What is your ontology?
What is your explanation for existence? Why it occurred, what purpose or meaning it may or may not have? What are your ethical, epistemological or personal views related to existence?
How long have you had these beliefs/understandings, are they subject to reform, change, or have they been relatively static and unchallenged for quite a time?
How long have you had these beliefs/understandings, are they subject to reform, change, or have they been relatively static and unchallenged for quite a time?
Comments (84)
As to my understanding as to why we exist, it is that the Will to build and/or grow is stronger than the Will to destroy. And that this Will to exist materializes as and from consciousness. According to this thinking, it seems logical that Earth is a Garden Planet, not a Prison Planet. We, as semi-self-conscious Beings, have a precious gift herein.
Same. Thats a good attitude to have. Having said that, being too influenced by others opinions may render one chasing their tail. Sometimes you gotta stick to your guns. Knowing when (for me at least) is the greatest difficulty.
Quoting Bret Bernhoft
Ah yes, the force of the continuity of life, to oppose chaos and disorder and persist as a stable, self controlled existant. I agree that "life" and the subsequent consciousness that airs es from it has a certain stubborn insistence of being unperturbed by its ever changing external environment. It prefers to adapt than die off into the abyss of non-living.
To convert this to some sort of philosophical rather than biological premise, what do you think such a will implies for conscious agents in a dead/inanimate world?
That's a fascinating question. It might either imply that our dreams/illusions are exceptionally potent (and therefore perceived as powerful) to us. Or, that Animism is the correct answer as to "why" and "how", and "who" for that matter.
Show me your criterion for existence.
The common people's criterion is basically a more elaborate version of seeing is believing, but visual hallucinations defeat that criterion.
My criterion for existence is potential, probability and change (potential energy).
If the sole criterion for "potential" is to manifest all possible states the first two probabilities is a 50/50 chance of non existence and existence.
If non existence is elected first (no time, no space or matter) , it is completed, tried and tested, after that because of the need for potential to encomoass change, the only remaining probability to manifest is "existence" .
Existence offers more probabilities than non-existence, and non existence has already been completed, therefore, all further probabilities are thus existent ones.
Existence starts as a singular probability and further one's are manifested through it.
Explanation of what? How we came to be? How consciousness came to be?
How the universe came to be is still unknown, my latest thoughts revolve around a field of energy that is infinite and where infinite possibilities exist, therefor the possibility of bubbles in this field will happen and because of it energy slows down and solidifies into matter, which is then the foundation of the universe. These are purely speculations based on my current understanding of physics and quantum physics and how probability works.
That life exists is a matter of probable chance. In chemistry there are a wild number of reactions that substances have with each other and in the right circumstance such interactions form a complex foundation of reactions that adapt to new situations, leading way to organic material that starts to interact with each other. This can lead to optimization and bias of these organic particles which informs them to act in certain ways, like if a substance is hard to dilute, it struggles to be diluted, the same as organic material start to struggle to not be pulled apart. Over the course of enough time, such complex chemical systems can evolve to larger scale and enough self-programming bias makes the material promote itself to not be "diluted". It then starts to actively work against non-existence/death and form bonds and larger structures like cells in order to optimize existence. Over enough time, cells are biased to work together and larger complex structures form out of cells. This then leads to the progression of life as we know in evolution and the systems of evolution mimics the same patterns in chemistry but on a more complex scale and as a system.
There's no meaning to this, it just is. But it is still a thing of beauty that such a thing can happen.
My ethical views are somewhat fluid between many different philosophies, but I gravitate towards epistemic responsibility and the need for scientific methods of gathering information/data before making complex moral choices based on a foundation of intuition that a person can only have if they've had a life filled with balanced moral dilemmas and are able to distance their most extreme emotions from a situation they need to evaluate morally. As obvious, I think most moral philosophies lack the complexity needed for an objective moral system and that such a complex system might be too complex to be practical. So I'm working on my own ethical concepts based on the best parts of other ideas.
That is more generally my moral ideas, so not directly connected to existence, but I obviously don't look at existence as some magical or religious thing and I think doing so is self-delusion in order to cope with reality rather than actually facing reality as it is.
I guess this isn't exactly how you want me to define these things, but ask away if you want me to rephrase.
I have no explanation for how and why, and I was not convinced by any of the explanations I have so far heard and read. Until I come across one that I do find convincing, I'll mark it as "unknown". This gives me no sleepless nights.
As for purpose and meaning, I think they exist in the mind of the beholder. I'm content to put those questions on the shelf, too, as unanswerable; and the probable answer is "none".
Quoting Benj96
I think as long as we're here, we ought to minimize pain and maximize well-being for ourselves and the other organisms with which we interact. And clean up after ourselves: take nothing but memories; leave nothing but memories.
Don't have one. I think ascribing purpose or meaning, reflects the general human propensity for sense making rather than whatever 'truth' might be. These questions are not useful to me personally, although I am aware of various theories/postulations. Not being an expert in any relevant academic field, my views, along those of most people, are inconsequential.
Quoting Benj96
I am not partial to systems or theories. I prefer to do things. Theory and talk are cheap. Generally I hold that suffering is bad and often we can take practical action to prevent suffering (poverty, persecution, illness). Just about every problem on earth seems to be one of resource allocation.
I've held views similar to this, with various refinements, for most of my life. I review them fairly often.
Nec caput nec pedes mon ami. Are you by any chance a modal realist? You seem to not distinguish potential existence from actual existence.
