Attempting to prove that the "I" is eternal
Imagine your consciousness disassociating with your body, so that you can observe your body from a distance. From this point of view, "your" body is entirely not self.
The question is, why is this body associated at all with my self?
Why didn't this body become born without my consciousness. Why didn't I remain as nothing when this body came into being.
It would seem I was associated in some way with this body before it came into existence. Or else it would have been born without me.
The question is, why is this body associated at all with my self?
Why didn't this body become born without my consciousness. Why didn't I remain as nothing when this body came into being.
It would seem I was associated in some way with this body before it came into existence. Or else it would have been born without me.
Comments (84)
Some might argue that a person's body was not born with the consciousness of the individual. It may have developed along with the developing mind of the body.
There is no memory of consciousness prior to young childhood. There is no empirical proof of the mind surviving the body.
I bet this is not very uplifting or helpful for you, but hey, I am not lying. My facts are verifiable by your own very experiences.
This is too convoluted.
Imagine that your consciousness is eternal. Done!
The thing is, you can imagine many things, including things that are counterfactual and even incoherent. There are ways to deploy the mere fact that we can imagine something in a philosophical argument, but they usually hinge on self-reference: the ability to imagine itself must be of some inferential significance (as in Anselm's Ontological argument, for example). In your case this is not obvious. Just because you can imagine your consciousness being separate from your body doesn't mean that this really can be the case.
Simply put, all the “I” was ever meant to do, is represent the human thinking subject, and that to whom feelings belong, and then, for no other reason than to talk about it.
No thought, no feelings, no talking, no “I”, hence no need for its eternity, the proof of which would be impossible anyway, given the current metaphysical paradigm.
Sure it does.
It is not a physical thing, but it dies with the physical body. It gets developed when the physical brain gets developed, and it dies with the dead brain.
The "I" is not physical, much like thoughts, feelings, etc. are not physical, although their presence can be derived and pointed out by physical devices. That is only so because the "I" somehow (don't ask me how) connects with the physical body.
Many say "I" is only an illusion. No. If there were no mind of an "I" there, there could be no illusion. Illusion is very much the function of the "I" via the brain manifestation of the mind.
Things go in trends. Current trend is to think there is no "I". I oppose that trend, and I want it on the record. (-:
Surprisingly, Levinas also associates "the idea of the eternity of the soul" with atheism, which he defines as "a position prior to both the negation and the affirmation of the divine." This is the reverse of what one might normally expect: usually, immortality is grounded by the existence of God, but here it is precisely the abstention from the question of God's existence which keeps the soul separate and eternal.
In short, rather than try to 'prove' the eternity of the 'I', I think it is much more interesting to try to trace the idea back to its originary moments: what allowed this idea to begin and to continue, what 'needs' does it fulfill, and—assuming that Levinas is correct here, and that atheism, rather than religion, confers the idea—why is the idea so often proclaimed in religious contexts, and so often denounced in irreligious contexts? It's as if the idea is affirmed most strongly in the exact places it seems least to belong, and vice versa.
OK, so if I didn't come into being until later...the question still remains. Why did this body generate my consciousness. If I was nothing at all prior to this, why couldn't I remain nothing forever.
But can we actually imagine consciousness coming out of something else, or consciousness not existing?
I said imagine....that is my fault. You don't HAVE to imagine consciousness being separate from the body. Its our direct experience that it is.
Of course, you can argue that this experience is an illusion generated from the brain, but I don't think there is any proof that that is the case.
Things at rest tend to stay at rest
Could we call non-being a sort of being at rest?
If so, something must have "pushed" me into activity, into a "being".
This implies that "non-being" is actually a sort of proto-being.
Absolutely nothing should remain absolutely nothing, forever..... unless this "nothing" is not truly nothing.
Prove me wrong, please. Or show that what I said is not necessarily the case.
Thanks for the feedback.
Let's assume as the starting point that we have free will, then here is the argument.
Since death is, as far as we know, only a physical event, it does not apply to non-physical things, and thus the "I" survives death.
Yeah I agree.
The laws of logic are really called "laws of thoughts", and as such, the test of imagination is an effective way to determine if the thing imagined is logically possible. I.e. if imaginable then possible, and unimaginable then impossible. That said, a thing being possible does not mean it is actual.
This sounds like the notions of Essence vs Existence. A unicorn has an essence - it is defined - but does not have existence; although it could. If it begins to exist, then existence is added to the essence. On the other hand, a meaningless notion like a "triangle-that-is-not-a-triangle" has neither essence nor existence, and cannot ever have existence.
Quoting Yohan
This sounds correct. For even an essence without existence is not nothing, and is therefore a being, when a being is defined as "that which is not nothing".
The first sentence of that statement suggests some kind of reincarnation.
The second sentence sounds like the automatons Descartes imagined were walking on the sidewalks outside his window.
If 'I' is the identity of a human, then it is not eternal. Humans are mortal => human lives end.
Great question as far as I'm concerned.
If you ask me, it's aesthetics or beauty and its opposite, ugliness, that pins the self to the physical. You might like to extend that to any exceptional physical attribute as being grounds for people to assume the self is the physical, the body. Persons of great physical beauty/ugliness, of great physical strength/extremely frail, possesing any physical attribute that deviates from the mean, are identified with their bodies. Their minds and what constitutes it e.g. beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, etc. are completely ignored as part of their identity, their self.
The flipside is people also consider the mind, its contents, as also defining of the self. For example, if Arnold Schwarzennger, who is an archetype of the self identified in terms of the physical body , were to say/do anything that goes against peoples' sensibilities e.g. pass a racist remark, he would be immediately reprimanded. As is apparent the self shifts its locus from the physical body to the mind and back depending on where, the body or the mind, an exceptional quality manifests.
It almost seems like what, the body or the mind, people identify with the self is just a matter of convenience - switching between the body and the mind as and when it suits them (us).
This can either mean we're not sure about what self is or that both body AND mind are integral parts of the self.
1. We're not sure. What is obvious is that the self is "most definitely" either body or mind: physical or non-physical. The difference between the two is enormous for if the self is physical it is finite in existence and dies with the body at death but if it is non-physical then suddenly there's an explosion of possibilities - eternal life, reincarnation, to name a few. It's ironic that there exist two clear choices - physical body or non-physical mind - and yet to know which of them obtains is simply beyond our capabilities (as of now). So close and yet so far.
2. Both the physical body and the mind form the self. It's apparent from what I've said in the initial paragraphs that people work from the assumption that both the body and the mind are integral to the self. However, as we've seen this could be caused by our uncertainty on the matter and confused we take the most practical route - assume both the body and the mind constitute the self.
If not that we're confused and we're dead certain that both mind and body are self then we could ask "which, mind or body, is preeminent?" The answer to this question, to take a philosophical stance, is that the mind takes precedence over the body. Humans are, afterall, rational animals. All cases where the body is identified with the self are, as I mentioned, exceptional cases of beauty, ugliness, strength, weakness or other physical attribute. The average person, on the other hand, has a self only if s/he has a mind of his/her own.
One might object to the above view that the average person thinks of herself as a mind rather than a body; afterall one only needs consider the success of the cosmetic industry. However these can be understood in terms of how a car owner wants his car to be presentable. He never goes to the extent of saying he is the car. Likewise the mind, the self, desires a presentable vehicle - the body must look good.
Also we shouldn't judge the situation from the status quo, the state of affairs as is: people spending splashing out on body products. Rather one should ask the question "Is every human capable of identifying his/her self with the non-physical, the mind?" The answer is a definite "yes" and that's where the story of mind-body, physical-nonphysical, mortal-eternal, begins.
