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What is your metaphysics?

I have been skeptical as the years have gone by. Metaphysical things, almost by definition, can't be proven or demonstrated at will. I believe more in things that I can see, feel, touch, etc. I'm not saying that I believe for sure that the physical world is all there is, just that when you get into the metaphysical you are going more on belief than knowledge, and I don't expect others to share my beliefs and vice versa.

You seem to have misunderstood what metaphysics actually is. In fact, your assertion that you "believe in things you can touch" is itself a metaphysical belief. Roughly, it amounts to the dominant metaphysical belief today in most university departments of philosophy/logic.

Metaphysics is an academic field, and though involving some level of belief it is completely unlike religion or spirituality. Generally within academic philosophy the goal is to determine what can be known with certainty, or at least to arrive at the clearest, most self-consistent and accurate picture of both what exists and what we know. The level of belief that is required (or perhaps even permissible within legitimate philosophy) is akin to that that you would find in the humanities like sociology or literary theory. In fact, looking at academia, scholars of humanities are generally the ones who attack the belief in physical reality, while generally, philosophers and scientists defend it. I mean, just look at to onslaught on realism, objectivism, and science by men like Foucault, Derrida, and Thomas Kuhn, all of whom worked within the humanities. Compare that to the realism-defending work done by philosophers, logicians/mathematicians, and scientists, like John Searle, Bertrand Russell, Daniel Dennet, Patricia Churchland, most physicists, as well as the Vienna Circle and the like.
 
Sa said:
You seem to have misunderstood what metaphysics actually is. In fact, your assertion that you "believe in things you can touch" is itself a metaphysical belief. Roughly, it amounts to the dominant metaphysical belief today in most university departments of philosophy/logic.

Well, she might mean that because metaphysical matters nearly always can't be adjudicated empirically, they aren't really worth investigating. However, you're of course right that this very statement implicitly rests on adoption of a particular metaphysics (or a member of a particular set thereof).

In fact, looking at academia, scholars of humanities are generally the ones who attack the belief in physical reality, while generally, philosophers and scientists defend it.

I don't think that this is a fair characterization of the position you put forward as characteristic of academics in "the humanities". Rather than attacking "physical reality" they attack belief in correspondence between commonsensical physical objects and the underlying constituents of reality. With many scientists, you see a 'realist' or 'objectivist' position put forth because this is the common-sense perspective, and many scientists needn't contend with metaphysics to produce their work. With many philosophers, this is because of the dominance of logical positivism over American departments, and there are numerous replies within the field of philosophy.

ebola
 
Well, she might mean that because metaphysical matters nearly always can't be adjudicated empirically, they aren't really worth investigating. However, you're of course right that this very statement implicitly rests on adoption of a particular metaphysics (or a member of a particular set thereof).



I don't think that this is a fair characterization of the position you put forward as characteristic of academics in "the humanities". Rather than attacking "physical reality" they attack belief in correspondence between commonsensical physical objects and the underlying constituents of reality. With many scientists, you see a 'realist' or 'objectivist' position put forth because this is the common-sense perspective, and many scientists needn't contend with metaphysics to produce their work. With many philosophers, this is because of the dominance of logical positivism over American departments, and there are numerous replies within the field of philosophy.

ebola
Ahh you have a point. Admittedly I have an anglo-american bias when it comes to philosophy, although I don't believe in a lot of the epistemologically objectivist beliefs of positivists and analytic philosophers (as I explained in my first post human knowledge is quite limited in my view). Certainly though I do like some Deleuze and Nietzsche.
 
I could go on and on about this, and I may come back to it later, but to briefly summarize my metaphysical position (if anyone gives a shit) I would say I believe in a Whiteheadian variant of Kantism. The world is composed of objects constantly interacting with each other. Our human knowledge bears not on the objects themselves, but on the interactions between these objects, and the phenomenon these interactions produce.

