You Can't Die, Because You Don't Exist
BUDDHISTS: How might Buddhism comment on the following?
PHILOSOPHERS: This is totally wrong!! :-) Explain why.
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This is a thread about the relationship between life and death, things and no-things.
You're sitting on the beach and see some bumps welling up out on the horizon. As a wave reaches the outer sandbar it starts to stand up and you can begin to see it's face. In between the sandbars the wave declines again and melts back in to the sea. But then it reaches the inner shallower sandbar, stands way up, and the top of the wave begins to collapse over it's face. The white water produced pushes towards shore and ends at your feet. You've watched a wave, seen it's birth, it's life, it's death.
In our common sense every day lives the above story is sufficient as it describes the event accurately enough. But we are philosophers so we wish to dig deeper.
What is it that was born, lived and died? What are the properties which identify the wave as being a unique and separate thing, as existing?
The water has weight and mass and clearly fits the definition of existence. But the water is still there. It didn't go anywhere. No evidence of death.
The energy can be measured and so is clearly a real phenomena too. But as Einstein apparently said, energy can neither be created or destroyed. No evidence of birth or death.
Our eyes tell us the wave has died, and yet what the wave was made of still exists. So when we say the wave has died, what is it that had died?
A pattern. A pattern created by energy applied to water. Or, given that matter is energy in a denser form, a dance between energy and itself.
Patterns have no mass, no weight, no substance of their own. Patterns are real, but they don't meet our definition of existence. Thus, they can't really die, because they never actually existed in the first place.
It is the thesis of this thread that all observable phenomena are of this type. There is the energy which is never created or destroyed, and there are the patterns, which don't actually exist.
You can never die. Because you never existed in the first place.
PHILOSOPHERS: This is totally wrong!! :-) Explain why.
-------------------------------------
This is a thread about the relationship between life and death, things and no-things.
You're sitting on the beach and see some bumps welling up out on the horizon. As a wave reaches the outer sandbar it starts to stand up and you can begin to see it's face. In between the sandbars the wave declines again and melts back in to the sea. But then it reaches the inner shallower sandbar, stands way up, and the top of the wave begins to collapse over it's face. The white water produced pushes towards shore and ends at your feet. You've watched a wave, seen it's birth, it's life, it's death.
In our common sense every day lives the above story is sufficient as it describes the event accurately enough. But we are philosophers so we wish to dig deeper.
What is it that was born, lived and died? What are the properties which identify the wave as being a unique and separate thing, as existing?
The water has weight and mass and clearly fits the definition of existence. But the water is still there. It didn't go anywhere. No evidence of death.
The energy can be measured and so is clearly a real phenomena too. But as Einstein apparently said, energy can neither be created or destroyed. No evidence of birth or death.
Our eyes tell us the wave has died, and yet what the wave was made of still exists. So when we say the wave has died, what is it that had died?
A pattern. A pattern created by energy applied to water. Or, given that matter is energy in a denser form, a dance between energy and itself.
Patterns have no mass, no weight, no substance of their own. Patterns are real, but they don't meet our definition of existence. Thus, they can't really die, because they never actually existed in the first place.
It is the thesis of this thread that all observable phenomena are of this type. There is the energy which is never created or destroyed, and there are the patterns, which don't actually exist.
You can never die. Because you never existed in the first place.
Comments (111)
The being that needs to survive, find comfort, and entertainment, lest some deprivation be felt through pain, suffering, need, and want.
So I cannot be destroyed because I'm not the kind of thing that cannot be destroyed? :chin:
According to the theory, you can not be destroyed because, as a pattern, you don't exist.
The story about the wave is perfectly reasonable in our every day common sense human scale lives. The wave was born, it lived, it died. End of story, no reason to complicate it. There is a pencil on my desk or there isn't. Simple, obvious, useful.
The problems perhaps arise when we try to map such a simplistic "alive or dead, exists or not" paradigm which is useful at human scale on to the largest of questions. As I'm found of ranting, space doesn't seem to fit within the constraints of a dualistic "exists or not" concept. Perhaps matter doesn't either because as we dive down in to the details of matter the boundary between exists and doesn't exist seems to blur considerably. So we don't need to enter the realm of religion to explore this possible problem.
If we did want to dive in to religion, one thing I see happening (amongst a million other things) is that religions will attempt to approach such questions, but typically do so in language which is often alien to modern scientific culture. Sometimes the religions are likely just full of crap, but on other occasions the disconnect may be more of a cultural translation issue.
To the degree it's a translation problem, here's how it might come about. Even if the thesis offered here were somehow proven to be exactly absolutely true in every regard :-) this thread would still be largely useless to the vast majority of humanity, few of whom are philosophers, and very many of whom are barely educated. So if you are a religion and your goal is to serve humanity at large, and not just a tiny elite of hyper-intelligent abstraction processors such as ourselves :-) you have to reach for some kind of language other than what is being presented here.
