Can Existence be separate from Experience?

[panic in paradise]

i am studying/learning Early Modern English, because i can and it makes for good reading and writing. not so difficult, and a bit quirky so its fun.


studying around i came across this:
"No one understood that word, did they?"
- ?
in other words; 'Everyone Third Person Singular'. this is a conundrum of sorts because, it leaves question as to gender. reads like a question from a 'soulful' riddler -- one whom is unable to assert how the need for their premise to be known, binds them from what they seek to learn.
_______________________*

"The proposed question, is- it not understood?"

the above is my attempt at extracting ones self, abandoning the identity of gender, and ultimately the loss of ego; left with only an observation of no description to describe.
its something only the observer can answer, for only they can understand; this is now wisdom gained through a personal experience.
to translate this from yourself, and express it to others in a once again relatable form, is then knowledge born.

 

[Pythagoras]

hmm... how can I communicate this better?

the very argument that you're using to prove your own point can be used to prove mine. "what is actually present" (as you say, our thoughts - but more generally, i think, we can categorize as immediate phenomena, and not just sensory) is all we can know with any certainty. that in no way implies that something beyond our what is present does not or cannot exist.

we can't prove that anything exists beyond the immediate phenomena we experience (although whether or not we can prove even the existence of immediate phenomena is debatable), but we also can't disprove it. I will repeat that all your argument mandates is that we can't know anything outside of immediate phenomena. we can't know if what is represented by our thoughts is real, but similarly we can't know if what is represented by our thoughts doesn't exist

i repeat, if you want to disprove the existence of noumenal reality logically, you have to assert its nonexistence as a premise, and that is simply not meaningful.

I admire your valiant efforts and am in agreement with pretty well all you have said. I think Dedbeat is arguing that thinking about noumenal reality is a form of perception, and therefore is phenomenal in nature.

I think as I stated above a clearer understanding of perception and apperception, categories of thought, and apriori truths should demonstrate to Dedbeat the subtle sophistication of Kant's work.

@Dedbeat - I think if you were to look at a good anthology, or precis of Kant's work you might see where psyduck is coming from. If one wants to escape Descartes solipsistic nightmare we need Kant to inject hope of an objective reality. I find your opinions interesting (if I have understood them correctly), however you do beg the question.

Py

 

[webbykevin]

something has to be existing in order to have an experience of experiencing anything, even the concept that it is actually both, before all of that, something is existing, you are that something, now what could you possibly be ?

answer that question of yourself, get to the point of seeing the witness, and enquire as to its mystery.

Then maybe one of us will find out what we really are, cos all the rest is just speculation.

 

[ebola?]

My personal take is that the answer must be 'sort of', depending on how conceptions of what it is to exist vary. I will put something forth, but it depends on numerous, tenuous assumptions that I happen to prefer.

I believe consciousness, in some sense, to be the universe observing itself. In these acts of observation, it could be said that there is only observation because as the universe looks at itself, it perceives and describes the object it looks at in terms of types of experiences. However, perceptions and descriptions also present themselves anchored in terms of which phenomena outside the scope of consciousness attach to various experiences.

So I think that the very border between experience and the experienced (and indeed, material and mental) appears as an artifact of the strange-loop or dialectic of the universe achieving self-consciousness.

However, I also believe that there 'exist' underlying conditions (as characteristics of this universe) of possibility for the universe to come to actual self-consciousness. So experience might exhaust all that actually comes to be, but it cannot encompass all that makes experience possible in the first place.

ebola