Modern philosophers- jukeboxes...

Val, to argue the existence of a non-physical experience is to talk above my knowledge. I cannot say that I think it exists, nor that it don't.

My point earlier was just that since any input you get from your senses is a non-physical re-rendering of the physical world, it might be said that your knowledge of the physical world stems from non-physical. My point is that when you see a mountain it is not in your head. A representation is in your head, but the mountain is still where you first found it.

I am a being of both physical and non- physical energies same as everybody else. Do you agree?

I see the world also as a place that is made up of both spirit and physical matter.

When it comes to dualism, I must admit that I am baffled. I see how dualism is everywhere, and since it is everywhere, as you say about god in your post, then it must be nowhere.

0 Replies

I always want to be one and occasionally someone would say thats insitefull but no matter how much I wished to have those qualities who they are bestowed upon is not I.

0 Replies

Cryacuz wrote "When it comes to dualism, I must admit that I am baffled. I see how dualism is everywhere, and since it is everywhere, as you say about god in your post, then it must be nowhere."
Dualism is not a trait we FIND in the world; it is a way we think about the world. As I repeat incessantly, we cannot avoid to think logically and speak grammatically without resort to dualism. But, I repeat, to experience our life intimately, to rest in the ground of our being, we must be able to enjoy pre-cognitively, non-dualistic consciousness. So, to Val, I do not "deny dualism"; I see it used everywhere, and I use it myself; I only deny its absolute validity or reality.
Val, I also do not deny physicalism. It also has its limited usefulness. But ultimately, I don't think we can refer to it as an absolute reality. It is a way that we conceptualize the "objects" of experience. Rocks are empirically and conceptually reducible to molecules which are reducible to atoms which are reducible to sub-atomic activities (notice I did not say "things") which will eventually be reducible to processes and relationships that we may not want to describe as physical or material. I do not want to jump, in this context, to the use of "Mind". But who knows?
But I do think that all processes are interdependent and conditioned by other processes: mind and body, idealism and materialism cannot explain experience by themselves. The "middle way" of Buddhism, or Interactionism as discussed by Fresco, are much more useful if you ask me than choosing between poles of conceptual dichotomies.

0 Replies

I posted this in another thread some time ago, but I feel it has relevance here.

The flaw in every complete philosophy
The point on wich every philosopher lies
Is it's masquerade of coherency
Of symmetry where chaos resides
Cause everyone knows who truly knows his mind
That questions posed devise in part their answers
Thus what you seek is always what you'll find
And once again by the dance outwaltzed, the dancer
Cause thoughts do not appear at thinkers summons
Nor at his sheduled hour do they call
They lurk within the darkest of mind's dungeons
Until suddenly into his head they fall
So I repeat what greater men have stated:
The thought, it came to me because I waited

So when it comes to this...

JLNobody wrote:

Quote:

Dualism is not a trait we FIND in the world; it is a way we think about the world.

...I cannot say I see the difference.

Otherwise I agree with your post. Especially the last paragraph.

0 Replies

I just mean that by dualism I do not denote that the physical world is constituted by absolute polarites. Up and Down, right and left, good and bad, etc. are in our minds, not in the world. That is to say, they are tools for organizating experience, not objects of experience.

0 Replies

Cyracuz:
"That questions posed devise in part their answers
Thus what you seek is always what you'll find..."

Yes, indeed. We do not so much explore with the mind as we construct with it.

0 Replies

Quote:

My point earlier was just that since any input you get from your senses is a non-physical re-rendering of the physical world, it might be said that your knowledge of the physical world stems from non-physical. My point is that when you see a mountain it is not in your head. A representation is in your head, but the mountain is still where you first found it.

By why do you say that the imput from my senses is non-physical?

About the mountain: there is a mountain in my head. In fact, all that we understand as a mountain is in my head, from the imput of my senses to language. But there is something "outside" that stimulates my senses. That thing receives a configuration of my senses, language, conceptualization, in order to become a mountain.
But all the process is physical.