And then you have to establish some kind of authority structure because most human beings, including us, don't really listen to reason so much as we do authority of some kind or another. As example, if Einstein came here to the forum anonymously and began posting as Nerddog28 we'd all begin challenging him immediately. If he instead came here as Einstein, and posted the exact same ideas, very different result.
And for a religion to achieve authority it has to reach across a long time period so as make the implied claim that, LOTS of other people believe this, so you might as well too. And so we wind up with language rooted in a long past cultural circumstance which many moderns will understandably not find relevant to their lives.
But things that exist cannot be destroyed either, as you stated. My point was that you seem to be assuming that to be destroyed, you have to exist, even while saying that such things that exist--matter and energy--cannot be destroyed either.
So maybe nothing can be destroyed? But you did claim that patterns are created, when you said that a wave was "a pattern created by energy applied to water". But surely something that can be created can be destroyed, no?
I did? Hmm...
Einstein says that energy can't be either created or destroyed, so ok, yes on that one. But the water could conceivably be boiled away from every planet in the universe, the atomic structure could be dismantled entirely etc. Does this satisfy your question?
Quoting jamalrob
Yes, the pattern is real, and has a beginning and an end, agreed. But it doesn't exist, according to our definitions of that word.
One of the things that has become clearer to me from many conversations here on the forum is that phenomena can be real, without existing. And not just "things", but damn near everything, ie. space.
Thanks for engaging. And for being a good sport about my way too many opinions.
I don't think so. So according to you, it is not just matter and energy that exist, but matter and energy that has taken various forms, e.g., water? What is the difference between a form and a pattern? What makes a water molecule different from a wave, such that one exists and the other doesn't? You've mentioned "our definition" of existence a couple of times now, but this is far from a settled question in philosophy, and you haven't been explicit about it. Why would anyone agree with a scheme in which matter and energy cannot be destroyed, but molecules can, but waves and people can't?
Anyway, let's say that we cannot die and waves cannot be destroyed. Where does that leave us? Why is that better than saying we die while the matter and energy that we were made of remains? How is that any different? What we value, in fact what we're actually talking about when we talk about death, destruction, and even existence, is the patterns. All you've done is redefine the words involved.
EDIT: This all seems to me rather like when people say that solid things are not really solid (which is a misunderstanding of physics or misuse of language).
Ah, good, would hate to see the thread die so soon. :-)
Quoting jamalrob
I'm not a physics major, but it seems only energy exists, with matter being a form of energy. Or so I thought I heard in my advanced studies at Netflix University.
Quoting jamalrob
Seem the same thing to me.
Quoting jamalrob
Ah, ok, fair enough, I'm using the general man in the street definition, has weight and mass.
Quoting jamalrob
I don't expect anyone to agree here. :-) I did say that I thought matter could be destroyed, the atomic structure unraveled etc. Energy no, as far as I know.
I think that what I'm saying, or at least tried to say, is that everything observable is patterns in energy, and that the patterns have no existence (weight and mass) of their own. And I'm certain I'm hardly the first person to say this, but am just expressing things already said many times in my own particular language.
Quoting jamalrob
United with all of reality. If all is just patterns, and patterns don't exist, there is only energy. Or, a religious person might say, all is God. I'm not religious, so I'm putting it a different way.
Quoting jamalrob
Why morn the end of the wave when the water and energy have gone nowhere? Yes, the pattern is gone, but it never existed in the first place.
What we value is thought. "Me" and "my thoughts", all of it thought. What is thought? A pattern of relationships between neurons. The neurons exist, have weight and mass. The pattern of relationships is real, but has no existence of it's own. We can't take a thought out of our heads and put it on the table, leaving the neurons behind.
Good discussion! Good challenges! Good moderator! :-)
So you agree that forms and patterns are the same thing, but you've said that forms of energy or matter can be destroyed, after saying that patterns cannot.
Quoting Hippyhead
Did you ask this man in the street if light and gravity, governments and currencies, species and rectangles, love and beauty, pieces of music and rivers exist? Anyway, to my knowledge there is no such philosophical position on existence as the one you mention.
My nitpicking is to try and make things clear and coherent, but aside from all of that, maybe you're a modern-day Heraclitus: all is flux, you never step in the same river twice.
Quoting Hippyhead
If by "we" you mean philosophers, yes sure, but when I said "we" I meant people, and people value more than mere thought.
Some relevant comments...
"One might almost say that our surface being is only the deeper eternal self in us throwing itself out as the adventurer in Time, a gambler and speculator in infinite possibilities, limiting itself to the succession of moments so that it may enjoy all the surprise and delight of the adventure, keeping back its self-knowledge and complete self-being so that it may win again what it seems to have lost, reconquering all itself through the chequered joy and pain of an aeonic passion and seeking and adventure.."