Quoting Benj96
- Mishima.
My involvement with philosophy was originally motivated by the belief in, and search for, the enlightenment I was certain was real. As a youth, these ideas were circulating, as I grew up in the 1960's and found a sense of identity through popular music, The Beatles in particular, and later through the counter-cultural movements that grew out of all of that. Part of that was a consequence of early experiences with hallucinogens, also very much part of the culture of the time, but I also had a couple of naturally occuring epiphanies.
The principle realisation was very hard to express in words, and probably looses meaning when I attempt it - but it was about the eternal nature of the subject, the I (while standing in a park one twilight.) This was that the I, as the subject of experience (not as the individual person or self) was somehow fundamental or foundational to existence - that wherever anything is, I am. Some years later, I found similar ideas in the teachings of Ramana Maharishi. He often referred to the verse from Exodus, 'I am that I am', as the point of convergence between the Bible and his teaching. I also had an intuitive sense of a forgotten truth, something I had known an unthinkably long time ago, that was the most important thing to understand, and which I had forgotten, but which was tantalisingly close. (Later I began to wonder if this was related to the Platonic 'anamnesis'.) Both those experiences were fleeting but vivid.
I went to University later than most and basically followed a curriculum that I thought might address these issues - philosophy, comparative religion, psychology and history, with comparative religion being the most useful and relevant to my questions.
So, after that preamble, I still believe that there is enlightenment, even though there's a lot of nonsense written about it. It has given rise in me to an orientation towards philosophical idealism, which I regard as the mainstream of philosophy proper, today's scientism and physicalism being parasitic upon it. The key understanding that has come out of this is that human existence is not something accidental, the product of a biochemical fluke, but is intrinsic to the Cosmos. Of course, we have to accomodate the discoveries that science has made since the 17th Century which are genuinely novel in the history of mankind. But that doesn't mean simply relegating the whole of previous culture to the archives, they have to be re-intepreted - that is the meaning of philosophical hermenuetic. And there's a lot of activity in this space. I was one of the first overseas registrants to the first Science and Nonduality Conference held in San Rafael in 2009, there are plenty of people working on these ideas (some bogus and some 100% for real.) The principle challenge is that we're not 'going interstellar', we are inextricably terrestrial and we have to learn to live on and maintain Spaceship Earth if we are to survive (which we will.) We have to find or retrieve or develop a wisdom tradition of our own, which aspires to enlightenment, mok?a, liberation as its highest goal, rather than endless consumption, entertainment and becoming.
That's about it.
I think all explanations, while some are obviously better than others in various ways and for various reasons, are under-determined and inadequate to the reality.
I don't think the idea of a purpose over and above the real is determinable or even coherent. Sure we can imagine stuff and that can be creative and fun, and even inspiring, but ultimately groundless.
My ethical view is that morality is a sense to be cultivated just as the aesthetic sense is, and that the principle moral values are pretty much universal. The epistemological and the ontological cannot be separated, even though they can be conceptually distinguished, because in practice our ideas of what is are dependent upon and limited by how we are able to collectively represent the world. Our thinking is ineliminably dualistic, while reality itself is not, so any idea we have of reality is inevitably going to be something of a distortion and a misleading influence.
I'd say something like this has always been my view since I began to think about such things, and I would say it is a settled view. Well, actually it is more a rejection of all views than it is in itself a positive view. You might say it is an apophatic "view" which is really no view at all.
So, all that said, I am not saying that, among the suite of possible human dualistic understandings of the world, that some may not be better, more workable, more beneficial, than others, but I am not a fan of correctness as an absolute, because any idea of correctness is completely context dependent and makes sense only in terms of the groundless assumptions it grows out of and depends on.
That was eerily familiar! I had a flashback to one summer night circa 1967, in the bed of a pickup truck, looking up - which was also out and down - into the void and it looked back, just like the crazy man said. And realizing that that was all right. There is no need for meaning or purpose or significance. Life is sufficient.
Let 'em dream! It wasn't all wine, protest and roses.
Life is sufficient...when you are actually alive...
It is my current position that the nature of nothingness (the kind of nothingness that actually "exists", and not just our arbitrary concepts of it) is probabilistic, and that logic and number (geometry) is fundamental to the nothingness that should of and still exists below the quantum foam.
I can imagine existing in time without space, but i can't imagine existing in space without time. The reason anything exists at all is because nothingness is logically improbable within a long enough time. Time is the most fundamental "thing" possible, and without it nothing would ever happen, and since something did happen (Anthropic Principle) we can know that time has always existed. If time is what allows for change then if time were to ever stop then it would never be able to start again, since the possibility of change lives and dies with time itself. Time is the first dimension and space emerges out of time as multiple spacial dimensions.
Of course it's more complicated than this, but that is the gist of my ontology, and yes of course it can change if i find something that makes more sense to me.
:fire:
Quoting Benj96
"Existence" is fundamentally contingent: there cannot be anything external to existence that stops existence from coming-to-be, continuing-to-be or ceasing-to-be.
The only answer to this "why" that does not beg the question is that there is not any answer. I think this is why 'there cannot be an ultimate why'.
Usually, more than anything, I am an ethical naturalist (re: aretaic-negative consequentialism), scientific naturalist (re: model-dependent realism) and absurdist bluesman (i.e. creating (ephemeral) forms from (perpetual) formlessness).
