Can We Even Conceive Totality?

Reply to saw038
You may want to look at this thread I started a little while ago.
http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/461/what-is-a-unitary-existence-like/p1

Wow, that is truly a great piece of philosophy. So, I think I agree with you, primarily based on your last line: "The fact that there is something to escape means the unity would never be in the possibility of existence being that there is already Other. "

If this is true, then 'Other' exists before our individualized self does. Therefore, our individual self may want to go back to Other, and it might be the origin from which it came, but it can never fully reach the land of Other until it gives up the idea of self.

I speculate, of course;

What do you think?

Quoting saw038

If this is true, then 'Other' exists before our individualized self does. Therefore, our individual self may want to go back to Other, and it might be the origin from which it came, but it can never fully reach the land of Other until it gives up the idea of self.

I speculate, of course;

What do you think?

Your question is a bit different than what I was discussing but in the ballpark. I was saying what would it be like if existence had no individuation and everything was a unitary whole. You are not necessarily posing a unitary existence, just complete knowledge of existence. I thought that interesting because it made me wonder if knowledge of everything all at once would be similar to experiencing a unified existence- the view from everywhere. Anyways, the Other in the previous thread's comments had to do with simply the fact that if everything was unified, there could be no room for processes or things to happen. So, possibly similar to the unitary existence scenario- knowing everything at once may be so complete, that it is similar to experiencing non-being as if everything was everything, it would be almost like saying everything was nothing (because there would be no room for individuation and therefore no room to know "other things" in relation to itself).

Conceive what?

Reply to StreetlightX I think you may have hit on my point.

Reply to schopenhauer1 I do see what you were saying and how what I said somewhat differed. I think these are hard concepts to transmit through language, but that is why I try to learn from others.

But the idea that everything as nothing is one I have pondered, because in a physics sense, nothingness does contain an essence of somethingness ( or, maybe our idea of somethingness is filled with holes of nothingness).

Regardless, my question remains:

Is there something that encapsulates all of somethingness and nothingness?

Fortunately, one can conceive of a brick without having an actual brick in one's head. Recite this mantra whenever such problems rear their befuddling heads:

"The word is not the thing."

Quoting saw038

Because the order of thought is a linear, bit-by-bit series

Is it?

Reply to Barry Etheridge When you're thinking in your head or writing something as I do now, are you not doing it one thought or word followed by another thought or word?