Sri Aurobindo
The Life Divine
"I can tell you nothing but this; I see that by God’s mercy there has come to be in me a form which is not fashioned out of matter, and I have passed out of myself and entered into an immortal body! I am not now the man I was; I have been born again in spirit, and the bodily shape which was mine before has been put away from me. I am no longer an object coloured and tangible, a thing of spatial dimensions; I am now alien to all this, and all that you perceive when you gaze with bodily eyesight. To such eyes as yours, my son, I am not now visible."
Corpus Hermanicum
Poimandres:(Shepherd of Men)
“ Not from self, not from other,
Not from both, nor without cause:
Things do not arise
At any time, at any place.
"This verse [by Nagarjuna] proves that things do not arise because they do not arise from any of the four extremes: They do not arise from themselves, from something other than themselves, from both themselves and something other than themselves, and they do not arise without any cause at all. These are the only four possible ways in which things could arise, and since none of them are valid, things do not truly arise. Therefore, things do not truly exist."
Khenpo Tsütrim Gyamtso
The Sun of Wisdom
Teachings on the Noble Nagarjuna’s
Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way
Existence usually means 'to stand out'. Thus a thing exists if it stands out from its background. This would be why Schrodinger notes that as well as what exists there is 'the canvas on which they are painted'. For a Venn diagram a set does not exist unless it stands out from the blank piece of paper.
The waves 'exist' because they stand out. The ocean does not stand out but is what existents stand-out from. Existents are phenomenal, having only a dependent-existence, therefore are not truly real. What is truly real is the background but this does not exist in the sense of 'standing-out'. Thus nothing really exists.
“Dionysius went so far with the negative ways of speaking of God that he even denied God existed: ‘It is the universal cause of existence while itself existing not, for it is beyond all being’ (from his book On the Divine Names). This might seem like nonsense. It would certainly cause a stir if a preacher went up into the pulpit and said, “According to our greatest authorities, God is not like anything of which you can think. In fact, I can tell you that God does not even exist. Let us pray.
But of course the point is to say that God does not exist in the same way that anything we can imagine exists. God is ‘Nothing’, not-a-thing, but that Nothing is not a sheer vacuum. It is that in which all distinctions fade away, but in which they are rooted.”
Keith Ward
God: A Guide for the Perplexed
I didn't say anything about forms.
Quoting jamalrob
C'mon, give me a little break, you're sinking in to automated rejectionism mode.
Quoting jamalrob
Ok, no objection to this. If I didn't support that agenda I'd be on a blog where only I can post.
Quoting jamalrob
Arguably not. One theory is that we don't value things so much as our relationship with those things. The relationships are made of thought.
Gotta step out for a few hours. Look forward to continuing!
You did.
Quoting Hippyhead
No, I really do think your definition of existence is wrong, and obviously so, and I don't think it's a popular view either in philosophy or on the street.
EDIT: I've just remembered that there is a view in philosophy called mereological nihilism, according to which you and I and waves, and anything else that's made of smaller bits, do not exist: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/material-constitution/#Eli
I like that way of talking about existence, but you don't make much use of it. If waves do exist, i.e., they stand out phenomenally against a background, then you cannot say that they do not exist without redefining "exist". You seem to do that when you say that things that exist "are not truly real" (whatever that means), and take that implicitly to entail that they don't exist after all. Why? It must be because you think that to exist is not in fact to stand out phenomenally against a background--which I guess is why you use the quotation marks around "exist"--but rather is to be "truly real" and to appear to stand out, which is by definition impossible.
So you began by offering an interesting way of thinking about existence, but then immediately dismissed it because it's phenomenal and not "truly real", without explaining what this means or why it should justify a dismissal.
Quoting Hippyhead
Nobody says that only things with mass exist, I don't think. Well, you do, but it seems eccentric. So as far as I can make sense of things, what you're saying is that everything observable is patterns in energy, which have no mass. Well, okay, if you like.
Quoting Hippyhead
Because it's the wave that I observed, that I loved, that was part of my world, and that is gone. I don't give a shit about the water and energy. You see the problem? It's patterns that are significant, even if you define them out of existence.
The sun is a chemical and physical reaction of gravity and burning hydrogen. Eventually, it will run out. But the sun does not seek to replenish itself. It will run out without any attempt to stop it.
A life on the other hand seeks water and food, things it needs to continue its chemical and physical reaction. When it can no longer do this by obtaining food and water, it does this by making a new copy of itself, or reproduction.
Once a life can no longer renew itself, the reaction ceases, and it is dead.
So yes, we can exist as life, and our life can die.