My "understandings" began as very confused and unclear intuitions and I have strived to critically revise and refine my ideas (& conceptual vocabulary) through study, discussion, argument and lived experience over the last four decades. I believe I'm still learning and growing, though sometimes I do worry that my positions are hardening from confirmation bias and/or age-related stubborness.
And when you're not, you don't care either way. Unless you go to hell, of course, but fortunately, I don't believe in hell. Sadly, I don't believe in heaven, either.
I agree with you about heaven and hell, though.
Is your existence the result of a long chain of random accidents, or specified by Darwinian Natural Selection? Does evolutionary selection operate without specific criteria? If so, how do mutating genes know how to maintain a consistent lineage of inheritance over eons of time? Just asking. :joke:
Evolutionary Selection Criteria :
In order for natural selection to operate on a trait, the trait must possess heritable variation and must confer an advantage in the competition for resources. If one of these requirements does not occur, then the trait does not experience natural selection.
https://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/selection/selection.html
Note -- Who decided on those critical standards for evolutionary survival? Happenstance?
I am not able to pull together a report to something able to answer the question of 'being qua being.' Looking at various ways of talking about it are interesting. But pursuing some of those while losing interest in others does not seem to me like choosing a favorite.
The act of selection is one of the elements under review.
So I tread water in what I think is the Socratic fashion; There is some arrangement that is the source of what is experienced: I am ill-equipped to say what that might be.
We mostly do imagine there is, must be, "some arrangement" as "source", but are these ideas even coherent outside the context of human thought and understanding?
It is presumptuous to assert that the ideas are coherent outside of the context of human thought and experience. On the other hand, it is also presumptuous to claim that such a domain of experience is a process that is going on in a fashion self-sufficient enough to have no relationship to this "arrangement."
:up:
So, where does that leave us?
Existence is just a fact of life - reasons why don't apply, in terms of looking for a justification for it. According to the evidence we have - which is quite different from the optimal evidence there may be, for creatures with a higher cognitive faculty than us - we are here because the laws or habits of the universe so happened to combine in a way that we arose.
Ethics I know not, these are so little understood, which shouldn't be surprising given that we are likely the only animals to have such a thing - there may be hints that other higher mammals have the barest of glimpses of such a phenomena. I think that it is in our best interest to take ethics seriously, given that existence is so rare in the universe - maybe unique. So we should treasure what we have, each other, and the humanist legacy.
I am liable to change some of my views, according to new evidence. In terms of epistemic-metaphysics, that's much more difficult and would need a very strong argument from dissuading me that rationalistic idealism - a la Descartes, Cudworth and Chomsky - is false. It could happen, but as of today, I think it's unlikely.
You didn't ask in your post the title of your OP. In which case, I currently think Raymond Tallis view is correct: I'm an ontological agnostic. I do not know what kind of things exist or do not exist in the world, absent the sciences, which say little on this topic. An ontology based on physics leaves an awful lot out.
You translated my phrasing into other words with your question. I will think about the best way to answer.
By critetion for existence I mean specific conditions something (x) has to meet before one can say x exists.
The popular criterion is an expanded version of seeing is believing (to be perceived is to exist), but false perception (hallucination) invalidates it.
As for teleological evolution as guided by Enformy, it certainly is plausible despite the fact that the scientific community's consensus that such a view is common and wrong although understandable. I keep an open mind - science is not a synonym of infallible.
Picking up where I left off, this thread must necessarily discuss the criterion for existence - the commonsense one used by the man on the Clapham omnibus, the scientific one, the philosophical one, the religious one, any idiosyncratic ones as well.
If there was a discernible explanation for existence, then that would exist too. There can't be another reason for it all, for existence. And... Nevermind. Self-explanatory, then? An analysis in modal logic can't deduce anything in particular that's (unconditionally) necessary, perhaps other than the basic logic (identity/non-contradiction) we started out with in the first place, which shouldn't be that surprising.
In absence of anything and everything, there can't be constraints, conservation (physics), prevention, etc, either. Not much to talk about it would seem, not even anything preventing something from coming about.
OK, well, this pursuit seems kind of odd. Might be more fruitful to instead try categorizing whatever does exist.
I'll just run with some eclectic sort of realism for now, pick a bit here and there that makes sense. We might talk about some things, like spacetime, objects, processes, ... It's one place to start anyway. Some like to chat about objective versus subjective, i.e. existentially mind-independent versus existentially mind-dependent, but that sometimes gets weird. Chaos versus order? Maybe we could also delineate/demarcate where such stuff makes sense and not. Onwards ontology...
My supposition is that 'X exists' factually IFF the sine qua non properties of X are not (a) non-relational, (b) un-conditional, (c) un-changeable and/or (d) in-discernible from (~X). :chin:
Before we answer that question, we should ask about what were trying to explain. Namely: what is existence?
Or you put it in ontological terms: what is being?
I made an OP long ago on that topic. I refer you to it as a spin-off of your thread here, if youre interested in exhuming an older thread.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12109/what-is-being/p1
First off, noticeably using negatives. Why?
Second, you're, to my reckoning, stipulatin' metaphysical conditions (obviously, ontology is metaphysics), but existence, over the past thousand or so years, has gone through an empirical turn as it were and perceptibility has become the gold standard i.e. if it can't be perceived (by the body or its extensions, (scientific) instruments), it does not exist. Perhaps you refer to the "sine qua non" properties of perceived objects, however, quite unfortunately, false that if it can be perceived, it exists (re false perceptions aka hallucinations which as far as I can tell fulfill all your listed conditions).
