• Existence Precedes Essence
    ↪boagie


    I... like to think... within the paradigm of an organism rather then the clockwork metaphor of the past. — boagie

    For our discussion, I can use organics in place of mechanics. In either case, I'm referring to organized movement of interlocking parts. With the former, it's organized movement of a human fabrication. With the latter, it's organized movement of a natural creation.

    With your examination thus far, you've assisted me in my arrival at the notion of non-sentient design. I will try to support this notion with some type of argument because I see its importance to my perception of nature.

    At present, I conceptualize design as an automatic process of nature that includes both logical organization and purpose. (Perhaps you can help me see whether this perceptual inclination of mine keeps me tethered to the metaphysical commitment known as theism.)

    My key stratagem is to make an argument for logical organization and purpose as inherent and fundamental properties of natural processes of creation, even in the absence of sentience. (Is the uncoupling of inherent, logical organization and purpose from sentience already an established point-of-view of some scientists and philosophers?)

    The first expression of natural creation that comes to mind is chemistry. If I can think of earth's history as including an early period pre-dating life forms, then I can argue that natural creation on earth, even in the absence of sentience, proceeded with logical organization rather than with randomness. A key particular of non-sentient logical organization figures to be the distillation of organic chemistry out of a welter of other chemistries. With its appearance, subsequent development of carbon-based life forms indicates not only inclination toward logical organization, but also toward upwardly evolving logical organization.

    What about inherent, natural purpose for chemistry?

    Is purpose inherent in upward logical organization? Well, let's consider a given level of chemical organization. I will make a proposition declaring that for a given level of chemical organization, said organization has momentum -- has a tendency, if you will -- toward one particular direction of development over and above other possible directions of development. That tendency, I declare, is toward upwardly evolving logical organization.

    I think I can make this declaration because the concept of evolution is a popular theory for explaining transition from primitive earth to modern, human-centered earth. Since the concept of evolution holds, as its foundational purpose, explanation of upwardly evolving life forms as based upon upwardly evolving logical organization, then, via reverse reasoning, I can assert an inherent tendency towards evolving life forms existing in its nascent state all the way back to the pre-life period of multi-faceted chemistries.

    Embedded within this proposition is a hugely important turning point; evolution from nascent earth to modern, human-centered earth must include a transition from rational automation to reasoning-by-choice.

    Lying at the center of this foundational transition is the emergence of sentience. This emergence of sentience marks the birth of reflexive purpose, or will (Entailed along with the birth of will is the birth of morals). Via reverse reasoning, I can assert an inherent tendency towards sentience_purpose_will existing in their nascent state all the way back to the pre-life period of multi-faceted chemistries.

    Conclusion - Darwin's theory of evolution can be characterized as a theory of upwardly evolving natural design.
  • Existence Precedes Essence
    ↪boagie


    the use of the term design is unfortunate — boagie

    There is no reason to assume intellectual intent — boagie

    things may behave in a myriad of ways appropriate to their natures, which there context dictates.. — boagie

    You present a powerful argument. I must proceed carefully, lest I mis-communicate.

    I think I'm seeing a rigorous avoidance of theism on your part. Instead of theism, I think you articulate something like a mechanical process of evolution devoid of the sentience presumably commingled with teleology.

    I think my use of design, in your view, carries the baggage of sentience presumably commingled with teleology. If this is so, then I have inadvertently maneuvered us into the familiar Intelligent Design Vs. Evolution debate. This has not been my intention. Also, I have not consciously been propounding theism.

    I wish to use design in a way that does not invoke the Intelligent Design Vs. Evolution debate.

    Let us suppose, for now, the main tenet of my plan to use design without invoking a deity declares that a mechanical process such as evolution, albeit devoid of the sentience presumably commingled with teleology, nevertheless exemplifies design.

    My reason for pressing on with a postulation of non-sentient design is my intention to cogitate upon origins, which is the hard problem of ontology.

    Let me assert that non-sentient design is exemplified in the automatic logic of a specifically-configured aggregation of potentialities.