On what grounds do we suspect that objects with 'standing' (existence presenting particular tendencies) logically prior to these processes produce the apparent relational processes that we encounter as phenomena? More succinctly, what indicates that the noumena is organized as objects (as we construe what an object is)?

These limitations extend to human language and communication. Just as knowledge can only bear on processes, but not objects themselves, so too language only has meaning when it represents relationships. In other words, an individual word has no meaning unless it appears in the context of a sentence. For example, the word "sandwich" is meaningless and has no use unless the word itself appear in relation to other words. If we say "the sandwich is on the table", this is meaningful because it represents these concepts in a certain relationship with one another.

Right. So to be more specific, we should ask, what relates the linguistic to the non-linguistic?

ebola
 
furthermore when all consciousness ceases to exist the universe will go back into it's dual cycle until consciousness arises inbetween the points of a and b again. the question is will sense organs ever come to exist in that transition again if its random?
 
I believe everything is much simpler than we perceive It. Its all just one singular Physical substance, a fundamental particle, in a constant state of change. Without consciousness there would be no time because time is simply an internal(mental) model and log of all the change that we witness. Without consciousness nothing would stand between the events that take place between the big bang and the point where the universe cannot expand any further. With no time everything would be in a state of a or b, Beginning or end, no inbetween. In our universe's case the beginning is infinitely small and the end is critically large. Two polar opposites that cycle back and forth. Right now we're perceiving the process of a to b - expansion. Only through an observer are we able to see how everything is as opposed to how it is becoming. I believe consciousness makes this possible because perception gives us a reflection of reality and thus we see the inverse of the exterior world. The inverse of becoming is being. The inverse of the polar opposites, beginning and end, is the inbetween (the time separating them). The inverse or opposite or REFLECTION(what I believe is the specific mechanism that drives consciousness) of what everything is becoming is what it is. I suppose you could say that everything really is dualistic, one thing in two states, and with the factor of consciousness it is polyistic, one thing in multiple states. Furthermore when all consciousness ceases to exist the universe will go back into it's dual cycle until consciousness arises between the points of a and b again.
 
I have been skeptical as the years have gone by. Metaphysical things, almost by definition, can't be proven or demonstrated at will. I believe more in things that I can see, feel, touch, etc. I'm not saying that I believe for sure that the physical world is all there is, just that when you get into the metaphysical you are going more on belief than knowledge, and I don't expect others to share my beliefs and vice versa.

Just wanted to point out that using the most advanced microscopes scientists still can not see some of the particles that we "know" to exist, based on indirect observation and mathematically explaining their existence. Yet we have proven without a doubt that many of these particles do in fact exist as the building blocks of reality. There may be even smaller building blocks, such as super strings of vibrating energy - but that's besides the point. The point is that not everything that we know exists is tangible or visible. ;)



Not trying to make an argument or sway any opinions here, just wanted to point something out. That is all.
 
Consciousness is tangible and I believe it's physical. We can connect neural patterns to certain aspects of consciousness like perception and sensation. we haven't discovered how that translates into experience yet but that's only a matter of time.
 
a matter of time? what about lost information? does it all come together? and make sense at some point? and how do you guys deal with such ideas? there's so much wisdom in this thread, shit, i'm lucky to have read and been apart of this time. http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/691237-Location-of-Consciousness/page2 after reading that too and being high as fuck on mxe im so mind fucked i dont know whether to laugh or die lol. at the end of the day faith is all i have right? At the top of a roller coaster feeling i have right now and coincidence again fuck me. and again i enter the void? and around and around? what the fuck is this how people lose their shit?
 
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What do you mean by "lost information"? At the end of the day you have more than faith but it all depends on how you look at it. And LOL um idk about you but I lost my shit by taking lsd and considering The Problem of Other Minds...
 
^ I presume the reference is to the principle of conservation of information, a fundamental law of physics. I'm more familiar with the problems that the principle of conservation of momentum raises for dualism and free will, but basically, consciousness and agency don't seem to mesh very neatly with our understanding of the world.
 