I find those "negatives" more specifiable (and irrefutable) than the alternative. IIRC, I've shared my negative ontology with you (& Mr. Enformy) on more than one occasion. :smile:
Empiricism pertains to epistemology, not ontology; and had the OP raised the question of 'epistemic criteria', my first thought would have been 'X exists' insofar as X-predicates are consistent with model-dependent realism, etc.
I don't see ontology as an explanation of existence, it's a description of the nature of existence, reality. It's a metaphysical concept. I've given my lectures on metaphysics before. At some level, we all have the same view of the nature of reality, the same ontology. The regular old day to day nature of reality we all experience all the time. Everyday reality. Maybe the right name is realism, I'm not sure. This reality is full of apples, Volvos, femurs, tree frogs, salt water, Cheetos, and Australia. Forgot cucumbers. Most people don't question whether or not their children are real or an illusion created by a Cartesian demon on a regular basis. Most people don't question whether their coffee is real or only the reflection of an inexpressible noumena.
It's only when we turn to philosophy that there is any mystery to ontology. I think we all pick them one based on our personality and temperament. I also think we apply different metaphysics and epistemology in different situations and at different times.
All that exists is the physical, is this the materialist's thesis? Sounds very ontological. I also find epistemological this and epistemological that to be unhelpful - everything is limited epistemologically, oui?
I'm not schooled in Heidegger, but I thought I'd drop this excerpt in as it is at least relevant:
This resembles the musings of Tillich on the non-existence of God - that God is 'beyond existence', therefore not *a* being:
Apologies, but I did address the key points to my reckoning. Epistemology fails as a distinctive feature, because at the end of the day, one realizes, it's like cheese, found in every philosophical pizza.
Materialism is an ontological claim, I don't even know how that's possible given the above, that all that exists is physical and physical means perceptible (by the senses). As I pointed out perception is unreliable (re Descartes?).
Freddy points out, paraphrasing both the Epicureans and Stoics (IIRC), that 'the senses don't lie, it's our interpretations of the senses which introduce lies into our perceptions.'
A paradigm (or interpretation), not a "claim". In modern terms, it's epistemological rather than ontological. Material is synonymous with embodied. I prefer to use physical to differentiate scientifically modelled material from raw material (though, yeah, the terms are used interchangeably). I think it's less overdetermining to conceive of materialism as 'nature is primarily, not ultimately, material' or 'materiality is nature's primary, not ultimate, property'. What is the 'ultimate property'? Whatever 'ultimate' is, it's still purely speculative I fail to see how 'the ultimate' matters (no pun intended) to proximate beings (e.g. humans living and reasoning). Anyway, this conception I derive from classical atomism with a focus on void over atoms.
This utterance is unwarranted, purely speculative and, by my interpretation (above), incoherent.
:up: It is said, as per some research, that the mind modulates the senses - kinda gives it some finishing touches before presenting the sense data to consciousness. Does the locus of the problem matter? It seems that whether the senses are faulty or the mind is, the end result is the same - we get a false picture of reality, scuppering the whole project of figuring what is real. I'm surprised that Nietzsche was able to rule out the senses as possibly error-prone. I don't see how in a world that had no treatment of syphilis, he could be so sure about neurological processes, a tough nut to crack even with modern cutting-edge science.
Yep, I would say science is the be-all-and-end-all when it comes materialism/physicalism. This is what I was driving at - empiricism's domination of metaphysics (nonverifiable, unreal). I suppose as you said, reality is primarily physical.
I love this analogy, or rather "plausible explanation". Basically natural selection not being restricted to just life arbitrarily but instead being a principle that applies from the get go of existence.
Quoting Christoffer
One critque however, I disagree that "working together" in becoming larger more complex systems is the only choice in natural selections cards to maintain continuity/survival of an existant.
Becoming bigger, more singular and more sophisticated does work. However staying small and multiplitous also works.
This other bias (lack of cooperation/multicellularity) is demonstrated by "static products of evolution." That is to say organisms that have remained stable and relatively unchanged for many millions of years while others have changed significantly in the same time frame.
For example viruses, bacteria, archaea and even larger organisms: crocodiles, turtles etc have changed little in their recognisable structure over many eons while others have become unrecognisable. Why is that?
I think it is down to the nature of selective pressures in evolution.
If pressures to adapt are a spectrum from a high state of pressure (rapidly changing conditions/high amounts of stress) at one end and consistent conditions/low amounts of survival stressors on the other, those organisms that experience the brunt of threat will change or adapt the most whine those that exist in the stagnant/static or stable zone will settle into a long-term niche without much change.
In summary that seems to indicate that the most complex organisms are those that faced the most challenges in existence. While uncomplex unchanging organisms are those thats design has been favoured for its indestructiblility.
If humans are considered the most sophisticated organisms, then we have had a target on our back for the duration of our evolution. Because we are the lineage that required the most effort to stay alive.
Not sure if it is presumptuous. All physical phenomena and occurrences are fundamentally presumptions by humans - in that "presumption" is a behaviour of sentient/conscious beings that can "presume".
That doesn't mean presumptions are incorrect. If we take scientific method as a source of proof of presumptions - then some presumptions (theories, hypotheses etc) have been proven to exist regardless of individual/personal subjective experience.
