You're welcome. I'm glad you know what I wasn't saying.
whew. I'm glad CrazyD is not seriously struggling with this.
Y'know, the sense that nothing exists...or does it(?)...that which the shrinks like to call 'dissassociation' or someothersuch label .....which basically categorizes one as a 'sick' person.
The feeling is much like wondering if you are crazy.
Anyways, I'm glad this is rather a walk-in-the-head as opposed to ^
Yeah, the name's not literal
How do we know that other things exist? Because there has to be a source for the data that we interpret as our experiences. "Red" and "sweet" are products of our brains, but there must be photons striking cone cells in retinas and molecules of sugar being snagged by taste buds, each sending electrical impulses to neural networks in an organic brain, for the experience to occur.
It is understandable that people contemplate dreams and wonder if waking experiences might be as illusory. But dreams do not appear out of thin air, they require a data bank of actual experiences to draw on as well as the physical apparatus to retrieve, process, and experience it. Without brains to process and store sensory information, there would be no dreamers and no dreams.
For those of you who seem to think that experiences might be independent of an underlying physical reality, where do you suppose those experiences come from? I can assure you that "I" did not dream up the concept of end stage renal failure, nor the medical procedures to stave off the impending non-existence of my beloved beagle. The suggestion that I and my dog might be nothing more than illusions generated by an unknown entity (which must itself be an illusion) for unknown reasons with the intended (or unintended) result of deluding you (or me) into thinking that we exist, is inherently illogical and trivializes the very real pain that we experience.
But maybe that's the point: if you believe that nothing is real, then there is no obligation to do anything to alleviate pain. Just convince yourself that it doesn't exist and go on your merry way.
Terry, your arguement is such an "adequate" description of experience--in terms of its underlying physical processes--that it DOES make one seem a bit out of touch with reality to deny it. Indeed, it is adequate--i.e., the paradigm in which it resides--for, say, the study and treatement of medical and psycho-neurological problems. But it is not completely adequate as a philosophical model of the reality of experience. Dogs, kidneys and their failure, and our feeling of grief, are not illusory as phenomena, no less real than the experience of red. They describe experiences, but they are not "things," not the kinds of "objects" that a materialistic ontology assumes. They are experiences. But I would not go so far as to argue that only ideas exist. The idea of a kidney would not survive very long without the phenomena to which it refers. Kidneys without the idea of a kidney and the idea of "kidney" without the palpable object which we can actually hold in our hand (actually an experience also) are interdependent. The dualism of idea and referent should not be an either-or issue. I do not think that "experience [is] "independent" of an underlying physical reality." But I also do not think that physical reality (as we know it) can be "independent" of experience. Within the world of your loss (I also lost a beagle a few years ago--gasp), there was a process of experience that was more basic than was the physcial event itself. What if you lost your dog but did not know it?
I do not believe that nothing is real. I believe that everything is not real in the sense of naive empiricism. It is experientially "real" but not philosophical so. And the New Physics may agree with that.
Flushd, a person who is suffering from a disassociation problem is, as I understand it, is a person who is incapable of enjoying the kinds of illusions most people enjoy. That is to say, he is not normal, either statistically or clinically. But he is not "sick" because he accepts or rejects a particular kind of PHILOSOPHICAL perspective on the nature of experience. In most cases we should not confound psychiatry with philosophy.
Twyvel, "real" is whatever is the case, even if the case is that there is no reality (suggesting that it may be unthinkable for us). I agree that reality is experienced by, or experience is that of, nobody (pun intended). It just IS (and isn't insofar as it is constantly changing/un-becoming) at the "moment" of its occurence.
It appears to me that in "pure" experience--that which occurs before thought--Dogen's "without thinking" (hishiryo) there is no separation, i.e., no existential (or metaphysical sense of) differentiation. All is (to the meditative mind) an undifferentiated aesthetic continuum (pardon the pedantic tone). Does that resonate with your understanding of "separation"?
i rest everything on this: Cogito ergo sum. It's erlier said in this topic but i think it's briliant. I think so i am. So everything does exists. Or maybe i'm just thinking it. In my thinking i can keep thinking that everything exists as shown in my head.
