My Animalistic Philosophy of Truth- Please give me reflections and debate!

Break down our belief in knowledge being correlative to an external reality as it is. Instead All of our senses are our own creations, relative to our own bodies, and not the window into an external objective world.

Now picture the simplest amoeba- moving towards things and away- and as it gets complex and evolves it turns eventually into a human being, ducking under branches and jumping over rocks and emitting complex sounds and making sophisticated movements. And in correlation to this sophisticated actor is an internal world just as sophisticated. But what started out not seeking the nature of reality but rather- seeking how the organism could change itself to better thrive in the world- why should all the complication convince us this has changed?

Life must be seen as an art- again especially like the art of fighting. There is no right or wrong way- just a million different styles of varying quality. We're always inside of a perspective gaining feedback from the world- self learning and hopefully improving our style. The urge to step outside of life and see things as they really are is illusory. Only a particular life can see. The world itself is constant change- not thought or vision or anything like that.

For most spiritual traditions teach that god must be approached not as something to be conquered dissected and pinned down with the intellect- but rather the intellect and the ego can be an obstacle. Spirituality is something to obey rather than understand and control. Something beyond us, bigger than us, that we must do our best to surrender to.

The animalistic philosophy of truth takes truth away from the idea that our reason can play god- take a question from our own thrownness and apply it to the entirety of reality itself- and instead teaches that our reason can make us better animals. Reality Itself- God or spirituality- is not to be delimited by the mind. It reaches us from beyond our concepts.

All of our senses are our own creations, relative to our own bodies, and not the window into an external objective world.

This organism now has an advantage! Now maybe "things to extend your tentacle towards" is what the organism "sees" every time a slight vibration up to a certain intensity is felt. And "things to extend your tentacle away from" is everything at a higher intensity than this. This type of knowledge isn't fool proof- mistakes will be made- but it does seem like it might give the organism an advantage.

Really I start with the idea that the whole world is Becoming- constant flux- change- This is itself an assumption but we're always "thrown"- starting from some type of assumption and besides- this is what Science suggests.

Action is first order- and knowledge is created in order to stamp upon the world of flux signposts to the actions we should take.

My answer is that being doesn't arise. being is just the name for a certain type of becoming.

I don't know how to quote like you guys do. lol Ok- so these are great replies Macrosoft. You've hit upon a central theme of this theory of truth. What is this truth we seek... this "truth not just for me" but "Truth for all of us"... Just like one god for all of us. One Belief system for all of us... can you tell I'm skeptical already?

The greatest thing we can say I think is some truth is so useful, its almost always useful for every being.

Because the Truly- the Really- the emotionally meaningful is what guides the logic to begin with.

Your mind must be balanced with your heart and your gut and your emotions and your spiritual sense.

We're just animals. Like monkeys. Or turtles.

I realize I keep flipping back and forth between using truth in the representational sense and in the pragmatic sense... I'm not sure if this contradiction can or should be resolved. I think it further demonstrates the limits of thought.

Our sentences cease being logical points and are reintroduced as interventions in life. Of course we don't want to give way to a shallow pragmatism of truth- Its true because I want it to be true! No instead, we want to get beyond just logic to a deeper source of truth. Truth should not be about control- the urge for the mind to control- to say once and for all "This is that!"

I laughed out loud at this one.

I have read William James and so many others but nothing in about the last 10 years so bear with me if I don't know whose arguments I may be using.

when I say that something is real. It is what I must react to. Where as if something is fake- or false- I can dismiss it- and hold onto instead a different understanding- that which it really is. "This is not an opportunity to get rich- (discard that) its a scam (react to that)!"

Its only when we sketch out each part- the epistemology, the psychology, even the politics or ethics- that as it were we construct a mutually reinforcing home for these thoughts to live. We create an operating system.

For truth you could appeal to common usage- science- religion- shame or ethics or taboo- predictability/repeatability- pragmatism- passion- lack of passion- etc...and all of these bases of truth might shape your worldview at different moments. So I think its not just that we can't see this operating system because its so big or because we're always in it- but because it is shifting with many pockets and networks and webs of related and mutually determining ideas with varying relations to others. Its multiple.