So you began by offering an interesting way of thinking about existence, but then immediately dismissed it because it's phenomenal and not "truly real", without explaining what this means or why it should justify a dismissal.
Fair comment. I didn't go further because it's such a difficult topic.
For the mystic the space-time world is found to be much as Hippyhead describes it. Our separation from the ocean would be illusory or superficial. But it would not be rigorous to say psycho-physical phenomena don't exist. Rather, they would exist, but not in the way we usually imagine. Thus Heraclitus states 'We are and are-not'. This is an expression of the Buddhist doctrine of 'Two Truths' or 'Worlds' which divides the world into the Conventional and Ultimate, which are two levels of analysis and speech. Only one phenomenon would be independently or truly real, but as there is nothing from which it could stand out it cannot be said to exist in the ordinary sense. Thus, as Keith Ward explains in that quote, Classical Christianity does not claim 'God exists' since this might be misunderstood as meaning God exists as an individual only in the sense that we do as individuals. But Existence must have a source, and it cannot be Existence. . . . . . . .
Thus it is claimed that nothing really exists or ever really happens - where the word 'really' would signify that these phenomenal things do exist in a sense,.(As is obvious). By reduction, however, whether in experience or in analysis, they would not. .
The 'immortality' and 'transcendence' spoken of in Yoga and self-enquiry depends utterly on the ultimate non-existence of the phenomenal world. If anything really existed it would be irreducible, just as philosophers discover by analysis, and mysticism would not exist. .
The problem with the waves and ocean analogy is that it might suggest the waves and the ocean have the same kind of existence, but this is not the intended message.
Is this better? .
. . . .
.
. .
Exactly. You may choose to identify yourself with the part that dies, and this is fine. But if you wish to transcend death then you also have to transcend life. Mysticism is all about realising one is not the pattern but the source of the pattern.
Actually Buddhists are only a small proportion of the people who 'give a shit'. If we did a survey of people on their deathbeds I suspect most people would. . . . . ,
Hmm. I don;t think most people on the street or even most philosophers have a coherent idea of existence. Meanwhile, in mysticism there is something close to unanimity. .
Ok then, please continue and share what you feel an appropriate definition would be.
While awaiting your reply, my quick take would be that I don't consider philosophers to be that rational, and am guessing the street doesn't really care one way or another, generally speaking. That sentiment is open to challenge as well of course.
It sounds like space to me. I have no hard opinion on this, but find myself intrigued by the notion that what so many have been trying to describe in so much fancy language is space. As just one example, it's the known proven phenomena which would seem to best align with the Catholic doctrine that God is ever present in all times and places. It also embodies some of the contradictions which have befuddled so many, such as being real but not existent. Oops, wandering off topic...
Let's instead take seriously the position that people and waves and other such composite objects don't exist, that patterns in general don't exist. There might be a few philosophers who agree. I don't agree with it, but I'll go along with it for now.
Does it then follow that people don't die? I think not. Surely what follows is that dying describes the destruction of a pattern, or the conclusion of a patterny process, even if this isn't the end of any thing's existence.
If this is right, then there is little comfort in knowing that nothing has ceased to exist. It just means that existence wasn't the important thing all along.
Of course, the idea that our constituent existents will find their way into other patterns might be appealing, but it doesn't really detract from the seriousness of death.
Phenomena can be real, without having mass. Space for example. Thus it seems useful to make a distinction between "real" and "exists". Admittedly common usage often lumps the two together.
And by the way, how many millions of God threads have you read that essentially claim God doesn't exist because it has no measurable properties such as weight and mass? Such claims seem to assume that such measurable properties are the definition of existence.
Quoting jamalrob
Yes, I do, would agree that such abstractions as we are exploring here will have limited emotional value. That said, I've been considering this for years, and for this nerd it does help create a different mental image than "when I die I lose everything".
There can be very practical implications of such a different mental image, to the degree it's possible to attain. As example, my mother died a very long hard death from Parkinsons because she wasn't a philosopher or religious, so she had nothing but the common "fight to the bitter end" philosophy to guide her. If they should tell me I have Parkinsons, I'm convinced my next step would be to get my affairs in order and then put a bullet in my brain. Part of this is a very ordinary fear of pain, and another part a sense that, um, the ocean is where I come from.
In agreement with your sentiment above I will remind you of the posts I shared above regarding how religions typically understand that this level of abstraction has limited practical use, and so they reach for other more accessible language. But philosophers tend to hate such language, so I am attempting to speak here in the local dialect, if you will.
You can't know that. Maybe you come from a very different place and upon death will return there, wherever that is. The ocean is far too big for you to even begin to imagine, in other words. Scary thought?
Real, but non-existent, according my use of the word. Like space, the overwhelming vast majority of reality.
Quoting jamalrob
If you don't exist, how do you die? If we agree that everything is energy, and energy can not be created or destroyed, then where is there to go?
