Are you a being? — tim wood

We are designated 'human beings'. It has always seemed important, to me, that we are called 'beings' - I think that word, which is so everyday and taken-for-granted, actually has great significance. I mean, what are designated 'beings'? Presumably, if you're a naturalist, only intelligent animals, including h. sapiens., although this fact doesn't cast much light on the question of the meaning of 'being'.

Anyway, I think your OP is asking an interesting question and one that I would respond to by initially comparing ancient Greek and Indian philosophy. As is well-known, the ancient Greek philosophers laid the groundwork for what was to become science (although in those times, there wasn't really a distinction between science and philosophy). But certainly such figures as Archimedes, Animaxander, Thales, Pythagoras, and Aristotle were precursors of what would become known later as 'natural scientists', who were motivated to ask very broad questions about 'how things can be the way they are' - what are the governing principles of motion and such questions, which were to lay the groundwork for what was to become physics, chemistry, and so on. After all, all of the subjects with the suffix -logy, were descended from the Greek exploration of the 'logos' of various subject matter domains.

Contrast that with ancient Indian thought, which, whilst it had a naturalistic or scientific side, was mainly concerned with existential questions - the Buddha asking, for instance, 'what is the cause of suffering?' Within this domain, the raw data are not objective, but experiential - you're asking questions about the nature of experience, not what drives changes in nature. (Of course, questions of the meaning of being are also represented in the Greek tradition, especially in the Platonic dialogues. But overall I think it's fair to say that the Greeks were more naturalistically oriented than was India.)

Or consider the Hebrew prophetic tradition, which is different again, being mainly concerned with the relation of God and mankind.

It's often difficult to separate all of these strands of thought, as they have intermingled and given rise to many kinds of hybrid traditions (such as the way in which Greek philosophical thought became incorporated into Christian theology or more recently, by the way that Eastern philosophical perspectives are being incorporated by physics.)

But, having made that basic distinction, I think that the 'way things work' questions are very much the domain of science and engineering (especially now in a culture that is so utterly shaped by technology and science.) So I think those who are engaged in those fields don't have much interest in or sympathy for questions about 'the meaning of being'. They're practical types, that like to get things done, make progress, solve practical problems; they're likely to think of philosophy as 'navel-gazing'.

Whereas the 'what does life mean?' types of question are more the domain of philosophy, religion, art, drama and literature. How these two broad cultural attitudes fit together, or whether they complement or compete, is the subject of a vast amount of commentary and literature (one notable example being C P Snow's essay on The Two Cultures.) And that is indeed a major cultural dynamic which I think you're reflecting.

It seems fair - and seems to mend usage - to allow being to refer to that which works. The engine works, but in its essence of being an engine, it seems unchanged. — tim wood

I think here you're conflating these two 'domains of discourse' in a not very satisfactory way by using this analogy. The analogy of mechanism is very characteristic of modern science (as distinct from post-modernism). In any case, engines are manufactured objects which are designed by humans to execute a function. Beings are of a different ontological order - and the very term 'onto-' is derived from 'being'. Nowadays the whole distinction between machines and beings has been blurred by the invention of computers, but in my mind this reflects a deficient understanding of the nature of being. I think we have lost sight of the ontological significance of 'being'.

To understand the question of 'the meaning of being' is indeed a deep philosophical, not a scientific or technological, question. In recent philosophy, this question has been debated most meaningfully by Heidegger and the hermeneutic tradition in Continental philosophy. It goes right back to the origin of philosophy itself, but I think it is much more on the existential, rather than the naturalist, side of the ledger.

Can this be right?

I don't think of it quite the same way you have presented it. Thinking about this problem in terms of reality which you ended up at, the following is my rough understanding. You stated:

The present experience is fairly called a phenomenon.

to my mind the phenomenological is reality. It is the only thing we can say we really know (and while we can be wrong about what it entails, we cannot be wrong about what we actually experience), the world literally presents itself to us. Science explains why reality appears to us the way it does, but that explanation is dependent on what was experienced or observed.