All the above doesn't provide us with an answer to whether the self is physical-finite or non-physcial-eternal but it does provide us with an idea of what peoples' impressions on the matter are. The general belief is that the mind is more important than the body as far as the self is concerned. Whether the mind is non-physical is an open question.
That is an unanswerable question. You can only appeal to spirituality and not to science, to philosophy or to reason to answer it for you. And the answer spiritualists will give you (priests, soothsayers, the Bible, etc.) is completely unreliable.
Hmmmm.......things at rest. Things...objects...spacetime realities. That are not in motion relative to something else. From a Newtonian perspective, fine. No problem. However, can a non-being ever be in motion? If it cannot, its at rest condition is quite meaningless. And if the possibility of motion is contained in some non-being.....how would we ever know about it? From its effect on something we can know about, perhaps by mere perception? All that does is negate the empirical Principle of Causality and still tells us nothing positive about non-being.
Ok, so what about the other necessary condition....time? Can any meaning of time be given to that for which motion is unknowable? Probably not, but here, the effects of a causal non-being may be given a time but not necessarily a motion. First something wasn’t, then it was. If time is a purely rational construct, there is no intrinsic contradiction, even if the unconditioned necessity of time be granted.
Nevertheless, while human reason always seeks the unconditioned, there is something quite disturbing in the notion......POOF, AND THERE IT IS. Empiricists of course, will have no truck with this POOF stuff, and nobody should without some sort of rational justification. Even if everyone grants the primary responsibility for everything human belongs to the brain, no one knows exactly how the magic is done, which just cautions us in the construction of our POOFS.
1. Pre-existence = non-existence
2. Post-existence = non-existence
3. Pre-existence = post-existence
If my status could change from pre-existence to existence, then necessarily my status could also change from post-existence to existence(post-non-existence) as well.
If that isn't the case, then you have to demonstrate that pre-existence and post-existence in some way hold unique ontological statuses to mere non-existence.
Which would be impossible wouldn't it? How could not existing in the past be any different to not existing in the future?
If something came from nothing before, why couldn't something come from nothing again.
It's like, yeah. It's absurd that something could come from nothing.
But if I truly didn't exist before, yet now I do, then I came into being from nothing...
My current conclusion is, all things exist except impossibilities.
So what can exist, does exist.
This means I didn't, nor did anything ever, not exist.
Non-existence is an irrational status. Because saying non-existence exists, is like saying squares can be circles.
This means, things appear and disappear. But appearance is not directly related to existence.
It means I come in and out of the realm of appearance. If I disappear from your view it doesn't mean I cease to exist. We already know many things exist which do not appear to us.
So yeah, I think I am so etching like a jack in the box. I spring up and down, but I always exist.
Thanks for reading. I hope I made sense to some one. Maybe I'm crazy and my logic is subjective
You should be careful with "=" signs. It means "identical", which is not the case here. Pre-existence has non-existence as a property, but is not identical with it. Pre-existence implies a thing will exist eventually. Non-existence does not imply that. With that, point 3 does not follow from points 1 and 2. Consider this other example:
1. A unicorn has non-existence,
2. A phoenix has non-existence, therefore
3. A unicorn is a phoenix.
Point 3 is not true.
Quoting Yohan
Why from nothing? Why not from your parents?
So no need of the arrow of time? There is no content expectation from pre-existence to existence, but if from post-existence to existence holds, then there should be content expected from the former to the latter. Post-existence implies an existence already done, then to return to it should bring the content with it. If there is no such implication, and the return from post- has no content, how can it be said it is a return at all?
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Quoting Yohan
Maybe not so much ontological, but certainly temporal statuses. In both pre- and post-, existence is given beforehand, hence its ontology is moot, the pre-and post- merely the time before and the time after such given existence. Non-existence has no such temporal distinction whatsoever, for existence is not given from which a distinction can be made, and furthermore, has no ontological status of its own anyway.
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Quoting Yohan
The one does not necessarily follow from the other. While true you didn’t exist at one time, and did at another, doesn’t mean you came from nothing. Granting that the mechanics of standard reproduction gives the body, and if no mind is possible without the body, it follows that the possibility of mind is given from the certainty of the body. One would be forced to show how mind absolutely cannot arise from body, or, show how body is insufficient for mind to arise from it, to disallow that it does, which only then makes room for coming into being of mind from nothing.
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Quoting Yohan
Which is it....all things or possible things? All things except impossibilities, or all things that can exist, which is the same as all possible things that exist, do exist? If all possible things actually exist, they are not merely possible. In which case, the proposition is the same as all things that exist, exist, a mere worthless tautology, true by meaning alone and having absolutely no particular knowledge derivable from it.
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Quoting Yohan
My (general) non-existence yesterday is a contradiction; my non-existence tomorrow is not. Non-existence is not an irrational status, but rather, solely the other half of a complementary-pair necessity. Except in the case of an uncaused cause, for any existence, the non-existence of it is immediately conceivable.
It is the conditions under which knowledge claims about non-existence is justified, that may be irrational, that is to say, does not follow from pure reason logically.
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Quoting Yohan
For humans, the first is catastrophically false, even if the second is true. Nothing whatsoever appears to us that doesn’t exist, and, even if some appearances give false judgements, they are nonetheless derived from the existence of something.
On the other hand, it is entirely possible to think things that don’t exist, but those are not appearances. First and foremost among such thoughts is, of course, that illusive, ambiguous, at the same time ubiquitous, omnipresent “I”.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
How can pre-existence have a property?
How can non-existence BE a property? Do not only things have properties? Non-existence isn't a thing. It refers to an absence of thing. Or rather, it tells you that not anything is being referred to. Like a finger that isn't pointing at anything.
Consider three identical bowls:
One is empty
One is pre-filled
One is post-filled
Is the emptiness of one of those bowls different than any of the others? How about the properties of the bowls themselves irrespective of their emptiness?
Explain to me how an empty bowl is any way different than a pre-filled bowl. You can say we have more information about the pre-filled bowl...in that we know that it will be filled. But that is information about what will happen to it. Not what it is.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I agree that that is wrong, but I think what I said is more like saying 3. A unicorn and a phoenix are exactly the same while NOT existing.
Sense?
Look with care, and you might notice that you assume your conclusion, around about were you imagine your self as seperate from your body.
But imaginability vs non-imaginability can work as a form of proof.
I can imagine existing without having memories or a body etc.
I can imagine all so called physical things as not existing, and yet I remaining conscious.
What I cannot imagine is;
1. Being unconscious.
2. Observing consciousness itself objectively
So I have as of yet no reason to think I can be unconscious or that matter can create or become conscious.
And I think that, others who think that they can imagine such things are involved in double think.
Really?
You remember your last sleep, but cannot imagine being asleep again?
Yeah - only in the sense that it was Yohan who did not yet exit.
As far as I can tell, part of me goes to sleep at night, while another part remains aware of myself sleeping.
What goes to sleep, is the ego, not my essential being. This is why in the morning I have a vague memory of time passing. Because deep down some part of awareness was aware of time passing.
....
I mean like, in order to make a clay bowl, you have to first have clay.
You don't really change the essence of the clay just because you shape it into a bowl or undo the shape.
So if my body became conscious, and I am the body, then if my body lost conscousness, I would still be the body, just a body without consciousness. If you eliminate consciousness from my body, and then turn on consciousness again in my body, I would hope it's me that regains consciousness, since it's the same body.
How did I become the body prior to my body becoming conscious?
I couldn't have merely began at consciousness right. I had to be a body first.
And what did I have to be before I bacame a body? The matter or energy that makes up the body, no?
