I see no logic in your speculative assertion.

Because the non-conscious universe is a logical impossibility, as I have said.

Therefore a subjectless universe is logically impossible.

Where is the "logical impossibility"? Saying it, doesn't make it so. You need to show your hand; show your logic! Can you fill in the missing premises that lead to this conclusion?

P1. (premise one)
P2. (premise two)
C. Therefore, if there are no 'conscious beings', then nothing exists.

[Sy Borg]

if there are no conscious beings in the universe seen as a spatiotemporal totality
then there is nothing…

1. If there are no perceivers, then why does this mean there are no objects?
2. If I close my eyes, does everything disappear (i.e. no longer exist)?
3. If all the conscious beings in the universe went to sleep (unconscious) at the same time, does the universe poof into nothing? ...and when we all wake up (if that were even possible), how does the universe pop back into existence?

I was thinking along similar lines. Heck, even when we are conscious sometimes we almost disappear.

Still, I don't think it's what Tam means, which appears more reminiscent of Hiedegger's Dasein. I too find the subjectivist view difficult to understand.


Tam, a question to help clarify: What are your thoughts on the comparison between the sense of being of a person during deep sleep and the sense of being of a rock? Are they:

1. both a complete blank (materialism)

2. neither a blank (panpsychism) or

3. does one have a marginal sense of being while the other does not?

I ask out of curiosity; I have absolutely no idea how or if you will answer :)

[Tamminen]

You are thinking of panentheism.

No, more like pantheism, more like Spinoza.

I suggest that what we want doesn't matter in the big picture scenario - we still end up getting what we get.

I agree, but we also get our desires.

In that sense we are all 13.8 billion years old and we have developed from being the mayhem of the early universe, and we have been parts of stars and planets, various floating energies and electron clouds. We were there as the first rock eaters started the process of transforming most of the Earth's surface into biology. We also were the archaea and mitochondria who found themselves in a fateful symbiosis. We were the trilobites, the dinosaurs, the apes, early hominids, parts of violent early civilisations - and now we talk on forums without buildings.

I agree. This is our history.

Maybe, as long as you treat deep sleep and coma as only relative non existence.

Deep sleep and being non-conscious are phenomenologically identical if there is no subjective experiencing during deep sleep.

If all the conscious beings in the universe went to sleep (unconscious) at the same time, does the universe poof into nothing? ...and when we all wake up (if that were even possible), how does the universe pop back into existence?

I think this is the only valid argument from you. And my answer is: it vanishes in the same way as my world vanishes during sleep, but it does not really vanish because I usually wake up if I am not dead. The vanishing of the universe in this sense cannot be compared to the vanishing of objects.

For the other arguments, I think you missed my point. Concentrate to my summary and try to find the weak points there. I am sure you find those points. So we can discuss them from a more realistic point of view. Note that the argument I presented there is based on my view of what the being of logic presupposes. You cannot ignore it straightforward, it is supported by many wise persons, including Wittgenstein. So the counterarguments must not be trivial.

Tam, a question to help clarify: What are your thoughts on the comparison between the sense of being of a person during deep sleep and the sense of being of a rock? Are they:

1. both a complete blank (materialism)

2. neither a blank (panpsychism) or

3. does one have a marginal sense of being while the other does not?

I ask out of curiosity; I have absolutely no idea how or if you will answer

They are both complete blank if there is no subjective experiencing during sleep. I do not think panpsychism is a plausible theory. As to #3, I do not know, maybe we just forget the sense of being during sleep. But we are speaking of the concepts of 'conscious' and 'non-conscious' and the relation of conscious being to being in general, not specifically what is what in nature.

[Tamminen]

About the subject-world relationship:

Take Wittgenstein. He thought that the “metaphysical subject” is an ontological precondition for the being of the world. Of course he did not mean any individual subject, but a subject in general, a subject that gets its properties from the world, being itself without properties.

Also logic presupposes the being of the world. He says:

5.552 The “experience” which we need to understand logic is not that such and such is the case, but that something is; but that is no experience.
Logic precedes every experience—that something is so. It is before the How, not before the What.
5.5521 And if this were not the case, how could we apply logic? We could say: if there were a logic, even if there were no world, how then could there be a logic, since there is a world?

In this scenario, which I share, the positing of a possible world without subjects is indeed logically impossible, because the logical space to posit it is always within the subject-world structure.

[Tamminen]

If there are no perceivers, then why does this mean there are no objects?

If by objects you mean the totality of objects, and by perceivers conscious subjects, this is the question I have now answered as well as it is possible for me at the moment. I think I have shown my hand. The ball is yours.

[RJG]

In this scenario, which I share, the positing of a possible world without subjects is indeed logically impossible, because the logical space to posit it is always within the subject-world structure.

It is logically impossible for a subject to posit that a subject-less world exists, because the subject must exist in this world to do the positing. Note: it is the "positing" of this that is logically impossible, NOT the "subject-less world". This is similar to the logical impossibility of me denying my own existence, because I must exist to be able to deny my existence.

BUT this is very different from the conclusion that you (Tamminen) seem to be making. -- that a world without subjects is logically impossible. Unless this is somehow a derived conclusion from the above premise.

...this is the question I have now answered as well as it is possible for me at the moment. I think I have shown my hand. The ball is yours.

Okay, I still don't see how you get from Premise 1 to your conclusion. We need a premise 2 that logically (mathematically) connects premise 1 to the conclusion.

• Premise 1 - A subject cannot logically posit that a world without subjects exists.
  Premise 2 - (missing premise)
  Conclusion - A world (the universe) without subjects is logically impossible

What is the missing premise? ...I can't conceive of a premise that would work here. Therefore, it seems that the universe can still logically exist if there are no conscious beings!

[Tamminen]

Premise 1 - A subject cannot logically posit that a world without subjects exists.
Premise 2 - (missing premise)
Conclusion - A world (the universe) without subjects is logically impossible

Not quite. A subject can logically try to posit a possible world of any kind, but because that world must fit into the logical space within the structure of 'subject-world', which is our logical universe, so to speak, the possible world we really posit cannot be without subjects. The weak point which I challenged you to attack on, is the question of where logic itself stands in our reality, and if it stands in our reality at all. So if you look what Wittgenstein says about it, you can oppose him or not. But if you agree with him, as I do, the logcal conclusion should be clear. Or is it?

[SimpleGuy]

The problem is not only that forever is something observer dependent as previously mentioned. This is truly the cas even for higher order logics with the necessity operator and the possible operator. If you would go futher than Interval temporal logics and include relativistic thinking that the reality is observer dependent (which has been shown from me from previous remarks), it should be clear that there could be theorems that are observers where this would be a tautology and other where certain theorems are not !!!! In modal logic where possible and necessary are implemented as logic operators, the different realities are ordered in a tree, and correctness is tree dependent !!!

[SimpleGuy]

Remeber a person falling into a black hole fall for all outer observers forever, but for himself this is not the case . This is the special relativistic effect of time dilation. So eternal is a observer dependent predicate.

[SimpleGuy]

Who is interested in this should look at this webpage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

So absolute values of predicates should better be formalized with modal logic.