    Let me try to unpack this horrid abstraction. Consider a chemical reaction. When hydrogen atoms mix with oxygen atoms and form water, this interaction exemplifies automatic logic. Clearly, you would refer to this chemical interaction as process and, also, as manifestation.

    Here the nature of the whole determines the environment which is itself a constitutionally complete entity. It is not this or that, it is in totality an endless process, process ------manifestation, process. Rather then regression, a closed system emploding in on itself? — boagie

    With the above you seek to maneuver out of infinite regress by employing the notion of a self-sustaining system that embodies a bounded infinity.

    I don't suppose anyone is satisfied with a pre-supposed, self-sustaining, bounded infinity that axiomatically stretches across eternity. By this reasoning, the scientist-philosopher sees no more than that seen by a child looking up at the starry sky.

    Let it be noted herein that axioms are one of the gnarly problems of set theory.

    Godel has given us a heady clue: no first order math can justify, internally, every true statement it generates. Are bounded infinities self-sufficient?
  • Existence Precedes Essence
    ↪boagie


    I am saying, manifestation is consciousness. — boagie

    If, as I believe, you're making mind & matter coequals, you're expressing, in your own words, something closely akin to the main thrust of my argument here. Plato prioritizes mind; Sartre prioritizes matter; boagie & ucarr posit them as coequals.

    I'm wondering if the coequal position is some kind of monism.

    Problem -- Even if we assert manifestation creates itself from out of nothingness, we're still positing nothingness as a pre-existing type of design. In turn, this throws us into a regressive series that looks to be infinite. Liberating the concept from this regression might require thinking beyond three dimensions, a task monstrously difficult.
  • Existence Precedes Essence
    it goes against my instincts, to think that there is not something before the manifestation of matter — boagie

    Is it correct to say you believe the material universe arises from a priori cognitive design?

    Do you, like me, understand that such a configuration assumes the existence of a sentient creator who weaves teleological creations?

    Do you think intentional creativity, even if effected via evolutionary forces, posits consciousness as an essential whose existence is axiomatic?

    Do you put stock in the following phrase? Sentience only from prior sentience
  • What is Being?
    ↪ucarr
    An existing thing, whether material or conceptual, is a road map to somewhere else.
    — ucarr

    How about, a thing is a dimensional construction which we create in order to organize and anticipate future events?     — Joshs

    Your language foregrounds ratiocination to a derived conclusion, whereas my language foregrounds an involuntary response, something like a chemical reaction.

    From your language I see a thing that is a complex cognitive construction that encompasses a mental journey via intention. From my language I see an autonomic journey as thing that participates in an ever-branching serial.

    Your statement is more at intentional exercise of reason. My statement is more at stream of consciousness, the foundation on top of which reason operates.

    As soon as we posit intentional creation of a thing, we're inhabiting the mind-space. Some argue this is epiphenomenal, thus lacking the causal power of existence.

    I see now that I want to simplify my proposition; Material things are road maps to somewhere else.
  • What is Being?
    Does the pencil as writing instrument have at least one existential attribute in common with the pencil as rocket?
    — ucarr

    Do you mean, do they both exist?

    I don’t think ‘as’ confers or conjures existence. You can use a rock as a hammer, but you don’t thereby bring into existence the-rock-as-hammer alongside the rock itself, do you?

    Or going the other way, in abstracting, you can look at a basketball as a toy, as a shape, as a souvenir, as a commercial product, and so on. Those are ways in which the basketball can be seen, but it’s the basketball being seen in this specific light, the basketball that is the thing here, and how it is viewed is not another and separate thing.

    Or is none of this what you meant by ‘existential attribute’?     — Srap Tasmaner

    Your enquiry is spotlighting issues that raise questions that impel us toward intriguing considerations of subtle distinctions between ways of existing.

    The intention of my question is to focus on whether a common, general attribute-of-existence can be distilled from a comparison of pencil-as-writing-instrument and pencil-as-imaginary-rocket. I figure the more disparate the two things compared, given that a common, general-attribute-of-existence can be distilled, the more generally we have identified general existence.