Being does not reside behind us, it is in front of us, hidden in plain sight, in our experience of reality, which is always becoming. What we abstract and differentiate from experience is the commonality, consistency and coherence in what we observe from things like trains, a commonality that extends everywhere from high speed Maglevs to the steam locomotive. The only reality attributable to an 'essence' as such is its virtual existence, which makes the phenomenal understandable, and which enables it to be communicated.

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[reply="tim wood;169176"

Then isn't spirit real? Reality blushes at this, and the runs away from it. What am I to make of it?

Spirit is a virtually real construction, in the same way logic, and mathematics are virtually objectively real.

Being is dynamism or chance constrained. Steady existence is what you get once a process has gone to an equilibrium balance and now simply persists in spite of any microscopic shifting about.

In asking, "Are you a being," however, my question was really, is your being-ness defined - or realized - in something static or something dynamic. I could as well have asked a Heracletian question, "What is a river?" (that you cannot step into twice). — tim wood

Well, Buddhists, as is well known, deny that there is anything static or changeless. And Heraclitus is often compared to Buddhism and to Lao Tzu; the case has been made that they all anticipate what is come to be known as 'process philosophy' and there's some truth in that. Nevertheless, Buddhists also recognise that there is a 'beyond' which transcends all the vicissitudes of worldly life.

The easy answer is science. I can say scientific things about them. The engines works - the rock just "rocks" - either way an answer in terms of function, dynamism, potential, change: continual becoming always new, effervescent. — tim wood

But this is also a deceptive answer, because science deals only with objects, with what can be measured, what can be known objectively. Philosophy has a broader scope than that, because it asks the kinds of questions you're now asking, about the nature of knowledge itself, or meaning itself. To seek scientific responses to philosophical quandaries is to fall into the scientism trap. But beings are not objects, but also subjects of experience, and the 'nature of being' is therefore not necessarily an objectively-answerable question.

There are very many schools of thought which try to address the question of the nature of being, but the most common approach nowadays is to actually not even ask the question, or to pretend it's not even a real question (as per the 'What is Scientism' thread; see this essay, in particular the passage under the heading 'The Spirituality of Secularity'.)

The reason it's deceptive is because our idea of what is normal or what is real, is itself deeply culturally conditioned, masquerading as 'objective third-person knowledge', the kind of thing that 'everyone knows'. Being philosophical, is being critical of that.

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I wonder if [Buddhists] have the concept of a moment, the slice of the temporal, "worldy" world small enough to admit of no change within it. — tim wood

Some Buddhist schools taught that the underlying nature of existence is actually a succession of minute instants which arise and pass away in rapid succession, each instant giving rise to (= conditioning) the next. One of the things that the Buddha is said to know is the precise duration of those moments.

(This is sometimes referred to as a form of 'atomism' with the caveat that the 'atoms' in this case are of momentary duration - referred to, confusingly, as 'dharmas' - which are not the imperishable particles of atomism, which have always been rejected by Buddhism as a matter of principle. This kind of analysis was associated with an early school called the Sarvastivada, but in any case, later developments in Buddhism tended to undercut this approach although I do know that it is still taught mentioned at the popular 10-day Insight Meditation retreats founded by Goenka).

Spirit is a virtually real construction, in the same way logic, and mathematics are virtually objectively real"? — tim wood

I wouldn't concur with that. I think of 'spirit' as a gloss on 'the unconditioned' - that which escapes all conceptual analysis.

Here's a quote:

There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned.

— Ud 8.3

Now, it has been suggested that this passage in the Buddhist texts can be compared to the 'wisdom uncreate' of the theistic traditions; however Buddhists will generally object to that interpretation, as they scrupulously differentiate themselves from theistic religions. Be that as it may, in all the traditional philosophies, there is something like 'the unconditioned' or 'the uncreated'. I suppose in the context of Western philosophy it is rather more like the mystical notion of 'Godhead':

Godhead is the divinity or substance (ousia) of God, the substantial impersonal being of God, as opposed to the individual persons or hypostases of the Trinity; in other words, the Godhead refers to the "what" of God, and God refers to the "who" of God. The concept is especially important in Christian negative theology, e.g., the theology of the Godhead according to Pseudo-Dionysius. — Wikipedia

Certainly dogmas can be constructed around such ideas, but the whole point of such a being is that it is not something constructed or created - it simply is. (I personally think the whole idea of 'the uncreated' has been progressively forgotten by Western philosophy, much to its discredit.)