Again, I do realize this is a highly abstracted way to look it, but then, this is a philosophy forum after all. If your challenge is that it's too abstract to be of much practical use, I would generally agree, on average, most of the time. Religions tend to be much more practical about such things.
Quoting jamalrob
Ok, I can agree, something which doesn't exist is no more. I know, I hear you, contradictory. But perhaps you could revisit the posts above regarding the attempt to map human scale concepts on to the very largest of questions? I have attempted to address this.
Quoting jamalrob
Again agree that such abstractions do not excel at the comfort business. But we are nerds, this is what we do. Mostly. At least here.
If you should feel that comfort is the most rational goal of such an inquiry then perhaps we should discuss different tools?
Yes, I think I understand. I also seek the right attitudes for dealing with these things, but for me, metaphysics doesn't help. Regarding my own death, often I think I would like to be a fighter to the bitter end, like your mother, but sometimes I think a peaceful equanimous death would be better. The significance of these things has a kind of autonomy and may as well be dealt with--this is ethics--whether they are illusions or mere patterns, or whatever.
I happened to be reading an interview with Daniel Dennett, in connection with another thread I've been reading along with, where he talks about his views on ontology and uses the word "pattern", as you do:
[quote=Dennett]We have got all these atoms, and then we have the patterns that we discern among these atoms and four dimensions: space and time. Now the question is: Do the patterns have ontological significance? And for me the answer is: That's what ontology is. What other criterion could you ever use? What other reason could you ever have for your ontological presuppositions?[/quote]
I think we can interpret this as saying that it's precisely the patterns that can be said to significantly exist, rather than matter without form. This might also be Aristotle's view, namely that things exist as compounds of matter and form.
Ok, I hear you, I'm not proposing a one size fits all solution.
Quoting jamalrob
Price tag can be very high. But your choice of course.
Honestly, what scares me is that I try to time my departure too closely, and blow it. And then spend the next 12 years staring at the ceiling unable to move. 12 years that will feel like 2,000. My sister doing this right now. No end in sight. Could be 20 more years to come before it's over. Can you tell I'm terrified?
I had an uncle who was mowing the grass on a hot 4th of July and had a heart attack. They said he was dead before he hit the ground. Now that's the way to go about things.
Quoting jamalrob
This could be a way to define existence, agreed.
Yes, my grandfather had Parkinson's and increasingly severe dementia over a period of 15 years. In those circumstances, I would think fighting to the bitter end would lose any meaning.
Quoting Hippyhead
I hope you find a way to deal with it, even if it involves defining waves out of existence.
Quoting Hippyhead
I'd want at least a second or two to think, "ha, this isn't such a bad way to go". Or, "It's July 4th, why didn't I just relax by the pool?" (I'm not American but my birthday is July 4th, so it all checks out :cool:)
Ah, sorry, so you know of what I speak.
Quoting jamalrob
Thank you, same to ya! We shall see.
Ha, I nailed your birthday. We great imaginary sages have a knack for such stunts. :-)
Yeah, that doesn't work. Try LSD for end-of-life anxiety.
Quoting Beckley Foundation
It sounds like space to me.
This is because you are caught up in naive realism. You assume spatial extension is fundamental. This idea does not withstand analysis. .
It also sound like 'Emptiness', 'Unity', Unicity', Brahman' and 'Tao'. These are extended only in appearance.
. . .
Describe the life history of a pattern. Imagine I drop a pebble into a calm pond. Describe the wave pattern.
Could be. I think I might be caught up in my Catholic upbringing that stated God is ever present everywhere at all times. I'm not stuck on the Catholic God, never was really, but it appears I am stuck on the notion of WHATEVER IT IS being embedded in material reality. Not limited to necessarily, don't know about that.
But this is fine. It implies that extension is not real. How could God be everywhere unless He is nowhere? It is precisely the unreality of extension that allows us to makes sense of omnipresence. .
What is extension?
Space and time appear to be extended phenomena. 'Extension' just means they are spread out in space and time, as modeled by the number line.
To believe spatial or temporal extension is fundamental is realism. This is denied by non-dualism and Middle Way Buddhism. The Perennial philosophy endorses a neutral philosophical theory for which space and time are reducible for a fundamental theory. . . . .
We do not experience extension. We are always here and now. This is well discussed by the physicist and mathematician Hermann Weyl in his writings on the continuum. Extension is a theory, not an experience.
Thus God is always here and now, watching every sparrow. He cannot be elsewhere because there is no 'elsewhere'.
This allows us to avoid the endless paradoxes that arise for the idea that space-time is more than an idea. . .
. . .
. . . ,.
This part I get. The rest, kinda beyond the reach of armadillos. :-)
Ha. It's not a difficult ideas intellectually, but conceptually challenging in the extreme.
