So we cannot be aware of awareness.... at least insofar that awareness is thought?

Is there a non-thought awareness of awareness? — Moliere

I think (awareness is always aware of being aware).

I have basically stolen the notion from J. Krishnamurti, that thought is nothing much to do with awareness. If awareness is considered as 'presence' to the world, it surely becomes clear that thought is secondary, subsequent, and thus always operating on the past as memory. The awareness that can be put into thought and thought about is not awareness but thought.

I want to, or you want me to, talk about life— but talk is dead; thought is mechanical. And this is the hardest lesson for western philosophy and western culture by which I mean to include both Christianity and science (the twins). The heart of things cannot be touched by thought, cannot be understood by thought, and all that AI does is to expose how dead and mechanical we have become, that we mistake our lives for that endless talk that clouds it.

The space between heaven and Earth is like a bellows.
The shape changes but not the form;
The more it moves, the more it yields.
More words count less.
Hold fast to the centre. — Tao Te Ching: 5

How does one hold fast to that which always moves and yields? Hush. Do not say it, find out.

I'd like to join in the mutual appreciations; I've got a deal of reading up to do, and things to think about, and thanks for that. I would have been a bit more forthcoming maybe, but I had a seizure on Boxing day and have been in hospital for tests and scans and then on anti fitting drugs and painkillers for a severe backache.
So I can say from immediate experience that I am not my brain, because my brain is going its own way and doing stuff that I definitely do not approve of, and my body likewise. But I am reading along more or less, and I'll just make a vague comment, somewhat related to this:

Would you say that human experience is a thing-in-itself?
— Moliere

No, I would not. It's in-itself, sure, but it's not a thing in the technical sense. Human experience is not a res. Human experience is more like cogitans in that sense. I would say: there is a human (a res) that has human experiences (cogitans). In other words, we shouldn't think that the cogitans is purely "mental" or "rational", since it is also empirical. — Arcane Sandwich

I find the term 'experience' too ambiguous for the job it has to do here, so I will substitute—

Would you say that human awareness is a thing-in-itself?

And my answer is an emphatic 'yes'. It is the thing in itself; the noumenon into which all phenomena fall. Awareness is like the black hole at the centre of the galaxy, it is the unexperienced source and destination of all experience. Thought cannot touch it, cannot grasp it cannot know it. The confusion of the mechanical process of thought with the silence that is aware of thought and everything else, Is I suspect, the heart of most philosophical difficulties.

So personal identity, then, is the confabulation thought creates in the attempt to stabilise itself as the narrative thread on which identity is built. In the superficial physical world, there are the facts of name, age, medical history, posting history, etc, etc, that is substantially true of a physical body and brain, but that is all merely phenomenal; of the thing in itself, of that which I am and you are, nothing whatsoever can be said.

So, does a stone have an identity? Mu!

Yeah. It's interesting that there is great scepticism of quantum effects in biology, and yet getting them into our phones is a realistic goal.

Hook me up. I want one implanted in my brain.
I wonder if that's how those monarch butterflies find that spot in Mexico. — Metaphysician Undercover

Microtubules. Of course.

A stone has an identity — Arcane Sandwich

It is what it is. If that is all you mean, we have no disagreement. But to say it has something seems to hint at more... ?

Is it something like "Dream big, you can be whatever it is that you want to be"? Or is it instead something like "Reality Itself bends to our mere will, so that with a mere though you can instantly become a different creature, such that you have gills simply because you think so, and you can actually breathe underwater because you think you can". — Arcane Sandwich

Well my ontology is that identity is a thought process and nothing else. To be hard-nosed for a minute, no fish ever thinks it is a fish, it does not identify itself at all, and therefore has no identity. Humans identify stuff including themselves and each other. Reality doesn't bend, it flows. Dreams remain dreams unless they are realised, just as as an architect's plans are fantasies until and unless a builder makes them a reality. Now we can argue about whether an architect whose plans are never built is a "real" architect or not, but identities as fantasies certainly have potential.

I can think that I am a fish. That doesn't mean that I am a fish. — Arcane Sandwich

Well that is a question of identity politics. Some people like to lay down the law about what are legitimate identities, but the recognised identities do seem to change over time and between cultures to an extent at least. Who knows if gill reassignment will or won't become an option?

