LastThursday

Alice: you're the only solipsist. Bob: no you're the only solipsist. Zara: wait... I don't exi

I suspect this thread is just a honey trap for the philosophers on the forum... I don't know, there's a lot of words being thrown about as if we really comprehend them and that we have a common understanding of them - we don't, so we end up going around in circles. But that's fun, like a merry-go-round. My personal intuition is something like: 1. Consciousness/reality can introspect itself. So even a void could be aware of itself or "know" itself or "comprehend" itself. 2. This introspection can ramp up in complexity, to the point where a flower is recognised. It's something like awareness can tie itself into ever more complicated knots. 3. There's no difference between the ability to introspect and the thing itself. Reality/consciousness is simply "knowing" in all it's glory, and nothing else. Time for breakfast.

Can you actually have "not knowing", what would that be? Take radio waves as an example. I have no direct knowing of them, all my knowing of radio waves are indirect, mostly through a radio, or theoretical knowledge.

There is a direct knowing without mind like @gettoefl says. When you look at or touch a flower, there is an effortless knowing that it is a flower. There's a conceptual knowing which is a set of relationships and causes and effects: which requires thought and effort. The fundamental difference between the two types of knowing, is that one is direct and the other indirect. For example you can look at a car engine and know direclty it's a car engine, or you can have a conceptual knowing of how it's constructed and what makes it work, and what makes it an engine. Maybe a car mechanic after several years, would have a more direct knowing of a car engine and its parts. Despite having effortless knowing, there still has to be learning. We still have to learn what a flower is at some point. Something has to happen in order for us to know something, even if its direct. I would say that "direct knowing" is a primary function of consciousness, even if it can be fluid. Have you ever held something with eyes closed and not "known" what it was until you opened your eyes? I would equate direct knowing as being one and the same as creating distinctions out of the unity of consciousness/experience (see the other thread on distinctions). In a sense we carve out and hence "know" objects from the flow of perception. Because knowing is fluid, we can know a thing in more than one way. When we look at a family member, we instantly and directly know them in many different ways.

Bang on, I say. And yet, here you are describing it in language. "infinity" is a word, so it surely points to something we can experience or think about.

I would try and bypass infinity and say that truth is something that persists. If something persists forever then it's an absolute truth. For example you could say the sky is Truth, because it's always there, it persists. Maybe consciousness is Truth - it's always there. The problem is you can't know with your finite experience if something will persist forever. Actually you're right, you can't know infinity. But it's funny how there's a word for it: infinity. How can we have a word for something we don't understand? What game is being played here?

I think this is where our arguments are distinct (sorry). I'm saying that experience can separate itself and also point to itself. Even a simulation would have to bootstrap "pointing to itself" from nothing, how would it do it this? Could a blind person simulate the ability to see? No, they must be able to see in the first place. Can experience simulate the ability to make distinctions, without it already having the ability to make distinctions? I would say the primary attribute of conscious experience is precisely that of "pointing to itself". That's what existence actually is. There's no need, but that is what happens. We inhabit a world full of distinctions. The fact that we can talk about such things, proves the point. There's no inclusion as such. There is no separate monolithic "experience" separate from distinctions within it, they both exist simultaneously. If it's a thought then it's a very strange type of thought. I can not think my table into a stack of cash, it's very stubborn that way. I also can't unthink my table. I could re-think it as firewood, but then it would still be a table as well. So it doesn't appear to be "my thought" causing and maintaining distinctions in experience. Isn't any sort of thought happening in experience in any case? Isn't thought a distinction in itself? That's another facet of consciousness/experience. It has the ability to make things persist. It has a certain stickiness to it.

