Again, we're pressing at the limits of my ability to comprehend, so my apologies for the shortfalls to follow. But...
l2r said:
the waking from sleep analogy came to my mind also (before you posted it). it's an accurate one, i think. your sleep is governed by your circadian rhythm, which is a non conscious function of your body. consider the state your body is in when awake and the state your body is in during sleep. the transition from one to another is not instant, and your consciousness changes gradually. since it is governed by the body and not the consious mind, it is the body which impedes this consciousness.
I'm wondering though: why consider the mind separate from the body in the first place?
Don't forget, definitions, by definition, are relative in essence. A thing is a thing when it is as opposed/contrary/compared to other things. In a void, a definition is meaningless. All silliness about demons aside, descartes gives a fairly sufficient defintion of existence. i mean, really, what other choice is there? what difference does it make? there's an experience ofa thinking thing. let's just agree to that and move on.
Okay...so attempting to paraphrase, existence betrays its presence insofar as essences manifest (of course in opposition to other essences). Yes, experience manifests, but in opposition to what, exactly? well, existence in absence of experience, perhaps. But does any essence thereof manifest? What I was (clumsily) trying to posit earlier is that the essence of existence for us is the experience of the contrast between existence and nonexistence, which is set in opposition to conditions of a lack of differentiation between existence and nonexistence (this latter condition being what I was trying to get at with things like "indeterminate flux", "generative context", etc.). Okay...for my ability to think, this 'condition' of lacking differentiation between existence and nonexistence seems to be the terminus, having undermined the characteristics allowing for cognition itself. This suggests a mystical grounding of the exoteric, but does it suggest a "soul" at any point?
The soul/spark is like a ball of chewing gum rolling down hill. It has control over rolling slightly to the left or right at times, but he roll is incessant. The gum picks up dust and grit through this lifetime. We only see these pollutants, and call those parts "me". imo (of course).
Okay, maybe I mistakenly imputed characteristics of a more traditional conception of the soul onto this 'spark'; my apologies. But to extend the metaphor, I might have been trying to dig down to the context which elicits this piece of gum rolling downward in the first place, positing that this piece of gum (particularly in in terms of its motion) manifests solely via this context. Do you consider this approach congruent with yours?
Anyway, I think your hesitation is as a result of a faulty framework for the task you're attempting: finding what came before the duality of the issue. But as i noted, the duality is still there. The endeavour is futile.
That's the tragic fate of cognition in general though, right? The conditions necessary for cognition to occur result in such flaws in the framework employed. Perhaps I am wrong in assuming that the duality cannot be characteristic of the totality
as such, but privileging such duality introduces a host of seemingly intractable philosophical problems.
Psyduck said:
Unless you want to incorporate contradiction into your ontology; then Hegel makes life much easier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science..._Contradiction
Heh...that's what I was trying to do this whole time, but I was probably horridly unclear, mainly due to how symbolic frameworks impose necessary recourse to stable, unified semantic particles; positing that these units are set in contradiction in varied ways fails to adequately express the 'essence' of such contradiction in motion. Also, Hegel is fucking challenging to understand, let alone articulate (but that might just be my failing).
Thanks for the links!
ksa said:
The existence of soul can only be proved by finding a certain human behavior that cannot be explained by molecular interaction.
Do we yet have a biochemical theory of all human experience and behavior? And have we explicated the mechanisms linking the two? If you think so, I'd get publishing
right now.
mdao said:
On the contrary, it comes from an acknowledgment that there could very well be realities beyond the physical (whose interface with what we call the physical world is through us and other sentient beings), but that if this is the case, it's kind of hasty to assume these realities fit into ours in a way that draws any analogy to the interactions between physical things in our physical world.
What distinguishes the physical from the non-physical (or supra/trans/whatever-physical)?
If you turn on Super Mario Bros. and start playing, Mario could be forgiven for thinking you're his soul. He'd be right in that there's an entire world full of sentient beings beyond his comprehension, which exert a very real influence on him and his world. But he'd be dead wrong to think this world or anything in/of it resided within him, and were subject to any of the same rules he was.
Very deft analogy! However, in some sense, wouldn't the circuitry of the Nintendo, our electricity, the motion of our button-presses, etc. in some sense be part of mario's world (if manifest as illusion)?
eblowla
basic ontology is tough)