Humans and hurricanes have something in common: both of them are event-based objects, in Carmichael's (2015) sense of the term. — Arcane Sandwich

Or to put it another way, they are both temporary, mutable, evolving objects. I'm all for a bit of common sense now and then. And depending on the time-scale, mountains continents and pretty much every object is temporary, mutable and evolving.

∃x(Cxm ∧ Bxt) - There exist an x, such that x was a caterpillar on Monday, and it is a butterfly on Tuesday. You just need to treat Monday and Tuesday as individual constants, and "being a caterpillar" and "being a butterfly" as two-place predicates that relate an individual to a moment in time. — Arcane Sandwich

Of course, one can account for these things, but in general, logic is mainly conducted in the present eternal tense, as it has been in this thread, and that is the practice I am criticising

I am unenlightened, but tomorrow I will be enlightened. No problem, but will anyone want to say that unenlightened is enlightened, even if they are willing to say tomorrow that enlightened was unenlightened. It can be made to work, but it isn't without difficulties.

Ok, this isn't a backroad, it's the cutting edge of the superhighway to the future. This is highly recommended as a great explanation of theoretical and practical quantum physics and if you don't think you learn anything from watching it, I will personally give you your time back.

I was trying to clarify rather than equivocate, but obviously you seem to be unenlightened on the semantics. — Corvus

Oh ha ha! You made a little joke about my handle! No one ever did that before; I should have thought about that when I chose the label.

Descartes famously said Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. — Arcane Sandwich

I think therefore I am whatever I think. I am the thought of myself. I am the result of the distinction I make between myself and the world. But this is obviously wrong. I am, therefore, whatever I mistake myself for.

But in being someone, I am something. I am something in the following sense:

∃x(x=a) - There exists an x, such that x is identical to Arcane Sandwich. — Arcane Sandwich

Will you say, "There exists an x, such that x is identical to a named hurricane."? We talk about them as objects for convenience, but we do not draw the boundaries or wonder where they go when they dissipate. The problem with formal logic is that it cannot deal with time.
Yesterday, there existed an x, such that was identical to unenlightened.
Today, there exists a y, such that y is now identical to unenlightened, but somewhat changed from x.
Tomorrow, who knows, there may exist a z such that z is then identical to the mortal remains of unenlightened, but is radically different from x and y in being lifeless. Or maybe z will be enlightened. :joke:

We can't record it really, and the defense of poetics falls to the same narcissism as the defense of science.

Yeah? Or naw? — Moliere

Yeah.
"The record that can be recorded is not the continuing record."
"Work is done and then forgotten; therefore it lasts forever."
ETC.

What would a non-narcissistic philosophy look like, in your opinion? — Moliere

Lao Tzu.

↪Arcane Sandwich unenlightened -- looks like we've come to a similar path you've described: that identity serves as a kind of "center" for philosophy at large. — Moliere

Hmm. "Philosopher" is an identity that identifies itself as central. But then that goes for any old narcissist too. But that's ok with me, because I am happy to say that I am the real Donald Trump, or a 17thC French playwright, or a harvest mouse. I am any centre anywhere.

Likewise, the world exists with no colour changes, whether you wore brown sunglasses or not. — Corvus

Again your expression equivocates; The world does not have any absolute colour independently of the visual apparatus and the ambient light. When I am a bee, I can see ultraviolet, by starlight I can see only monochrome. Colour is not a term of physics, but of vision. Looking through a microscope does not change the world, but it changes what can be seen; colour is a feature of what can be seen and it changes.

Endo-symbiosis. Feel the love.

Some cases of sensory disorder of few folks shouldn't change how the the external world objects look and smell in general. Should they? Of course, if you wear brown sunglasses, and look into the world, it will look brown. But you wouldn't say, now the whole world is brown, would you? — Corvus

No, I would say the whole world looks brown, not the whole world is brown. You are equivocating here how things look and how things are, which is exactly what the language is distinguishing. :yikes:

We don't say my experience looks red, or my nose smells nice. — Corvus

And yet some of us are colourblind, and some have lost their sense of smell and we do not blame the rose. Normal people talk about the world directly, and not about their experiences at all. One often talks about experience as a non-philosopher when one begins to doubt one's senses. "A common symptom of covid is the experience of a smell of burning." This does not mean that spontaneous combustion tends to occur around covid sufferers.