But how did I become the energy or matter that became a body that later became conscious.
Does the physicalist not believe that ultimately it is is matter that becomes conscious and that matter is what is objectively real?
And if I am really real in some way, if I am, then isn't my identity in matter/energy?
So you are saying if you exist again, then you didn't really cease existing prior.
Which is my point, and what necessarily follows if pre and post existence are identical states.
Quoting Mww
Tautologies are only worthless if they are obvious.
If everyone was saying some bachelor's are married, and I pointed out that actually nobody who is unmarried is married...it would be a tautology, but it would be worthwhile to understand it if not yet understood.
All proofs involve some form of axiomatic circularity. The key is getting good at discerning what is and isn't rooted in axiom.
You said if all possibilities exist, they are not mere possibilities.
What is a mere possibility? Is a mere possibility something that could be but isn't?
I'm saying for something to be possible, the thing has to have actual existence in a seed form.
So a seed implies the possibility for a tree. In a sense though the tree already exists in the seed...it's just undeveloped.
Seems nobody is getting my points. Oh well, sorry if it's a waste of time.
How is switching from non-existence to existence any different from switching between nothing and something?
Either before consciousness I was nothing at all, or I was something, for example the body before to developed a mind.
And if I was the body, what was I before that?
And then how far back can we go? If we go back in time far enough can we get to a place where I didn't exist?
The term "nothing" is defined as "that which has no properties". Insofar that pre-existence is not nothing, then it has some properties. Or another way to look at it, if a term is not meaningless, then it has an essence, that is, some essential properties.
Quoting Yohan
Sure, you are correct. "Non-x" is the absence of x. So pre-existence is similar to non-existence in that they both lack the property of existence.
Quoting Yohan
As mentioned above, the essence of a term is found by listing its essential properties. The essence of "empty" can be "absence of being filled". The essence of "pre-filled" is "absence of being filled" + "potential of being filled that will be actualized eventually".
Quoting Yohan
This disagrees with common sense. In real life, neither a unicorn nor a phoenix exist, and yet the definition of a unicorn is different than the definition of a phoenix. The only property (or lack there of) they share is the absence of existence. To use yet another example: A bowl is empty; a bottle is empty; yet a bowl is not identical to a bottle despite both being empty.
Yeah.......no, not at all. If I make a snowball, heave it at the barn wall and it explodes, it has immediately ceased to exist as a snowball. If I gather up all the snow from the former snowball, make another snowball from that, there is then a snowball containing the constituency of the former, but not the identity of it. A snowball exists again; the snowball really does cease to exist. The arrow of time does not allow snowballs in general to exist, cease to exist and exist again as the same thing. This in response to......
Quoting Yohan
......in which the status of you is the snowball. Rather than being thrown against a wall, you just roll over and die, synonymous with post-existence. It is rather unlikely your splatter will be reconstructed such that your status re-emerges, in the same way the snowball was reconstructed, synonymous with changing your status from post-existence to existence. The point being, even if it could, your status would not be equivalent to the status you had as an existence, which is the same as saying your existence status really did cease to exist. And if your status did cease to exist, and some other status emerges, it would be impossible to distinguish whether the re-emergence was a reconstruction from former existence or born anew from non-existence.
It is not necessarily the case status can change from post-existence to existence in the same way as status can change from pre-existence to existence.
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Quoting Yohan
Any logical tautology is obvious to a sufficiently discerning mind. Any proposition with no knowledgable content is immediately obvious even to the common understanding. If I walk up to you, stick out my hand and declare, “this is my hand”, you would be excused for exhibiting a puzzled expression.
Quoting Yohan
Propositional error: their proposition has married as a predicate, you proposition has unmarried as a predicate. I don’t see tautology as much as I see inconsistency.
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Quoting Yohan
....which shows very well....
Quoting Yohan
....insofar as trees always arise from seeds, but not all seeds give rise to trees, and, insofar as “tree” contains definitive properties sufficient for the conception of it, those properties themselves do not inhere in a seed, which necessarily holds properties of its own such that the conception of “seed” is entirely distinct from the conception of “tree”.
An undeveloped tree is neither tree nor seed.
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Quoting Yohan
A mere possibility is a thought to which a particular conception, out of the myriad of standing conceptions, has not been judged, or cognized, as consistent with it. In the event where the only perception you have is a noise; any individual cause of the noise, is merely a possibility for it. The conception of the actual cause requires either additional perception, or some logical deduction a priori, dependent on the extant experience with noise in general, re: having experience with firecrackers, from the noise you just heard you are justified in the deduction that it is not caused by a firecracker. In such case, you may know what the cause of the noise isn’t, but you cannot deduce what the cause is from that alone.
If all possibilities exist, they are not mere possibilities. This requires the distinction of categories. That which is possible has a distinct separation from that which exists. If this distinction is not granted, the logical argument dissolves. Nonetheless, if a mere possibility is nothing but a thought having no particular conception belonging to it, and if that which exists absolutely must have a conception belonging to it necessarily, in order to be judged as a thing at all, the logical argument stands unaffected. A mere possibility of a thing is very far indeed from the existence of that thing.
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Quoting Mww
Quoting Yohan
It isn’t, in general. Both require causality. In the case of your existence from non-existence, the causality is given by standard reproductive mechanics. General nothing to something would also have a dedicated causal mechanism specific to its effect, but what that particular mechanism is could not be conceived until the effect, the something, whatever it may be, is known.
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Quoting Yohan
Again, human reason always seeks the unconditioned, that which is the irrefutable, absolutely fundamental ground for all thought. Problem is, that involves infinite regress, for any answer promotes the possibility of an underlaying query as to why such should be the case. In the interest of philosophy in general, and apodeictic knowledge in particular, interest is best served by terminating infinite regress in a logically consistent manner. Otherwise, we can claim nothing whatsoever as a ground. Thus, the question how far back in time can you go before getting to a place (in time) where you don’t exist is easily answered by the certainty of regular human reproductive mechanics: no childbirth, no you. Plain and simple and best of all, non-contradictory. The feeling of being dissatisfied with such explanatory simplicity doesn’t negate its effectiveness.
And, with respect to the title of the thread, there is nothing given from the mechanics of your existence, that wouldn’t apply equally well with the metaphysical “I” with which the title is concerned. Because the question “when is there no “me”” is so readily susceptible to an objectively valid response, if one should wish to manufacture a theory to supplant that which is established from experience, he had best be able to justify it with, not equal but greater, explanatory power.
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Quoting Yohan
If you’re going to buck established philosophy, you’d better have something interesting with which to do it. As long as your points can be so easily argued, from a strictly dialectical procedure, which in no way is meant as falsification of those points, is a sure sign you need a more substantial presentation.
If I may. This is a nice illustration, but how does it demonstrate that the second snowball is not identical to the first one? Let's call your scenario scenario 1. Let's compare with scenario 2, in which the initial snowball was never thrown at the wall, thereby never got destroyed. What is different, property-wise, between the final snowball from scenario 1, and the snowball from scenario 2?
Sure you may, and.....thanks.
The two scenarios are too dissimilar to be compared, aren’t they? In mine, the snowball is built, destroyed and reconstructed. This in juxtaposition to yours, in which you’re standing there with a snowball in your hand. 1.) there is a change of snowballs, 2. ) there is no change in snowballs..
But the question is with respect to whether or not we are justified in claiming all the snowballs are identical. If the primary ground for establishing exact similarity, such that all snowballs may be called identical, is the holding of similar properties, then any snowball as such would be identical to any other. All three may be identified as snowballs, as opposed to, say....chicken coops, but each should have attributed to it an individual identity, re: SB1a, SB1b, SB2.