In that case some presumptions are facts and others are yet-to-be-proven beliefs.
Some of this process has already been proven in labs where organic material were "zapped" with electricity to kickstart a process that would lead to more complex structures. So one component that might be missing is that there has to be some kind of burst of energy that kickstarts the process. And since the primordial soup also had a lot of storms and lightning, that wouldn't be something out of the realm of possibility, instead quite probable.
Quoting Benj96
Yes, but even if amoebas, viruses and bacteria are small, they often cluster to stay alive, meaning they don't form a singular species, they act in a way that their optimal existence is within clusters of many. A form of "legion" entity. Think about our gut bacteria, their function within us acts as a singular organ in harmony with out other organs. We can lose and add bacteria, but their existence depends on their function as a group.
Quoting Benj96
Static existence could be about the lack of evolutionary necessity, meaning, they might never had the necessity to evolve due to already being in harmony with the environment. It is possible that humanity has changed their course of evolution now that we've changed so much of the world. And therefor their first evolutionary steps away from how they were will now start to take form.
Quoting Benj96
These do however change, but because of their size, there are less variations visible to us, but just think of the different variations of Covid-19, each variant is an evolutionary step, or rather, the largest step was Omikron, an entire different subset from the original virus that is now pretty much extinct. Just like there are no Neanderthals left in the world.
Quoting Benj96
"From what I know in biology repetition is rather the key to evolutionary steps. High pressure acts differently on different species, some die off directly with the slightest change, without getting to the point of evolving past the change. It would be like if the world suddenly just had a quarter of oxygen within the atmosphere, we would probably die faster than we have the chance to adapt. Longer spans of change will often change everyone. Even if we can rule a turtle today to be the same as millions of years ago, they will still have small evolutionary changes that has aligned with the rest of the world.
Size is a good point for this. Millions of years ago there were a lot more oxygen in the world. That led to larger beings. Since then the level of oxygen has declined slowly and due to that, species who are pretty much identical to their ancient relatives have reduced in size while keeping most of their biological essence intact. That's an example of a very slow evolutionary change.
Evolution most likely occur through repetition, a norm changes into something new that then repeats itself as a new norm and that changes any species to find equilibrium in that area while the most sensitive ones die off since they cannot handle even the slightest evolutionary stress.
Quoting Benj96
Actually, evolutionary, we are masters of survival. We've evolved into adaptable beings that aren't sensitive to much of the changing environment. We do, however, have evolutionary differences like pigmentation, length etc. that is an effect of the environmental norms we existed within over the course of history.
Some have concluded that our modern life has detached ourselves from evolution, we don't need it anymore since we can adapt through pure will. While some of that is true, we are in fact still evolving according to our environment and if nothing kills us off we will eventually change into something fuzed with how we use technology. That depends on if technology reaches a function that is universal. But if we solve immortality, we would probably never change, which would be the true end of human evolution other than the change we experience throughout one life.
It's important to remember that our consciousness is most likely just an evolutionary step. Just like each species has their own way of hunting, staying away from danger etc. we evolved a complex system to hunt, stay out of danger and collaborate in packs. The fortunate (or unfortunate for some people) outcome of this is that the system grew so complex that we formed a self-awareness that isn't just good for spotting danger and collaborate in hunts, but to adapt in the environment. We evolved to conceptualize a hunt, and therefor we could conceptualize other things. Why does that plant look like it does? Can we create that warm thing that burns so we don't freeze during the night, it seems to scare away dangerous animals, good, also it seems to keep our food good for us longer if we burn it.
And from there we form the history of our evolution of consciousness. At the moment, there are a lot of research into psychedelics and the history of it. It seems that way more cultures used psychedelics than previously thought. It might very well be that the stories, mythologies and wondrous stories that were invented and later turned into religions has their roots in such psychedelic trips. We basically started out trying to conceptualize the world, then introduced psychedelics that pushed our minds further and pushed us to create more, to be creative in a search for what is good in life. Much like we gravitate towards what is good for us physically, we gravitate towards the aesthetically pleasing and these things could very well be how we started out with our appreciation for art and music.
My ideas forms out of what is most logically the formation of us as animals, not detached but exactly like everything else, which means our consciousness is part of the wild evolutionary changes that animals can have in nature. Just like a really long neck on a giraff looks wild in evolutionary terms, it's logical and so should we consider our consciousness.
I am willing to say the world operates logically, without contradiction. Knowledge is impossible otherwise and nature appears to follow rules that can be represented by mathematics.
If I had to pick an ontology that seems most enticing it would be those inspired by Boehme and Hegel, where existence comes about through logical necessity, as the result of the resolution of contradictions (dialectical unfolding). I'm interested in attempts to formalize this (e.g. Lawvere with dialectical, the unity of opposites/ adjoint modalities, and how this might be paired with categorical quantum foundations), but they're a bit over my head in many cases.
I have an intuition that the idea of discrete objects that are the sum of their parts is deeply flawed, an illusion foisted on us by how evolution shaped our sensory systems and cognitive capabilities. The constituent parts of things seem to be impossible to describe without the whole (i.e., with fundemental "particles", the field is essential and an object cannot be understood as discrete bits). This would suggest an ontology somewhat similar to mathematical formalism, a thing "is what it does," it is defined by its relations. These relationships can and do change over time, leading to new rules of interactions (this implies some sort of "hard" emergence but since everything is relational, I don't think this runs into the problems hard emergence faces when it considers wholes as composed of discrete "bits."