    I have long suspected as, in its prepositional mode, functions as a philosophically rich grammatical form.

    If I can make bold and conclude Heidegger, in saying, human is a being for whom being is an issue, means (along with other things) human cannot live without narratives, then I will also dare to speculate that for human, the statement x as y is a serious claim, which is to say, within the narrative, metaphor (and simile) is necessary, not optional.

    This leads me to saying that human, with its big brain, cannot live locally, which is to say x as y statements are, for human, truth statements. Furthermore, I speculate human, by force of the necessary status of x as y statements, gets drawn toward this very thread overall (and others like it), which tries to comprehensively grasp existence in its phosphorescent super-abundance.

    Let me truck out a notion now rolling around in my head for years.

    An existing thing, whether material or conceptual, is a road map to somewhere else. Perhaps the thingliness and even the hereness & whereness of things are not primary to existence. Instead, perhaps how a thing spins out, as if by centrifugal force, its observer to another destination is what is primary about existence. All this is to say that what our senses perceive of existence might be secondary to how a particular thing spins out its observer onto another en route to (whatever).

    As I recall, Aristotle said being is the means by which all beings are revealed as it remains unrevealed..

    These speculations lead me to assert, being is transcendental to all beings.

    This might mean then, regarding pencil-as-imaginary-rocket, while we don't want to cease discerning hallucinations as such when they occur, we do want to push things to the point where we find ourselves within the feathering-boundaries of identity statements as truth statements.

    What say you to approaching general existence as existential incandescense?
  • What is Being?
    Pretending a pencil is a rocket is pretending something is a rocket... — Srap Tasmaner

    Does the pencil as writing instrument have at least one existential attribute in common with the pencil as rocket?
  • What is Being?
    This pencil is not a rocket. — Srap Tasmaner

    Question -- Since your example sentence provides (1) subject (pencil), (1) complement (rocket) and (1) verb (to be), when you write

    Two predicates there and some existence. — Srap Tasmaner

    am I failing to understand your intentions? Please clarify. :smile:
  • Existence Precedes Essence
    ↪boagie

    I'm not denying Sartre's claim that existence precedes essence. Instead, I'm situating it within a larger complex than the one he assumes. Viewing our world through the lens of QM impacts deeply our conceptions of boundary lines.
  • Existence Precedes Essence
    We don't experience waves or potentiality. We experience actuality and particles. Waves are what we call that we can't experience — Gregory

    Regarding experience -- I think one functional picture of experience is that we persist in time as a kind of macro-sized distribution across said time. Although I may be stretching the definition outrageously, I dare say this distribution approximates what might be called human experience of time passing as human experience of waves. We can make closer approach to this phenomenon by noting the elusive nature of the now. Might it be a probablistic wave-distribution across the interface of past-present-future, an asymptotical manifestation of the elusive now?

    Regarding potentiality -- In my struggles to conceptualize energy, I'm presently positioned at the following definition -- energy -- the ability to move. As such, energy is potential motion. This, i.e., potentiality-as-energy, certainly we experience daily.

    Regarding actuality -- How this should be defined (as pertains to human) is what is in play here in this discussion. Traditionally, actuality is set in contrast to intentionality. In other words, the question is whether what we see before us in fact conforms to the idea conceived in our heads.

    Now, the elaborate intentionality of the human mind, vis-a-vis material human is the very relationship about which, in my opinion, QM has something important to say. I think QM allows us to speculate about humans being, like wave-particle duals, non-local (see human experience of passing time above).

    Digression -- Could it be that human non-locality contains a clue about the way humans might time-travel? I'm speculating about a probability dislocation in time that moves us around temporally. Such travel would, however, be dangerous, as liquefaction of time might prove hopelessly confusing. Moreover, the time traveler, in the mode of an oscillating blur, might prove hard to relate to. And still more moreover, contact with time traveler might throw another person into a non-linear time progression, also hopelessly confusing. Dissolving the rigidity of here-and-nowness is not something to undertake lightly.