^yes that is what i am referring to; it just hit me one time while on MXE (like many things apparently) what happens to lost information?

the idea came to me when i was watching the cable guy and realized many of the references the film made were contextual and you had to have grown up likely in NA during a certain period of time to grasp the full understanding of the film. I thought, well in 100 years, this film will no longer make near as much sense or be half as funny as when it was first released. There are timeless classics as well that do not suffer this issue.

Another example is the wiping out of indigenous knowledge by destroying indigenous culture, much information was passed down orally in such cultures and much research has already been lost due to either very few people being able to even communicate with such cultures or no one being able to because they were wiped out in the name of imperialism. Does that knowledge still exist? if not then it seems like a loose end to me, sure we can rediscover it i suppose but we may never actually rediscover it through science as research/funding for such things generally go towards a very westernized point of view in terms of medicine (which this whole paragraph is essentially referring to). It's a sociological issue.

my point however was that with the possibility of lost information, how can it simply be a matter of time that we discover the nature of our reality/existence/perception when we may have already known it or will come to know it and lose it again? I think we need a paradigm shift big time especially with our scientific method to really get answers.We cannot get outside ourselves to even verify a world or reality that is not entirely subjective so how can science really tell us anything? that is the failure of empiricism right there.I think that was my point anyway, i was pretty messed up at the time lol.

much of the progress on such knowledge is often overlooked or missed especially by the masses. And much of it is not scientific, it is metaphysical ie. cannot be proven empirically. I'm mostly referring to the work of contemporary philosophers or modern philosophers like Kant. That information is inaccessible as you need quite a bit of background knowledge to even begin to understand what contemporary philosophers are going on about, not to mention quantum or particle physics.

so as to metaphysical understanding of anything bringing us closer to understanding the reality beyond what we perceive (the object in itself) i don't think we are getting anywhere any time soon and perhaps there is a reason for that.

and yes the law of conservation of energy must equally apply to information but we do see information lost to the global consciousness at least. My question above really asks, does it get absorbed somewhere else? is it preserved like matter or energy? If not, that's messed up and if so, where? in the cosmic consciousness? another dimension?
 
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A metaphysical question I like to ask is a panpsychist one. Does the mind manifest reality or does reality manifest the mind? Can we truly disprove the former? If not then it's possible that my mind is the only thing that exists and all else is illusion.
 
How, then, do you make sense of the consistency of the illusion? When we dream, things don't quite add up; clocks jump around, lightswitches don't work, our location changes. Of course, each of us lies behing a veil of perception, and as always, both the ideas you posit are underdetetermined. Based on sense experience, yeah, it's possible that one mind is the only reality, though I don't thing that's the most sensible inference to draw from the evidence we have at hand. Isn't this world, if it's entirely emergent from your mind, pretty detailed? Like, how come, at any time, you could pick up Nature or Ebony and read about ideas and facts your conscious mind was never aware of? Isn't your solopsistic musing a little (well, actually, surpassingly) egocentric? At any rate, I'm actually certain, in the strictest epistemological sense, that your thought cannot be correct; even if, for the sake of argument, we suppose there might in fact only be one mind, then I know absolutely that it's my mind that exists. I'm hoping the cogito isn't controversial.

So, then, we've established absolutely that, if exactly one mind exists, then that mind is my mind. If you are to argue that, in fact, there is one mind existing, and it is yours, then it must be the case that you are arguing that we share one mind (this is the only logically consistent conclusion, unless you are to abandon your premise or refute mine). If our minds are one and the same, how come we don't know or believe or remember any of the same things?

ebola?, man, you've said some really interesting things in this thread, and at a very high level, and I very much want to respond, one day, but I just never quite feel I have the time or the clarity to do you justice in engaging with your ideas. Sorry. Can we view this as correspondence chess, and do away with the game clock, please?
 