Pragmatism seems to suggest a more exploitative concept of truth- truth is what benefits us. Whereas my animalistic concept of truth suggests that truth is what creates us (hopefully in a manner that benefits us).

It adds a dynamism to our thought- it is the type of thinking that befits the "over-man", the Hegelian-Nietzschean constantly evolving dialectical becoming type of person. And this certainly goes a long way towards warding off shallow pragmatisms and the Last Man.

Truth is a process that creates our experienced world.

This is what is great in Heidegger, IMV. What I get from him is not arguments but the revelation of things that were always there without me grasping them conceptually. He analyzes the evolution of human clocks in terms of care. By really looking into the concept of time he opens man's essentially historical existence.

In short, we don't start from zero. We start within some kind of 'circle' of the meaning of existence. It's a circle because it is the meaning for us of the world in which we live. I'd say that we extend and brighten that circle.

Ah I was trying to place where the talk of time but not the time of the clock and "care" came from... Heidegger! Heidegger's interesting for me because when I was really reading this stuff I was an atheist and very Nietzschean and I followed Heidegger in all his thrownness, Neitzschean resonating talk- But then when he got to the sort of disclosure more Eastern sounding aspects I was "thrown" off lol.

But then after my philosophical journey came my spiritual journey- and I began to believe after arguing for only beliefs- that there was capital T Truth... Only we don't possess or create it. We can only listen to it.

To put it clear. I believe from my own experiences, that among the other experiences of spirituality- there is a kind of knowing that one can listen to. It is very quiet, especially at first. But the more one listens, the louder it gets. To me it is an obeying, but I'm also Jewish and I've noted different peoples seem to have a different relation/concept of spirituality (Christians go to India and they still talk all about love and christ consciousness lol).

Now this opens up a chilling line of thought for me as a Jew discussing Heidegger. I always thought about this spiritual voice- that like Kierkegarrds discussion of Abraham and Isaac- the Big T Truth is anything but Humanist! It follows no rules at all that we can proscribe. The chilling prospect of giving up your will to it is that it could tell you to do something monstrous.

Can you imagine what a monstrous possibility that is?

What if God told Heidegger all the Jews should be sent to camps!!!

I read the Schiller wikipedia article you attached. and I remember reading some of the pragmatists... here's the thing for me- For some reason I do get excited about some of their ideas- but more often than not, they seem to quiet my thoughts. To replace thinking with common sense. it almost seems like a quieting of philosophy some how.

Can you explain this to me?

After Studying philosophy I decided to go try and live it and basically- start revolution lol These days I'm primarily a musician and community organizer.

But the more pieces you throw into the air- the better chance you have that they may coalesce and form a new orbit.

This is my view of revolution in both thought and society. You work on one aspect- and then another- and then another- and its only after enough aspects have been altered that the big picture begins to emerge.

I notice that you don't speak of two circles- you speak of brightening the one. Which is beautiful. And I think this metaphor works too. And here instead of two separate circles- you add enough to its rings that suddenly the whole circle starts to rotate around a different center. For me this circle we're born into is often very isolationist and solitary- from the individual to the nuclear family. And the new center I seek- is also the old center. Tribe.

Really I start with the idea that the whole world is Becoming- constant flux- change- This is itself an assumption but we're always "thrown"- starting from some type of assumption and besides- this is what Science suggests. Once we thought the world was composed of atoms (beings)- but that was replaced with a world of waves- energy- constant change. So once we assume the world is constant change or becoming- how does being first arise?

So what is that becoming that creates this type of becoming we call being, or identity?
The point is this- why would any animal or simple organism have any type of perception or awareness if it could not alter its behavior?

So now that we have two different ways of being in the world- if this is done at random,

Forget "Trees" or "Speeding Vehicles" or the color "red" or "Blue".. all of these are more complex identities. None of these exist in the world of the simplest organism.

In my view the world is dynamic ("becoming"/changing), but it's not nothing that's dynamic, there has to be something ("being") that is changing, or the notion is incoherent

It seems weird to me here that you jump from nuts and bolts ontological ideas to specific issues in philosophy of perception.

So now that we have two different ways of being in the world- if this is done at random,

This is not a mini-rant directed specifically at you. You just brought it up. ;-)

But creatures easily do discriminate between such things, regardless of whatever interpretational apparatus you're relying on to parse them as "complex."