But wait, he said, with child-like exuberance.....what if the justification for itemizing, re: SB1a, etc., derives from that which is not itself a property? If space and time are nothing but pure intuitions, the necessary conditions under which human experience of objects is at all possible, then this becomes the true source of identity proper, for no two objects can exist simultaneously in the same place. That which is here and now absolutely must have a different identity that that which exists there and then, even if it is conceived as being constituted of the same properties.
‘Course, we could just Sharpie a black stripe on my snowball and your snowball, throw mine against the barn, re-assemble it and see where the stripe is compared to the stripe on yours melting away at rest in your hand. Entropy mandates the probability of re-assembling the destroyed snowball with the stripe intact is vanishingly small, so even the inclusion of markings as a form of common property, in some cases is insufficient for being identical, while still maintaining similarity.
Anyway......it’s all fun to think about.
To be clear, by "identical", I mean not that they are similar, but that they have the same identity, that is, they are one-and-the-same.
With that, two snowballs side by side would not be identical, because even though they share the same properties of material, size, and shape, they are not composed of one-and-the-same matter (ie they have distinct molecules of snow). But when we compare the snowballs in the two hypothetical scenarios previously described, they are then composed of one-and-the-same matter. So it would seem in that case it is correct to call them identical. Granted they have different histories, but this is like two different paths leading to one-and-the-same location.
Instead of ending with admitting I may have misunderstood what you’re trying to say, let me begin with it. If I got it right, the following pertains; if not, please correct me and I’ll go from there.
You’re asking about the initial snowball never thrown, in juxtaposition to the final (re-constructed) snowball initially thrown. This is why I thought the two scenarios too dissimilar: there is no initial snowball never thrown. To have such a snowball never thrown requires two entirely separate events, which has no equivalency at all to the original argument, and which you’ve agreed the two snowballs therein would indeed not be identical because there would have to be “two snowballs side by side”.
But you’re asking from a hypothetical, with respect to one-and-the-same matter constituting the original unthrown and re-constructed final snowballs, as an argument for equivalent identity. But is it exactly the same one-to-one matter? Is it even possible for it to be so? The same kind of matter, sure, but will the gathering of splattered snow material re-constructed, ever perfectly equal the pre-splattered material unthrown, such that the one-and-the-same matter is maintained? And even if it is, we still have to contend with the spacetime non-equivalence, re: can SB1b at t2 have the same identity as SB2 at t1?
Speaking of histories, I’m going to assume you’re familiar with Feynman’s sum over histories, in which he says, paraphrased, if we don’t know which path a particle takes we are permitted to say it takes all possible paths. When you invoke different histories for the snowballs in their taking of different paths, we are permitted to say we don’t know what happens on those paths such that when they end up in one and the same location, something happened to them to make them different from when they split up. We can only be absolutely certain nothing happened if we can be absolutely certain they are exactly identical before and after their different paths, which we’ve already established we cannot.
In short, we should guard against demanding waaayyy too much of our knowledge claims. Conventional human understanding allows the snowballs to be identical and by association have the same identity; proper philosophy, and indeed even physics, will allow no such thing.
I think your understanding of my scenarios is correct. But now I'm thinking the example of snowball is not adequate, for its complexity creates tangents such as spacetime non-equivalence, Feynman’s sum over histories, and other things I don't fully understand but are likely not relevant for the current enquiry.
Let's try again with a simpler example. Consider a stool composed of only 5 parts: 4 legs and a sit. The stool at time t1 is fully built, then deconstructed into its 5 parts at time t2, and then reassembled with its original parts at time t3. The question is: Is stool(t3) identical to stool(t1)? I would say yes, for all the properties are the same (with the exception of time, but time is not really a property of the stool).
Based on the quote below, I understood that your answer would be no. But maybe I misunderstood?
Quoting Mww
Actually, it is. Epigenetics is about genes being ‘turned on/off’ and the cascade effects can lead to all kinds of things.
We’ve known for a long time that plants under different conditions grow differently, and that this affects the offspring. We know that cortisol levels in unborn children make them more prone to anxiety (more often than not). It’s complex, but it’s still just a matter of organisms readying themselves for life in biological genesis (there is a technical term, forgotten it ... ‘transgenerational epigenetic inheritance’ - be careful with the term ‘inheritance’!).
I agree. To me this idea is accessible and convincing, yet I don't see it come up much on forums.
Quoting Mww
We can also consider linguistic convention, what is typically intended by 'me' or 'you.' One is born. One dies. As far as I can tell, all counter-intuitive theoretical and/or mystical talk is parasitic upon ordinary usage.
The natural response here seems to be that our networked brains create phenomenal selves that share a language. We learn to use the words 'I' and 'we' and 'consciousness.' Eventually we can imagine our thinking as detachable from our body, probably because our shared language is not dependent on any particular body. Most of our ideas are inherited. If we have fresh ideas, they can survive us. So the detachment of thinking-language from the body has some foundation, but it's hard to make sense of a detachment from all bodies.
That said, I still find consciousness strange when its familiarity temporarily recedes now and then.
That's exactly my position: origin,continuity defines things and people.Where did an apple come from? It didn't come out of nowhere. It grew from the tree. It is a part of tree. It is a tree. A person came from his/her parents. The person is his/her parents. His/her parents are their parents. That shows in nature - in biology books it's written that animals care about two things: their survival and the preservation of their genes(their children). And like that we can go back in generations. And the scientists tell us about the evolution and the big bang. That at the beginning there was a big bang. So we all came from the big bang. So we all are the big bang. So every person is everyone.
Lest we forget where this current dialectic came from, I submit it is quite adequate for a response to the original proposition......
Quoting Yohan
......in which an argument, via snowballs, is constructed in the attempt to show that any arbitrary status post-existence is indeed very far from that same status in existence prior. If “my status” is taken to mean the metaphysical “I” of the OP, and if the argument via snowballs holds, then the claim the metaphysical “I” is eternal, is successfully falsified, insofar as in one form “my status” is this, and in another form, “my status” absolutely cannot be the same this, but is rather, that. The second form has a status, certainly, just not the same status, which serves as sufficient reason to deny the externality of, not so much “status” as a general condition, but the “status of me” as a particular condition.
The logic grounding the falsification is the distinction between identical to and having the identity of. Granting that the common understanding allows, say, re-constructed snowballs to be claimed as identical to that from which it was re-constructed, merely given the sameness of its properties from which relatively indistinguishable appearances follow, does not grant the proper philosophical understanding the warrant to also grant the original and re-constructed snowballs to have the same identity. And because the subject matter has to do with metaphysical abstracts, philosophical understanding should have the floor, the empirical experiment being simply the ground for showing a logical proof is possible.
As to chairs, the argument would be much the same: the appearance of the re-constructed chair is justified in being claimed as identical to the original chair, merely from the fact the material for both is exactly the same material, but that in itself is not sufficient to justify the claim that it is the chair of singular identity. Say, for example, someone else comes into the room and not having the experience of all that material he sees laying around as having at one time been a chair, but having the experience of chairs in general, puts all that material together properly such that a chair is created, will not have any justification whatsoever in claiming the chair he just made, is the chair from which the pieces came. I mean.....as far as he is permitted to say, those pieces were just delivered from IKEA, and they never had been coalesced into the form of a chair at all.
OK, fine. But now we’ve incorporated different epistemological perspectives, which the original argument does not abide. We can overcome that by simply allowing the guy dissembling the original chair, having been called away for something, to return finding a chair, for all his intents and purposes because of the chair’s appearance, comprised of the pieces he left in a heap a few minutes ago. What right does he have to claim the chair he sees now is the same chair (some chair of singular identity) he took apart before? I submit he has no right at all, for he cannot know that someone didn’t bring in a twin-like chair and removed the pieces left strewn about when he left the room.