^ The concept of the illusion stems from the subject-object relationship, in so far as that which you are projecting at the object as you construe a fictitious relationship between it and you, no matter how convincing. If our framework of this reality all comes from mind, then of course reality as we know it is an illusion because nothing we experience is separate from us. In simpler terms, if your brain is just projection its own facsimile of the word into itself, which it then experiences, then you are experiencing your own construct and not the world de facto.

And no, it's not egocentric to say so. As there is no world being observed, there is also no self observing it, because self itself is a construct. That the simulation has various ways of convincing you of its realness does not mean it is any less of a simulation.

As for one mind vs. many minds... the only difference between every human being is their ego and their story. On a fundamental level we are all identical, hence the reason why cultures and civilizations act as giant memory banks, with no one individual carrying the entire knowledge set. Ego creates duality and that is pretty much the synch of it. Not saying ego is the enemy per se, just that it's divisive by nature.
 
Not responding to anyone else on this thread, just offering 'my' views. My metaphysics are completely derived from and give deference to concepts of reality as found in certain strains of Hinduism and in Buddhism in general. This reality is just a dream world that we are currently collectively occupying as energy beings...everything that can be had at through the primary 5 senses is just part of this dream...so are the thoughts that you constantly think in your mind...we have become automatized into this dream progressively, starting from birth. This journey that you're on ends in death, but then starts again with another life/consciousness, in some form and dimension. Basically the normative Eastern conception of reincarnation, with the ultimate goal being verifiable enlightenment, and with karma dominating the entire scene. Time is certainly illusory. Time is used as an imaginary dividing marker in this dream-scape just to differentiate what's all the same. Omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, these qualities are all readily accessible, because you really can have complete mastery of this dream-scape that we refer to as the 'real world'. However, you first have to deautomatize from this reality and lose your possessiveness over what isn't yours, namely, your body/mind...these things degrade and fade away like the sand yo...

IME, the main issue with metaphysics in the West is that the system, though intellectually very thought provoking, doesn't offer solutions to how to deal with the human condition effectively. Instead of worrying about this stuff, we should just meditate - you work on you to help me in this life, I'll work on me to help you in this life, feel me? (This isn't my own bullshit, this is just a simplification of the motive in Eastern spirituality - a Buddhist monk is going to be meditating and working on himself, so shouldn't you be working on yourself too? We are all in this together after all, we're all connected, all the same...)

The interesting thing I've learned from studying about some Eastern religions is that there is a point where belief really has no play at all in all of this. It's actually not about belief...metaphysics as known and discussed in Buddhism is just pointing to what's really real, if you know what I mean...as science is developing even now, it is more and more falling in line with Buddhist thoughts and methods as they pertain to enlightenment. Check it out, there's plenty of shit out there, though the information I'm talking about is found in academic libraries with well-informed Religious Studies' departments more than on the world wide web.
 
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^ The concept of the illusion stems from the subject-object relationship, in so far as that which you are projecting at the object as you construe a fictitious relationship between it and you, no matter how convincing. If our framework of this reality all comes from mind, then of course reality as we know it is an illusion because nothing we experience is separate from us. In simpler terms, if your brain is just projection its own facsimile of the word into itself, which it then experiences, then you are experiencing your own construct and not the world de facto.

And no, it's not egocentric to say so. As there is no world being observed, there is also no self observing it, because self itself is a construct. That the simulation has various ways of convincing you of its realness does not mean it is any less of a simulation.

Possibly the most stimulating and compelling material I've read on this forum. Feel free to share your views at any time, Foreigner. You expressed what I think really well in words. This is why the Bluelight community is so awesome!
 
As a man of no faith, creed, or philosophical allegiance I don't believe meta-physics is even a necessary term for the 21st century.
At the risk of sounding like an assinine egoist, I believe that all you need in this world to create a worthwhile worldview is an education in science, medicine, and other disciplines exclusive to man.

I'm a humanist, but that has nothing to do with meta-physics other than the fact that I believe human life is worth saving and improving. More people should study particle physics, with less spending their time reading about gurus throughout the 10,000 years of human civilization.
 
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