    Regarding particles -- recently I resolved for myself the following, the signature of a material object is its mass. Now, as I'm speculating, mass is the everyday experience of particle-wave duality. I say this because of the following question. Where, in everyday reality, is the mass of a physical thing located? It's in the transition of a material object into and out of a state of rest. If true, then particles, although they seem to be discrete, are really, in actuality, no more rigid than waves.
  • Existence Precedes Essence
    Are you also telling me the PNC is a relic of the pre-QM past?
    I'm only pointing out that your OP commits a performative contradiction rendering its conclusion nonsensical. I provided a link in my previous post which explains that the superposition principle predates QM (& "Schrödinger's Cat" gendankenexperiment) by nearly two centuries.     — 180 Proof

    Is my OP (Operating Premise?) nonsensical within the context of Three-valued logic?

    The equations of e.g. linear algebra and functional analysis used for describing phenomena in superposition are founded on symbolic logic with axioms such as the LNC (i.e. bivalence) and therefore any claim that 'symbolic logic is refuted or invalidated by the very mathematical formalisms which are founded on symbolic logic' refutes itself with a performative contradiction (i.e. you saw-off the branch on which you're sitting). — 180 Proof

    Perhaps you've done me a service by enlightening some of my ignorance & error or, on the contrary, by validating my validity by spotlighting the performative self-refutation of my claim.

    After all, my point, as you know, is that one particle being in two places at once is performative self-refutation. Nonetheless, the particle occupies two places at once i.e., "I'm here_I'm not here." "I'm there_I'm not there." Henceforth, it's smooth sailing to "I'm sitting suspended on this branch I just sawed through."

    I'm supposing that the quantum computing code writers (Google employees?) are making bank with performative self-refutations that threaten to slice through pre-QM computing encryption standards.

    I provided a link in my previous post which explains that the superposition principle predates QM (& "Schrödinger's Cat" gendankenexperiment) by nearly two centuries. — 180 Proof

    Perhaps the heart of our kerfuffle is the age of your superposition data. My perusal of the link suggests (to my math ignorance) a discrete parsing of bi-valence, with simple additive and subtractive effects. These are the very things QM perplexes.

    You have helped me with the info re: Three-valued logic and, for that, I thank you.

    P.S. I'm wondering what our jurists do when a defense lawyer takes recourse to Three-valued logic, considering our system of jurisprudence and its reliance upon self-contradiction as proof of invalidity.
  • Existence Precedes Essence
    ↪180 Proof


    Are you telling me logicians have no conceptual bone to pick with paradoxicality or, if you prefer, undecidability?* Are you also telling me the PNC is a relic of the pre-QM past?

    *By the way, I seems to me, at least at first glance, these terms are NOT bi-valence but, rather, the conflation of bivalence.

    P.S. - My math is terrible so, demolish away.
  • Existence Precedes Essence
    Your comments here are packed with astute observations.

    Minds digitize an analog world to create the meat of thought. Objects of the mind are the result. I believe that the world is process, relationships, or information, not physical. — Harry Hindu

    I'm drawn to the notion that physics boils down to manipulated information, however, our so-called physical world, real or not, constantly demands attention. Ask any highway patrol-person, s/he'll tell you horror stories about the costs of inattention within our sham-physical world.

    The idea that physical objects exist is the result of this digitization of the world into discrete forms in space-time. — Harry Hindu

    Since you're invested in an information-based reality, it surprises me to learn you think binary cogitation leads to discrete forms in space-time. As we the people of the earth descend ever more deeply into virtual reality, the hard boundaries of material objects continue to melt away. Don't they?

    Turning your thoughts back on themselves in like the camera looking back at the monitor it is connected to. It creates a feedback loop - an infinite corridor - one akin to the void one peers into when running away with the thought of thinking about one's thoughts. — Harry Hindu

    Wait a minute! You, Harry Hindu, a person who weighs in on a thread concerning the essence of human, make an ingenious metaphor mocking human reflections within the mirrors of thought?! This, after asserting an information-based reality? Your metaphor suggests a position of anti-reflection.

