The question of whether time exists or not is not relevant here, it's just a distraction. What is relevant is that all of time is either in the past or in the future, and the moment of "the present" separates these two and contains no time itself. This make the present outside of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, time -- if it exists, and it may not -- can only approach the present from the past, or from the future, without arriving. You say the present is outside of time. According to my understanding, I exist in the present and not in either the past or the future. By this understanding, the past and the future are abstract concepts that occupy my mindscape as relativistic things; I know mentally, but not existentially, both the past and the future in relation to my existential presence within the present.

If the present contains no time elapsed, then must I conclude my perception of time elapsing occurs in response to my existential presence in either the past or in the future?

What does it mean to say we live in the past or in the future only? It suggests we aren't present anywhere. The pun is intended because presence denotes the present, but I don't immediately see how there can be presence of a thing in the past as the past, or in the future as future. Is it not so that wherever we are, we are there in the present? Where are you now? How can you be present in your own past?

What kind of existence does the present have in total separation from elapsing time?

If the present is timeless, how does it maintain the separation of past/future? Maintaining the separation implies an indefinite duration of time for the maintenance of the separation. Also, separation implies both a spatial and temporal duration keeping past/future apart, but spatial and temporal durations are not timeless, are they?

How does a material thing sustain its dimensional expansion, a physical phenomenon, outside of time? Consider a twelve-inch ruler. Its twelve inches of extension continuously consume time. Relativity tells us the physical dimensions of a material thing change with acceleration of velocity accompanied by time dilation, so we know from this that physical dimensions consume time.

The present, "now" exists outside of time. All existent time consists of past time and future time, whereas the present, now, is a point or moment, which separates the past from the future. So all of time has either gone by (past) or not yet gone by (future), and the present is what it goes past. This means that the present is "outside of time" by being neither past nor future. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm mulling over the idea that time as you describe it above doesn't exist at any time: the present exists outside of time; the past, once the non-existent present, continues to be non-existent as time gone by; the future derived from the non-existent present, does not yet exist until it becomes the non-existent present and then continues its non-existence as the past.

It doesn't make sense to speak of that which is outside of time, as pre-dating everything, because that is to give it a temporal context, prior in time to everything else. So "first cause" is not a good term to use here. This is why it is better to think of the present as that which is outside of time, rather than a first cause as being outside of time. The latter becomes self-contradicting. — Metaphysician Undercover

I glean from the above you think a first cause exists outside of time. I understand your desire to steer clear of a first cause because of some problems it introduces. I will observe that it's strange to think of a first cause outside of time because causation seems by definition to entail a sequence of time such that one thing precedes another.

This provides a perspective from which the passing of time is observed and measured, "now" or the present. Then also, the cause which is outside of time, the free will act, is understood as derived from the present. But, you should be able to see why it is incorrect to call this cause a "first cause", or a cause which "pre-dates everything else". It is better known as a final cause. — Metaphysician Undercover

Does time pass within the present? This is an issue because if it doesn't, the question arises: How does the present become the future?; coming at this same issue from the opposite direction: If time doesn't pass within the present, how does the present become the past?

...the cause of those actions, the free will act itself, may occur at the moment of the present, and this need not involve any elapsing time; the moment of the present being outside of time as described above. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a description of causation outside of time? Consider: The accumulation of falling snow on the roof caused it to cave in. Is this an example of timeless causation?

Do I remember correctly you telling me that, according to your understanding, time holds place as the first cause? — ucarr

I don't know, you'd have to put that into context. Anyway, "time", and "cons-creative" are not at all the same thing, so I don't see how that would be relevant here. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, it's a maybe on you thinking time is a first cause.

Time is a universal context, unless you can think of something that exists outside of time. The Big Bang believers are signed on to it being able to happen in the context of no context as in nothing exists; I'm skeptical about the rapid expansion of the Big Bang being possible in such a situation.

The upshot of what I'm saying is that time is relevant to everything, even the supposedly totally self-sufficient first cause. If first cause pre-dates everything else, doesn't that put first cause into a temporal relationship with what follows from it? Even when we consider first cause alone, assuming there can be a time before first cause causes anything other than itself, the existence of first cause alone involves some elapsed time in the process of its self-creation happening; it involves some elapsed time in its possible duration alone before causing anything contingent; it involves some elapsed time in its relative temporal priority to its contingents.

Finally, I'm saying the practice of cons of any type involves elapsing time, so that includes cons_creative.

Cons-creative, itself, must have a cause, and therefore is not the first cause. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do I remember correctly you telling me that, according to your understanding, time holds place as the first cause?

Are you positing cons_creative as the first cause? — ucarr

No, like I said, it's the cause of cons-reactive, not necessarily the first cause. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your inclusion of the adverb reads like a hedge on your commitment to denial of cons_creative as the first cause. Why don't you share with me the fine print on the status of cons_creative in the role of first cause?

I know you reject: "existence precedes essence," so if, as you conditionally claim, cons-creative is not the first cause, then please elucidate important details of the cons_creative origin story.

Re: the relevance of my argument in my previous post, it intends to show - via the first law of thermodynamics - that cons_creative is neither the cause of itself nor of cons_reactive.

When you talk about the conflict between cons_creative and cons_reactive, you invoke an implication there is something that cons distorts when one of the modes is embedded in the other mode. This distortion implies something causal to cons that cons, in its effort to perceive it, distorts. This causal something seems to be Kant's noumenal realm. — ucarr

The "something causal" is cons-creative itself, and attempting to understand cons-creative as embedded within cons-reactive is ...a misunderstanding because it fails to recognize the priority of cons-creative, and the fact that cons-reactive is a creation of con-creative. — Metaphysician Undercover

Okay. So, cons_creative precedes cons_reactive, which is to say, cons_creative causes cons_reactive. Is this a correct reading of what you intend to communicate?

Are you positing cons_creative as the first cause?

It only produces the conclusion of "panpsychism" through equivocation between less-restrictive definitions, and more-restrictive definitions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Is your pronoun "It" referring to the premise: Cons_creative is the first cause? If you reject panpsychism, then you must believe cons is a construction that lies somewhere within the evolving material complexity we observe on earth, but this, however, contradicts cons_creative as first cause.

My main premise in our dialogue says that Russell's Paradox shows how logically there can be no unified and local totality. — ucarr

Apropos of this, a first cause, by definition must cause, or create itself. This means that it must be simultaneous itself, and something greater than itself. A self cannot create something identical to itself. It therefore must be distinct from what it creates. In the instance of self-creation, how can the self be distinct from itself? The only approach to this entails the self being greater that itself, which is a convoluted way of saying the self must contain itself plus something more, otherwise you merely have an identity.* In the case of an identity, the self is eternal, with no creation or demise. This is Kant’s noumenal realm. Consider Sartre’s response to the noumenal realm: “existence precedes essence.”

*This paradox is expressed in set theory thus: no set can be a proper subset of itself; a proper subset is not equal to the superset to which it belongs. Without this restriction, a subset being a proper subset of itself means it is unequal to itself. Russell's Paradox shows this is what happens when you try to unify everything into one locality.

...Russel's paradox, equivocation of "set". In one sense, "set" means a collection of objects, in another sense, "set" means a defined type. The latter sense allows for an empty set, the former sense does not. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think I can cite a counter-narrative to your first definition of set: a collection of objects... that does not include an empty set. According to one standard of set theory, the empty set is a member of every set. The comprehension of the axiom: "the empty set is a member of every set" applies to both senses of "set."

Regarding the premise: Cons_creative is the first cause; this would have to entail the set of all heterogenous things linked thematically by: the type that is not-type. This, again, examples Russell's Paradox exploding a unified and local whole via paradox.

I invited you to... explain how it is possible to apprehend free will as an illusion. I'm still waiting for that. — Metaphysician Undercover

As I've been arguing from Russell's Paradox above, because there is no unified and local whole, there is no first cause. This leaves us with permutation of the already existing things. As it is said by thermodynamics: matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed (but instead merely rearranged).