I like to think the smart jumper jumps not just from, but also to. In this case, to Phenomenology. A system in itself, to be sure, but one consciously intent on setting aside, "bracketing," that which obscures. — tim wood

Right. That was very much Husserl's approach, and phenomenology generally. I am not that well versed in phenomenology, but I admire what I know of Husserl.

How do you make clear your distinction between a "virtually real construction" and something "virtually objectively real"?

Our self, the I our virtual organism is constructed through our experiences in the world where the other is of dominant importance, as Rimbaud put it "I is another". Our virtual self is constructed by and in our interactions with others from the get go, we become a virtual self due to our intersubjective experiences. How we approach the world, how we construct conceptions about the world are based on what we have learned from others, filtered and automatically reconstituted, self actualized, by our prior experiences, our feelings, wants and desires.

There are instinctive aspects to this ability in my estimation. The way we think and infer, our regard towards pleasure and away from pain, form the 'mortar' for our construction and are common/typical to how we are constituted as a species.

The phenomenal train is based on our idealization about what constitutes trains, which enable us to recognize them as such. Its ideal is constructed virtually. The virtualization of phenomena is based on our history of observations of trains, from which we infer or add to previously learnt commonalities. The train does not proceed from transcendental ideals, rather it starts in the world and ends up being virtually understood by our construction. It is only by taking apart, the abstraction or reduction of these commonalities, that ideal components can be inferred as objective/shared. The shape of a ball, pyramid or anything else is based on its form, which we raise to the level of being objectively virtual due to its ability to provide commonly understood, intersubjective coherence to our experiences. This process is, I think, similar to how we can treat our self as an object.

My admittedly rough thought is that we move from not from the transcendental presuppositions as a basis for experience but rather from phenomenal experience providing the presuppositions for transcendental ideals. Reality is not hidden or occluded, it is experienced as such. Our and science's attempt is to explain why we experience what we experience, the ontological determination of that 'why' is dependent on the reality of what experienced and not the other way around, in my opinion.

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It might be pertinent to note (don't want to surprise you latter, I already did that with someone else...ha, ha) that I am sorta Panpsychist, While I don't believe that every atom is conscious, I do assert that matter over the course of billions of years obtained a vital structure, from which consciousness has evolved. Spirit has to come from somewhere, I don't believe we are deluded, spirit is and it seems to me, in a very materialistic way, that similar to gravity's relationship with matter, the correct structure of matter gives rise to life, to spirit.

K?

:)

How it works, or how it is? Are these the same thing? Does working reduce to being? Or vice versa? — tim wood

In my view, everything is constantly in relative flux with other things (on a macro and micro level). So some x "working" or "being" in particular ways are identical ways of describing states of change or motion. It obviously depends on what you or others mean by "working" and "being"; but I interpret your initial questions (in the quote) as asking, ontologically, "how do things exist/behave?"

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Let's suppose that spirit (dreams, awareness, intentionality, etc. - the content of these things) is just phenomenon. Then isn't spirit real? Reality blushes at this, and the runs away from it. What am I to make of it?

Time for you to write a bit more on what spirit is, perhaps how it relates to life itself. I assume that for you, no life, no spirit - yes?

Spirit is a virtually real construction,

I suggest that the phenomenal is real and that the reductions or abstractions we derived from the manifest are virtually ideal. What we have learned determines how these ideals effect our lives. The societal discourses we learn, share and contribute to enable us to have common values and explain a shared world. The effect is that of a coherent whole, whose qualities form the definitive or typical elements in the character of a person, nation, or group or in the thought and attitudes of a particular period...this what is meant by spirit as a social construction in my opinion.

What you are is ten to fifteen gallons of chemicals, mostly water - or at least that's one way of looking at it. Not a useful way in terms of your human being. — tim wood

I don't agree, since, using your analogy, "taste" refers to brain states, and brain states are collections of chemicals/particles, in my view. (With the proviso that "explanations" are subjective.)