Definitely tricky, agreed. When you layer language into the mix it's difficult to disentangle what's going on. Say you hold two things, one in each hand. It doesn't require any language to - at some level - understand what's going on: you're holding stuff. The description in language "I'm holding two things" can be completely separated from the direct sensation of holding two things. You can argue that in fact you only ever experience one sensation with everything happening simultaneously. Although, the mere fact that you can make a distinction between what you're holding in the left hand and the right, means that the ability to distinguish things is somehow built in to direct experience in general. There is a perception of "making a distinction" separate from its use in language. It's the sameness/difference argument we both made above. You can say all perception is the same thing, or you can make distinctions and say that parts of perception are different from each other. You can then convey those distinctions using language.

@Osaid that's good. You could say that all phenomena have attributes. Similar to your example, tables have the attribute of having four legs, so in that sense they are all the same. But they also have an attribute of construction material (wood, plastic etc), so tables can be distinct from each other. In the end you can assign a bunch of attributes to any perception. For example red and green are distinct in hue, but the same in that they're both colours. You could say that all vision is the same monolithic inseparable thing or equally made up of perceptions of colours, shades, sizes, position etc. I would say that a distinction is a binary or digital thing: yes or no. It either exists or it doesn't. Once you make a distinction it automatically creates a boundary around itself. e.g. Once you create the country of France it naturally has a border with Spain - otherwise France wouldn't be distinct from Spain. In this case a distinction is a thing of the mind, you need a map to maintain it, there's no border in reality. The mysterious thing is what actually makes the distinction in the first place? Once I've learnt what a table is, I can't "unlearn" it. Does a table actually exist if I haven't made that distinction at all? I say no. Would anything exist if there were no distinctions?

Many years ago, I remember staying over at a work colleague's place after a heavy night. I woke up on the sofa bleary eyed, and the guy pokes his head through the door to check if I was awake. I said "morning" in a croaky voice. I then suddenly woke up again (for real), and at that exact moment, the guy pokes his head through the door again. Luckily I didn't wake up a third time.

You do know that teenagers think about sex right? I'd be more worried about red lipstick, maybe eyeliner, having long hair...

I've been listening to new old music. It's a bit like living in a town for years and then discovering an alley you've walked passed a million times, through which lies another part of town undiscovered. I only know Ultravox from Vienna and Dancing With Tears in their Eyes. I like the energy and of course the familiarity of the sound: I was just that much too young to investigate music for myself at the time, and getting hold of music was far harder when I was a kid. Cassettes and records (vynyl) it was and radio and TV only for the popular stuff. I didn't get pocket money. I only know Golden Brown from the Stranglers. But you can hear how good they are, even if it's of its time: I like The European Female, catchy.

I'm reminded of this interview: Definitely watch the whole thing if you have time.

How romantic ❤️ I think romance was invented by singing Troubadours: invariably men. But maybe that's just masculinity of the past.

@Razard86 are you linking romance with femininity? I don't get it. Surely romance is also masculine, doesn't it take two? I totally agree that femininity and beauty should be explored for its own sake though.

I'm only using God as a synonym for reality/consciousness/source/higher power whatever. As such God can do what it likes, it's not bound by any rules, God can bend reality to its own whim. You are a human, and bound by lots of rules about reality, you cannot bend reality as easily: you have to use your body to do so. Except fundamentally you're not really human, you're actually God contorted into a human (i.e. an abstraction of God). So, occasionally your God nature pokes through and weird stuff happens (the abstraction leaks).

@Rafael Thundercat spoilsport.

You first have to know what consciousness is. Consciousness by definition is pure awareness (of itself). What that awareness manisfests itself as, can be anything and everything. The awareness doesn't belong to anyone, because everything in reality is pure awareness (idealism). Does the water belong to the river or does the river belong to the water? Consciousness then, is manifesting a "you" who spins stories about "consciousness". Consciousness is the backdrop for everything: people don't "have it".

I like the idea of a leaky abstraction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_abstraction (I know, I know, I'm a programmer). You are god abstracting itself into a human form. But the abstraction leaks and manifests in things like the law of attraction and synchronicities. The law of attraction is the encapsulation of the observation that "weird shit happens". God is always there warping reality, because God cannot completely hide in the shadows: the human abstraction leaks.