Can you refute this premise? For example: can you show that permutation examples free will?

Who said anything about "something created from nothing"? — Metaphysician Undercover

You're argument is rooted in a series:

I said that the rule, for using the symbol, is prior in time to the symbol's existence, as the reason for its existence. — Metaphysician Undercover

What's the reason for the rule's existence?

Consider that in our dialogue, as dialogue, there is nothing prior to consciousness. Can there be something prior to consciousness? — ucarr

How does this make sense to you? You are asking me to take as a premise, that there is nothing prior to consciousness, and then asking me if there can be something prior to consciousness. That would be blatant contradiction. — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you provide an example of a dialog that occurs outside of consciousness?

If creativity means something from nothing, that's the paradox of nothingness being an existing thing. If creativity means re-arranging pre-existent things, that's equating creativity with permutation, a false equivalence. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. — ucarr

I think the problems that you have with this issue are due to the conditions which you set up for yourself. Why do yo see the need to set out conditions such as these? — Metaphysician Undercover

Why do you insist on "something from nothing" as a condition? — Metaphysician Undercover

How do you define creativity?

Distinct and incompatible are non-equivalent. — ucarr

Sure, but I am explaining them as incompatible. — Metaphysician Undercover

I = Incompatibility, A = Material Thing, so {$∞≠I$} and {$A≠I$}. The set containing A is a sub-set of the set containing $∞$. Since, by definition, every material thing is incompatible with incompatibility, declaring that a specific material thing, such as A, is incompatible with incompatibility is a trivial and useless declaration.

Reverse engineering has no problem recreating the creation of the apparatus from the opposite direction: final state $→$ initial state. — ucarr

Perhaps, but that doesn't address the point, which is to get to the reason behind the existence of the thing, what is prior to the initial state. Consider the title of the thread, "what does consciousness do". I answer that it is an act which produces "the initial state". If reverse engineering looks at "states", it does not apprehend the activity which produces the states. — Metaphysician Undercover

A timeline of events seems not to be relevant to the existence of an artifact. The substance, structure, construction and purpose of the artifact are contemporaneous. Regarding natural material objects, they have no substance, structure, construction and purpose outside of sentient interpretation of the signs supporting the intelligibility of the sentient's agent intellect.

The will to create pre-supposes a sentient. The existence of a sentient in turn pre-supposes an environment from which the sentient is emergent. — ucarr

...you are just employing contradictory conditions. — Metaphysician Undercover

The will to create is always immersed in the ecology of self and its environment.

The issue here pertains to accessing Kant's noumenal realm of things in themselves, i.e., "being" without encountering the problem of the perceptual distortion you describe. — ucarr

I never said anything about "Kant's noumenal realm" — Metaphysician Undercover

When you talk about the conflict between cons_creative and cons_reactive, you invoke an implication there is something that cons distorts when one of the modes is embedded in the other mode. This distortion implies something causal to cons that cons, in its effort to perceive it, distorts. This causal something seems to be Kant's noumenal realm.

What do you make of Russell's Paradox as it relates to the origin boundary ontology you equate with omnipresent mind? — ucarr

...why do you even refer to set theory at all. — Metaphysician Undercover

My main premise in our dialogue says that Russell's Paradox shows how logically there can be no unified and local totality. I infer from your argument you posit cons in the position of first cause. In the context of our dialogue, this looks like a version of panpsychism, since you think cons exists at the level of elementary particles. Although this seems to be an argument for cons as first cause, Russell's Paradox, by my argument, forestalls cons (and everything else) as first cause; it shows that logically there is no first cause.

I'm wondering how a zero-mass apparatus could be built by the positive-mass agency of humans. — ucarr

You reject the terms and conditions (free will, immaterial, soul) which are specifically designed to make all the aspects of these problems you bring up intelligible, comprehensible, and solvable. — Metaphysician Undercover

A man might imagine the problem of getting through a rough mountain pass is solved by human flight over the mountain range. This act of imagination, however, will go nowhere if it's not eventually supported by facts, science and engineering. Can you show how facts, science and engineering support free will and immaterial soul?

Note - What Cons Does: Examining in Overview by Analogy

If quantum reality supports our empirical GUI, which we call reality, then, by analogy, we can understand that QM codes for our empirical GUI.

Does it follow that making a study of the QM realm leads to unlocking the QM coding of our empirical GUI?

Might this be equal to learning how to read the building blocks of cons?

Will this lead to understanding our cons at the human scale of experience in terms of it being a formatting program for the empirical reality assembled from the building blocks of cons, i.e., quantum phenomena?

Do you know there's a realm lying beyond yours and other persons perceptions that's analogous to those perceptions? — ucarr

I do. If there wasn't, we wouldn't perceive the same thing. No matter how we test or verify it, we see the same thing. The reason is because we independently perceive the same thing outside of our minds. — Patterner

You know that you perceive what you call reality in accordance with the cognitive constructions of your mind. Since the basis for what you know is your mind, how do you know what lies beyond the basis for your knowing, i.e., your mind?

You know that another person looks at what you've looked at and reports seeing something that agrees closely with your description of what you've looked at. So far, you know that your and the other persons' minds construct perceptions similar, and thus you know that your and the other persons' minds do similar things when they react to existing things that stimulate their perceptive activity.

Consider a parallel. You and your friend both have the same computer system. Also, you both run the same word processing program on your respective computers for formatting typed input into spread sheets as output. Let's say the program is MicroSoft's Excel program.

Neither of you has independently learned the DOS (Disk Operating System) language that supports the GUI (Graphical User Interface) that translates, i.e., constructs the cognitive package of animations, pictures and sounds you and your friend know as Excel.

What do you know about the underlying DOS that makes possible the GUI you and your friend depend on? For example: Do you think that, on the basis of knowing the GUI content alone, you could write DOS code for the GUI you and your friend depend on for seeing and comprehending Excel's content?

Let's assume that via parallelism you can translate from the GUI content to an analogous DOS electronic content. In this situation, you've discovered an analogous realm lying beyond what you perceive directly.

If, however, we assume the underlying system supporting the GUI is not an analog program, but rather a digital program, do you think that in this situation knowing GUI content informs you about digital content?

I don't agree with any of that. I can be blindfolded, driven somewhere I've never been, and taken into room in a building I've never even seen in a picture. There could be anything in that room. Something someone made; a plant; a meteorite; a person; anything at all.

Someone I've never heard of could be taken to the same room in the same manner, and they would see the same thing.

The thing was there, and had the characteristics it had, regardless of the other person and/or me seeing it. — Patterner

Regarding what you know, you can't transcend the scope of your consciousness. Everything you describe examples an organized perception of reality known to your personal history and its attendant point of view. Through social interaction, you've experienced verification of what you've perceived by other individuals who've described similar perceptions.

You know that other individuals have perceptual mechanisms that render perceptions similar to yours when they gaze upon similar things.

Do you know there's a realm lying beyond yours and other persons perceptions that's analogous to those perceptions?

I think you need to look at written symbols independently from written words. Then you'll see that there is necessarily "a grammar" behind any writing of symbols. The written symbol may be essentially a memory aid, or something like that, and there is necessarily a rule, as to what the symbol represents. Without that grammar, which tells one how to read the symbol, the symbol would be useless. — Metaphysician Undercover

Consider a symbol whose rule for its interpretation is lost. Though meaningless, the symbol still exists.

Consider a symbol whose rule for its interpretation is known. The rule can be read and understood. The logic supporting the rule can be read and learned. Where in this sequence is something created from nothing?