Also, "usefulness" is subjective. It might be useful, for example, just to ascertain the properties of matter that make-up human beings.

On the other hand, if we focus on how something works - behaves - the question arises as to what it is that works. — tim wood

Focusing on how something works/behaves is just focusing on how particular properties function.

But this offers no account of what changes or moves. It appears that some account of being comes first, then comes movement or change. On that account, though, we need an account of what change is. — tim wood

In my ontology, (a) all existents are continually changing/moving, and (b) change or motion are identical. In other words, to exist is to change. Existents are collections of properties. So properties are what change. For example, small particles are changing on a micro level, and larger objects (as a collection of particles) are changing on a macro level.

We could call that spirit — tim wood

Why would we call what changes "spirit"?

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Is there any distinction in your thinking in your first sentence between "real" and reality? I think we did admit a distinction above - I could be mistaken. If a tree-in-itself-as-it-is-in-itself, ding an sich selbst, is the reality, is "reality" interchangeable with "real"?

(What we see cannot be the tree itself - we see different trees - my image differs from your image!) I agree "the phenomenal is real" - just not reality, or at least not the reality of the tree. Maybe the reality of the perception of the tree. We just have to be careful about exactly what we're affirming. You've left out the steps between perceiving and learning - maybe that doesn't matter.

One reason I have gone to the phenomenal is its objective certainty. While we may be certainly wrong in what we perceive, we can't un-sense it, it may not be but it certainly can't be un-sensed. Descartes's point of certainty may be absolute but leaves us in a subjective waste land. The phenomenal , unlike the Cogito, can be shared. Did you see that cherry tree, yes it is beautiful I especially like it white blossoms against the stark gray background of early spring. Of course I could be feverish, delusional or tripping, but you can tell me that I am mistaken, and together we can work it out. Unlike the solipsistic nightmare of Descartes's certainty, shared phenomenally is objectively certain real. The certainty of the phenomenal is capable of being shared, corrected and enhanced.

I think an epistemological foundation is necessary and must be ascertained on an intersubjective level. If we believe Kant we can't know the "in itself" the objective, instead we determine the transcendental presumptions that are needed to account for our experience of the world . It is not really an ontology as such and I concur however I think the phenomenal realism I am thinking about has a transcendental character which based on its concurrence with others. Therefore it is both immanent (in the world) and transcendent (shared with others) at the same time in a shared world.

What we come to is "spirit as a social construction." Admitted and agreed: there certainly seems to be, e.g., national spirit. But this cannot be spirit in itself, can it? You've given an example, not the thing itself. If I look at your description, spirit seems to be the derived, the abstracted, the generalized, gelled into a being. If that's the case, then we have this, that, and the other thing called the spirit of this, that, and the other thing, but we have lost spirit itself, except as an entirely abstract collective term with no content in itself. The questions of the being and existence of spirit simply evaporate.

Spirit in itself is a dynamic whole, the affirmation all we have derived, learnt, remembered, shared. Its dynamism works in our life in concert with others...this is its affirmative effect I think. Spirit's construction starts on day 1 and never ends until we end. I don't think that Spirit, as a 'thing' is possible to demonstrate because it is constantly changing, only partial view points are possible.

It is only in and through our relationship with others that fragments of our spirit can be shared, imparted, and understood by us and others. Our relationship with others is cemented in language, where we can phenomenally share meanings.

If it's chemicals/particles, then you don't get to have subjective - there is no subjective. That's why regarding you as chemicals/particles "is not... useful... in terms of your human being." — tim wood

Eh? I was using "subjective" there just to clarify that explanations are subjective, since you wrote "the bucket of chemicals does not explain, for example, your taste in neckties." We/minds do the explaining between or regarding phenomena, not the things themselves. (Btw, subjective--the way I use the term--just refers to the location of the mental. Mental states are brain states. Brain states are collections of chemicals/particles/etc.)