As long as these possibilities are logically reasonable, claims with respect to identity cannot be determined by them, which makes explicit the truth of identity cannot arise from appearance, which in their turn arise from properties, which in their turn arise from perceptions, which in their turn arise from empirical conditions, or, which is the same thing, objective reality.
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From all that, just between you and me and the transcendental fencepost, could you now think that your.....
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
........may have an internal inconsistency? Because I think there is an internal inconsistency, I will say you are correct in saying....
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
......in as much as, no, the two chairs do not have the same identity, they are not one-and-the-same.
Nahhhh......discourse on pure a priori metaphysics never was a popular pastime.
You mean like this:
“....the nervous system sends 'messages' of a sort to future generations....”
(Sigh)
Please refer to the other thread where this is being discussed. It is science, not theory or mysticism.
I don't understand why you are bringing knowledge and perception in a metaphysical topic. A thing is real/not real independent of our knowledge of it. In my hypothetical example of the stools, it is about facts, not perceptions. Let me try one more time to clarify the reasoning.
P1: "Two" things are identical or one-and-the-same if they have all the same properties that make their identity.
P2: Stool(t1) and stool(t3) as described here have all the same properties.
C: Stool(1) and stool(t3) are identical, one-and-the-same.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my guess is that your objection is with P1. But in which case, what is your definition of "identical"?
I’m ok, thanks. Nothing against your science; I just prefer mine with a little more rational foundation.
It's not psuedo-science. It is mainstream, excepted science. Perhaps someday you'll be ready to accept it.
Because no metaphysical proposition can be shown to be valid without empirical justification.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Then you should be able to tell me about a real thing unknown to you.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Then why are you and I not identical? Are our respective identities really from the properties we have in common?
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
As I said, I don’t have a problem with identical things, if as you say, they all have the same properties, or empirical predicates. But no two things are identical before there is an identity for one thing to which the second may relate, and no one thing can be assigned an identity before the conditions for it are thought, in the case of ideas, notions and such subjectivities for which there is no particular object belonging to it, or before the conditions of things are perceived, in the case of all else for which there is a phenomenal object of some kind belonging to it necessarily. It follows that if either class has even one incongruent thought (properly conception) or perception (properly intuition), the things cannot be identical, for the simplest of reasons that they cannot have the same identity. Assuming correct judgement, naturally.
Furthermore, whether we grant two things are identical or not, we are given nothing from that, that we can use to establish the identity of just one of them. I can perceive two things which seem identical without knowing what those things are. Therefore, being identical must be different than having an identity. The irreducible ground for identity is of course, A = A, in which a thing is equal only to itself, which carries the implication that any A is equal only to its own self. A rose is a rose is a rose may imply rose A is identical to rose B, but does not imply rose A is equal to rose B.
I can muddy the philosophical pond further if you like: being identical invokes the categories of quantity, quality and modality, whereas identity invokes only the category of relation. The former juxtapositions things to each other as they are perceived, the latter juxtapositions things to us as they are thought.
Anyway.......call enough is enough? If you got more, though, I can keep up.
You actually have to assume metaphysical physicalism in order to have the illusion of experiencing an external physical world.
If by that you mean the original data must come from empirical observations, then I agree. If you mean that the concluding metaphysical claim must be empirically verifiable, then I disagree. What is metaphysical is not directly observable; it can only be deduced.
Quoting Mww
Of course I can't do that; but I can tell you about a real thing that existed before I knew about it: dinosaurs. My point is that the existence of a thing is not caused by our knowledge of it. So in the stool example, it doesn't matter if a subject does not know if the stool was previously assembled or not.
Quoting Mww
No; the opposite: our identities are distinct precisely because you and I have different properties. Matter, for one thing: my body is not yours. Then a few other properties I'm sure, like height, weight, etc.
Quoting Mww
I agree with the perception part (assuming true perception), because this informs about a property of the object perceived. But I disagree with the thought part, which I believe you categorized as subjective. Subjectivity by definition refers to the subject of thought, not the object of thought.
Quoting Mww
How could that be? As per P1 from this post, "identical" means they have the same identity, which is the list of their properties. It follows that the identity must be known in order to determine if the two things are identical. Could you give an example where we perceive two things which seem identical without knowing what those things are?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
So you’re saying our identities are distinct because we have different properties, as in, your height is this and my height is that. Your mass is this my mass is that. You’re right-handed, I’m left-handed. So you have one identity and I have another. If that is true, are identical twins one-and-the-same? Even if their parents couldn’t tell them apart by their properties, is it permissible thereby to say they have the same identity?
I submit that all empirical predicates are properties, without the least regard to the specifications of them. I doubt you think of yourself as “Samuel LaCrampe” just because you are a certain height, because “Samuel LaCrampe“ has been many heights. Therefore, some other condition must determine why we are separately identifiable as particulars in the set of all general instances. Existence in simultaneous time yet different spaces serves as sufficient conditions to distinguish the individuality of our proprietary phenomenal humanity, but still does not condition that which we each assume as a subjective identity specific to ourselves.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
What is metaphysical is not directly observable and can only be deduced.....absolutely. That different times are not coexistent but successive as different spaces are not successive but coexistent, is a metaphysical proposition because it is not directly observable, or, in proper philosophical parlance, is a synthetic a priori judgement. In order to justify that claim, however, to demonstrate an objective validity for it, if there should be one at all, there must be empirical observations sustainable from it. Otherwise, it remains rattling around between our ears, not doing anything useful. A metaphysical claim cannot be proven, but only shown to be non-contradictory in keeping with the principles of universality and necessity, consistent with the current state of our understanding. Case in point.....all mathematical propositions. In fact, any a priori metaphysical deduction. A = A, the LNC, the LEM.
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Quoting Mww
I was pretty sure that’s what you meant; just wanted to see what you did about it.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
.....which is why I covered my ass with, “...but having the experience of chairs (stools) in general...”. With that, he knows it is possible the pieces can become a stool if he puts tab A in slot B correctly.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
What do you mean by subject of thought? The answer to this is the beginning of the extrapolation of the notion of identity itself, which is what we’ve been stabbing at for days.
I offer subjectivity to be the conscious rational activity of a thinking subject.
The object of thought is a cognition, an empirical cognition grounded in phenomena is an experience, a rational cognition grounded in abstractions is a judgement, all of which requires a thinking subject, that to which those cognitions, without exception, all belong.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
How about perceiving two things that each have 4 legs, wings, and speaks. It is entirely possible for such things to exist, because there is nothing contradictory about them, which makes explicit the possibility of perceiving them. Damned if I would know what they are, but I certainly could perceive and recognize the properties they have. Identical things only means we already have the intuitions representing their properties in us, such that we know what it means to be identical, even if we have yet to give them a name corresponding to the synthesis of those intuitions in that form. We know dogs so we know legs; we know ducks so we know wings, we speak so we know speech. We just haven’t antecedent experience of an instance where all three of those properties co-exist simultaneously. Another example of the distinction between identical to and identity of.
And if that’s a little too far-fetched, the same principles apply to any circumstance where something is first learned.
Ever onward........
Why wouldn’t it?
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Quoting Yohan
What if I don’t want my experience illusory?
I could try to explain my point of view ... But I don't want to argue it.
I figure it's likely you know the basic argument in favor of idealism.
Explain away if you’re so inclined; no argument from me.......promise.
