Yes, what I was thinking of is that we experience a flow of time, with some width to it in our impression and interpretation of our experience of being. This is not to say that this is what is going on in the real world, but rather it is what is going on in the constructed(projected) world, constructed by our body, brain, mind.

What you describe reminds me of what the Buddhists say, that the world ends and is remade from moment to moment, as you say, like a movie.

Thankyou for your considered reply, I am getting a handle on this now. The postmodern stuff is new to me, but I expected to come across it at some point, but I need to learn the vocabulary. I am still puzzling over your idea of an infinite meaning. Let's say we have a state in the world x it would have many different meanings for different subjects experiencing it. Are you saying that there could be potentially an infinite number and variation in the subjects experiencing it and therefore an infinity of possible meanings in X?

I say again, I think my transcendent is not much different to your immanent. My use of transcendent is probably unconventional. I really don't recognise the transcendent as something other, apart from a myth of popular interpretations of religion and spirituality. For me the transcendent is transcendent as other, but that other is us, it is the imminence in us, but is in some ways inaccessible, veiled from us. Hence is transcendent in that it is veiled in this way.

I hope I'm not butting in here(you did by the way steal my OP"the eternal moment". No worries, it's great to get back onto this subject).

My angle was that eternity is in the now, and it is our limited awareness and experience of time as a series of moments bleeding into each other, like a strobe light, that makes us think of time passing.
I see the past as a bit of eternity we are familiar with, because we were there, we experienced it, we knew it. So with the help of physical matter etc, it is retained for us. Given a bit of permanence in our memories and old haunts that we can visit.

@Πετροκότσυφας

http://youtu.be/83GgOhBhxqI

Yes there is natural, innate wisdom in some selves and one could also interpret that every being is wise. My cat for example is a font of wisdom, she knows what I am going to do before I do.

But in a human self there is the addition of an educated self conscious intellect. This results in a clouding of natural wisdom, especially when the teaching is philosophically, or religiously directed. This is because the teaching and effort to learn is impinging of the intellectual understanding of the self who is learning. In this mist, or fog of the processes involved in the building of the intellect, natural wisdom can be lost. Also there is an intellectual wisdom to be learnt, which is in a sense, an aptitude, or tutored process of fine tuning the intellect. This is historically undertaken in religious organisations, and I suspect occurs in academic philosophy. In the esoteric schools, this was developed to a further level in transcendent insight, which you misrepresent.

So in the development of a human being as they grow up, there is a process of seeking/teaching/learning knowledge and wisdom. Which is understood to be sought/discovered/ deduced/realised.

So the OP isn't really talking about whether he as the same person will exist, but, rather, whether he'll emerge into existence again - whether he'll get 'caught back up in' existence. Even as something different. The focus on pronouns misses the problem entirely - it's a problem that is difficult to pose due to the limitations of grammar.

I know it's difficult to articulate with the language we have. But I think we all know instinctively what you are thinking about and I have puzzled over it for a long time too.

I remember clearly a realisation I had at the age of about 5, that when I die, I won't be aware of the passage of time, so a very very long time could pass in an instant to me. Also that the same circumstances which resulted in me being here would happen again eventually, so I would find myself here again eventually, and in my perception, it would have happened in an instant. So when I die, the next instant I would be reborn.

I think the problem with this issue philosophically is that it seems to hinge on whether one considers the existence of an immortal soul or the equivalent. Or whether one is of the opinion that we are an emergent property of physical material etc. In the former reincarnation is pretty much a given and in the later, it's impossibility is a given.

So, no need to worry about it. If something wakes up and thinks it is you, it won't be you. It also leads to the fact that we will never be able to "upload" our consciousness into computers or robots or inhabit other bodies

The only way we will be able to know if we will never be able to upload our consciousness into computers or robots is to try it by experiment. I see no reason to dismiss the idea of a gradual introduction of synthetic processors into the brain, if there is a continuation of consciousness. Although it does occur to me that there would be some psychological issues, or a alteration on personality developing into a "different" person. But the critical issue is that the continuous living experience of me would be maintained. I would still be here, although feeling different. Rather than having entirely ceased to exist, when my apparatus stop working.