    Well now, my friend, you won't likely in future convince me you're not intimate with some of the paradoxes of the human condition. Look at yourself.
  • Existence Precedes Essence
    ↪Harry Hindu
    Well, for starters, how about, wherever there’s being, there’s sentience, and vice-versa?
    — ucarr
    How do you know this?     — Harry Hindu

    This is the gist of my argument. Boiled down to its core -- the lotus blossom in my garden -- it asserts that perception and its referent (an event that shapes the perception) are super-positioned into a seamless and undecidable duality. For my source, I cite one of the cornerstones of QM Physics -- the quantum-mechanical property of being regardable as both a wave and a particle.

    Each human enters the world as an instant immortal , having always existed, and being always to exist. This is the innate POV of all sentience.
    — ucarr
    This makes no sense. If a human enters the world, then the world preceded the human entering it, and didn't always exist unless there is somewhere else other than the world from which they came that does always exist. Sounds like the typical philosophical misuse of words in an effort to awe others with their world salad.     — Harry Hindu

    Please oblige me by sharing your first-hand account of your parents' courtship and conception of you. Next, please share your first-hand account of your death and burial. Mind you, you first account will be a retelling of what you witnessed, first-hand, before you were born. Your second account will be a retelling of what you witnessed, first-hand, after you died.

    Sentience is the primary essence of the material universe, as consciousness is the greatest of all creations. It is an essence adorned with laurel.
    — ucarr
    Sentience is a view and a view is simply an arrangement of information - of information about states of the world relative to the state of your body. In other words, sentience is simply an arrangement of relative essences, like the temperature of your body relative to the temperature of the air around you. When we speak of existence, we're really talking about the existence of essences. If not, then what else could you be referring to when you use the word, "existence"?     — Harry Hindu

    This is the hard one. You seem to be saying sentience is simply a point-of-view (hereafter, POV) on various arrangements of sensory and conceptual data. Let us now take our hats off to David Chalmers for his short paper on 
    The Hard Problem
    Yeah. Science examines arrangements of data via individual scientists conducting said investigations. World libraries are overflowing with such data. You and I are not science. We might be scientists, but we aren't science. You and I never experience neutral collections of data because there's something that it's like to be Harry, or to be Uriah that shapes our view of collections of data into a personal experience of said collections. There are no generic human individuals. It is this personal POV that shapes data ingestion into a self perceiving it. The personal, perceiving self, so far, has been left out of scientific descriptions of sentience. When you get personal, which is the condition of every iteration of real-world sentience, you're now talking about the POV on the POV.

    My examination of Sartre's Existentialism (Existence Precedes Essence) herein is limited to the structural. First things first. I want to super-position Sartre's Existentialism & Plato's Theory of Forms because my gut tells me scientific examination of the POV on the POV requires a whangdoodle game-changer, namely, QM's embrace of paradoxicality.

    By the way, you're right regarding my claim for the innate immortality of sentience when you say, This makes no sense.. It makes no sense, that is, as long as you keep your mind bound to that foundational, scientific article of faith: The Principle of Non-Contradiction. If you'll start to allow yourself to believe that (y)our sentience, by its nature, is a perplexed duality, you might one day rejoice in the paradoxicality of that sublime, bounded infinity, your life.
  • Existence Precedes Essence
    ↪Xtrix
    Yeah. It should be understood that Locke's Tabula Rasa comes with a limitations and conditions clause.
  • Existence Precedes Essence
    Back in 1945, when Sartre uttered his existentialist credo, in my opinion he was tapping into QM.
    — ucarr
    And on what was - is - your opinion based? More opinion? Or something - anything - of any substance?     — tim wood

    I like to believe my opinion is based upon some observed phenomena established by repeated experimental observations performed by various researchers within the QM community.

    Here's the key phenomenon, observed and examined repeatedly throughout the 20th century and ongoing: superposition. My basic conception is that Sartre, with his Existentialism, has argued for the matching bookend to Plato's (Socrates) Theory of Forms. The trick involved is that there's no necessary debate over one or the other being right, as suggested by the Principle of Non-Contradiction, as QM has (with conditions) toppled that principle.