Yes, I favor idealism of a certain sort, along other disciplines. But that doesn’t matter here, cuz I’m not arguing anything. Just listening, even though I might ask a question or two.
Quoting Mww
No; in the sense that I give, "two" things would be identical if they are numerically one. E.g. you say you saw a brown dog at such time and such place, and I say I saw also saw a brown dog at the same time and place, then we conclude that your dog and my dog are identical, that is, we speak of the same dog. In the case of identical twins, "identical" just means that all or most of the properties are similar, yet the twins are numerically two. I'm okay using the term identical in either sense, so long as we are on the same page.
Quoting Mww
Correct. While I believe that things must have the same identity to be identical, the reverse is not necessarily true. I retain my identity even if I have a few different properties from 2 years ago. The answer, as per Aristotle, lies in the distinction between essential properties and non-essential (or accidental) properties; where if you change non-essential properties, like weight, you retain your identity, but if you change essential properties, like dying, then you lose your identity.
Quoting Mww
As per Aristotle again, when it comes to things other than persons, the cause of particulars is the matter. E.g. two triangles are numerically two because they are composed of separate atoms. When it comes to persons, I add the soul in addition to matter as the cause of particulars or individuality (but we can leave that can of worms alone).
Quoting Mww
Ah. So subjectivity means abstract, rational, non-empirical ideas, and objectivity means empirical things, is that more or less correct?
So we are not on the same page on these terms. Here is what I mean. "Object" is the thing observed, thought about. "Subject" is the observer or thinker. E.g. when I think "This apple is round", the object is the apple; the subject is me. From there we get the terms "objective" and "subjective", where a property is objective if it is about the object, and subjective if it is really about the subject. In the previous thought, the property "round" is objective, because roundness is a property of the object. On the other hand, in the thought "This apple is interesting", the property "interesting" is subjective, because it is really saying something about me when I think of the apple, ie, the apple interests me. Objective claims are about reality, and can be true or false, right or wrong. Subjective claims a mere matters of opinions, and cannot be true or false, nor right or wrong.
Quoting Mww
It sound to me you equate the identity of a thing with its name. In your example, you can describe the things by listing their properties, but then the only thing missing is what they are called, am I correct? A name is only a symbol or sign that points to the identity, but is not it. E.g. say I just learned to speak english, and don't know what the word "bird" means, ie, I don't know what identity it points to. You describe it by saying it is the type of animal that has two legs, a beak, feathers, and can fly. I say "Ah! I get it. We call it 'oiseau' in french." You have described its identity by listing its properties, and now I know it.
Sorry for the long post.
Well, physicalists claim ...correct me if I'm wrong...atoms of light reflect off of atoms in a "world" and those atoms hit our eyes. And the atoms of our eyes trigger atoms that make up "our" brain...and then what? many triggered atoms collectively have a particular atomic activity that corresponds to an "experience of an external physical world"
Did the atoms that make up "your" brain have a direct experience of a physical world?
At most we could say that our experiences correspond with a world. But no amount of correspondance makes the experience of the real world itself.
Just like if you look at a photograph of the statue of liberty, you have not actually experienced the statue of liberty in its essence. You have only seen an image of the light reflected from it.
I suggest you get the essence of the Republic by Plato. You don't have to read the entire danged book itself, just Google it.
You are a brilliant mind: you reinvented the wheel that was first described 2500 years ago, and constantly remindered. This is actually brilliance, to come to the same conclusion as Socrates, without prior knowledge of his teachings. Well done. (I am NOT being facetious.)
Good post, and not all that long. Much appreciated.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Yes, agreed, but that presupposes we each have the antecedent experience of brown dogs enabling our perceptions to be consistent with each other. The principle works for anything for which we have a common experience. Nevertheless, all we’ve done is identify a general conception.....dog.
If you call out, “here Sparky!!” and I call out “here, Fido!!”, the dog comes to you but ignores me, we have gone further than the establishment of identifying a general conception, that is, we have given an identity to a particular instance of a general conception.
Maybe, in the interest of metaphysical reductionism, we only make the notion of identity such a big deal, is because we absolutely insist on having one for ourselves. At the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, we cannot abide being confused with something that is otherwise identical to us.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Close, but a little further down the line. I agree to identifying a thing by its name, which is the same as my conception of it. Or, I identify a thing by means of its concept. But I still may have need to single out a particular thing out of a bunch of things all conceived as possessing the same name. No big deal if I need to pick out Ford from all cars, an even lesser deal if I need to pick out Mustang from all Fords, lesser still if I need to pick out convertible from all Mustangs. But these reductions are all concerned with empirical predicates, easily explained from the fact the conceptions corresponding to each reduction is itself a reduction. In this way, I can reduce to a very specific instance of just one general conception using nothing else but those properties, from which I can give an identity to what I really want to know. Maybe, in the case of a single instance, being identical to and having the identity of.....are exactly the same thing. Maybe, that’s what Aristotle wanted the rest of us to understand.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Agreed. But what is it that is lost? That is, of what is identity comprised? What is an essential property?
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Yes.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
More or less, yes. There is objectively valid, which are not empirical things, like equations, geometric figures, notions and ideas, that we think, and, there is objectively real, which are empirical things, like equations and geometric figures we construct, plus anything whatsoever we perceive. For the objectively valid, the conscious activity of a thinker, the internal domain, is responsible for those objects of reason, which is subjectivity. For the objectively real, the world, the external domain, is responsible, for all that which occurs without any thinker.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Absolutely. Which is why metaphysical investigations are so much fun. How to tell the difference, and what to do about it when the difference is told.
Took me all day to write this....ho’made chili and cornbread and the Rose Bowl and Mama’s special Eye-talian bubbly got in the way.
Sorry.
That's right. This would be naming a particular, for which the main cause of its individuality is the particular matter that dog is made of. That's all that is needed for an object, such as a particular soccer ball. I think in the case of a dog, we could also add its particular set of memories and habits.
Quoting Mww
I think we're safe, because I hold that as long as we are made of particular sets of matter, then we are particulars. But things get ... fun, when that matter gets substituted. E.g. I heard that all the atoms in our bodies get replaced every 7 years. This recalls the puzzle of the Ship of Theseus.
Quoting Mww
I think that is correct. In addition, we name general concepts with common nouns, (e.g. a dog) and particulars with proper nouns (e.g. Fido). The identity of general concepts is their essential properties, and the identity of particulars is their essential properties plus their particular matter. E.g. Pointing to a particular set of matter when saying "Fido is that dog".
Quoting Mww
I think you are asking how to determine if a property is essential or not? In general, a property is essential if, should that property be lost, then the thing would lose its general identity (called "species" as per Aristotle). This can be tested in a thought experiment. Say a particular triangle is made of the following set of properties: "surface with 3 straight sides" + "yellow". If the triangle loses the first property, it is no longer a triangle, where as if it loses the second property, it remains a triangle. Therefore the first property is essential, and the second one is not.
Quoting Mww
Interesting. While I think your definition of "objectivity" matches with mine, it doesn't quite match for "subjectivity"; because the activity of a thinker is not necessarily a mere matter of opinion; neither in act (it is either true or false that I am thinking), nor in content (my thinking process could be right or wrong). I'll think about it some more and see if the definitions can be reconciled somehow.
Quoting Mww
Yeah this is could be a whole discussion in itself.
You say:
Quoting Yohan
I say:
The most we could say is that our experiences are merely representations of the world. But no amount of representation makes the experience of the world as it is in itself.
Close enough.
Minor point; you’re gonna get your butt handed to you on a platter if you say “atom of light” in any
less than gracious company.