Say more if it interests you to do so, interested here, but this particular reader may require more [s]dumped[/s] dumbed down translation in to armadilloese.
PS: It appears armadillos don't excel at spelling either.
Good to meet another timeless being!
It is my mission to explain how profoundly simple metaphysics is and debunk the academic discipline, , but it ain't easy.
In theory at least, profoundly simple things might be best explained in profoundly simple language.
In theory at least, profoundly simple things might be best explained in profoundly simple language.
Quite so. But then there are questions and objections and the complications multiply.
,,
You can't know that. Maybe you come from a very different place and upon death will return there, wherever that is. The ocean is far too big for you to even begin to imagine, in other words. Scary thought?
Sorry to butt in but this is an interesting point. Yes, the ocean cannot be imagined, But it can be known and inhabited. The analogy of an ocean is used to describe a realisation. So Hippyhead can know this. Whether he does is another matter. . . ,. .
It remains an open question as to whether, or not, matter and energy are ultimate forms of being, or are simply forms of something yet more basic.
If matter and energy are not ultimate forms of being and can be destroyed, then would the purported "something yet more basic" continue to exist?
Is this another, more parsimonious, way to state Hippyhead's original thesis?
For living creatures the pattern that persists would be RNA and DNA - expressing their patterns in a myriad of different ways. I'm not suggesting that they are a constant, just a good illustration of the pattern.
Quoting Punshhh
I would be interested in your explanation?
Likewise this is also the case for the soul (for want of a better word), but in a more subtle way. This is a simplified version of the idea.
should be
I CAN'T DIE BECAUSE I DON'T EXIST
First of all, I do exist!
As Descartes showed: Ego Cogito, Ego Sum. In other words, when and while I am thinking in the first person present tense mode, I must necessarily exist, and this fact is always intuited as being indubitably certain!!!
However, my indubitably certain existence is not a NECESSARY existence because the Cogito (my thinking activity) upon which my indubitably certain existence depends is a CONTINGENT activity; i.e., nothing precludes my thinking activity from ceasing to occur.
I can die because I cannot have an indubitably certain intuition that my thinking is a NECESSARY activity.
In other words, I do exist, and I can die!!!!!!!!
Enabling experience being the central point?
I would agree with this. The words that I would use is that our mentality is constructed entirely from the integration of information surrounding us and the data inherited via DNA, and our physicality entirely from DNA information entangling energy and matter. The physicality enabling the mentality. So that we have a self at all is doubtful, since all that we are is composed of elements outside of ourselves - hereditary data, energy, materials, and information. The largely, though not completely, constant but perhaps immortal element is DNA information, this varies among species, and has a myriad of expressions.
However, there is a basic strip of DNA data shared by all of life, and I've come to believe it contains the bias to be. What I can not get over is that a bias is emotional information, and it is emotional information that creates consciousness. So in the end, it seems, that consciousness just wants to experience. It seems not fussed about what it experiences. The experience of an amoeba is as good as that of a human being. It seems to want to be in superposition of experience perhaps, or something like that.
Erwin Schrödinger : “There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads.”
The great physicist was always on the ball. Thus Hippyhead's patterns do not really exist. Consciousness is Reality and all the rest is smoke and mirrors.
After all, to suppose otherwise it to suppose space-time is fundamental. . . . .
So I can't die, nor do I live. It seems unsatisfactory, somehow.
I don't think Hippyhead's patterns are in conflict with what Schrödinger said. They are a different dimension, I believe. Hippyhead is describing the physicality, but there is also an element of mentality to it, as panpsychism would suggest. In monism the mental and physical are inseparable.
Yes, real, but non existent (no mass or weight etc).
I don't personally look to deeply into the roles played by DNA, because the workings are not important and that the reality of the manifestation is probably more complex than we know, or we are in the dark to the reality.
You have to assume there is a third state, and this would be immortality. With practice one can discover this state. Then one knows one is not subject to life and death. This is the basic message. .. .
Nor me. These patterns are bang in line with what Schrodinger said. But he also notes that as well as the patterns there is 'the canvas on which they are painted'.
The canvas is what is revealed when the patterns are seen for what they are. As the Upanishads say, 'the voidness of one thing is the voidness of all'. ,
Not in the ordinary sense of the word. The Ultimate would be real and would exist in a real sense, while all the rest would exist only in he sense of 'standing out' or being distinguishable.
After all, energy cannot come from energy, or matter from matter, or existence from existence. There has to be a phenomena that transcends these things in order that it can be their source. Kant's argument for the 'thing-in-itself' is relevant here. . . . .
The Principle of Sufficient Reason is a universally shared transcendental prejudice. It is a cognitive knee-jerk reaction. It necessarily and inescapably distorts all human thinking about consciousness and natural phenomena. Its persistent and tiresome theme is: "THERE HAS TO BE, SIMPLY MUST BE, A REASON WHY!!!!"