I almost wish there was something like a twitter limiter on post length.

What is common and already widely understood is easily communicated through a sentence or two. What is different and doesn't want to be understood through old perspectives requires explanation.

Think of the person who says something mean- and everyone feels bad- and then another person who finds this ridiculous- and laughs at it- and then everyone laughs. The mean person's perspective is now discarded in exchange for the perspective of the one who laughs.

Life must be seen as an art

But instead it was later seen that these atoms were actually energy- waves-

It may seem weird to you but if becoming is primary- then how does being arise at all? In what state is "being" real?

this act of treating "constant change" as if it were "the identical" is something created by life.

. . . On the other, for common understanding, we can say that they are.

Creatures don't discriminate between "Blue" or "red" when they don't have eyes.

Do you think Hegel or Heidegger could have made their impact through twitter?

(Keeping in mind that personally I think both are horrible authors as is.)

. It's not possible to just have "motion of nothing," or "just potential motion of nothing" which is even more nonsensical.

Facing mortality can give you distance from what is petty in one's community. In that sense it is isolating, especially if most don't want to face embarrassingly deep issues while there are gadgets to collect and while there is respectable worldly position to enjoy. On the other hand, the terror of death forces us to flee from what is petty or less important in ourselves. Flee where? To universal virtue which is more like poetry or music than a fixed idea

These heidegger ideas- as well as the one you mention with how our time is lived historically- I just can't get inside these ideas to feel them. So I know I don't really understand them.

A philosopher always has an ego and the grandiose abstract nature of philosophy can certainly play to this ego. So we don't know how to dance or dress fashionable or make social conversation but all this is "petty" and we are above and beyond these "petty things".... I can't help but see philosopher's like Heidegger in this manner.

Beauty and materialism in their right place are fundamental parts of a good life- even though some are more sensuous when it comes to these things and some are more enamored with thought and other aspects of life. The Carpenter values working with your hands, the philosopher values work of the mind, and the concierge or fashion designer values the art of comfort and appearance. All are valuable and have their place.

My suspicion is that when Heidegger appeals to these fringe extreme concepts like the fact we all will die one day- its an attempt to render these parts of life worthless. Nietzsche criticized this a good deal when he was talking about those who raise a god only to cast a shadow upon life. Who are the lovers and who are the haters of life- Nietzshce who often asked. This is too simplistic because Nietzsche was of course full of hate and he admitted it himself- but the question has some validity. And where do we put Heidegger in terms of this question?

"Is something truly good if it is only temporary.... don't we want that which is Good Always?"

To face death and our own mortality seems like it throws us more into the now- the present moment- and here is how I understand your talk of musicality and poetry. There's no point to it per se- its not to get somewhere. As a guru once said to me. "So you seek enlightenment. Where will you find it... over there?" Our life can not be justified by some imagined goal- it must be its self justification at each moment- like music or poetry.

Tell me if I'm on the right track with any of this. What I'm missing and not understanding. I've always felt like an outsider looking on Heidegger's thought.

I'll only add from my perspective- music or poetry also reach that dialectical ideal of becoming- where we are not trying to exploit or control but are equally putting ourselves in the mixture. The embodied cognition, as you called it, also means that our bodies and ourselves are at stake in our thought and actions. And isn't this what is truly Authentic?

When do I decide that I can only play the cards that were dealt with me? When do I choose a project in terms of what is possible given those cards and not imaginary cards that let me do anything? What is it to get serious with a kind of sober joy that embraces the world I was thrown into? Arguably this adds more to the text than the text gives.

What allows the way we are caught up in time to become visible? In stronger terms, what allows us to see that existence 'is' time?

I'm hearing Sartre's decision here in a way. Maybe Sartre presented his decision more as a radical break than this- there seemed to be a kind of unnatural randommness required for him- you don't decide for reasons but simply because to decide is to be free... I'm less impressed with Sartre in general lol. But it was fundamental that one choose one's decision- and here I see a choosing- a choosing of one's thrownness. Would you say the two are similar or different? Am I putting it correctly.

What does this really mean- this choosing of our thrownness? Do you think that we often live our lives with imaginary cards?