Yes, agreed, but reductionism mandates that for the simplest objects, or complex objects perfectly congruent, the particularity of identity reduces to the space and time of it. The irreducible identity of a thing is itself.
Which inevitably leads to an absurdity: rationally, the simplest possible thing can only be conceived as possessing a singular conception, but empirically, even a photon is conceived by at least two, its energy and its velocity. The simplest singular conception is time, and if time cannot be a property of things, then there can be absolutely no things conceivable by a singular conception.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Agreed, not necessarily. I didn’t mean to intend that. The subjective conscious activity is reason in general, and opinions, beliefs and knowledge are mere matters of degree reason judges of truth. A natural condition of rational agency is determinations of certainty.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Wonder what the opening salvo would be.
Light is not composed of atoms.
Regardless of the physical components of experience, there is an element that can’t be understood in physical terms, which is judgment. Whenever we say what something means - and that is a basic activity of conscious thought, is it not? - we’re engaging a faculty for which physicalism doesn’t have an account. There’s merely a presumption that this faculty must be explicable in physical terms, as everything is presumed to be, but there is a a difference in kind between physical processes which can be described in terms of interaction between bodies, and rational processes, which comprise solely the relations between ideas.
I think this reductionist idea seems correct. If the cause of individuality is the particular matter, and no two physical things (which matter belongs to) can occupy the same space at the same time, then it follows that no two particulars can occupy the same space at the same time. As such, finding the space property of things at a given time is a good way to determine if things are identical or distinct.
E.g. You saw a brown dog at such time, and I also saw a brown dog at that same time, but yours was at location A where as mine was at location B. This is sufficient to conclude we saw two different dogs.
Quoting Mww
Understood. So one definition of subjectivity can be something like "an act that is internal to the thinker (the subject), and is not reducible to a physical act"; and a second definition can be "a property assigned to an object, that is merely a matter of opinion from the subject".
These two definitions overlap in that they both involve an internal act from the subject, but yet seem to be different enough to remain two separate definitions. Shame...
Quoting Mww
Here's a candidate.
Have you noticed that the propositions "This apple tastes good" and "Samuel thinks this apple tastes good" have the same message, and yet the first one is subjective and the second one is objective?
I like that one....
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
.....not so much that one.
Assignment of a property to an object is indeed the activity of a subject, but I don’t think it is merely a matter of opinion.
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Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I’ve noticed it now, insofar as the message is the telling of something about the taste of apples. I’ve also noticed that seemingly the first is objective and the second is subjective. I’ll withhold my rebuttal until you’ve assured me you didn’t inadvertently misplace your qualifiers and thereby shown me the error of my ways.
I must admit I've read some plato, including the Republic - Thanks though (I could perhaps read more.)
Quoting god must be atheist
thanks. Doing philosophy is quite hard. Especially being unbiased and questioning what seems obvious. The more obvious something seems, the more I try to question it. I still feel hopelessly inadequate to understand reality, a lot or most of the time, but I try to keep going down the rabbit hole regardless. Death will come some day, and I figure if death is the end, then it wont have mattered if I wasted my life philosophizing. If there is even an miniscule possibility of immortality, I figure its worth seeking since the prize of immortality is of infinite worth. Whereas a life, no matter how great or horrible, if it leads to permanent exinction, such a life will equate to absolute meaningless in the end.
My theory is that a person's IQ is equal to the extent to which a person is capable of questioning their thinking/perceptions. I have no idea what my IQ is though, or how well the test is grounded in empiricism
That depends on the properties; but maybe the term "property" is confusing. It could be replaced with the term "predicate". Here are examples of subjective properties/predicates:
This song is good. This joke is funny. This story is interesting. Strawberries taste better than bananas.
People could disagree with all these statements, and there would be no right or wrong.
Contrast it with the following examples of objective properties/predicates:
This song is 5 minutes long. This joke is stolen from someone else. This story is in english. This strawberry is smaller than this banana.
If someone disagrees with these statements, then one person must be right, and one must be wrong.
Quoting Mww
To clarify, I am using my definitions of objective/subjective here. So the first proposition is subjective because it is a mere matter of opinion - some people could claim that this apple does not taste good; and the second proposition is objective because it is a matter of facts - it is either true or false that I think this apple tastes good.
I changed my mind; regardless of whether we call it a property or predicate, opinion can assign a property, but it might not be logical in itself, or consistent with other properties befitting the object. To further assign a property by means of mere opinion, to an object already cognized as a certain thing, may even be irrational. The denial I worked from originally is based on the notion that allowing opinion to assign properties is barely distinguishable from what we might call imagination.
A deeper investigation into speculative theory of cognition stipulates that both imagination and opinion are pre-conditions for judgement, thereby not denying that of which imagination and opinion are capable, but denying them legitimacy for their efforts.
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We have agreed that opinion, belief and knowledge are just relative degrees of truth; my opinion is this is true, I believe this is true, I know this is true. Any statement of truth is a judgement, which makes explicit judgement must have a ground consistent with its degree. The ground for a knowledge judgement is obviously, experience. The ground for a belief judgement is a possible experience. The ground for an judgement of opinion has no experience or possible connected with it.
Greatest degree: I know falling out of a tree certainly can hurt because I fell out of a tree once and it hurt like hell.
Lesser degree: I believe falling out of a tree hurts, but never having fallen out of a tree....I might get lucky, fall on a pile of leaves, and suffer no hurt.
No degree at all: experience and possible experience having been accounted for, there is no other degree of truth available, so there is no opinion on falling out of trees. Nevertheless, it is my opinion these statements are true.
Assuming the lack of dishonesty, meaning a bite has actually been taken out of said apple, to say “this apple tastes good” is a knowledge claim. It is non-contradictory, thereby entirely possible, the taster of the apple and the author of the claim are the same. If a subject knows something certain about an object, which he does not then have to tell himself post hoc, it is an objective statement, because he is telling someone else a fact, or something he knows for a fact, about an object.
If I hand you an unbitten apple, tell you this apple tastes good, you would be correct to call my claim unsupported, and claims without support of truth, are opinions, and all opinions are necessarily subjective.
Now, “Sam thinks this apple tastes good” has a distinction in subjects, the one being Sam who thinks, and the other being the one who knows Sam thinks. The former, the claimant who merely thinks an object meets a certain condition, has a belief because the degree of truth to the claim relies on him alone, for he merely thinks the apple tastes good. Therefore, the claim is subjective for Sam. To the recipient of Sam’s thinking about the apple, whoever says, “Sam thinks....”, the indirect subject if you will, because Sam isn’t going to say “Sam thinks.....” knows for a fact what Sam thinks something. It is therefore an objective statement.
Thing about metaphysics.....nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong, to quote the immortal words of Stephen Stills.
Sorry for the long delay.
You invite me to imagine my self existing apart from my body. I can do this with ease, of course, and it is one way of establishing - as Descartes noted - that my self does not appear to be my body.
But by itself this does not imply that I exist eternally. For how does evidence that two things are distinct provide evidence that one of them exists eternally? My body does not appear to be my chair. That is not evidence that either my body or my chair exists eternally. So how does the fact my mind does not appear to be my body provide evidence that my mind is eternal?
So you claim that subjective topics, that is, matters of opinions, regard things for which we have little-to-no experience or knowledge, is that right?
I disagree with that. Sticking with the same apple example, even if we both take a bite out of the same apple, I can still make the honest claim "this apple tastes good", and you can make the honest claim "this apple tastes bad"; and this can simply be explained by the fact that I happen to like apples and you happen to dislike apples in general. Another classic example: we both look at the same piece of art, and you claim "this is beautiful" and I claim "this is ugly", and neither of us is wrong, because as the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that is, the subject.