I'm also highly skeptical of identity as anything other than a pragmatic definition, and embrace a circular, fallibalist, "the truth is the whole," epistemology.
As to things existing sans consciousness, I do believe things exist that are not conscious, and that an external world accessible by multiple agents exists. However, I'm not sure if things existing "of themselves," is a coherent notion, e.g. that a universe of just two identical glass spheres floating in space can exist. If existence is defined relationally, then it is unclear which relationships can meaningfully exist sans agents.
I'm a physicalists vis-á-vis minds, i.e. brains interacting with bodies and the enviornment gives rise to consciousness, but more agnostic about the ultimate origins of consciousness. Frankly, I don't think any current explanations come close to explaining why certain patterns of information flow/physical interactions should give rise to first person experience while most do not, and most solutions either simply appeal to mysterious "complexity," or attempt to dodge the question in various ways. Given the proliferation of different theories, I think it's fair to say that the study of the origins of consciousness is a field in crisis, not one on the cusp of wrapping things up. But I have no reason to think consciousness is not a natural phenomenon, so I go back and forth on this.
Is immortality a solution or something detrimental? Immortality would be the end of bearing child on a planet of finite resources, not to mention the creeping in of boredom, impairment of the economy, inheritance, positive/advantageous evolutionary mutations etc.
Quoting Christoffer
I'm not sure we are ever free of evolution. So long as we reproduce, changes/diversity will occur. Technology may release us from certain pressures forcing us to rely on it ever more. For example prescription glasses: before, people with bad eyesight would die because they didn't see the tiger standing in front of them, now prescriptions offset the pressure to have gold eyesight and thus those faulty genes are passed onto children. Technology opposes this decline km our visual acuity by compensating it, maybe it will eventually restore full vision to the blind or enhance vision in general. But then it means we are dependent on our tech for survival.
It doesn't mean evolution stops it just means that it has entered the phase of being bio-technological in nature.
Quoting Christoffer
I agree that our consciousness is likely the product of neccesity. How it changes in the future is difficult to predict, but its ability to create and utilise tools means the number of sensations and experiences possible for sentient beings like ourselves is sure to increase in the future - virtual reality, artificial body parts, mind uploads etc. Tech will likely be the kect frontier of sentient evolution, enabling us to expand and conquer space (something organic bodies did not evolve to do).
The imagination and predictive abilities of sci-fi have repeatedly demonstrated that our imagination is always the step just beyond what is currently possible. And many sci-fi things if the 70s/80s/90s are now real existants.
Oh, and I'm definitely not an eternalist. I was almost won over by the sheer weight of popular science writers who frame externalism as a "sure thing," but the above convinced me a lot of the arguments in favor of externalism are based on misunderstandings.
Generally, these fall into two big groups. First, misunderstandings of relativity and assumptions that it precludes local becoming, based on misunderstanding what proper time is in Minkoski space-time. Second, the influence of Russel's work on the subject, which itself is heavily influenced by his understanding of Cantor's work on continuous lines. More importantly, he misses Aristotle's perfect refutation of Zeno's Arrow (i.e. an arrow is never moving in any frozen instant of its flight and so movement is an illusion). This is a fallacy of composition. Time is the dimension across which change occurs; it cannot exist "in a moment" but is emergent from change. Thus, visualizing space-time as a "block" is fraught because time isn't a dimension you can move back and forth in, nor something that can "flow," it is simply the dimension across which local change occurs.
I am normally pretty open to multiple theories and understand at least why they are popular, but the argument that change is illusory strikes me as ridiculous and I don't see how it became mainstream.
Anyhow, the book is excellent even if you don't accept its argument. Full primer on the philosophy of time and has an excellent summation of the differences between Newton and Liebnitz' philosophy of physics and how they influence views today. Made me realize I have a lot more affinity with Liebnitz/ Aristotle than Newton / Plato.
These Springer Frontiers books are generally fantastic. They're also academic publications, so horrendously expensive if you don't have a school membership. But, that's what LibGen is for, although I wish you could tip the authors.
I agree that reality/existence in day to day living can be taken at face value. This is the nature of culture, common ideation and the interpersonal utility of language.
It's surface level - vague, imprecise, unquestioned, unassumed and therefore useful in a day to day context.
However existence is not just surface level. It stems from the furthest/most distant origins. The most primitive, the beginning of all things. All encompassing.
Trying to apply specificity to a macroscopic scale is much more difficult then applying vaguery to the everyday microscopic scale.
Thus, big questions on existence elude us. We are not unanimous regarding it. Tiny questions of existence on the other hand - like the taste of coffee and its role in our daily lives, is less elusive, more concrete.
This is the inherent polarity of existence - it is both the most simplez straightforward and intuitive thing, and the most mysterious, simultaneously.
Philosophy tackles the complex aspect. Or perhaps, makes the simple convoluted.
I agree. Time does not have relevance to a single moment - where time doesn't occur. Otherwise it wouldnt be a specific moment.
It's worth noting that perceiving time requires memory/storage of and active reference to previous information. It's impossible to perceive the passage of time without a sense of past (memory).
Therefore it seems time is intrinsically linked to conciousness.
Further proof is such is the lack of simulataneity in the universe. Locations are separated by gravity, space and time. Information requires time to traverse the distance between location A and B regardless of how close they may be.