I already argued for beauty and ugliness to be an intrinsic feature of experience in OP so they are objective (person-independent). What is left are like and dislike that are subjective so person-dependent and therefore extrinsic. — MoK

The redness of the rose belongs to the rose, not to me or my experience.
— Corvus
No, the redness of the rose is constructed by your brain. The flower does not have any particular color at all so it is just the feature of your experience. — MoK

The aromatic hydrocarbons belong to the rose, but the smell belongs to the nose. The reflective and absorbent signature belongs to the petals, but the redness is in the eye of the beholder.

But here, I think you have gone astray right at the beginning by talking about "experience". Surely experience is always at least mediated by senses, sensitivities and sensibilities?

I think that attractiveness is the extrinsic feature of the experience whereas handsomeness is the intrinsic one. — MoK

Well yes, I assumed that was what you wanted to say. But I was hoping you'd have some argument or rationale for saying it.

What sets aesthetic experiences apart from other experiences is not intrinsic and extrinsic features but the fact that some experiences are attractive (or deterrent) for their own sake regardless of whether it serves other interests. — jkop

Yes, I've heard that before in latin — "De gustibus non est disputandum" But that is rather wider than is being suggested here, and still both too vague and too unreasoned to be very helpful.

I'm tempted to suggest that the distinction being groped for here is between subjective and objective, such that matters of taste are to do with the subject, whereas matters of fact are features of the object. But therein lies a whole can of worms if not a pit of vipers.

That is an excellent question! I think like and dislike for example are extrinsic features of our experience. Let me give you an example: A man could be handsome but he would not be sexually attractive to you since you are straight. Does that make sense to you? I am open to discuss this. — MoK

Great example! I feel the same way about goats. But is it that I am blind to the sexual attractiveness of goats, whereas other goats can appreciate the intrinsic attractiveness, or is it that attractiveness is in some essential way relative to the observer, where handsomeness is not? How can one tell the difference?

As distinguished from extrinsic features of our experience? What would they be?

It seems to me that if the argument works for beauty and ugliness, then it works for any other features of experience - veridical and illusory, or married and unmarried, for examples. Which would be inconvenient, if the intention is to say something about aesthetics that distinguishes it from science or mundanity.

I see this discussion as highlighting Trump the person. I see Trump as symptomatic of the control of our political system by large corporations. — alleybear

That's about right. Government reduced to entertainment "The Economy" reduced to "The Oligarchs".

Thought rather tends to confuse itself with awareness; but one can be aware without any movement of thought, and one can think without much awareness too.

Of course, if you haven't been turned on, you wouldn't know, so no blame:

In both a racially diverse community-based study and a large nationally representative study, we observed that early life exposure to structural sexism negatively impacts late-life memory trajectories. For women, greater exposure to structural sexism was associated with faster rates of memory decline. The difference in the rate of memory decline between being born in the state with the highest structural sexism versus the state with the lowest structural sexism was equivalent to 9.1 to 9.6 years of cognitive aging. These findings are consistent with previous studies showing that unequal access to sociopolitical and economic resources has a detrimental impact on women's health outcomes.5, 6, 9, 10 This work adds to the literature by showing that these macro-level structural inequalities also influence late-life cognitive health outcomes.

Taking a lifecourse perspective, exposure to high levels of structural sexism in early life may have direct biological consequences that increase a woman's risk for cognitive decline later in life.24 This risk may remain despite exposure to lower levels of structural sexism throughout the rest of the lifecourse. It is also possible that the downstream consequences of structural sexism trigger a trajectory of social exposures (e.g., educational and occupational opportunities, income, etc.,) that alter risk for cognitive decline at later life stages.11 Future studies should test these specific pathways to identify the distinct contributions of policy exposures across the life course.

Structural sexism also had cognitive health consequences for men in both studies. While estimates for men were not significantly different from zero, associations between structural sexism and baseline memory performance were similar among men and women. These findings suggest a potential pattern of universal harm associated with exposure to structural sexism.5 Cross-national studies have demonstrated that gender equity is associated with greater economic growth, poverty reduction, and health improvements at the population level.

https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.14410

Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Hesse at 12, wow. — Rob J Kennedy

Yeah, not normal I know. I was brought up with 4 older sisters and was reading fluently by 3. No telly in the house, but plenty of books, and I devoured them by the dozens (without understanding everything obviously). The kids around me at school were struggling with Enid Blyton. :groan: So I was a bit of a loner...