...if you want to maintain the principle that these parts exist prior to consciousness, then we need to allow intention prior to consciousness, as what creates the parts. Then we have a formal meaning of "consciousness", as what arranges the parts, just like the formal meaning of "grammar", as what arranges the symbols, but we still need "intention" as prior to the parts, creating them, just like we need "rules" as prior to the symbols. — Metaphysician Undercover

Consider that in our dialogue, as dialogue, there is nothing prior to consciousness. Can there be something prior to consciousness? We cannot know the answer to this question because the means of searching out the answer requires a questioning mind, which pre-supposes consciousness. Consciousness can only get beyond itself paradoxically, as in the case of Kant's realm of the noumena: things in themselves unmediated by consciousness. This is the paradox of a conscious conception of what is not consciousness. By playing a mind game wherein I paradoxically assert there is a realm lying beyond consciousness, I paradoxically de-construct consciousness and arrive at the inexpressible, given that expression pre-supposes consciousness. So, getting beyond consciousness paradoxically via a mind game, I de-construct consciousness, and thus the logical implication is that at its most fundamental, consciousness formats reality itself. Of course, within the scope of the mind game of paradoxicality, intentionality is just another stop in the infinite regress of consciously constructed reality.

First, you say there are aspects of reality consciousness can work with. That's consciousness in reactive mode. — ucarr

Working with something is not the reactive mode, it is the creative mode. This is evident from the fact that we can work with completely passive things, moving them around to build something. — Metaphysician Undercover

If creativity means something from nothing, that's the paradox of nothingness being an existing thing. If creativity means re-arranging pre-existent things, that's equating creativity with permutation, a false equivalence. Matter is neither created nor destroyed.

We use the past tense of verbs to describe the past, and future tense to describe the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

Notice how the incompatibility between the two descriptive modes is understood as an incompatibility between two features of reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Distinct and incompatible are non-equivalent. I shake your right hand with my right hand. Our two hands are distinct across the axis of two semi-circles symmetrical. Our distinct hands example compatibility in a handshake.

the reactive mode cannot apprehend the creative mode except by analyzing the effects of the creative mode. This is what I described as observations through the apparatus. This approach cannot understand the creative mode which built the apparatus, because it always interprets through effects, what have occurred, the past. — Metaphysician Undercover

Reverse engineering has no problem recreating the creation of the apparatus from the opposite direction: final state $→$ initial state.

The will to create, itself, does not require the assumption of a separate independent reality, as it takes absolute freedom as its premise. — Metaphysician Undercover

The will to create pre-supposes a sentient. The existence of a sentient in turn pre-supposes an environment from which the sentient is emergent. In our entropically mediated world, absolute freedom holds no obvious pertinence to the constraints of the evolving thermo-dynamism of far from equilibrium life forms. Feeding the metabolism on a daily basis - a far from equilibrium necessity - bears no resemblance to absolute freedom.

The "being" of consciousness, at the present, demonstrates the continuity between the two, and that the incompatibility is somehow an incorrect representation. — Metaphysician Undercover

The issue here pertains to accessing Kant's noumenal realm of things in themselves, i.e., "being" without encountering the problem of the perceptual distortion you describe. If what you say is something you know, and not merely conjecture, then it must be true that you can do this. Show me that you can.

The reality of the overlap of future and past is what allows for the incompatibility to be resolved. But this idea necessitates a breakdown of "independent reality", which is what "special relativity" accomplishes. Then we are left with the consciousness only, no assumption of "independent reality", and we must start with a primary premise which respects the reality of the consciousness itself, as the will to create. — Metaphysician Undercover

You seem to think that elimination of the noumenal realm delivers us into a unified reality permeated by consciousness. Moreover, you seem to think material reality no less a part of mind than abstract reality.

What do you make of Russell's Paradox as it relates to the origin boundary ontology you equate with omnipresent mind?

Note - The paradox shows that, logically, a set cannot be a sub-set of itself. In order to overthrow "existence precedes essence," you have to produce some logic showing there exists a context wherein a set being a sub-set of itself doesn't entail an uncontainable paradox. It's the uncontainability of the paradox that explodes establishment of an internally consistent origin of existence.

The problem is the reason for a posited material reality independent of mind. It's this originating part of the Big Bang science can't reach.

The independent reality is the past and future... — Metaphysician Undercover

How do you know this about something lying beyond your consciousness?

"the present" is actually a duration of time combining both future and past — Metaphysician Undercover

How is it that future and past don't dissolve when joined together in the present? There can be no direct contact with either, as contact implies the present.

...the incompatibility is evident in the difference between invariant (inertial) mass, and variant (relativistic) mass. — Metaphysician Undercover

I conjecture there's no local frame of reference for either the past or the future; they exist only as abstract concepts. Likewise, I conjecture there's no past mass or future mass. Whatever their causes might be, they render them as present tense phenomena.

Can you show how inertia examples determinism? — ucarr

The inertia perspective, is derived from Newtonian laws of motion, which state as the first law, that a body will continue to move in a regular way, as it has in the past, indefinitely into the future, unless forced to change. — Metaphysician Undercover

Okay. So constant flow animation only gets interrupted with perturbation of momentum.

....we need to create an observational capacity, an apparatus, which is not reliant on mass/inertia principles. In other words we need an apparatus which is entirely created of possibility without matter or mass. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you assuming the human individual can exist untethered from mass/energy? — ucarr

I'm wondering how a zero-mass apparatus could be built by the positive-mass agency of humans.

if you say there’s a pattern to activity, you’re as good as saying there’s a purpose to activity. — ucarr

A person cannot follow a pattern without having a purpose. This is true even if the purpose of the pattern is simply cycling through the pattern and maintaining its organized form. In this example, purpose means maintaining a sequence of steps holding true to the pattern. There's no way to understand organization outside of purpose. In the absence of organization, there's no possibility of consciousness that recognizes organization and distills from it purpose. Working backwards, the presence of a conscious being implies a universe consistent with life and its stupendous organization. This is not to say there's a humanoid, super-being who designed the universe super-naturally. Thermo-dynamics may have caused life-supporting organization in balance with non-living chaos. Whatever system supports life is a system consistent with life even if it's also consistent, in equal measure, with total chaos. As such, it cannot be characterized as being a system devoid of organization and purpose. We know this because, being part of this system, we see the presence of organization and purpose.

Our sense of "order" is only order in our perspective, but the processes of the universe and reality does not have such a perspective. We are therefor just part of the chaos machine, part of entropy and the entropic processes that happen through time. We take energy, absorb it and consume it, then dissipate it. All according to entropy. — Christoffer

Order in our perspective is order in the perspective of the universe because we are part of the universe.
We're not separate from the universe, and neither is our pattern recognition, logical thinking and purpose.

Humans lived thousands of years before the organic chemistry of the metabolism began to be understood as an organized process. In other words, it was present and operational in the world before there was any human perspective on what goes on inside our bodies. Do the enzymes in our digestive track have a role to play, i.e., a purpose to fulfill? If you're alive and in good health, you cannot doubt this.

No. Nagel's bat would be more of a presence. In the situation you describe, there would be nothing it's like to be that person from that person's pov. That person doesn't have a pov. — Patterner

I agree with what you say. So, where are we now? Well, maybe it's easier to see that in the supposed noumenal world of Kant, existing things dwell in something like superposition because they have no presence, something supplied by consciousness. Therefore, it appears that the human observer's presence vis-à-vis the object observed imparts to it boundaries both measurable and navigable.

Attention, then, imposes measurable material properties upon potential material things. Does this allow us to speculate about measurement being, to some extent, a self-fulfilling prophesy? When you expect something to be there along the lines of certain dimensions measurable, it will be there in such prescribed form? If nothing else, this might help explain flights of fancy become airborne in the dark, optical illusions and hallucinations.

You describe consciousness as reactive here, the other way is to describe consciousness as creative. — Metaphysician Undercover

The two are fundamentally incompatible, because the former assumes a world already made, which is irking the consciousness, while the latter assumes that the consciousness is producing "the world", in its creativity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then you attempt to describe the consciousness as constructive (creative) within the incompatible premise that the consciousness is reactive. — Metaphysician Undercover

First, you talk about consciousness as something reacting to a reality at least partially independent of it.

Second, you talk about consciousness as something that produces reality from itself.

