The Mind and Our Existence
Now, For a long time I have been dabbling around this situation and can't seem to find any certainty in the relationship between our mind, and existence. What we define the mind as (shown predominantly by Descartes in his meditations, for all I know) Is that we are able to think; therefore we are. However, does that make us aware of who or what we are? Or just the fact that we are able to be certain that we can have conscious thoughts.
Moreover, all the different arguments we have for existance; that being the mind and the world, are baffling in great logic and all make incredible sense. As a result, I have found it hard to find certianty in one that I can truly support and believe. How can we be sure that we exist in the first place, or on a larger scale: the world.
I would love to hear your responses and expand on what you think.
Moreover, all the different arguments we have for existance; that being the mind and the world, are baffling in great logic and all make incredible sense. As a result, I have found it hard to find certianty in one that I can truly support and believe. How can we be sure that we exist in the first place, or on a larger scale: the world.
I would love to hear your responses and expand on what you think.
Comments (49)
What's your opinion, though? Agree with me, disagree?
If you are looking for a good, knockdown answer to the problem of external world skepticism, then you are probably not going to find it, as if there was, we would not be having this discussion and skepticism would be considered something only the insane consider.
There are pragmatic considerations, as even though I know the external world may completely be a lie, everything in the past indicates to me that I have to do certain things to persist and that this is the only world I am aware of, so, therefore, I ought to act as if the world I perceive is real. However, I do not find solely pragmatic foundations to be good for epistemology, so I think that this answer is insufficient.
After a few hour in a sensory deprivation tank, people can lose their minds and feel like they cease to exist. So there is good neurocognitive evidence to argue that the patterning the world provides is very much needed for our having an "inner world" of differentiated experience.
Of course, idealists may argue that the experiments that prove such a thing are further fictions of their minds. You can't in the end get anywhere with an ardent idealist anymore than you can with a naive realist. ;)
The issue is that the old traditions of foundationalism (DeCartes and the like) suffer from problems. Even the more permissive inductive versions of foundationalism are fraught with problems.
The problem can be traced back to the notion of justification. Normally, we require some sort of justification to say we know something. The intent of justification is to reduce error in our beliefs. For example, we want evidence that reduces the possibility of error and closes off alternate possibilities to what appears to be the case. However, there is no number that shows how well we are justified, or even what cut-off number would be permissible. In other words, there is no exact science in epistemology once we go beyond the realms of established scientific, mathematical, logical, or statistical methods. Even then, there are problems, particularly that the foundations of these fields' epistemologies are always in question. Further, as some have commented, some epistemologists demand a level of rigor to hold knowledge such that even if we accept their epistemological systems as sound, most people do not know basic facts about there day-to-day life.
PS: Your picture/gif mysteriously disappeared :-|
I like that analogy, the world as a wall. I think of this wall as a confinement. Do you see that with respect to the past, and with respect to the future, it is not the same wall? Doesn't this imply that there is a break in the wall at the present?
When I look to the past, I see that all physical things have definite location. I have seen things. But I have no capacity to move into the past, toward any of those definite locations. I assume that for the very same reason that I can't move into the past, the locations of things in the past are definite. The past has been fixed, it cannot change. I cannot go there to change it. I apprehend a wall, a barricade to my actions. But when I look toward the future, I have no capacity to see anything, I only see it as it goes past. I apprehend a wall to my senses, I cannot sense anything in the future, though I have sensed many things in the past. However, I apprehend real possibilities with respect to the future, the possibility to act, to move, and to change things which have remained the same in the past.
So the wall toward the future prevents me from sensing anything in that direction, but it allows me to move with some freedom. The wall toward the past allows me to see all that has been around me in the past, but it prevents me from moving, or changing anything which has been. Since these two walls are radically different, almost opposed to each other actually, it is impossible that it is the same wall in the past as in the future. Therefore it appears like there must be a break in the wall at the present.
Neither.
Quoting Agustino
:-d
Quoting GreyScorpio
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here.
Quoting GreyScorpio
What sustains us? The wall? What sustains the wall?
So then you suggest they arise together (à la Buddhist interdependent origination)? How is this possible?
I'm not sold on going down the rabbit hole of there being a first cause, which seems too linear a causal chain. Infinite regression becomes a logical problem then, in my understanding.
Quoting GreyScorpio
If there are only minds, then you have to account for material reality somehow. Why is there a distinction between the immaterial mind (let's say ideas, thought, etc.) and the world-proper (galaxies, planets, matter at large)?
Quoting GreyScorpio
You'll prolly help me understand as we go :)
Surely but that does nothing except postulate a first cause. For example... A and B mutually depend on each other and constitute the world. That means that A and B - taken together - are the first cause. Indeed you'd end up with one substance and two attributes, à la Spinoza ;)
One way to view the problem is not that the mind needs or doesn't need the universe but that the mind is embedded in a holographic universe, such as the Implicate/Explicate Universe as described by David Bohm.