    By asserting super-position into my analysis, I'm declaring that Plato (Socrates) and Sartre are both correct in their observations, with Niels Bohr, et al putting a bow onto the matched set via QM.
  • The Special Problem of Ontology
    Hello T Clark,
    Big thank-you for your energetic & detailed response.
    I am always skeptical of mixing quantum mechanics, science, with metaphysics. To me it looks like the similarities are metaphorical rather than literal. That's why I disliked "The Tao of Physics." Being would be unapproachable even if reality were classical.
    Yeah. My approach to science (unfortunately) is through the lens of philosophy, whereas, it should be the other way around. When it comes to QM, I'm strictly a lay person & a novice. A legitimate science person can probably hammer my QM interpretations. Even so, without them, I haven't got a leg to stand on. Also, I like the scientific project in general because it impels practitioners to go chasing after difficult questions most people trash.

    Hello to TheMadFool (great user name),
    Your profile nails me. Yes. When it comes to cognition, high-speed, low-res feedback looping is my thing. I'm an intuitive. When I start getting too impulsive, I listen to music, which calms me.

    Hello to Hermeticus,
    The only option for us is subjective existence. There may or may not be an objective reality - but we may never know the details because we're bound to subjectivity.

    This expresses for me, in a nutshell, the reasons for my (deepening) dalliance with existentialism.

    I might be wrong in all my judgments, but nonetheless I'm treating them as necessary fictions that guide me forward.

    I like to think Bob Mitchum, with many more degrees of cool, might say something like this to Jane Greer.

    To My Fellow Travelers,
    Being a glutton for attention, I want to lavish thanks upon you for your time & attention to my ruminations.
  • What is Being?
    Shout out to Xtrix for starting this expansive thread. Your detailed consideration of being gives me much to think about in the coming days.

    Looks like I'll be paying additional visits to that neologizing esoteric, the ever fearsome Heidegger.
  • What is Being?
    1. What is the difference between a sweet, juicy, red apple and a sweet, juicy red apple that exists? The difference between a red apple and a green apple, or a sweet apple and a sour apple, is pretty clear. But explaining clearly what is added to an apple by existing...?

    Great question, Banno. My tentative response has me taking recourse to that rascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I'm supposing that when we claim something exists, we're withdrawing credit from the Bank of The Social Contract. Dubious though they be, socially sanctioned claims of an independent, objectively existing reality are needed (by most of us) in order to secure a functional society. Consensus about what's really "out there" is a necessary (if fictional) binding agent for social organization and culture
  • Abstractionism Examined
    Some additional thoughts,

    To abstract and to generalize are closely related. To abstract means to take the general form of something out of its local context wherein it's a specific thing with distinguishing features that make it concrete. In its general form, the abstracted thing fits into a multitude of generally similar contexts.

    Perhaps the most accurate way to distinguish to abstract from to generalize is to declare that the first action is a cause whereas the second action is an effect.

    Perhaps here, within this examination, it's better to oppose to abstract with to multiply. With multiplication you can talk about taking a concrete thing and increasing its numbers without abstracting it from its concrete, distinguishing features. Even here, however, to multiply the numbers of a thing is to both abstract and generalize a concrete thing into generic members of a set.
  • Abstractionism Examined
    Hello T Clark,

    Thanks for the welcome to TPF and, also, thanks for taking the time to respond to my post.

    I sense that your distinction between abstraction and generalization is sound, and perhaps you can elaborate on their differences a bit more.

    Right now I'm wondering if perhaps there's some overlapping between the two concepts. My current thinking is that if one opaque bottle tests good, then the chemist makes an induction to the belief all opaque bottles shall test good. This is the generalization part.

    Believing he's made a sound induction, the chemist feels ready to advance to the robust evaluation you write about and then, lastly, advise the producer to roll out a batch of product in opaque bottles. It is in the last part involving the advice where abstractionism comes in as it is a mental picture that guides the chemist in the absence of hands-on empirical testing at the full volume of commercial production.
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