0 Replies

Nobody

Quote:

Val, I also do not deny physicalism. It also has its limited usefulness. But ultimately, I don't think we can refer to it as an absolute reality. It is a way that we conceptualize the "objects" of experience. [/QUOTE

I never said it was the absolute reality. I said it was the "possible experience" - the words are from Kant. All our life is physical experience. By our senses, nervous system, brain. The possible experience is an intentional one.
Imagine a fish within an aquarium. An aquarium that gives the fish no possibility of perceiving what is outside. The only reality of the fish is the aquarium.
If the fish is a philosopher, is philosophy must respect the fact that the only experience of the fish is the aquarium and the things that are within, including the fish.
The fish can imagine many things outside the aquarium - although the fish doesn't even know there is an outside. The fish can have mystical revelations that are impossible to translate into fish-concepts.

But that is not philosophical knowledge.

0 Replies

But fish will adapt new concepts and will learn to survive with us .I was just recently up in Val David and started to teach the wild fish to be petted before I give them any pork sausage.It's true and they do learn to be petted first before feeding even the larger wolder trout secumb to this style of feeding.The funny think is they learn the sound of my walking down to the pond.They can tell when it's me or others and act appropriately.
Even fish will participate in something that is unravelling the mystery between us and the other sentient beings onthis planet.

0 Replies

Val, I think I finally understand what you mean by "physical".

But we are all like the fish in the tank. Imagine being the creature in that position. Everything the fish sees is a re-rendering of it's natural environment. There's only one giveaway. It's alone. It's origin is not in the known world, so it has to assume that it comes from somewhere other than the world it knows and sees, or that the world it sees somehow has produced it.

I'd be more inclined to agree with your opinion that everything is in the tank if there were not so many threads leading out of it. But what does that really matter? I am convinced that I can see only half the world at best, and I am reconciled to the fact that I understand even less of what I do see. I just remember that the threads leading out are also threads leading in...

One last thing: You use the term philosophical knowledge. What is that?

0 Replies

Val, I, too, am trying to understand what you mean by "physical." I think you are not just referring to the existence and operations of "stuff". Our very discussion of this matter is a process of mental activity, in which "physical" is a mental event or activity. I guess I am more of an idealist/mentalist than I am a materialist/physicalist, although I prefer to be neither one. To me, experience is the foundation of this life--indeed, it IS my life. Without it there is nothing--its absence is part of the definition of so-called death. At the same time, "experience" is also "only" a concept but one that is at the same ontological level as "mental activity" (see my last sentence).
This notion, that the physical world is the source of "POSSIBLE experience" is solid. I would even go so far as to say that it is the source of "PROBABLE experience." I "know" that when I spin around on my chair it is very LIKELY I will see a wall lined with books. It is very unlikely that I will see a wall with empty shelves. But this is talking about causality, a different philosophical issue. If we see reality monistically--as I do--we understand that the dichotomies of mind and matter, cause and effect (and in this case subjective and objective) are tools we have constructed to organize experience, not (as I suggested earlier) properties of an absolute objective reality "out there." And, I acknowledge, "experience" is a way of organizing experience, not a property of an absolute subjective reality "in here." That is why, as I said, I prefer, philosophically, to be neither physicalist nor mentalist. But notice how I am stuck with experience as an ontologically more foundational notion than matter: I had to say "'experience' is a way of organizing experience...".

0 Replies

Algis.Kemezys

Yes, but in your example the fish interacts with what is outside is aquarium. In my example the fish would never know that there is something exterior to the aquarium. He could call the aquarium, "the universe".

0 Replies

Cyracuz

Quote:

But we are all like the fish in the tank. Imagine being the creature in that position. Everything the fish sees is a re-rendering of it's natural environment. There's only one giveaway. It's alone. It's origin is not in the known world, so it has to assume that it comes from somewhere other than the world it knows and sees, or that the world it sees somehow has produced it.

Yes, but imagine that the tank is very, very big. Full of fishes and rocks, and flowers. So big in fact, that our philosophical fish names it "universe".

Quote:

One last thing: You use the term philosophical knowledge. What is that?

[/QUOTE]

A philosophical theory based only in our possible experience.

0 Replies

Can you know what is our possible experience, val?

If I understand you correctly this term can only apply to the things you have alredy experienced, because they are the only things you know. There is no way you can know what will happen in the future.