Third, you talk about the contradiction in characterizing the function of consciousness as a reactive organizing principle that parses the raw material things of existence into a navigable environment.

Speaking in a parallel, I don't believe grammar, an organizing principle that takes words and organizes them into sentences, paragraphs, chapters and books, creates written language. No, grammar organizes written language. The organized sounds of the spoken word get organized into written signs that can be interpreted by a standardized organization, i.e., grammar.

Likewise, as I'm saying, consciousness takes partially independent material objects that, at the quantum level, exist prior to consciousness - itself a construction from parts - and organizes them into navigable environments. So, consciousness is a material phenomenon that provides a function that parallels the syntactical function of grammar.

To deal with this incompatibility, lets assume two distinct aspects of reality, those which the consciousness can work with to create, and those which the consciousness does not have the ability to alter, so that it can only be reactive to these. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your above sentence contains some issues. First, you say there are aspects of reality consciousness can work with. That's consciousness in reactive mode. Didn't you already say consciousness_reactive and consciousness_creative are fundamentally incompatible? Doesn't this imply that consciousness can only be one or the other, with switching between the two modes being impossible?

Second, you say consciousness must be reactive to independently existing things it cannot alter. Doesn't this statement have the same problem as the first one?

We look at the future as having the possibilities to create, and the past as what we do not have the ability to alter. I believe that this is the most productive way to frame that fundamental incompatibility, the past in its reality, is incompatible with the future, in its reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

If I'm not mistaken, there is no continuity between incompatible things. By this reasoning, past and future must be compatible given the natural continuity between them. Clearly, the functional present, when seen relativistically as the future in relation to the past, contains overlap with the past. If there were no compatibility between the two - not to elaborate on the problem of them existing as such only in relationship to each other - it seems to me there could only be an eternal present. An eternal present is hard to make sense of when we entertain the concept of progress.

So all of its "reactions" are already conditioned by its creations, the creations being prior to the reactions, as required for "a reaction". — Metaphysician Undercover

This argument seems to contradict your prior argument: "...the past in its reality, is incompatible with the future, in its reality."

What we have then, with this expression of mass/energy equivalence, E=MC2, is a principle designed to convert "what we do not have the ability to alter", the inertia of mass, into the malleable energy, "possibilities to create". — Metaphysician Undercover

Your above statement contains an issue. Inertia can be overcome, and it is overcome too many times to count. Einstein's equation, by explaining change of momentum through mass/energy equivalence,
establishes the fact that where's there's inertia, there's also energy, and thus past and future, being consistent along the channel of mass/energy equivalence, are not incompatible.

...this supposed mass/energy equivalence is defective It is an attempt at doing what is impossible, taking the determinist principles of inertia, "what we do not have the ability to alter", and expressing it in the free will perspective of "the possibilities to create". — Metaphysician Undercover

I take your above statement to be a logic-based attack upon $E=MC^2$. As I see it, the gist of your argument says: the equation tries to make a claim based on Mode A interpreted in the context of Mode B, but this must be a faulty claim because Mode A and Mode B are incompatible.

Can you show how inertia examples determinism?

...the primary perspective of the human being is intentional, the view toward the future, so this must have priority. — Metaphysician Undercover

...we need to create an observational capacity, an apparatus, which is not reliant on mass/inertia principles. In other words we need an apparatus which is entirely created of possibility without matter or mass. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you assuming the human individual can exist untethered from mass/energy?

I've always thought consciousness does being. It is the being aspect. — Barkon

Interesting premise. Consider: If medical science could surgically reduce the human brain to the limited power of sustaining only the unconscious nervous system, with no trace of an individual personality and its will remaining, would such a vegetative state of a biological system in human form count as a presence when in the company of conscious humans?

I ask this question because your conceptualization of "being" as an active verb, i.e., how one goes about "doing being" sounds like it's the same conceptualization I have. I think in the case of both conceptualizations, our conscious presence is the active verb that empowers us to go about "doing being." We are doing "being" when we focus our attention on something or someone.

I'm with you, i.e., present, when I pay attention to you. Paying attention is how we do "being."

...there's nothing to support consciousness being "special" if we observe everything from the point of view of reality itself. — Christoffer

Here I take you to mean existence must be perceived logically, not egotistically. With some nuance, I agree with this premise.

The major process of reality is entropy. — Christoffer

My gut reaction, so far, infers the above statement stands as the foremost premise in your post. So, given consciousness being a part of reality, and given your premise "entropy drives reality," then our core question here seems to be: What's the relationship between entropy and consciousness? My spitball conjecture says: Consciousness drives some part of entropy.

...the universe is, by the laws of physics, leaning towards spreading out energy as effective as possible. — Christoffer

Here we come upon a complex issue: the language of the above statement imbues the universe and its laws with teleology. The universe, having a goal, behaves with design towards spreading out energy as effective as possible. Also, the universe, because it prioritizes effectiveness over its opposite, has a value it adheres to. The implication is that the universe is itself conscious.

There's an inclination towards the formation of life, by entropy itself. — Christoffer

Here we have more teleology, but operating on an even grander scale: entropy is biased towards the formation of life - that is to say, entropy has the goal of forming life.

Here's how I define entropy for myself:

entropy - the unidirectional increase of disorder within any dynamical system utilizing energy toward performance of a function. So, entropy is rooted within $InputA → logical/operator → Output B$.

The negation of inherent design within creation is a gnarly problem for sentients. This is so because sentients must perceive patterns in nature in order to live.

If you discern patterns in nature, you cannot deny that nature has purposes, as patterns and purposes are intimately related. In fact, if you say there’s a pattern to activity, you’re as good as saying there’s a purpose to activity. If there’s a logical sequence to activity, a sentient observer can only conclude there’s a goal-oriented progression including a start point, a mid-point and an end point. If you randomize this sequence, and all patterns along with it, the sentient being cannot practice life-sustaining behavior. Working backwards, we see that existence without patterns and purposes would not lead to the emergence of life.

So, teleodynamics - thermo-dynamics at the higher level of entropic systems organizing constraints on natural forces towards a future state of the system - or cognitive design by sentients, is about something not immediately present, but rather something predicted to emerge at a later state of the system.

...the more energy demanding life is, the faster entropy moves. The complexity forming out of this is generally in line with speeding entropy up, and the complexity might seem oddly beautiful to us, but may just be iterative as anything else in nature. — Christoffer

I take you to mean entropy is an essential and iterative process.

Could it be the iteration of entropy and the complexity of mind are joined by the bi-conditional operator? As the iterations of entropy evolve upwardly, the complexity of mind evolves upwardly. From the reverse direction, as the complexity of minds increases, the vertical stacking of re-iteration rises.

Conclusion – there’s no conflict between the entropy-driven evolutionary process and the egotistical mediation of its resultant: sentient beings.

...what we've defined as "matter" is just different levels of energy in different forms. — alleybear

Could one function of our consciousness be to define all the energy fields we come into contact with, whether "matter" or not, into a "navigable environment"? — alleybear

Yes. As described by Einstein's equation: $E=MC^2$ we're navigating our way around a reality populated by the mass/energy binary. Mass is the particle form of energy and energy is the waveform of mass. Under this scheme, consciousness, like your word-processing program, organizes raw data. Instead of organizing letters, punctuation and spaces into words, sentences and paragraphs, it organizes the raw data of the mass/energy binary into massive objects, their dynamic motion and the resulting events into empirical experience.

I conjecture that spacetime in its pure form is infinite flow. The mass/energy binary is the result of the perturbation of flow. So, our mass/energy populated reality is rooted in the interruption of infinite flow and, existentially speaking, the deepest inclination of our reality, and of ourselves, is the natural desire to return to the flow out of which we emerge as a disturbance.

This desire to hark back to the infinite flow is spirituality viewed through the lens of physics.

Schopenhauer's suicidal apotheosis is the desire to liberate the material self, an interruption_perturbation of flow, from its incompleteness. Some force disturbed the surface of the primordial waters, thus causing water droplets to spring upwards into the air. While the water droplets live airborne, traversing space and time, they long to return to the sublime oblivion of the primordial waters.

Under this view, the consciousness of the water droplets - a stand-in for sentient beings such as us - is tragical. It's formatting function of the mass/energy binary is an attempt to return to the primordial waters in piecemeal fashion. The primordial waters, however, are the limit of consciousness and what it constructs. The constructions of consciousness are forever approaching but never arriving at their source.

If your point is simply that my reality appears to be different to the reality of the person who locked me in, so? How is this identifying anything useful about the self? — Tom Storm

If I lock you in a room and then leave the scene, does the apparent boundary line between your location and mine really exist?

Let's assume the apparent boundary line between you and me is illusion. Does that tell us there's a way I can read your mind, and vice versa?

...can you not distinguish the intentions of the perpetrator, who inflicts great pain upon you, from your own intentions for yourself? — ucarr

Please demonstrate with an example - perhaps in dot points - how you see this working. — Tom Storm

• Some agents kidnap and tie you to a chair in an empty warehouse at a deserted mall.

• Tied to one leg of your chair is a bomb on a timer. You've got fifteen minutes to escape before the deadly bomb explodes.

• You're a high-tech wizard, so the thugs don't notice you're wearing contact lenses equipped with micro-chips that allow your brain to control a virtual camera with synched mag-res scanning. Using your thoughts, you telecommunicate with your head of security android always on standby back at your laboratory ninety miles away.

• With ninety seconds to go, you hear a crash through one of the large two-way plate glass windows as Robbie the android flies in, unties you from the chair and flies out of the warehouse with you in his arms.

• Airborne three hundred feet, you feel the windchill as you hear the entire warehouse explode upwards into a great fireball in the twilight skyline over El Segundo.

• Back at your desk in the lab, you write notes on what just happened, conjecturing it was the work of Riegaert, your arch enemy within the high-tech industry.

Question - At any time, as you write up your notes on how Riegaert almost got you - you only decided at the last minute to put in your brand new untested contacts before going out in the morning - do you confuse your intentions during the escape ordeal with the intentions of Riegaert?

I think the empirical experience of inflicted acute pain, physical or emotional, does an effective job of locating the position and boundaries of the self — ucarr

...could the self [be] a part of the 'great mind' or will, as per Schopenhauer or Kastrup? — Tom Storm

Are we all dissociated alters of each other? How would we tell? — Tom Storm

In reference to my quote at top, can you not distinguish the intentions of the perpetrator, who inflicts great pain upon you, from your own intentions for yourself?

...I think it misguided to characterize a philosophical idea as if it were a predefined and absolute product of consciousness. — kudos

Existence is simply a sequence of moments stocked with endless details? The observer, being wise, will not succumb to anxiety about outcomes?

...the Kantian alarm bell of treating Reason as if it were a means to an end. — kudos

The open road holds most promise for the traveler unfettered by definitive dreams?

...there is something we are losing by lumping post-structural thought in with objective machinations operating for themselves... — kudos

No aesthetician worthy of the label settles for enlightenment by auto pilot?

...not everyone wills to reason... — kudos

Sentience holds value independent of its transactions?

...universal reason is not just somewhere distant, but penetrates right down to the core of action. — kudos

Knowing and being always present jointly?

...the... identity of thought and action... is being misunderstood. — kudos

Don't deify the mind?

We simply can't accept the identity whilst maintaining difference, and instinctively make recourse to the belief that they are separate domains with reference to a contingent difference principle. — kudos

We shall break bread together?

Reality boils down to the self/other binary. It is the essential platform supporting all empirical experience and abstract thought. — ucarr

I'm not sure how accurate this is. — Tom Storm

When I think of 'self' - I don't consider this to be one discreet thing or even a knowable thing and I am uncertain what parts of the self are entirely me or not. I wonder if the idea of this/that is more of a convenient shorthand with limitations and gaps. — Tom Storm

I think the empirical experience of inflicted acute pain, physical or emotional, does an effective job of locating the position and boundaries of the self. By this same example, I think it does an effective job of locating the perpetrator outside of the position and boundaries of the self.

I've recently been learning Buddhist transcendence via suicide involves the utter denial of selfhood, with the certification of success entailed in facing down the likes of self-immolation in terms of mind over matter.

As I see them, all of these ideologies grapple with the self/other interweave. Denying it and then transcending it into... non-existence does nothing to break the connection, as non-existence vis-á-vis the living can only be an existential paradox.

I think life is richer when we can identify a difference between the intuition and the imagination. It is easy for image to stand in for sensibility; However, one ends up chasing one’s tail in philosophical thought trying to manage a war of ideas. — kudos

I'm supposing you're finding that my statement suffers from circular reasoning.

It seems a common thing to express disdain for the ‘woke’ culture and gender identity permissiveness through a type of anti-academic universalization, or insert whatever bourgeois premise one wishes to drown in the nihilist riverbed here. — kudos

If I'm reading you correctly, you hold at least some sympathy for "woke" culture. I regard my statement as being reportage, not analysis in support of antithetical judgment.

Regarding your second paragraph, your sentences are full of complex terms and nuanced ideas. I can somewhat discern their meaning individually: first the woke POV, then the conservative POV. As for my perception of the coherence connecting them thematically, I'm having no success. In the third sentence you seem to be prioritizing empirical experience over abstract thought.

In the third paragraph maybe you're assuming the POV of the extreme skepticism of nihilism vis-á-vis the woke/anti-woke binary.

It sounds like what you're asking about is a conception of the self as a part of a larger whole. — kudos

Yes.

With today's youth on the front lines, humanity faces radical changes to identity beliefs and values as science and technology make an ever closer approach to high-verisimilitude simulations of natural humans.

If a cyborg is equipped with AI cognition that can digest the contents of the Library of Congress in one hour or less, then it might not be a surprise to learn such cyborgs can also slip between genders mind, body and soul without effort or qualms.

Given their ease in doing this, they simply wouldn't care about how they present themselves to society, especially when such gender shape-shifting is universal. Switching genders would merely be another item on the list of situationally desirable adaptive behaviors.

The sloughing off of the hard boundary lines of human identity marking formerly sacred spaces such as culture, race and now gender category is due to their partial dissolution already underway. This dissolution is one of the more profound effects evolving in this, our age of do-it-yourself global telecommunications from your bedroom.

Kudos to McLuhan: yes, the medium is the message and the now current medium asks “Where are you now global citizen? Why, you are nowhere, nowhere in particular that is. Nowhere and everywhere. Ha! Ha! Let’s all global party!”

Well, if the gender binary has exploded into a many-colored gender wheel with numerous prongs, then the age of the sexual grayscale is upon us.

These days, those who only came out at night, now populate the broad daylight with their nuanced filigree of intertwined sexual persuasions and gravitations.

Alternative-identity teens can make bold and engage socially with the establishment, as we saw in Barbie. As she enters the real world for the first time, her initial encounter is with a non-binary teen at the local high school. Dialoging with a beauty pageant habitue surely signals a mainstream arrival.

Reality boils down to the self/other binary. It is the essential platform supporting all empirical experience and abstract thought. — ucarr

Well, it's a bit glib. — Wayfarer

Consider: Self/Other binary $→$ the limit of the non-local is consciousness.

Let me try to explain my hypothesis by referencing it for comparison to: photons have minute rest mass and, light speed is a limit.

Premise - As mass is the waveform of matter, consciousness is the waveform of self/other.

The self/other binary, understood to be non-local, suggests itself to our understanding as consciousness emergent from an interweave of interacting gravitational fields.

Premise - Gravitational energy is the inverse of massive energy; whereas the former waveforms position, the latter localizes position.

When Emmanuel Levinas says, “Ethics is First Philosophy,” he describes the mutual warpage of spacetime around the self/other binary as consciousness. My being is warped by your being, and vice versa.

Premise - The gravitationality of consciousness leads to the matter funds thought ←→ thought funds matter puzzle.

Is this puzzle a bi-conditional parallel to “Ethics is First Philosophy?”

No. I did not use "multiple" to define the conjunction operator. — ucarr

You did, you used multiple in the definition. If you only want to used attractor, when you define attractor, you'll still have two use a word similar to multiple, several, and, connect, which all contain the same essence that's fundamental and can't be defined... — Skalidris

...if you can't define/explain "and" with smaller parts it's made of, it creates the circularity, the self reference. — Skalidris

In other words, the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set — ucarr

I need to change my definition as follows:

In other words, the "and" operator is a connector that links multiple things that are to be taken jointly — ucarr

The word changes do not alter the meaning of the definition except to make it a more accurate description: to connect by linking things together.

and (conjunction) -- used to connect things that are to be taken jointly

multiple (adjective) -- having several parts

When you look at the two definitions, why do you think they are one and the same?

3x4 = 12 — ucarr

Multiple isn't the same as multiplying... Just as you said here. — Skalidris

Regarding the equation with the multiplying function, why do you deny that 12 is a multiple of 3 and 4?

...the problem I mentioned is when 5 can't be broken down into smaller units, smaller operations. — Skalidris

It's true prime numbers are limited as to how they're factored, but your argument includes more than the primes.

Bell pepper equals pizza (containing bell peppers) minus all the other elements. — Skalidris

This statement says bell pepper stands alone, or B = B. B $≠$ B + P

...you're saying a fundamental definition cannot be broken down into subordinate parts — ucarr

This is true.

You're saying when the terms of a fundamental definition are not known to someone, synonymous terms of equal meaning known to that person are useful in the effort to communicate the definition to them.

This is true.

So you're saying that the way you defined "and" isn't A = A? — Skalidris

The way I defined "and" does not say "A = A."

You defined it as: "the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set" — Skalidris

Here's the correct translation of my verbal equation to a math equation: Given A, A (two unconnected, identical machine parts), with the entrance of the conjunction operator $∧$ we get
{$A∧A = 2A$}.

A = A is not a multiplicity of A twice; it is one A, itself.

You used multiple to define it but multiple is just a step further from "and" (if you take one element AND another, you have MULTIPLE elements). — Skalidris

No. I did not use "multiple" to define the conjunction operator. I used "attractor" to describe what it does: connect. Perhaps you'll argue that connecting is just the same as multiplying. They're related, but they're not identical. We can prove this by showing how 3+4 = 7, whereas 3x4 = 12.

Also, as you say, “multiple is just a step further from ‘and…’”. Well, one step further is a positive distance from the previous step, so the two positions are different. What this means in our context here is that

…(if you take one element AND another, you have MULTIPLE elements). — Skalidris

Your description shows us that the conjunction operator is a function that renders a connection linking multiple parts. This process that renders connected parts is distinct from the connection it produces. The connection is the result of the process. We know the two things are distinct because parts don’t connect without a process that renders the connection. An example is a truck and the trailer it pulls. The truck and the trailer don’t connect unless there’s a trailer hitch that performs the function of connecting the two.

Suppose "trailer hitch" is defined as "a connector that links truck and trailer." This definition has the same form as "...the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set." I want you to show how both definitions are indistinguishable from the definition of "and."

If A = B but the only meaningful way to define B (or an element within B) is B = A, it's the same as A = A. It's only meaningful in language, if you don't know the word for "and" and that someone tries to explain what that means, they can use words that you know that imply the concept "and", but that doesn't mean they've defined it in a meaningful way. — Skalidris

The underlined part of your quote is incorrect. With A = B, you've set up an equation of the type:
5 = 2+3. This is not A = A, which could be 5 = 5, or 2+3 = 2+3. A and B, as your eye can see, are not identical, as the case with A = A. Stop conflating equivalent with identical.

When you stop conflating equivalent with identical, you’ll see clearly that saying: “He tried to bother me.” differs from saying: “He tried to harass me.” The two verbs are roughly equivalent, but certainly not identical.

But if A is an element of C and that C= B∧A, defining A as C without B isn't meaningful. — Skalidris

If A is an element of C such that C = {A∧B}, then defining A as C is a non-sequitur.

For clarity, consider you have a pizza with mushrooms and bell pepper toppings. This establishes bell pepper as an element of the pizza. Does it make sense to go from there to saying bell pepper equals the pizza?

I now see that your argument denounces my definition as redundant. The issue in our debate is whether my definition is distinct from Webster’s definition of “and.” This is a very different issue from arguing that a definition is neither meaningful or useful. Since you've used these words to make your argument, claiming my definition possesses neither attribute, I've been assuming they accurately express the point of contention. They don't.

Although my definition says nothing not already said, I claim it is still distinct from Webster’s definition of “and.” My definition emphasizes “connect” within the context of set theory.

As I now think you're saying a fundamental definition cannot be redefined usefully because of redundancy, I go along with you most of the way, but not all of the way because of the issue of context. If it’s best to insert 5 into one context, whereas it’s best to insert 2+3 into another context, then that stands as a minor example of usefully spinning a fundamental definition.

If it's circular, if it sends back to itself directly, then you cannot define it in a meaningful way. — Skalidris

In a relationship between a thing and a sign that points to it, we find meaning. At the fight club, guys engage with each other in bare-knuckle fighting for the excitement and satisfaction of it. There's the fight club, the thing itself. There's also the raised fist, the sign that secret fight club members raise to each other when they cross paths on the street. So, the raised fist, the sign, "points" to the fight club. The sign "means" fight club.

Consider that the sign, i.e., the raised fist, is also a thing. Pretend for a minute there is no fight club. There’s only the raised fist. If there’s only the raised fist, we can say the raised fist means the raised fist. If we let A = raised fist, then we can say the raised fist means the raised fist another way: A = A.

A = A is the circularity you’re talking about.

Within the scope of this equation, there’s only A defined in terms of A. This definition is not useful because its journey from start to finish adds nothing to the start point.

Don’t make the mistake of exaggerating the scope of jurisdiction of circularity over meaning.

A thing not usefully meaningful within circularity can be usefully meaningful outside of circularity.

If A = raised fist and B = fight club, then we can say A means B.

In the scope of this equation, A is usefully meaningful.

So, as with the case of A herein, the conjunction logical operator "and" likewise can be defined meaningfully, as I've already shone in an earlier post.

multiple | ˈməltəp(ə)l |
adjective
having or involving several parts, elements, or members
The Apple Dictionary

Have you ever tried following the definitions in a dictionary, looking up each word used in a definition, only to discover it eventually loops back to the same terms? There's no escaping the circularity but you can try if you want to see it for yourself! — Skalidris

If you configure a circle of any size, and you construct it by using the sequence: apple_orange_pear, you can start at any point in the circle and stop at any other point on the circle, and the three parts remain distinct. If you make a complete circle from, say, an apple back to itself, it's not conflated with either the orange or the pear.

...we could explain the "And" logic gate but yet never be able to explain the "And" concept. — Skalidris

Above you say "and" is undefined. "Circular" and "undefined" are two different things. If you cannot define something, you cannot establish it as distinct from other things. In other words, if you cannot say what something is, you also cannot say what it isn't.

In this example here, and in the previous example from 22 days ago, I establish "and" as distinct from other things.

The distinction between processes that we can discover in the object, and processes which we can discover in our minds when we reflect on our thought about the object, is a distinction that we have no right to make here... ~Collingwood, The Nature of Metaphysical Study — Pantagruel

As I understand your Collingwood quote, the formatted configuration of the referent populating our thought is the cognition itself, not the external thing-in-itself. The self of the mind, in this example, is its own cognition, not the thing-in-itself. So perception of the world is a self/other binary. Our knowledge of the thing-in-itself is limited to the formatted configuration of the referent as thing-in-itself, not the objective thing-in-itself.

So far this seems to be consistent with my claim consciousness formats the boundaries of perceived things as a translation of things-in-themselves. We know our empirical experience is unlike the math descriptions of events transpiring within the QM realm.

Our thoughts exemplify what they conceptualize — Pantagruel

Since a concept is a generalization of a thing, i.e., an abstraction from a specific example to a set of examples linked thematically, conceptualization of a thing is an impression of a thematic form. What phenomenon conceptualizes a thing as a thematic form (thought) if not consciousness?

At present, I'm not seeing how:

Our thoughts exemplify what they conceptualize — Pantagruel

is inconsistent with:

...consciousness formats the boundaries of perceived things as a translation of things-in-themselves. — ucarr

Consciousness can be construed as a species-collective property, which at the bare minimum distances (and possibly insulates) it from the individual notion of (ego-)death. — Pantagruel

It's interesting how radically life, with threat of death removed, loses value and therefore meaning. It motivates me a long way towards claiming time is the mathematics of life and death. Again, time, with threat of death removed, loses value and therefore meaning. Same again for information.

Dead information is information without a referent not itself. You are nothing in the absence of that which is not you. Primordial evil is objective otherness. The child in the store sees something it wants and pitches a tantrum on the floor when parent refuses their appeal. Most children grow up and get over the fact there are forces out there not you and what you want. These forces must be reckoned with rationally, or else the stunted individual must be warehoused in lockdown.

When you score a victory against your opposition, it has meaning and value. The circularity of you being you in isolation has no meaning or value.

Math printed in a book signifies inter-relations between signs. All of this circularity goes nowhere until a perishable human opens the book and imparts value and meaning to the signification by being able somehow to make use of it in the struggle to stave off blank nullity.

There is no membership within a coven of votaries that can stave off your very individual burial.

Existence is incomplete on purpose, and therein lives all the drama of life's adventures.

My notion of consciousness, as boundary administrator for the everyday picture of reality, casts it in the role of a mechanism of perceptual organization. In this role it's a type of formatting algorithm for rendering quantum reality in terms of what we call Newtonian physics.

Our thoughts exemplify what they conceptualize. — Pantagruel

My analysis of your above quote has: "thoughts exemplify" = "what they conceptualize." Thoughts model as examples of "what they conceptualize."

Your use of "conceptualize" is critically important.

con-cep-tu-al-ize
kənˈsep(t)SH(əw)əˌlīz
verb [with object]
form a concept or idea of (something): we can more easily conceptualize speed in miles per hour.

You are saying, as I understand you, that thoughts model the structural organization, i.e., the formatting of themselves. The statement pictures a seamless integration of form and content. It invokes Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message.” Context and information are merged.

So, thinking is a structured environment that conveys information via the holism of itself. Thinking conveys information environmentally. This is the groundwork of emergence.

What feeds environmental holism? Quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement, in turn, strategizes new forms of thought by suggesting what cannot be wholly contained. Consciousness feeds upon this uncontainability of quantum entanglement towards ever-arising new forms modeling permutating boundaries.

QM reality is the entangled environment of environments. Consciousness, feeding on this higher order of environmentalism, spits out ever-arising new forms modeling permutating boundaries.

Yes, regarding thought, the medium is the message. However, even the entangled environment of environments is merely circular without external referents.

There is no self without the other and its otherness. This contradictory relationship of strategic incompleteness is succinctly expressed linguistically through GIT (Gödel’s Incompleteness Theory).

The reconciliation of quantum entanglement rendering, via consciousness, Newtonian physics is the material correlate of GIT.

There will be no reduction to final axioms of any discipline because our reality is life-bearing, and life depends upon the strategic incompleteness supporting the self/other binary.

The self/other binary, being the referent/sign binary, sustains the inside/outside binary making life possible. That no self can complete itself makes life possible as strategic incompleteness. Because living things die, i.e., there is something vital beyond the living organism it cannot wholly access because this vital something is incomplete, living things die.

Death makes life-as-strategic-incompleteness possible. In the absence of death, existing things, having no vital referent beyond themselves, would be complete, circular and devoid of value.

In summation, the presence of life in our world demands objective reality (the otherness lying beyond the self-interest of the self) and impartial truth (the selfish connection to unselfishness). It also demands social intercourse (Our native incompleteness abhors isolation).

We are alive and real only because we can die. Consciousness divorced from death is a childish game. We grow up when we accept the strategic incompleteness of ourselves; it fends off death until the living project extends beyond the individual’s strategies for preserving its incompleteness.

But these values I would say have implications that are nearing "necessity" when one takes into account self-awareness OF EXISTENCE itself. So do the values lead to conclusions, or is it always open-ended? — schopenhauer1

As I'm thinking about it, the values are the conclusions. Consider drinking water and eating food. Of course, the sentient periodically experiences thirst and hunger. In the old days, carnivorous humans had to hunt game before they could eat. Hunting game is hard work. Individuals don't undertake hunting game unless they're sold on eating game to survive as holding status as a necessary value.

Perhaps there's an argument claiming instinct is separate from value. Okay. I'm guessing, however, that instincts light the way to core values. An example of this might be holding family as a core value based on the sexual instinct. Nature entices otherwise itinerant males into becoming family men through their sexual urges.

Does having the capacity for existential self-awareness imply anything further than this fact? — schopenhauer1

It seems to me obvious that self-awareness is the platform supporting the entire edifice of morality. Since it concerns proper behavior in society, morality assumes a basic structure of self and other.

The social contract organizes the relationship between the individual and society considered as one thing, a collective.

Without self-awareness, I don't see how moral principles and codes of professional ethics can even be developed, let alone practiced. Any kind of organized thinking about correct behavior going forward assumes the enduring point of view of an individual. Well, in the absence of self-awareness, individuals disappear.

Values fostered by morals anchor the sense of identity essential to individuality.

You can almost claim self-awareness and values are one and the same because selfhood means holding values. Because abundant energetic activity, thoroughly and precisely executed in persistence over significant time, marshals resources to achieve the far from equilibrium state of a living organism,
the biological process presents as a synonym for values. The process of creating life is exquisitely value-centered. Slight deviations from these precisely calibrated values precludes the appearance of living organisms.

...I advocate antinatalism (no one should have children), and then for those already born, I don't see much way forward. I only have "practical" recommendations like "do not engage with others as it leads to more suffering" — schopenhauer1

I'm wondering if antinatalism is an extreme form of pessimism. If so, then being born and surviving through a normal lifespan means submerging into a deepening negativity. This because maturation is accompanied by an increasing power of the will to design and execute chosen outcomes.

There's a resemblance between antinatalism and original sin; in both systems, life on earth is a slog through the poison blossoms of an unjustifiable sentience. Antinatalism is more extreme in its negative judgment of existence; sentience guided by will presents a journey of suffering but briefly relieved by interjections of joy. Death is the cure for unavoidable calamity, but only if approached by suicide somehow unwilled. In this system, birth resembles original sin. The living are punished unto ruination because they are born. Although this birth is unwilled no less than unwilled death, the former is punished while the latter is rewarded. There is no cosmic sentience authorizing and protecting the sanctity of life.

In the system of theism, the grace of saintly life is freely bestowed, with freedom of choice of the saints included. Curiously, the saints, progeny of the Deity, possess a power unpossessed by their creator: the power to sin.

Antinatalism imposes original sin whereas theism gives saints a choice between sin and sanctity.

Although saints can choose to damn themselves, the deity offers them an escape from damnation and return to sanctity through total allegiance to the savior.

Antinatalists experience salvation through eternal embrace of nihilism.

Why a human individual would choose antinatalism instead of theism is mysterious, unless one believes there is compulsion on the part of some individuals to pair antinatalism with atheism.

Either way, life on earth is rigged for insuperable misery until death. However, the theist, unlike the antinatalist, can triumph over death through belief grounded in a faith lying beyond knowledge.