I'm not sure that I understand this importance of time as you and Heidegger are using it.

And then Sartre though man was a futile passion to be God.

I guess that depends if one believes in an afterlife or counts fantasies of starting from zero.

This reminds me of Sartre's take on love- the impossibility of trying to dominate the subject, etc etc. Its not that relevant to what we're talking about except to say- how foolish is it that we try to elevate our own experience to the universal? A lot of times our philosophies describe us better than they do the world.

Hmmm. So there's two contexts of not accepting our thrownness. Thinking that we are an original causa sui- or believing a metaphysical story. These days it seems this is less common. Now people just don't believe in anything lol. Distraction has replaced faith.

Memories are present creations, recreated time and again and exist only so long as they exist in our synapses. The future is a similar story. Consciousness created "the Thing that Persists in Time" so that it could compare different impressions and draw conclusions. But my belief is that past and future only live in one's consciousness.

So if this is what Heidegger means to say by time- then yes I agree.

Maybe the better contrast, however, is between 'our' cards (the tribes cards) and 'my' cards. Because authentic means 'own,' just as one's death is one's 'own' more than just about anything else can be. It is literally the end of the world, a personal apocalypse. It exists now in the form of possibility. What does it mean to look at it and take it into account, as a constant possibility and not as distant event that one buys insurance for?

Heidegger is trying to show us that our notion of the present is mostly inherited baggage that doesn't do our first-person experience of meaning justice.

This way of seeing the world- of one's own death as a possibility- I'm not sure I'm familiar with it.

I can sit here right now and think about if everything just ended. If my own personal experience was gone. And what do I get from that thought? Personally I get a kind of peace. There's some famous christian who said to an atheist- "come here and see me upon my death bed. I want you to see with what peace a christian dies." I'm not christian but I'm spiritual. I see my life as a sort of mission in some ways. I'm doing my best. If I'm gone... well shit I sure tried. but since I don't feel like I have to control everything- the sense of me vanishing doesn't leave me with some great anxiety about what I leave behind. That was never up to me to begin with. I was just doing my best and proceding with trust.

This is what trying to feel the possiblity of my own death brings up in me. I'm not sure if this experience coincides with what you speak of. Neither does it make me feel necessarily more like this life is my own rather than shared with others. My spirituality still makes me feel like I am part of something shared....

Speak on this- what am I not understanding that makes Heidegger so hard for me to grasp :)

In a sense I don't believe in time at all. Just constant change.

There is constant change- let us give up on the idea of trying to seize everything all at once and then passing it through some medium called time. etc.

Death allows us to see our entire existence from the outside, from nothingness. Nothingness lets beings be against a background of their possible not-being. We can see the entire world (the meaningful world with others) from the outside, imaging ourselves gone.

For Heidegger and you it seems like there is something more profound supposedly there. Does this view of time impact your life in some kind of way? can you describe how?

What you're describing here- isn't the feeling of it a kind of lessening of seriousness? A kind of- Shit since we're all gonna die anyway- I'm not as caught up in the gravity of it all?

In my life- when I was about 20- I decided the future that I was taught to hold sacred and fear missing out on- getting a good job- the american dream etc- was a crock of lies. So I felt a kind of lessening of the seriousness of these shared perspectives and was freed to embrace my own. Is this talk of death having a similar effect?

I think what maybe that statement neglects is the connectedness of mental life. It's not pure noise, for instance. The past is reinterpreted in terms of a future project. The future is projected in terms of what has already been. What is the dynamic here? Is it a simple forward flow?

A "future" is always imagined- A "past" is always imagined. The present is always real. So the three are not equal- Past and future all exist in the present- and the present is just flux. Reality.

The past that we encounter is always a picture/ a memory/ a bit of our imagination. It is never real. Things change and they leave nothing behind.

If he is right (and you will have to decide for yourself), then we've been locked in a 'presentist' illusion (useful fiction) for centuries, beguiled by one of our own inventions, asleep to its apparently necessary but actually merely contingent dominance.

When we consider our reality- our experience- in terms of something in the "past"... isn't this past constructed just like a movie by our minds? We try to be faithful to what we were recording but its still a movie.