Philosophy has taught me more about life than anything I have studied, or experienced.
— Rob J Kennedy

That's an amazing thing to hear, and I say that as a professional philosopher. I can't believe that someone actually gets something that useful out of philosophy. — Arcane Sandwich

That surprised me too; but I'd guess you were learning all the time, even if you weren't being well educated, about people and life, so that you could recognise those principles as valuable.

↪unenlightened Do you recall the first time you encountered philosophy and what was it? — Rob J Kennedy

A hard question. When I was 12 ish, I was reading Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Hesse, and considering what I should do with my life. I put it in a juvenile poem as a choice between love and non-attachment. But I had no idea at the time that any of this had any relation to 'philosophy'; rather, it was an exploration forced on me by the awareness of the complete falseness and hypocrisy of the moral and social system of the all male boarding school I found myself condemned to.

So at least for me, I began to ask deep questions because of the inadequate answers that society was providing. But I didn't call that philosophical until I had been at university studying philosophy and psychology for a couple of years more or less by accident. :grin:

I often wonder, what makes a person interested in philosophy? What is it about them that draws them to read, study and discuss philosophy? — Rob J Kennedy

I generally like to think that it is philosophy that makes me interested in it, but there is no necessity that all philosophers have the same motivation. And there are grades of horseshit n'all. But if I had to speculate and generalise, I would invite philosophers to look for some circumstance that caused them to question their own identity; identity is the origin of world view, and it is when one cannot quite make sense of one's world view that one falls unwilling into philosophy. And because identity is entirely fabricated, there is no escape.

More for playing than for listening to; or you may dance.

Source: other people. Believe everything they say. — NOS4A2

You are an other person, and you are completely incredible.

Speaking of pants, and kicks... Source: The guy's parents, his uncle, his manifesto...

This doesn't belong here; It's political analysis. So start a new thread with it.

Try and ignore the bizarre subtitling.

I'll say some rather obvious things, that haven't been plainly said thus far.

War requires a broad consensus on both sides to the identity of the parties. Everyone, or at least most people involved, have to know which side they are on and who is the enemy. Without such agreement the best that can be managed is a free-for-all brawl.

In order for the separation of identities to occur, or another way of describing such a separation, the term 'polarisation' can be employed. The 'normal', ie 'stable' situation for any society is that folk's identities are not aligned, and as long as there is no great alignment conflict will tend to be internalised within the individuals, and social relations will be largely peaceful.

A classic case of polarisation leading to open conflict was the troubles in N. Ireland. The society became polarised such that religion, class, political party, political party, exact location of home, all became aligned, such that to know one vector was to be able to predict all the others with almost complete certainty. It is this alignment that allows the externalisation of the conflict and the absolute identification that leads to violence.

My source? You’re talking to him. I prefer my own conclusions to the conclusions of others, especially authorities. If I’m wrong I’m wrong, but if you’re wrong it’s because you’re credulous. — NOS4A2

You're my source too, but unlike you, I check my sources bit and confront them with contradictory sources. And when their response is to behave like big floppy dick and admit that they just spout whatever they like to imagine to be the case, I draw the appropriate conclusion.

And your impeccable, fair-minded, and honest sources are?

One cannot blame Trump because some of his followers are violently inclined and irrational; oh wait, actually one can and should, because that is exactly what his message advocates and encourages. It is not remotely surprising that the violence ends up turned against him, and it has already happened more than once. But yeah the FBI are making up these stories because deep state lizard pedophiles are trying to control our brains.

“The subject held no animosity towards the president-elect,” ..
... he had cast his vote for Trump in November's election.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/tesla-cybertruck-driver-matthew-livelsberger-had-no-animosity-towards-trump-suffered-from-ptsd-fbi/articleshow/116933571.cms

Another broken anti-Trumper self-immolating upon his beliefs in an act of terrorism. — NOS4A2

Yeah, but no, but. Just edit out that "anti-".

Reasonable Insanity.

Latest progress and prognosis on AI and robotics. above my pay grade of course, but I like to keep my ignorance up to date.