His statement should have been: "I think that I think therefore I think that I am". Don't you see that the assumption of a self-that-is-thinking precedes his observation that there is thinking, and that act that requires a thinker? It is a general bias that all actions have agents (actors). It is built into the grammar (the everyday logic) of our language. We even say that "it" is raining. Where is this agent, "it"? Decartes seems so right to you because he is reflecting our cultural-linguisitc bias about the "reality" of subject-object or action-agent adhesions.
Where does this 'Nothing exists' argument or question go though? Where is the logical conclusion, I mean we can't even conceptualise nothingness(can we?). Even given the adjustment, "I think that I think therefore I think that I am", it's quite a profound statement in that something is happening. Even if nothing exists because of constant change or flux, maybe we need to consider more deeply what point we're trying to consider when we ponder over our own existence.
Welcome, Greenbite and Ashers. I hope you both stick around for a very long time.
Ashers, I'm afraid I fail to grasp the meaning of your first sentence. I don't think that the position of the emptiness of all things is a "logical conclusion"; it is an observational intuition. It just seems to be so when we realize there are no static "things", except as abstract ideas. Everything is and is not almost at the same time.
I like the pragmatism of your question about the "point" of one's effort to understand his existence. It does seem to be a philosophical problem of the most puristic (i.e., non-practical) nature. That is to say, if we never solve the "problem of existence" it makes no difference for the quality of our life. But oh what fun to ponder it.
Oh absolutely, I love thinking about these things. :wink:
With regards to my initial sentence, my reference to logic wasn't actually regarding the conclusion (despite the words I chose..) but more the fashion/style in which we get there. So, from A to B to C etc. I worded that poorly, I guess I was trying to attack the very nature of the problem. Maybe my curiosity with the words "nothing exists" is with what was supposed to exist in the 1st place. I'm already trying to consider a world of abstract ideas that you speak of. Hope that makes a little more sense.
Pupil wrote:I mean, if you think about it, you can't prove that logic is correct, because that would be circular! You just accept basic premises such as A=A as self evident. I would do the same for existence.
Hah! A - 1 + 1= A - 1 + 1
If A was not equal A, then adding (- 1 + 1) to each side would not allow both sides to still be equal.
At some point in the future, it may be the most important question. When we have traveled the stars and uncovered the secrets of the cosmos, the initiative to go on may well depend on an answer to the reality of existence.
Asher,
JLN draws attention to the point that "going somewhere" is antithetical to the concept of a "holistic reality". As one writer put it
"truth is a pathless land".
It follows also that some might disagree with JLN's conclusion that pondering "our existence" makes no difference to the quality of life. Such ponderings can lead to a reconsideration of social conditioning to achieve "material self betterment", since the self and its ephemeral goals become transparent.
Sorry JLN, I realise that was not your conclusion !
fresco wrote:JLN draws attention to the point that "going somewhere" is antithetical to the concept of a "holistic reality". As one writer put it
"truth is a pathless land".
It follows also that some might disagree with JLN's conclusion that pondering "our existence" makes no difference to the quality of life. Such ponderings can lead to a reconsideration of social conditioning to achieve "material self betterment", since the self and its ephemeral goals become transparent.
I took his comments about having little difference to life as a reply against a negative outlook like, well if nothing exists, why do I bother with life. So from that point of view, the idea that, "nothing exists" doesn't mean that life is meaningless which is the attitude I have come across on occasion. I find I'm in full agreement about the kind of "material self betterment" you mention, whether that's your actual position or simply a point of view thrown into the topic.
Fresco, it COULD (or perhaps should) have been my conclusion. Who knows what practical inferences policy makers of the future may draw from current philosophical efforts? To some degree, present social policies reflect the fundamentally erroneous conclusions of Plato and Descarte regarding the absolute "reality" of ideas and selves.
Ashers, by "nothing exists" I mean that "no (solid) things exist." I would also suggest that if the world is fundamentally "empty" in the sense that it is composed of processes rather than things, that does not alienate that world from me. I am also "empty." It is my home, my very nature.