Speaking phenomenally- it seems we are always in a reality that can't be pinned down (flux) and we strategize and contemplate based on constructed memories and projected imaginations which are also part of this unpinnable reality.

Can you explain to me how it is otherwise?

So the past is 'still here' in that sense. And the future is already here to as the words pour out toward the end of the sentence.

t. But perhaps the most important part of the past is the way we interpret the 'present' and the 'future.' The 'living' past is how we do 'now'.

The world does not need everything that ever was preserved and laid out in sequential order of time. We're the ones who need this.

But is this anything more than an impressive trick? Does it change us?

I still retain the impression that what Heidegger is concerned with more than anything else- is just turning everything into philosophy! lol These sophisticated descriptions... is this really embodied and lived philosophy?

When you talk about how the the living past is how we do the now- are you saying for example- like the way foucault reinterprets the past how that changes our present? Are you saying-

"He who controls the present now- controls the past.
He who controls the past now- controls the future!"
-Rage against the machine :)

If this is the case- maybe I'm not effected by this thought because I could say- right- reality is a narrative. Why describe it in such a complicated manner.

ope I haven't been too annoying. I just get excited about these ideas and want others to enjoy them with

There'd be no past. Nones' thinking about it. It just doesn't arise. This rock is going through changes. That rock is going through changes. They're not even in the same "world" because what's a world but a perspective?

The way we interact with the past and future to me is just the way we interact with our imagination. It doesn't strike me with awe. A "future" is always imagined- A "past" is always imagined. The present is always real. So the three are not equal- Past and future all exist in the present- and the present is just flux. Reality.

the feeling is mutual. i want to brush up against the borders of what i don’t understand because that’s where the growth is. thank you for all the explication. i think i need to revisit Heidegger.

They're horrible writers like Bob Dylan is a horrible singer.

There is no thing without the motion.

How precise is this present? And where does this notion of a perfectly precise present come from if not from clocks?

Disagreeing is one thing

There's a difficulty in having to use the very words you're trying to redefine.

I'm not sure its worth chopping up more on this particular subject. The differences- the stubbornness of the disagreement will probably reflect in some other area of conversation as well. Maybe it'll be clearer then- what is at stake?

For me, my sense, my feeling when I talk about our different concepts of time- is that I feel like I am reaching for a demystifying of this time process- and you believe you are speaking of a time concept that has greater depth than what I am speaking of.

And surely I don't understaand what's down there since I haven't really plummeted its depths just tried sometime years ago and felt like I was entering into such a foggy morass it couldn't have been erected in good faith with the attempt at clarity.

But where that mistifying mist rises up in philosophy... only look what ugly thoughts can hide behind these abstractions in the case of Heidegger! I think its important to speak plainly when we can.... this goes for philosophical writings in general. We say that if we speak plainly (like Nietzsche) we'll be misunderstood (like Nietzsche). But if we speak only in this tortured complex language we'll be even more misunderstood. Didn't delueze have a dichotomy of these two language- common language and more philosophical? I see them as common language is easy to relate to the rest of life and judge- but difficult to know the author's true intention because its so easy to substitute it with our own. Why philosophical language is more precise and distinct as to the author's intention- but so difficult to bring it to bear upon every day life and connect and really understand it- and this itself forms a kind of mask by separating it out from the world it must refer to.

Probably not that much is at stake. It won't rock your world ethically if you suddenly see where I am coming from. It'll only change your mind that Heidegger was indeed saying something fresh.

It may well be that 999 out of 1000 humans speaking in new ways are really wasting our time with their own confusion. But occasionally 1 of them really has grasped something new.

For me a lot of this came from discussions of being and becoming and questioning how it is that I experience time... as well as Bergson's theorem that when we say time we're really talking about space. Love me some Bergson!

All my talk of Being and Becoming has got to cue you in that I'm down for the difficult language of philosophical thought. In my demand that philosophy talk in common language as well- there's a deeper demand there.

Philosophy has got to lead to something!

But I really think philosophy is something to be embodied and lived. It has to enter into our conversations. Its like a new eyeball. When you're describing this eyeball to someone- it may be very difficult language and very scientific. But when they've learned it they put this eyeball in their head- and now they see things differently. Once we've expanded our meaning of concepts like truth, etc- we don't need to explain them again each time. We just use them with a different sense.