So anything that occurs at different locations can never be perceived at the exact same moment that they occurred.
Just as when we see a supernova in the sky, it likely happened a number of light-years ago but we perceive it to occur during the present moment of observation
I think it is without positive or negative value, it only is. We live our lives today in a vastly different way than people did a thousand years ago. Immortality would fundamentally change our culture. Just the concept of death, reproduction and sex is a fundamental part of how our culture looks, almost everything in our culture has some influence from it because it's a fundamental part of our human experience. So a world in which we are immortal would fundamentally change our culture, our art, our experience of knowledge. However, one evolutionary change might happen, a change to our brain in order to process more memory. But that could happen with normal cellular change in an individual over the course of thousands of years.
Quoting Benj96
Yes, we are never free from it, but it will not happen in the same way as the rest of nature. It would be less pronounced or according to our technological dependence. Which has somewhat already happen with rudimental tools and ways of living, like farming.
The concept of us being "free from evolution" comes more from the idea that we are free of the bonds of evolution. We don't need to evolve wings to fly, we build a machine to fly and so on. It's more a comment on the state of technology as a major part of our lives.
Quoting Benj96
We are already expanding our consciousness with technology, like me writing here on the forum. It's a communication over distance that has reshaped parts of how we think about the world. Just like a hammer, in our minds, becomes an extension of our arm, i.e our brain expands tools as mental body parts when we use them (this has been verified in tests), communicating directly with text forms a mental language that is different from how people communicated before and it is actively changing how we use our consciousness.
If technology evolves into a symbiosis with us, like if we start to augment our consciousness with AI to expand the capabilities that we find hard to do in our mind, like complex advanced math, but the experience is like as if we just "thought it through", then we will reshape the foundation of our consciousness in ways we don't yet know how they will play out.
Quoting Benj96
I think the most interesting thing about sci-fi is that some sci-fi has informed technological development to realize what was seen or read about in sci-fi, instead of it predicting it to come true. Some sci-fi writers have produced concepts that scientists were inspired by and instead of it being a normal consequence of scientific development and technological advances, sci-fi has instead informed what we are inventing.
So we cannot really calculate what came first, the artists visions or the scientist and engineers inventions. Much like we speculate on how people with different minds, like ADHD, Asbergers, etc. having an evolutionary role in packs of humans, being the ones who dare to view beyond the mountains, to step back and evaluate where others just continue as before, these people were the artists and shamans, the explorers and path finders. They had anti-social tendencies because that led them to expand their minds into the world and then report back to the group of people who were too rigid into standards of living that no one dared to explore for new food or places to go.
This could be the foundation for how stories and art sometimes influence people to realize something from it rather than stories and art being descriptions of reality as it is.
Art, therefore, is in my opinion just as fundamental as philosophy, science and technology for the advancement of humanity.
My belief is that what has been passed down as 'immortality' or 'eternal life' does not actually mean perpetual embodied existence or living forever in physical form but rather in realising a state of being which transcends physical existence. (There are exceptions, for example in Taoist and various esoteric schools there are teachings of actual embodied immortality but I think they're the exception. I'm also highly dubious of the Christian dogma of the resurrection of the physical body.)
Of course, such a state is impossible to imagine or conceptualise, but this is part of the point! The ordinary being is so attached to his/her physical form that they cannot conceive of anything beyond it, so can only conceive of the immortal in terms of a continuation of their normal state of existence for an endless duration - which would indeed be hellish. Instead there is another dimension to existence, the timeless and deathless, entry into which is what 'the deathless' actually means (see for example this Buddhist text.)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm interested in the sense in which time itself must be grounded in the perception of duration. See this example which I have mentioned previously:
[quote=Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271]The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. [/quote]
This implies that time enters the picture, so to speak, with the observer - which also lines up with Kant's view on time.
You seem to be arguing that presumptions are not presumptuous if they are consistent with and coherent within our general set of presumptions which constitutes our general understanding of "all physical phenomena and occurrences", and, if so, I agree.
The presumptuous move is to assert the coherence of our presumptions outside of that context. So, it is not a matter of "correct or incorrect" except within the familiar world which is constituted by our common set of presumptions.
The commonsense definition for existence is indeed that of the common man (and common animals), who believe only what they can see. But philosophers are not limited to the physical senses to understand the world. Instead, where their senses fail to see, they infer the invisible links of geometry. So they turn to metaphors (analogies to concrete things) in order to communicate their idiosyncratic understanding of the unseen world. That's why I call Reason : "the sixth sense", which is uncommon even among human animals.
Pragmatic Scientists are also sometimes forced to rely on imaginary metaphors to fill-in the blanks of understanding. For example, Virtual Particles have never been seen via telescopes or microscopes, because they are imaginary. But such non-things would not make sense to the commonsense of the common man. Moreover, the un-common-sense of Ontology will never put virtual food in the bowl for your commonsense dog. :joke:
The point about the understanding of reason in contemporary culture is that it tends to be strictly constrained by empiricism, meaning in effect that it must always be ultimately validated by experiential, third-person evidence - meaning, in effect, sensory experience enhanced through instruments and extrapolated mathematically. So when most people say 'reason' in effect they mean 'scientific reason' which operates within constraints that are rarely made the object of explicit awareness. Philosophers (or some philosophers) are well aware of this.
Things are known only in the reasoned sense if there be identified a knower and an object known. If you include the relation between the knower and the known, then we really have a triune process as Gurdjieff, Hegel and Peirce, in their different ways, have indicated. But another way to think about it is that the process itself becomes another thing known by knowers.