For a different view, a good habit to have is to finish what you start. Other than the satisfaction of achieving a goal and being able to to brag, there's the psychological effect of finishing something. Firstly it provides a type of closure and allows you to detach and move on to the next thing cleanly. Secondly it teaches your psyche that finishing (achieving) is important and is something that is possible. In the long run it gives you a confidence in yourself and your abilities. Chess mastery is a long road however, so you'll need a lot of time, patience and focus to get a title.

Philosophy and art are about telling good engaging stories. As a side effect both can be about getting at some sort of truth about the world. There's an aesthetic and emotional dimension to both disciplines, which is ok for its own sakes - it doesn't all have to be about truth. Perhaps both are ultimately about transformation?

Life is matter with a name. Are you alive? Sure. The difference between you and the wind is that the wind doesn't care about death and stillness. Every mote of your being wants to live; on every level and dimension. To live you must know yourself intimately. For if you didn't entropy would soon scatter you to the four corners and you would forget who you were. This knowing of yourself is deep, it's the miracle of your form and your function and your most intimate thoughts. Look around you at the cactus you nurture, the cat you stroke, the mosquito that bites you. All that aliveness is of the same kind. A cactus yearns for heat and light and water so that it can keep knowing it's a cactus. You are connected directly to that first notion of self knowing that sparked all those billions of years ago. That first knowing has never stopped knowing itself, it became a cactus here, a cat there, you right now. Everything that lives is only one thing: the tendrils of some great unfathomable creature enveloping our home planet. It splits itself off, eats itself and argues with itself. For matter to know itself it's not enough to be around a long time. A rock formation may have survived the excesses of entropy for a billion years, but that's blind luck. Life knows its extents and constituents and actively maintains them. It must seek matter and energy to constantly replenish its identity, and eschew the parts that are no longer "me". In this way a constant flow and pressure is maintained between itself and everything else both alive and dead. Life is a mirage because it is never static, it is in a constant struggle to keep remembering itself. A creature is not the matter it is made of, but an idea that dynamically sculpts matter and energy to its own ends. Is that idea of self knowing separate from the dead matter it animates? That billion year old rock formation never got to know itself: it eventually weathered and crumbled to dust and stopped being rock. It didn't care or remember, it constantly forgot who it was moment to moment. Self knowing requires self correction. When communications are sent they need error correction, or else the static of reality erases the message over time and distance. Our bodies must constantly self repair and flush out broken bits of itself or the toxins that damage the identity of its cells and DNA. It's clear that matter and energy has the ability to correct itself and maintain an identity: it's just a mathematical trick. But the first life had to bootstrap this ability, proto-life was self correcting. To self correct, there must be a self to correct: as soon as matter erased its own errors it acquired a knowing of itself. Proto-life had to be more than self correcting to become life itself however. Remembering is never perfect. An identity that perfectly maintains itself is not resilient. Entropy is infinitely creative and can't be easily escaped. Proto-life had to adapt to different regimes or risk death by entropy. Once it had an identity and a self, it had to allow itself to change its identity over time. It had to evolve. The result is a cat and a cactus. Change is death, to change from a proto-cell to the spiritual primate you are, life had to die a billion times. The first life had an imperfect sense of self and it still does. That is why you will die. Your body's self correction is imperfect and accumulates errors over a lifetime, until finally entropy has its way. Reproduction is imperfect and is what drives the process of evolution itself. Imperfect though it is, the act of knowing in itself is perfect. That is why the giant multi-faceted organism that is life persists. Being alive is perfection.

@Thought Art that's a decent high level list. I would add emotions and mind to the list. A lot of immaturity comes from impulsive emotions not being kept in check (chimpery!) and a lack of self awareness and consequences of your actions. I'd say the most important ones in the list are relationships and health/fitness as well as mind and emotions. Those together are like the operating system of humans. Master those and everything else becomes a lot easier.

@Holykael start a gratitude journal (on here maybe). Find one thing every day that you're genuinely grateful for, big or small.