Who are the others?

[Someone here]

Is there a problem with the being of the others? Heidegger has his concept of 'Mitdasein' and the idea of man falling into the averageness of 'das Man'. Sartre has his concept of 'the look' and says that there is a basic conflict between me and the other. Many great philosophers have seen the other as a problem that needs clarification. However, I am not so much interested in the phenomenological aspects of otherness, but in the metaphysical problem of foreign experiences: how is it possible that there are experiences that I never experience, so that they remain absent for me for ever. Or is it possible? My intuition tells me that all experiences are in the end my experiences so that there is a genuine symmetry of experiences, in the way 'TylerVo' also seems to think under the title “Could Separateness and Death be Illusions?” It is possible, of course, that my intuition tells me lies.


Others are series of experiences, individuals.

Other individuals are related to the individual that I am at present. If I did not exist, there would be no others either.

The other is the other member of a relation which has me as one member. And because the relation is symmetrical, I am also the other. So I am an other to myself.

I am in temporal and spatial relation to others.

The others are in the world, but also in my past or future.

Consciousness is my consciousness. It is a flow of experiences, changing of the present to a new present. Also the experiences of others belong to this flow, but because they are not my present experiences, they must be experiences that I have had in the past or experiences that I shall have in the future.

I have this feeling and I know that also others have feelings. A feeling is however something that is present in the double meaning of the word as 'here' and 'now', the content of my existence as I am experiencing it. It is not meaningful to speak of a feeling that I am not feeling. But because the feelings that I meet in the world in others are not in the same way present as my present feeling is, they can only be feelings that I have had or shall have in those ”places” in time where others are.

If I did not experience the experiences of the others, there would be experiences without experiencing.

It is impossible to think of an experience which exists but which I do not experience.

An experience that I do not experience is a being that is not.

I am an individual that is composed of the experiences between my birth an death, that is, the experiences to which my present experience has a memory relation or which have a memory relation to my present experience. Other individuals are composed of experiences before my birth or after my death, that is, experiences to which my experiences have no memory relation and which have no memory relation to my experiences.

Existence realizes itself by fragments of time that are temporally and spatially related to each other.

That I am here and now, is a timeless truth. The present is a unique content mediated by the world, which, as it changes to another unique content, constitutes, mediated by memory, the unique series of presences that we call the individual. Individuals are series of experiences that, separated from each other by the loss of memory we call death, change to each other constituting on one hand the endless series of presences we call time, and on the other hand, as they meet each other and themselves as material objects in space, that totality of events that we call the universe.

I meet myself in the others. This is not a metaphor.

When I meet an other, I meet a moment in the endless series of moments, at the present moment of which I meet the other, and at a past or future moment of which I have been or shall be the one who meets me at the same meeting event.

A and B see each other simultaneously in their common time in their common world. But in the time that connects these two experiences to each other as present experiences, one happens before the other.

The other whom I meet am I, who meets an other: me.

I know that others have experiences and I know that the other is an I, but something prevents me from seeing what grammar expresses: the I whom I meet am I.

In these sentences 'I' does not refer to an individual but to the subject. This way of using the word intends to express the view that there is only one subject, and that the subject is always that which I am.

When I speak to an other, 'I' refers to the individual that I am, and 'you' refers to another individual. That there is only one subject, has no expression in ordinary language.

That only I exist, does not mean that the others do not exist. 'I' and 'the other' refer to the same point, but this identity realizes itself only through death. In life it does not express itself. When I live with others, the others are only others.

The word 'I' has two meanings: 'the subject which has these experiences' and 'the individual that has these experiences'. When I speak, these meanings overlap so that I speak simultaneously as an individual and as a timeless subject. When someone else speaks, I think this someone is an individual that is foreign to me and whose inner world is closed from me, and I do not see that 'I' really refers to one point only: the present that changes its content and meets its past or future in the world, and to the past or future of which 'I' can also refer.

When I use language I presuppose that there are in the world other individuals who understand me. However, language does not easily express the deeper meaning of the existence of others: my temporal relation to them.

If we try, using language, to get closer to the deepest meaning of our existence, language comes to its frontiers illuminating reality with its paradoxes.

Only by traveling outside of language can we see into the nucleus of existence.

When I speak, I speak to others, and therefore I speak of things that are common to us in the world, and of myself as an individual, in relation to others. This is the region of language. But only a slight move, a change of perspective, opens up a new land, where things that are common to us become private, a land which therefore stays outside of language. Seeing this land reveals the deep union that has always been between us, and when walking on this land we understand, for the first time, the meaning of our existence.