The Universe as we view it is real, it is there, it is substantial, and it is exactly as we perceive it. It can be thought of as a hologram and the mind is a reference beam that is tuned to a frequency in order to view a personal aspect of that hologram. So everything is real and there.
From these views, a personal mind (both distinct but still part of a Universal Mind) creates its own personal memory which is also part of the fabric of the universal hologram and is accessible via a personal mind frequency This can be what is commonly referred to as Self.
So we have a Universal Mind and a Personal Mind and they are embedded in the fabric of a Holographic Universe.. Does the Personal Mind persist as part of the Holographic Universe? In this model it does.
Erm, no I don't think so. What are you suggesting is the cause of A and B taken together? And tell me what A and B are, or at least what you think I find them to be.
A and B taken together have no cause. Whatever reality you imagine - say you imagine that mind depends on world and world depends on mind - in that case all you're saying is that there's an A and a B which taken together form the first cause - like two sides of one coin. It could also be A and B and C and... The first cause is inescapable.
There is material substantially but in essence it is all energy. This doevetails our current understanding of the energy/material universe. The material is substantial energy.
I think it's more pertinent to ask, "why are there material things?"
Quoting GreyScorpio
I'm not necessarily making that claim, but if this is true, then why is there materiality at all? If there is no need, then..?
Quoting GreyScorpio
I dunno! Why is there?
Quoting GreyScorpio
If the mind is non-conceptual and non-experiential, then how do you know for certain that it exists?
Whatever A and B create cannot be cause but effect. The effect is whatever arises out of the two.
If A and B are the basic components of your ontology, then everything else that exists arises out of the two. For example, A is extension and B is thought. The whole realm of extended and thinking things arises out of those two.
What else exists?
Whatever is there in the holographic universe is there for me. I do not distinguish between real and imaginary. They all exist.
Quite obviously the instantiations of those two. In the case of Spinoza, the modes - the particular extended things, or thinking things, etc.
This doesn't follow. Is thinking and feeling not conceptual or experiences one might have or what?
Quoting GreyScorpio
I think one can be relatively certain that material things exist, in whatever capacity - the question is whether or not material things are all that exists. You seem to have taken a fully idealistic position, whereas I'm more in the dualism camp.
I think if you're after a concerted materialist position, whisper Terrapin, as I think he identifies more in that way :)
Quoting Agustino
Okay, I admit to being no expert on this topic, but if there is only mind and the world, what else is there that comes about as a result of A (mind) and B (the world) having formed a relationship together?
Experience for one :P
Can there be experience if there is just world and no mind?
Quoting Heister Eggcart
But the point was that we cannot find this continuity in the wall, we cannot "walk around" the wall because there is a break in it, and that is the present. See, there is a wall to the past of us, and a wall to the future of us, and these two walls have completely different features. As much as we try to connect these two walls, by claiming that what "is", is at the present, we cannot validate this "what is at the present", so the two walls remain as distinct. We cannot connect them.
Quoting GreyScorpio
What is detached, is "existing in time". This is what we make up, fabricate, as what is existing at the present. From our perceptions, we create a concept of what it means to exist at the present, and this is our fabricated world. In reality though, things are behind the two walls, past and future. However, we are given a glimpse at reality through this separation between the two walls, when things pass from being in the future to being in the past. From this glimpse of reality we create our "world".
Quoting GreyScorpio
What I think, is that there is separation between us, there is separation between your mind and my mind. I am not thinking your thoughts, and you are not thinking mine. Because of this separation we think that there is some sort of wall at the present. the wall separates us. This validates our claim that there is a material world, the separation which exists between us. We apprehend this separation as a spatial separation, that is what we perceive, there is space between us, we can measure the distance. But when we try to comprehend this separation with our minds, it takes on the character of a temporal separation. You are always in the past from my perspective at the present, and I am always in the past from your perspective at the present.
I disagree, I think that there is a continuous wall, Just because we live in the present and remain here does not mean that we are unable to foresee or progress the future. I agree there may be different features for each time frame (past, present and future) but not everything changes between these time frames. A break in the wall would suggest a complete rework of time, thought and maybe life itself; as if there were a break in time. I agree, we aren't able to interchange between fragments of time, ourselves:
But our minds have that capability.
We are able to travel back to the past in our minds and revisit events that have already happend. Is it not possible that we do the same thing for the future; during a common night time dream or a day dream? Time may be a problem for our physical states. But if it wasn't a possibility, would we have things like memory? And would memory exist if there was a break in the wall?
THE ANSWER IS QUITE SIMPLE (but it was difficult to arrive at):
Reality is that which will annihilate you, whether your mind acknowledges its existence or not.