Quite the contrary!!!! "THERE DOESN'T HAVE TO BE ANY REASON WHY I, YOU, OR ENTITIES EXIST!!!!! In fact, the positing of a Thing-in-Itself is nothing more than an expression of this prejudice!!!
Everything may just be gratuitous and The Principle of Sufficient Reason may simply be the most universal, abstract expression of the Principle of EPISTEMIC ANTHROPOCENTRISM!!!!
I like to define things, otherwise we talk past each other with different understanding of vague terms like soul, or spirit, but I can respect your wish. I was really focusing on what Schrödinger said, I am not familiar with the Upanishads.
Quoting FrancisRay
The canvas being a pattern itself? If we lay quantum field theory over this, the wave would be an intersection of various fields. The consciousness would be the self organization, the state of matter the result of self organization, and energy would enable it all. It is something for a brief moment and then vanishes and turns into something else. Sounds about right.
That's just wrong. There are patterns.
This can occur once one identifies with the universe, rather than something anthropocentric. The universe dose not die. It would indeed be a shift in paradigm.
The only thing I don't define here is spirit (for want of a better word), because any attempt falls short. Remember what I said about a different kind of knowledge, one not requiring the intellect, which you agreed with. What I'm saying here is that each of us knows spirit (for want of a better word), but via being rather than intellectualising it.
Please do describe such things by another system, I am familiar with most of them. I will remind you though at some point that our current understanding of material and life is quite limited and that the reality of manifestation might be quite different from what we can deduce with science for example.
REAL. Just not existent.
Like space.
The coin is real, it's not forged.
The painting is real, it's not a print
The river is real, it's not a mirage.
The pattern is real, it's not a...?
... artifact
What?
No. The canvas is not a pattern. This is its definition. If it were a pattern it could not be the canvas.
It would be, unless it is already ones paradigm. It would be to become a buddha or find the Holy Grail. . . .
You might like to look up mysticism. The idea you need is 'dependent existence'. .
An idea that takes some work to get across where metaphysics and mysticism are poorly known, but utterly crucial to philosophy. . .
Well, could be. I dunno, seems kinda obvious though.
Space. No weight, no mass, no shape, no form. Not meeting the most common definition of existence. And yet it's a real phenomena.
Math. No weight, no mass, no shape, no form. Not meeting the most common definition of existence. And yet it's a real phenomena.
Space. No weight, no mass, no shape, no form. Not meeting the most common definition of existence. And yet it's a real phenomena.
Math. No weight, no mass, no shape, no form. Not meeting the most common definition of existence. And yet it's a real phenomena.
Are these real phenomena? On what basis do you dismiss some phenomena as non-existent but real, but say these two are both existent and real?
The reality of space has been confirmed by science. Some will say this means it exists. Ok, that's one definition of existence which can be chosen. Personally, I'm attempting to make a distinction between two kinds of phenomena.
1) Is real, has mass and weight.
2) Is real, does not have mass and weight.
Given that most of reality is in category 2, and most of what we focus on is in category 1, such a distinction seems worth considering.
You are confusing the Principle of Cause and Effect with the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Just because natural phenomena have causes which explain "how" they occur doesn't mean they have reasons which explain "why" they exist. Do you see the relevance now?????
Mysticism is utterly crucial to philosophy????
I don't think so!
Fundamentally, mysticism, in all its forms, is not so much meaningless or nonsensical as it is primarily ELITIST. The Gnostics, for example, were very forthright about their inherent superiority. They promoted, among themselves, a false kind of consciousness of superiority. They claimed to be a special breed of pneumatic humans who were above the majority of merely material or psychical humanity. Only they were able to have a direct, intimate, personal encounter with the transcendent via some secret (magical) way of knowing, which the rest of us poor slobs, by our inferior natures, could never hope to be privy to. Mysticism evolves by promoting a religious frame-of-reference that would turn the rest of humanity into inferior beings. It is this dangerous elitism that I find shallow and self-serving about the paradigm of mysticism. It promotes, either explicitly or implicitly, the idea of the transcendent Nothingness of the worth of the rest of humanity.
I can not agree with this. The wave has ripples on it, the ripples are themselves waves.
Quoting Punshhh
You are referring to experience, and the essential element of experience is emotion, which I would agree can not be described with intellect at all - it must be experienced - suggesting emotion is a force rather then a concept. To feel the force / emotion of ones body is the only way of knowing it. This is the hard problem of consciousness.
The interesting thing about this thread, is that people have arrived at similar conclusions via different reasoning. So, I think, it is worth while elucidating it in the best way that one can, so as to put as much light on it as possible.
To understand something one way is one experience, whilst to understand it another way is yet another experience.