We have asked who the others are. We have also asked what will be after death and what was before birth. The answer to both questions is the same: after my death I shall be an other and before my birth I was an other.

The thought that the other whom I meet am I, is, when thoroughly understood, clear but embarrassing.

The existence of others is self-evident for us, because it belongs to the basic structures of our existence. We do not usually think what a strange phenomenon it is.

When we communicate with others, we do not understand who they are. But we shall perhaps understand it some day in the silence of a forest, when our thoughts decide to start conquering the frontiers.
 

Edited July 14, 2021 by Someone here

[Mason Riggle]

Recognize that the inside of the cup and the outside of the cup seem like two separate things, but they are not.. they are both (plural) the cup (singular). 

You (singular) are 'self and other' (plural).  It's all you.  

When you have a dream at night about your neighbor, when you are in the dream, it seems like the characters in your dream are having an experience which you are not experiencing, but do you suppose they really are?  While you are dreaming it seems so, but when you wake up, you realize it was all you. 

 

[LastThursday]

Some questions and thoughts that came up:

• If "you" is just a complex construction in consciousness, then that construction could either be redefined or disappear altogether - where does that leave "other"?
• "You" are different from "others". You seem to inhabit a different relationship to your body that others do. You are dragged around by your body, and you are aware of it intimately. You're aware of others' bodies but in a very different way.
• "You" are the same as "others". Not only do you have a body, but appear to have the same concerns, ways of behaving and so forth. You identifty others as being in some way the same as you (human). So there is a strong inference that others too must be experiencing something similar to what you're experiencing. The inference could be false however (i.e. philosophical zombie).
• Can "other" include animals or inanimate things? Is a jellyfish conscious in any sense? If other can only include humans what specifically is special about humans that allows them to be put into the category of "other"? Is it the case that if it looks like a human and behaves like one, it's a human? Or is there some God given quality that only a human posseses?
• If others are conscious, and you could flip into their consciousness and POV, what would you become? Would you just be a voyeur without control, or would you be some hybrid of you and them? Conversly if another person flipped into your consciousness, how would you perceive that? Can multiple people merge consciousnesses?

[VeganAwake]

The biggest problem for the sense of 'I' is death.

The stories that are created out of this fear of death are endless.

These fictional tales have been being created since the mind became complex enough to become an entity unto itself.

Once the 'I' showed up, the question immediately arose "where will 'I' go when this body dies.

The cosmic joke is there already isn't an 'I' in which appears to be asking the question.

❤

[gettoefl]

you chose to temporarily limit yourself to being one part of the body even though you are the whole body

why?

duality can be a nice trip, you can look at yourself in microscopic detail ...

before you entered this whole dream yea life was good but equally same ol same ol

understandably you felt like some entertainment, play, laughter, love ...

Edited July 14, 2021 by gettoefl

[Nahm]

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

Is there a problem with the being

No, actually. There isn’t. 

[Someone here]

1 hour ago, LastThursday said:

If "you" is just a complex construction in consciousness, then that construction could either be redefined or disappear altogether - where does that leave "other"?

It depends on how you Define "you". 

You are a little construction in consciousness if you speak about the ego. But you are also consciousness itself. The whole of it. 

The construction can indeed change or die. But consciousness itself can never die. It just change forms. From self to other. 

1 hour ago, LastThursday said:

• You" are different from "others". You seem to inhabit a different relationship to your body that others do. You are dragged around by your body, and you are aware of it intimately. You're aware of others' bodies but in a very different way.
• "You" are the same as "others". Not only do you have a body, but appear to have the same concerns, ways of behaving and so forth. You identifty others as being in some way the same as you (human). So there is a strong inference that others too must be experiencing something similar to what you're experiencing. The inference could be false however (i.e. philosophical zombie).

Your body and other's bodies are equally objects appearing inside you as consciousness. No one is experiencing anything. Consciousness is not a property of you or others. You and others are equally objects illuminated by consciousness. 

1 hour ago, LastThursday said:

Can "other" include animals or inanimate things? Is a jellyfish conscious in any sense? If other can only include humans what specifically is special about humans that allows them to be put into the category of "other"? Is it the case that if it looks like a human and behaves like one, it's a human? Or is there some God given quality that only a human posseses?

Same. Creatures don't have consciousness. Consciousness have creatures. 

1 hour ago, LastThursday said:

If others are conscious, and you could flip into their consciousness and POV, what would you become? Would you just be a voyeur without control, or would you be some hybrid of you and them? Conversly if another person flipped into your consciousness, how would you perceive that? Can multiple people merge consciousnesses?

You flip into other each moment. You should know the answer. 

[Someone here]

@nuwu are you a bot?