Conversely, I can have zero knowledge and experience about angels, and yet making a claim such as "angels exist" is objective, because it is a matter of fact: they either exist or they don't.
Quoting Mww
Nevertheless, I mostly agree with these above statements on the degrees of knowledge. I would call the top one "certainty", the middle one "probability or reasonableness or methodical faith", and the last one "blind faith".
Quoting Bartricks
This is not in the OP, but here is my answer. It does not claim that the mind is eternal (for I believe it begins to exist), but that it survives the event of death.
- The human body can be defined as "all the physical parts of a person".
- Thus if the mind is not the body, then it it follows that it is non-physical.
- Since death is, as far as we know, only a physical event, then it does not affect non-physical things, and thus the mind must survive death.
I think what youre referring to is a type of proprietary dualistic phenomenon.
one could claim that knowing a lot about sparrows may influence the way one visually experiences sparrows so that one can be put in phenomenal states for which no wholly sensory states suffice. One´s knowledge does not merely cause one to attend to sparrows in a particular way. Rather, one´s knowledge puts one in a phenomenal state that one could not have been put in by wholly sensory states. In such a case, cognitive states can make a constitutive contribution to one´s perceptual experience by, for example, structuring the experience, without thereby producing a phenomenal state that is non-sensory in kind (see Levine 2011, Nes 2011). However, most philosophers hold that cognitive states can cause one to be in certain sensory states by influencing attention. Carruthers and Veillet (2011) argue that it is not clear that the sparrow expert´s experience involves irreducible cognitive phenomenology, since it is possible that her knowledge simply causes her to attend to sparrows in a different way compared with a novice. She will notice certain properties of the sparrows that the novice fails to notice, but the phenomenal state she is in is a state that wholly sensory states suffice to put her in. How should we decide between these views?
If cognitive phenomenology is proprietary, it should in principle also be possible to pick it out via introspection. Holding that cognitive phenomenology is proprietary allows one to appeal to introspection in cases where there is a dispute about whether cognitive phenomenology is involved or not. This may serve as a motivation for holding that cognitive phenomenology is proprietary, and not merely irreducible.
I am not sure if your post is intended to address my quote, but if it is, I must admit I don't understand anything you are saying. Sorry bro. Perhaps it could be a bit more concise?
-The mind is over the event, and in doing so cant be classified inside the event.
-The mind is eternal due to the processes in which the mind operates- being that of a "symbolic representation" to the external/ physical plane.
-the mind is not the same as cognition and thought.
-perceptions go along with thought.
-perceptions are bias, and the human instinct is to think about ones own survival.
-the concept of I is merely a perception of ones state of progressive interpretation of their own cognition.
-if the mind cotains the essence or substances outside of the event, the brain will have to participate in said event.
-if the brain stops functioning, the body ceases to operate
-there is no representational abstract proof of the mind living on after death, only changing states or properties, which would constitute it not being an "I" or "mind" after it has stopped working, which brains do stop working.
@Yohan, I think you are posing a malformed question in that I believe you are confounding concepts of one's 'conscious self' with concepts of one's 'soul'.
re “Imagine your consciousness disassociating with your body, so that you can observe your body from a distance. …The question is, why is this body associated at all with my self?”
As such, this is not a plausible ‘imagine’ scenario b/c it requires supernatural soul-like happenings, which have no scientific or physical basis.
The only “I” that is present as you think about and pose your question is completely related to your conscious self. Under the cognitive framework that I am developing, the ‘I’ is not much more than a qualia resonant condition that takes form and flows within a cognitive architecture that requires a closed loop (potentially virtual) sensory-motor experience that grounds and shapes the metes and bounds of the cognitive agent into an embodied agent experience. Under my model the “I” starts from a random or ground state and starts extending itself into whatever has the highest degree of spaciotemporal correlation with the cognitive agent’s intentions. In this way, while the embodied experience is an illusion, it is an integral part of what you have grown to call “I”, even if embodied parts of ‘you’ become physically removed; e.g., much like the phantom limb phenomenon, or how a prosthetic limb becomes part of ‘you’. Hence, this “I” that has come to be in the integrated qualia state as an embodied agent cannot be one and the same with that soul-like concept which is thought to be in a non-physical, energy state, existing in another dimension. The only connection between the two that I can (wildly) imagine are purposeful patterns of non-random quantum fluctuations in your brain that could come from your ‘soul’ in another dimension, which may bias your embodied agent’s behavior in important yet very general, qualitative ways, but such a ‘soul’ connection cannot be part of your conscious ‘I’.
Re “It would seem I was associated in some way with this body before it came into existence. Or else it would have been born without me.”
Per my above model, your body was born w/o you, and ‘you’ only came to be as your cognitive framework became merged with your sensory-motor framework, which is likely why no-one has memories earlier than 2 years old, and certainly not before 1 yo. I would posit whatever you call ‘you’ did not exist before you could remember you existed, let alone before you were born. Whatever that was beforehand as an infant was in some quasi unconscious-disembodied state.
The concept of the world and the I concept are both constantly changing and relative.
I'm talking about what is beyond such, which is, to the relative mind, nothing, for it can't understand how something non-relative can exist.
You are you. Always have been you. Always will be you.
"You" does not point to the personal fluctuating I concept, but to the impersonal selfless awareness, that seems more in the background, watching change occue
re "You are you. Always have been you. Always will be you."
how do you prove your belief in that? It is not true just b/c you say so. e.g., all the cells in "You" as a body are replaced every 6 mo, so your body is certainly not a constant 'you'. Cognitively, what you call 'you' at any given moment in your life is well documented to be pretty much a narrative of your self image formed by your own story and/or by those of others. So, the cognitive “You” is a made up story, and it is well known that you can be programmed to remember and believe things about yourself that never happened or were never part of “you”.
Re “I'm talking about what is beyond such, which is, to the relative mind, nothing, for it can't understand how something non-relative can exist.”
Words mean something. Webster defines “I” as “someone aware of possessing a personal individuality “. So, you are simply talking about a soul concept. However, if you want to be scientific then you cannot call “I” anything beyond what you can tangibly call part of yourself when you say “I”. Anything else relates to the soul, and is religious and/or supernatural, so belongs to a Theology or Mysticism discussion, not a Philosophy of Mind discussion.
Re “"You" does not point to the personal fluctuating I concept, but to the impersonal selfless awareness”
Not according to common usage of “I” by people and Webster, see above. Mostly mentally ill or religious people think of themselves as an “impersonal selfless awareness”.
For me, this is an unproductive direction to endeavor into. good luck...
Here is my current argument
1. Possibilities(essences) cannot be created or destroyed.
2. I am a possibility/essence (currently an actualized one)
3. I cannot be created or destroyed (although the actualized me can)
I am consciousness, I believe, is the form of what you are looking for.
Nothing seems to be permanent, not the cells of the body, certainly not consciousness or the I.
The only thing constant seems to be that when you ask the question it will be consciousness that you use to do it with. So If the I is the consciousness, this would be constant, but the I and the consciousness you use to ask the question with would be different every time - in the absolute sense.
My I, and my consciousness, have been very different things over the course of my life, when I think back to the age of 10, 20, 40, 50, etc. Which I is the true I?
Being no one - Thomas Metzinger
Edit. On further reflection, a counter argument is possible.
DNA would contribute much of the information that goes into creating consciousness and the I.
This indeed is constant throughout a life time. And the very first instruction in DNA would relate to the essence of what keeps a biological organism going, and this very first instruction would be common to all living creatures and would be immoral - being passed along the lineage of life to perpetuity.