So, to define "possible experience" is a task almost as bold as defining god itself. Is there such a thing as impossible experience?

Quote:

Yes, but imagine that the tank is very, very big. Full of fishes and rocks, and flowers. So big in fact, that our philosophical fish names it "universe".

Yes, my gilled friend, we call it the universe. And we agree for the time being that there is nothing outside our fishtank. But it doesn't change a thing since the tank is so big that I'll never get to see it all even if I swim constantly.

0 Replies

Cyracuz

Quote:

If I understand you correctly this term can only apply to the things you have alredy experienced, because they are the only things you know. There is no way you can know what will happen in the future.

So, to define "possible experience" is a task almost as bold as defining god itself. Is there such a thing as impossible experience?

I used the expression "possible experience" as the experience within our human conditions. That means, all that makes our experience possible.
And no, it doesn't only apply to things already experienced. If something is physically possible, the experience is possible, even if it never occurs.

But the experience of God is not possible, because God is not a physical entity.

0 Replies

Quote:

If something is physically possible, the experience is possible, even if it never occurs.

How do you know what is physically possible without it being based on your previous experience? How can you learn something you don't already know in this fashion?

Quote:

But the experience of God is not possible, because God is not a physical entity.

No, god is not a physical entity. It is all physical entities. Get it? You are not a head, but a head is val. Smile

0 Replies

JL Nobody

By physical I mean everything I can interact with, including me. Interact with my senses, my brain, my body.
About mental activity, I see it as a product of brain activity (although I find very problematic to establish the nature of that mental activity: the fact that it is caused by brain activity doesn't necessarily mean that it is the brain activity. But here I honestly have no answers).

Experience is another word for life. To breathe, eat, sleep, is experience, interaction. To see, hear, touch, is experience. To talk about experience is experience, the same way that opening a door is experience.

I don't consider myself a materialist or physicalist, but I am certainly not an idealist. There is not an "I" beyond the I that is present in the world. My reality, my being, is the sum of all the experiences I have in my presence in the world (that Being, tragically, reveals itself in the moment when no more experience is possible, death). My mind doesn't "fly" beyond my physical presence, it is in my physical presence. It is a tool, among others, that allows me, as human being, to "configure" all the sensorial stimulations I receive, and, in a certain way, conducts my intentional experience.
The fact that "experience" is a concept - like everything - doesn't change that perspective. Language is also an initial condition of our experience: we are not vessels to be filled by external stimulations. Our possible experience is choice and construction "under" those external stimulations. That is why I talk of interaction.

0 Replies

cyracuz

Quote:

How do you know what is physically possible without it being based on your previous experience? How can you learn something you don't already know in this fashion?

Everything that is able to stimulate my senses, is physically possible. You never saw me, but I assure you I am physically possible. Laughing

Quote:

No, god is not a physical entity. It is all physical entities. Get it? You are not a head, but a head is val.

All that was, is and will be? And all that was possible but never came to existence? God is all hammers that existed until now and will exist? But hammers have been created by men. Before the creation of the hammer was God incomplete?

0 Replies

Quote:

God is all hammers that existed until now and will exist? But hammers have been created by men. Before the creation of the hammer was God incomplete?

hmm... what do you suppose Plato would say to that remark?

Quote:

Everything that is able to stimulate my senses, is physically possible. You never saw me, but I assure you I am physically possible.

Yes, to me you are only a spirit conveyed electronically. But still it's nice to meet you. Smile

Couldn't you just say that everything is physically possible then, since you know nothing that is not able to stimulate your senses?

0 Replies

I think of "possible" in "possible experience" as synonymous with "in principle." An experience, in philosophy or even a phenomenon in Science, need not be an empirical accomplishment; it may be a theoretical accomplishment. It may follow from the logic of a theory that such and such an experience would occur given certain conditions. This is how I understand the nature of experimentation, i.e., the theoretical deduction (from general laws) of empirically testable hypotheses.

Val, I have to examine your recent posts more carefully. I suspect that we are not as far apart as I have assumed.

0 Replies

Modern philosophers- jukeboxes...

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know