Sure. But in this you affirm properties (as opposed to their functioning). If functioning is all there is, then what functions? You can have all the doing you want, but you have to have something doing the doing (which is neither properties nor functioning!). Properties and functions are different; they cannot be one and a many at the same time. — tim wood

I was just following the distinction that you were making between what something is and how something functions. The distinction is a conceptual one (i.e. conceptualism) that minds focus on with regards to "things". We can focus on what things are made of; we can focus on how things function--what we choose to focus on is subjective (occrring in minds). The functioning of properties is an instrinsic property of properties. In other words, functioning is just how particular things change/move. You can't have properties not functioning in some way. That goes for inert or non-living things like rocks too.

By the way, I lean more towards "bundle theory" than "substratum theory". That is, things are just bundles of properties (functioning in particular ways).

1) is problematic. What is a thing? What is change? — tim wood

A thing is (a) a collection of properties (b) moving/changing dynamically in particular ways (c) relative to other properties within a thing, and relative to other external things. Change is just motion or movement or processes. Since it's relevant, functioning is about how particular things change/move/behave.

2) is a claim without evidence or argument. To be is to be just that that does not change. — tim wood

The evidence is that when you look around things are changing/moving. Things decay. Things accelerate. Things disintegrate. Things develop, bloom, and wither. You can also see change occurring microscopically.

3) Properties are qualifications of the description of a thing - thing as yet undefined and it needs to be. The description is not the thing. — tim wood

No, ontologically, properties are physical components/aspects of matter/things.

You may not like my arguments, but there is enough in them to point you toward rethinking your own. — tim wood

Thanks for the condescension. What you have helped me do however is give me more incentive to elucidate my views, so I'm sincerely grateful for the questions you pose. Also, I wouldn't say I don't like your (or others') arguments; rather, I don't agree with them.

As a tub of guts, you're different from a human being, yes? No? I think - possibly in error - that you're arguing that tub-of-guts and human being are reducible to a one. Maybe in some aspects, for some purposes, but not essentially. Or do you say they're essentially the same? — tim wood

By "tub of guts" do you mean the biological properties of a human? Then yes--a human being is biological properties. I'm also not a realist when it comes to essentialism, in case you're inferring that. I'm a nominalist.

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One reason I have gone to the phenomenal is its objective certainty. — Cavacava

The phenomenon in itself, is objectively certain. — tim wood

Phenomenon, is by definition subjective, of the subject. I don't see how you manage to turn this around, and make the claim that it is objectively certain. Inter-subjectivity ("sharing") does not create objectivity (of the object). Human agreement does not ensure truth.

Objectivity in the sense of judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices

You are proceeding from "observed phenomena" (of the subject), to conclude "observable phenomena" (of the object). Isn't this like jumping across the is/ought divide? Observed phenomena is what is, and observable phenomena is what you conclude "ought to be", based on your observations. What produces the "objective certainty", that your conclusions of what ought to be, are correct?

I can and on occasion do confirm what I sense by discussing it with others who either agree or disagree, and typically we come to some sort of agreement. How do you do it?

I tried but I'm confused. What is the 'it'?

What is your 'being'? Is it A being or being, the act of being from the point of view of ME being or an abstract being being.

And what is work? A person digging a ditch might be about to bury a friend and might not consider a ditch dug a work done, but rather - time to reel in the body. Is it work because it tires or because it is not something one wants to do or because it requires a lot of trouble?

I think this collapses to "collections of chemicals/particles/etc" explain phenomena. If not, what am I misreading? — tim wood

It's your usage of the word "explain" there that I'm not clear about. I'd rather say that "collections of chemicals/particles/etc." are identical to phenomena. That's what phenomena is.

I read this as, "A thing is [comprises the] physical components/aspects of matter/things. — tim wood

Yes.

That reduces to a classical deterministic movement or a random quantum movement. Take your pick. — tim wood

That's a false dichotomy. There are (at least) three "picks": strict determinism (only one possibility or 100% probability), indeterminism (non-equiprobable probability), or "pure" randomness (equiprobability).

I credit you with being able to demonstrate the impossibility of such an account. — tim wood

That's question-begging.