:100: But you'd hardly cast them as representative of our culture at large.
By the way, it's good to see you back here wasting your time with the rest of us. :grin:
I think this undervalues the importance of everyday reality. All the other ontologies only have meaning in the context of this way of seeing things. They all have to take it into account. The fact that so many don't is a sign of a lack of insight.
It's also more than surface level. It encompasses everything that humans experience in all but the most extreme and exotic environments. It's also not in any way vague or imprecise. An apple is exactly an apple. I can measure it's location, motion, volume, mass, electric charge, sweetness, shape - all its properties, within precise tolerances. If it's unquestioned, that's because it works so well in so many situations.
I completely forgot about the sixth sense - thanks for the reminder mon ami. Like dark energy - it has to be there says the mind (dark energy hasta exist), but we can't find it (our senses and instruments can't detect it).
A reminder to us all that instead of dividing into mind (rational) and body (empirical), we should be uniting as mind-body (rational + empiriical) i.e. BothAnd.
They seem to be distinguished by a sort of "confidence interval" - as in how plausible or true they seem to be at that current time to the vast majority or whether they reflect consistencies we search for in our understanding of reality.
Science has declared truths or facts in the past that have since been refined, ammened or totally discredited and replaced or became just a belief or outdated presumption. Eg. The Copernican revolution in astronomy.
Beliefs are facts in the sense that beliefs exist. It is a fact that some beliefs appear more factual while others seem more unlikely.
The entire truth/the true nature of reality has been proposed many times from many disciplines but never fully adopted or unanimously accepted, none have remained unchallenged for the entirety of human existence and discourse.
It's a strange intermix.
None. Physicalism, in practice, is an epistemology (re: a paradigm used in natural science).
The question lacks grounds for raising it (Witty, Peirce).
Nominalists & pragmatists, naturalists & existentialists don't ask 'whether or not numbers are real'. Platonists & rationalists, for example, promiscuously misplaced concreteness like that. By "nonphysical stuff", by the way, you do mean abstract objects, not "angels", right? :smirk:
Ironically, that Empirical, tangible-results-oriented, understanding of "Reason" is common even on The Philosophy Forum, where we don't do anything remotely empirical. Materialism, as a belief system, sometimes seems to be the un-official doctrine of TPF. :sad:
PS__For the record, Enformationism does not deny the validity of Materialism, as a guide for empirical research. And it does not advocate Spiritualism, as a guide to heaven. It does however assume that philosophical reasoning is a valid approach to evaluating immaterial ideas & beliefs.
Materialism, also called physicalism, in philosophy, the view that all facts (including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/materialism-philosophy
Philosophical Materialism states that everything that truly exists is matter; everything is material, thus all phenomena we see are a result of material interactions.
https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/philosophy/materialism
Quoting Agent Smith
It's not complicated. There's broad consensus that religion and metaphysics are archaic, they haven't moved with the times, and are no longer relevant to life as it's lived now. By default, the only yardsticks we have are those provided by science. Of course there is an enormous variety of attitudes and views, but that is broadly true in secular cosmopolitan culture. Materialism as a philosophy arises mainly from attempt to apply scientific methods to philosophical problems, or to deny that there are philosophical problems that are not in scope for scientific method.
Quoting Benj96
It's not a democratic question! And the fragmentation of worldviews is inevitable in the kind of culture we're in, with instantaneous mass communications available to everyone around the world. In that sense, everyone has to find their own truth, which doesn't necessarily mean something of their own invention. (Isn't that what Kierkegaard said?) In some ways, it has never been easier due to the abundance of information, but also it's never been harder, because of the number of apparently conflicting views.
Incidentally and apropros this thread, an excellent new article on Aeon.co on Karl Jaspers.
A tennis ball may be green, but it is also round.
A knife may kill but it can also save. There's no reason to say a knife is a weapon. I,'m a bit bewildered why physical (stones, bodies) is more real than the nonphysical (ideas).
Why should one aspect of the tennis ball be more real than the other? Like you said there's no justification for a physicalist ontology, oui?
At heart my ontology is trivial: every possible concrete thing either has no parts (and thus has the structure of the empty set) or has parts (and thus has the structure of a non-empty set). These concrete things make up all possible worlds and all possible worlds are real worlds because there is no difference between possible and real.
Quoting litewave
It's happy hour here (near Portland, Oregon) so I'll lustily drink to that! :yum: :up:
A physicalist ontology I define as either the physical is all that exists/is real or that the physical is more real than the nonphysical. From such a standpoint, unicorns and numbers don't exist/are not real or are less real than horses. This, as you can see, captures the materialist/physicalist position on ontology. It has no basis and if it has one I'm not aware of it.
Ar you suggesting @litewave's sloshed and you would like to also get ... sloshed?
I agree there is interplay, but I'd say that facts, beliefs and hypotheses are all dependent on presumptions and not, ultimately, the other way around.
As to what seems most plausible, I don't think we have general consensus, and even if we did have majority consensus should we consider that a definitive guide to anything beyond the context of human understanding and knowledge?
I also agree that changing scientific paradigms have rendered previously accepted presumptions outmoded.
But then that means physicalists are ok with dualism and mathematical platonism, but they're not are they? Something doesn't add up, oui?
Gracias for identifying my fallacy. :up:
:ok: