posted by ** Ulterior**
Consciousness cannot observe itself, i.e. no matter what you observe it’s not the awareness as the awareness is doing the observing.
Whenever I look at what is thinking I find a thing looking, not thinking.
In general I don’t see a problem with introspection. But its use in demonstrating something seems quite limited. You either end up with a solipsitic tautology, or you require others to believe your reports on internal states which cannot be subject to either verification nor falsification (in other words, it ain’t sayin’ much).
Well it was quite an insight for me to realize that I cannot observe the awareness that I am, in fact it was baffling, and still is.
But re: the OP , consciousness has no attributes or characteristic of an existent whatever they may be, so it can’t be said to exist as such.
Vorlon, do you know of David Lewis? His theory of possibilism, or “modal realism,” which is briefly described here, sounds very much like what you describe. I agree with Lewis’s theory myself; his ontology works very well in the context of a fully relativist worldview.
I agree. I was responding to Ulterior, not yourself.
JasonFin, Vorlon definitely rejects the notion that there are things that don’t exist. Myself, when I use the word “unicorn” I do not suppose that the intended object of that word is my thought of a horse with one horn and wings. Nor, in fact, the listener’s thought of such a beast (should I be able to know that the listener has such a thought… a digression). This is largely why I like the semantics of possible worlds. From that link:
Fascinating link, JasonFin. I can’t say that I agree with it all, but it has a certain eerie familiarity…
erislover: regarding this quote:
This is, loosely speaking, correct. It depends on how specific we’re being. There are many configurations that would fit into the category of Clinton that are not part of my world, and are unreal to me. However, actuality (relative to me) could be said to be a property of the Clinton who lives in my world.
And the Eternal Void contains all things.
If I have stuff but no interactions, I can’t get the universe as an end result. If I have interactions with no stuff, I quickly discover that I also have the stuff, and everything else. From interactions I can build a multitude of cosmoses.
I never said that you can’t have interactions too. But if you say “all I have are interactions” as you seemed to in your last post, then you really have stuff and interactions between the stuff.
I don’t understand what you mean when you say: “If I have interactions with no stuff, I quickly discover that I also have the stuff, and everything else.”
Can you illuminate me?
It doesn’t matter if I postulate stuff with interactions between them, or just interactions. The end result in the same, and since no distinction can be made between them, they’re equivalent. The stuff is unnecessary.
So we have interactions, no things, and stuff that just appears somewhere, somehow in the analysis.
What stuff? I only see interactions.
Although I would hesitate to use The Matrix as any guide to understanding, there’s a statement popularized by the movie that may prove helpful:
There is no spoon.
What is an interaction?
I honestly have no idea.
In everyday life, of course, an interaction is just an event that takes place between two things that changes them both. The problem is that when I look more closely at things, they look less and less like “stuff” and more like collections of events. The things I thought were objects before become happenings, occurrences, and verbs.
Presumably, if I understood interactions, I’d understand everything. I have no idea how I or anyone else would accomplish this.
The way that I think of interactions, they must be between things of some sort. You have said that “stuff” follows from interactions. I would say that the interactions follow from the stuff. The stuff is necessary for the interactions.
Simul-post.
Anyway, your arguement is ad hoc. It doesn’t explain anything.
I am interested in how you decided that “things” look like “events?”
How would you get interactions from stuff?
Name any “thing”. Then tell me how you would distinguish between a real thing and something that merely mimicked its interactions with you.
More to the point, explain the difference between an actual thing and a set of interactions that acts like an actual thing.
The universe is composed not of matter or energy, but of distinctions.
Well, for someone who is getting wierded out by our (at least Lib’s and mine**) use of “possible”, I don’t understand this chain of the abolishment of existence.
You don’t see things, you see interactions between things. Interactions don’t exist, they just are (and if “are” doesn’t mean “exist” here then I don’t what to do). And when you look at things, you don’t see things you see more interactions; that is, more things that don’t exist.
Perhaps you can see why I am a little worried about the implications here.
Well, technically it explains everything, which is why it isn’t useful.
And it isn’t ad hoc. When you reduce the statements people make to their most basic components, you end up with distinctions between things. That’s all language is, and that’s really all anything else.
It’s difficult to attempt a dialogue on a message board such as this, but I’ll attempt it:
[VAA]: Is your hand a thing?
erislover: But what did we ever mean by existence, anyway?
This core problem is at the heart of all the really interesting “theological” questions. What’s the purpose of God? How can God be said to exist? Why are we here? Where is here? What does where mean?
Concepts like “purpose” have meaning only relative to something else. “Where” requires a set of relationships that can differ. “Here” also requires those relationships, and can be defined only relative to other things.
“Existence” only means something relative to something else. When we start talking about the Ultimate Reality [da da duuuummm], it’s meaningless to ask whether it exists. Exists relative to what?
Possible = Not ruled out
Exists = Occurs somewhere
Most people aren’t going to be able to give an analytic definition of “exists” meant to encompass everything. The problem becomes one where we either accept epistemological limits and do not attempt to give a universal definition, or we simply make an assertion/definition and be done with it. One sounds suspiciously like “making stuff up” and the other is unsatisfying. I think these are pretty much our only choices.
However, this does not forbid us from operating with the word, we may of course roughly consider “Existence” as “having observable properties” via the senses. Since “senses” are the criteria for existence, either senses cannot be said to exist, or we just “say” they exist (the union of: an axiomatic rejection of solipsism, the definition of existence as “having observable properties”, an assumption of my own existence, and the occurance of “senses” in other beings that exist).
What is interesting to note is that I am psychologically affected by things that have no observable properties (that is, that don’t exist).
Existence is not, to me, a property, but a generalization of the declaration of phenomenal content.
But this is a general use of “exist”; it is not meant to define all uses of the word. Our language allows the grammatical form of “things” for that which we would not call a thing. Perhaps that is a complicated way of saying: though we tend to use the word “exists” to talk about nouns, we do not necessarily equate all nouns as similar, nor all uses of existence to them as similar. “Function” and “tree” play a superficially similar role in grammar, but in fact their uses are for more restricted and varied.
To whatever your criteria for “exists” is.