Basically what I'm really getting at here is- Philosophy for what? How come? Why philosophy at all?

But more than that- because of those punctuated moments of truth! Epiphany! And Truth changes our world- our lives.

When I look at the world around us- politics in america and the world- the "liberal elites" of the media- the ones who used to protect us from our own worst instincts- and subject us to theirs- they've been rocked by the populism of social media and the flattening of information in general. Its a more populist world of information. So we can't rely on protection anymore from those who "know better'. The democracy is a more true democracy- which means just as dumb as its people.

So philosophy- truth- all these things become more important than ever. And one thing I like about my perspective on things is that it helps breed a philosophical humility. TLDR- we're just animals bro... animal brains. We only see from our own tiny perspective. Respect and love differences, etc, etc yadadya- And at the same time- Demistify your intellectual concepts on God that think they KNOW to make room for the mystery of true spirituality.

So I come on to this forum as a- hmmm. its been 10 years lying dormant all these thoughts. And I feel like they have legs. I feel like they should go somewhere. Even if every single thought within this has been said before- its something of a new center. I've searched for it in writings and I've seen parts and pieces here and there, etc. But the big picture of it- the central thrust of it- It feels like Nietzsche to me but it doesn't sound like Nietzsche at all. It echoes Bergson, Deleuze, Rorty, so many, so many others of course. But its got its own identity.

I find myself in the weird situation of thinking that I have something important to communicate and share in the world of philosophy. At this point I'm convinced that I do. Even if you disagree you can just play along with a- "supposing you did have something new to communicate..."

It's the "what now". Can I meet some professor and partner with him and have him do all the dirty work because he's chosen a career in academia anyways? Is that a kind of shortcut for me? Is that realistic.

Or should I just keep plugging away at this animated thing and try to reach a broad market.

The Acedemic world or the popular world?

What do you do with a problem like Maria?

If this was Athens I would walk into the town center and debate with Socrates I suppose....

I realised I was choosing when to be happy or mad. And that I could choose not to let things affect me negatively. In fact, I realised, everything has it's ups and downs, things change. But it is my decision to choose how I react to it all.

Can you communicate your philosophy to a kid from the hood?

How much does philosophy talk about Racism? That's kind of relegated into the English Department- Cultural studies I think.

You mention serpeant and dove. One way of looking at rap or a kid from the hood- compared to abstract philosophy and where ever we're from... is Chakras. Whether you believe in one system or whatever- just the general idea that when you listen to someone's voice- some people speak from their belly- some the top of their head. Some are more rooted- some more airy. What part of a persons self is activated and where are we still sleeping. They say Hip Hop was born when people began imitating the drums with their voice rather than the melodies. Its the rhythm. And Rhythm is the lower chakras. Are the lower chakras lower? Only if you prize the mind greater than the soul.

This Whitey needs his damn rap :)

I love Dave Chappelle (Not because he's black). His point about the metoo movement. When you reject and kick out everyone who's done wrong- it just keeps them underground and hiding. They need to be confronted and given the chance to change.

Recently I heard or read somewhere something like :'all white people think they are superior.' Is there a pride in whiteness that is mostly unconscious? Experienced as a kind of neutral pride in one's own self but dependent somehow on skin color? It seems plausible. If people with more pigment in their skin had by chance ended up in the same position, I think it would be the same for them.

Black folks tend to dance better. They tend to sing with more feeling. Not all, but many. To me, this means they're more embodied- more activated and aware of their feelings. It suggests to me they have stronger souls, and more active hearts. We melanin lacking are far more disembodied. Now advantages come with that- with less feeling we can be more controlled and disciplined easier, etc, we're less prideful, easier for us to act in our longterm interest rather than act out of passion etc. and other things too that I feel uncomfortable saying. But basically, when racists say black people are more animalistic reverse racists can just say- well white people are closer to robots. What happened to their souls? What happened to their hearts? What else is more important in life than the soul and the heart?

Violators should be confronted,

We don't have a right to be employed, and business owners do have a right to appeal to the possibly irrational attitude of the mob.

I'd set up a very different system than that if I were king. Basically you would have a right to be employed, and businesses wouldn't hinge on direct patronage with money-for-goods-and-services exchanges.