[Schopenhauer]is referring to the Protestant Christian notion that there is no contingency related to salvation (complete denial of the will to non-being). That is to say, "If I do this, then I salvation will happen". If this was the case, then cause-and-effect would be in effect and that already presupposes the operations of the will. — schopenhauer1

I see that Schopenhauer's vision of salvation requires abstraction from causality.

...salvation-proper would take place by some non-causal capacity of the individual. This has always been there perhaps for some characters, to be realized, but one cannot tie it to a specific causal reason. — schopenhauer1

I'm struggling to see how this isn't another way of saying that, for some individuals -- the elect -- salvation happens through divine grace unwilled.* If this isn't what Schopenhauer envisions, then the logical structure in suggestion is a binary with grace on one side, and the opposite of grace, i.e., willful calculation towards salvation, on the other side.

*An example of grace unwilled would be a saint. Saints are born, not made, right?

The "knowing" would be something akin to a gnosis that one "reaches"... — schopenhauer1

Gnosis, being knowledge of spiritual mysteries, comes to the saint unbidden, doesn't it? I read somewhere in the bible that those pure of heart will see God. A pure heart comes to the saint unbidden, doesn't it?

The secular bent of my mind has me conjecturing the following: Schopenhauer has worked out a plan for abstracting oneself from causality and the willful manipulation thereof. This abstraction to pure isolation sets up a subsequent dissolution of the self into... what?

If dissolution of the self into non-existence is salvation, then the unborn are blessed, and the living are cursed. This doesn't sound right to my ear that's always heard life is holy, not that non-existence is
holy. When a transgressor receives the death penalty for commission of a heinous crime, dissolution into non-existence unbidden is salvation? The life of a saintly buddhist dovetails with the life of an unrepentant blackguard?

Certainly the doctrine of original sin (assertion of the will) and of salvation (denial of the will) is the great truth which constitutes the essence of Christianity, while most of what remains is only the clothing of it, the husk or accessories. — WWR Book 4

Therefore according to this doctrine the deeds of the will are always sinful and imperfect, and can never fully satisfy justice; and, finally, these works can never save us, but faith alone, a faith which itself does not spring from resolution and free will, but from the work of grace, without our co-operation, comes to us as from without. — WWR Book 4

It seems to me that, given the above, Christianity's Gospel cannot be served up to the masses (as we are taught); salvation cannot be be reeled in like a fish on a hook; there is no learning how to fish for salvation, as it comes unbidden to the elect, in accordance with a mysterious divinity. If this is true, then Jesus came to earth to greet those already divinely chosen for the afterlife in heaven.

If it were works, which spring from motives and deliberate intention, that led to salvation, then, however one may turn it, virtue would always be a prudent, methodical, far-seeing egoism. — WWR Book 4

...salvation is only obtained through faith, i.e., through a changed mode of knowing, and this faith can only come through grace, thus as from without. This means that the salvation is one which is quite foreign to our person, and points to a denial and surrender of this person necessary to salvation. — WWR Book 4

I see here that faith is a type of knowing, perhaps divine knowing. In our language, "knowing" is a verb, an action. Is there a divine knowing possible in the form of an existential reality that can be practiced within the natural world?

Luther demands (in his book "De Libertate Christiana") that after the entrance of faith the good works shall proceed from it entirely of themselves, as symptoms, as fruits of it; yet by no means as constituting in themselves a claim to merit, justification, or reward, but taking place quite voluntarily and gratuitously. So we also hold that from the ever-clearer penetration of the principium individuationis proceeds, first, merely free justice, then love, extending to the complete abolition of egoism, and finally resignation or denial of the will. — WWR Book 4

I see here that good works become operational when the faithful cease to obstruct their activation due to exercise of self-serving will.

I think Schopenhauer's version of non-being is almost necessarily accompanied by a physical death because at that point of salvation, how does one go back to "willing" again? Willing is so intertwined with physiological living for Schopenhauer, I cannot see how the final "salvation" can be anything different (like a Buddhist might believe with the Middle Path): — schopenhauer1

What comes to mind as a possible alternative to non-existence is something akin to the virtual body of Jesus on earth.

Yet it seems that the absolute denial of will may reach the point at which the will shall be wanting to take the necessary nourishment for the support of the natural life. This kind of suicide is so far from being the result of the will to live, that such a completely resigned ascetic only ceases to live because he has already altogether ceased to will. No other death than that by starvation is in this case conceivable (unless it were the result of some special superstition)... — Schopenhauer

I wonder if the passage described here might better be characterized by some label other than "suicide." What about the idea of replacing "suicide" with "ascension"? Might Jesus' total surrender of his will to God have been the form of his ascension from the cave?

I've thought of ascension as a type of explosion that creates instead of destroys. In this context it might be the creative explosion of the will. With its explosion, the will merges into the Divinity.

Your Schopenhauer quote says interesting things in the way of clarification: self transcendence -- as I'm getting it at the moment -- entails a journey to a state of mind of total acceptance, which plays as a human possessing the neutrality of a rock, or any other such insentient.

However, there's a big however; the human as a rock, retaining cognition, sees himself attaining to rock neutrality and approves. Goal attained. Job well done. Cognition cannot escape self interest. And self-interest, by definition, precludes transcendence of self.

There is no life in absence of self.

So, at the moment, I'm thinking self transcendence is an ego-stroking mind game. Why else would the saints, if they had really merged into non-existence, leave behind their writings?

That being said, I claim that the best course of action...is to live a life of withdrawal. — schopenhauer1

I hear you saying social engagement is overrated because it causes more problems than it solves. I wonder if human nature might forestall isolation as antidote. I expect that in the situation of protracted solitude, human nature internalizes social engagement. The two-way conversation of social engagement becomes the mock two-way conversation within the mind of the solitary.

If the solitary isolates beyond internal mock social engagement -- assuming that's possible -- I wonder if a strengthening tendency towards hallucination arises. This wonder on my part is funded by the notion life, by its definition, militates against isolation. I base this natural anti-isolationism of life upon the idea consciousness is inherently social. My basis for this claim is the understanding consciousness is rooted within a self/other binary. This binary, I think, presents so essentially that even the self becomes object.

If you think there’s a flaw in Schopenhauer’s or Buddhism’s approach to transcending the self, make the case. — schopenhauer1

I wonder if the flaw might be: "...even the self becomes object." That being the case, there may be no transcendence of the self possible. Also, there might be the issue of a logical puzzle: how can the self transcend itself if it's the self doing the transcending?

If self-transcendence can somehow transcend the logical puzzle of itself, then where does it arrive? Let's suppose it arrives at the position of pure observer: always seeing, never seen.

Isn't that the God position: purely generative, not at all derivative?

A problem attaching to the God position -- at least from the human perspective -- presents as the origin narrative of the God position. We know from Russell's Paradox there's a logical problem with all-inclusive set comprehension, a necessary pre-requisite for the God position.*

If a human somehow arrives at a God-position point of view, isn't it likely human nature will inflate the ego to an extreme exaggeration featuring omniscience, an ultimate resultant of hubris?

*Perhaps Russell's Paradox suggests a reason why the super-nature of God needs the nature of humanity: not even God -- being conscious -- exists free of the self/other binary.

Causal relationships are about transformation, not simulation. — ucarr

I never used the word, "simulation", so this appears to be a straw-man argument. An effect is a representation of its causes, not a simulation of its causes — Harry Hindu

"Represent" has meaning in more than one sense, depending on context. There's the sense of "represent" as "to speak for" in lieu of another. This sense often refers to an elected official who, as a member of congress, represents the voters who put him into office. It would be strange to claim the elected official is an effect of his constituents. There's also the sense of "represent" as "to depict" something. This sense often refers to a picture depicting, for example, a bucolic setting in the countryside. This is the sense that involves simulation.

We've been writing at length about the GUI. It can be a simulation.

With causal relationships, we're concerned with an initial state of a system and how it arrives at a different state of the system at a later time. A → B. If A is the cause and B is the effect, is B a representation of A, or a result of A?