Quoting Hippyhead
I believe, the pattern you are describing is consciousness, which I define as self organization. The consciousness ( self organisation ) exists for the duration of the wave, but when the wave passes the consciousness disappears, whilst the matter and energy are conserved, and go on to create a different consciousness - so a different experience is created, if you like.
The pattern exists as part of the wave, but as the wave passes, so dose the pattern. So, the pattern cannot exist independently of the wave. This is monism.
There is one thing missing from the wave. It is something we attribute to ourselves, but begrudge almost everything else, and it is a stupid, stupid thing that we do, as it impoverishes our experience of the world, and makes us mortal. Emotion exists in the wave as the reason why it self organizes. If emotion is attributed to the natural world, then everything in the natural world comes to life as a peer. So waves and trees can become friends, and there is meaning in every blade of grass. So you are never alone, as it is all equally as meaningful as you are. But also you can never die, as you will always become something such that you will continue to experience, but not as yourself, but as an equal something else. So you become immortal, via a shift in paradigm, by identifying with the universe.
I'd rather read Terry Pratchett.
Yup, the unfortunate result of returning to earth after the wondrous transcendent is often an inflated ego the size of a small galaxy.
I wouldn't put to much emphasis on emotion myself, as it is a system within the vehicle of the body for the purposes of controlling behaviour, in a conditioned, or inherited and strategic way.
Likewise experience while being a fundamental property of being is also provided by the action of the body. If one is to distinguish the being from the vehicles through which it is hosted. One much identify the vehicles and their actions in this hosting and distinguish the spirit, or essence of being form the vehicle. Such knowing does require some practice, but as I have hinted, we do already know these things were we to but know it. To see the wood for the trees.
This would be a dualism, whereas I am a monist. Once the wave passes, so dose the pattern that formed it, I believe.
Quoting Punshhh
What is controlling what / who? What is the strategy?
In biology we are the vehicles of DNA, but in some eastern philosophy we are the vehicles of a life force. We being nodes in a lineage of life. The conceptions are very close, and I have faith in them. Do you agree?
But there is, of course, a pattern we recognise as a horse-picture.
Not unless you mistook it for a horse, which you didn't.
It's a pattern you recognised with particular ease from your perspective, but which you may then impose with ease from almost any other.
Well, I think "never existed in the first place" isn't immortality.
Who said I didn't?
What, you mean in some very fleeting way, for a small moment, in some small corner of your mind?
Or were you able to maintain the mistake, in some subtle way? Art as illusion?
Yes, I was forgetting how entrenched that theory is.
So, for some such reason, you don't think pictures are generally patterns? Merely, illusions of patterns? Ok.
Therefore reality contains that which exists, and patterns.
My problem with this scheme is that I think that saying that patterns are non-existent is just a shorthand; patterns are mental objects, and therefore they exist as some cerebral disposition of biological, chemical, physical matter. (There is no pattern of X aside from my mentalization about X).
In my words, the wave existed, only during its "life". The pattern that corresponds to it existed, only during the observer's life.
We end with all-pervasing death; death to that which is real and death to the pattern. Neat!
I suggest you ask yourself why you don't expect anyone to mistake a horse-shapped cloud for a real horse. What is the essential difference between the two, you think?
In reality we can't answer this question as we are in a position of ignorance.
The organism of the body, so as to protect and nurture the body within a social colony. Before we developed larger brains and intelligence, emotion was more important in controlling behaviour.
I don't attribute such importance to DNA, as it is the source of the encoding of the structure of the body, rather than the control of the organism during its day to day life, or in experience. Therefore DNA is not involved the strategic, or social behaviour.
Agreed. I see the biosphere as an organism, likewise humanity as an a organism. Organisms which are divided into seperate units, or individuals.
When I say DNA, I really mean epigenetics, or cellular consciousness. DNA seems to be the custodian of this. You see the biosphere as the main organism, and humanity as one of its components? What caused the biosphere ? How did it come to be?
I can agree with that.
I agree that DNA plays an important day to day role in cellular life.
Yes, also individual cells likewise.
Both questions are not answerable from our current position. I'm not saying the answers are beyond our understanding, but are not, perhaps within our area of knowledge. It's possible that someone has got a right answer, but how could this be verified? Also, there may be beings with us who know the answers but for some reason or circumstances are not telling us.
Do you mean beings living within us? I think our cells are a sort of being that collectively create us.
Is this insight part of a school of thought, or is it your own construction?
It's Theosophy which is derived from Hinduism. Some of it is my own thinking, I've lost track of where one ends and the other begins.
Those who identify with something anthropocentric surely must die. But those who identify with the universe cannot possibly die! How can they? I think it is a much healthier paradigm. :smile:
Quoting Punshhh
Thanks, I'll have to check it out.