I'd say more than that. It goes deeper. Rather than just a empirical approach, it is a metaphysical one: materialism. When it is recognised anything may be known, transcendent philosophy collapses. It no longer has any wisdom to offer. There is nothing "mysterious" or "inexplicable" anymore. Such notions merely become our reactions to thing we do not expect, rather than a hidden realm of power or truth.

This is a naive interpretation of wisdom. Wisdom is a simultaneous awareness and realisation of one's position in a real world, a known world, and an understood world. The wisdom comes through in the cognitive synthesis of these three perceptions/views/maps. The wise man(or woman) performs an intellectual dance within this synthesis and in so doing reveals deeper insights than can be provided from them individually in their current state of knowledge.
This can be developed into a process of transcendent insight in which the wise man metaphorically climbs a ladder of intuition through this synthesis and recovers insights which are creatively unique. Which are in an epistemological way transcendent.

This definition of wisdom lies in contrast to your naive description above.

Sorry. which of those questions is about pragmatism rather than being an expression of pragmatism?

I am talking around the subject of pragmatism because I am still familiarising myself with metaphysical debate. If for example you were to ask me how I make pragmatic selection in my contemplation, I would probably not be able to express it in commonly used metaphysical terms. I would have to rely on using common parlance in creative ways and would probably not be tolerated, cause confusion and misunderstanding, or fail to convey it.

As I am reading it in this thread at this point, pragmatism is an approach or system of choice or selection in the centre of thought of the practicing subject. Wherein, in what appears to be a mysterious way, one direction, or concept is chosen, selected out of a number of possible alternatives and built into a conceptual framework, or map. Rather like the way a chip processes information in a computer.

Does that get anywhere near the mark?

So in my question, "matter to what?", I am asking for whom, or for what purpose is the selection made?

and explains the degree to which it could then matter

Matter to what?
And to what degree have you enquired?
Are you sure you can see through the mist?

Fine. But you are not showing that they have a demonstrable advantage - except as a way to block open minded, publicly conducted, ontological inquiry.

This is your perception perhaps.

I have not begun yet, I am still familiarising myself with the established terminology.

Anyway it's late and I need my beauty sleep.

So is the self a mirror image of the different?
Is the different a representation of the self reflected?

I am unacquainted with your idea of meaning and the infinity of meaning. I will have to give it some more thought. Can you answer how meaning in the self relates to meaning in the world

Yes I see that but, we are blind to what we are in some sense. We need to be able to see through the veils, including the veil which is our thinking mind itself, the extent to which we are the blind leading the blind. By analogy a cat leading another cat through quantum theory while all they know about is mice and territory. I am concerned with other or unconventional ways of knowing and other means of seeing and witnessing and the development of wisdom. Your pragmatism is interesting and certainly more grounded in academic philosophy and the sciences which is solid progress, but it seems I and others like me are reaching similar insights through alternative means.

I do see all as within the self in the world, to the extent that it is focussed equally in myself in the world as if I were being a solipsist. But also I am a being in the world in which I live, in the moment, here and now. This is why I have said I agree with you. I am trying to say that imminent in the being is a transcendence, but not to some other place, but to the self, to the lived world.

You forget that I am arguing the pragmatist view and so Occam's razor applies. You can pretend to worry about invisible powers that rule existence in ways that make no difference all you like. You are welcome to your scepticism and all its inconsistencies. But as I say, if whatever secret machinery you posit makes no difference, then who could care?

So we have a pragmatic metaphysics? I agree, but for me the pragmatism is a reading of nature from an alternative perspective. I build in insights from the apophatic enquiry, discovering what we don't know is equally as illuminating as establishing what we know we can say.

You have read me wrong on this point again, I didn't say realities beyond the veil(I will label x ) make no difference, I said we can't determine the difference. It might be all around us, but we just don't see it. The apophatic truth is that we don't know what the world would be like absent x, with an x added if there is none, or if either state is or is not an impossibility(i.e. x is a necessary being).

Further more and this ties in with Schopenhauer1's point , we can't determine to what extent the veil is involved/tied up within ourselves. We don't even know if our experience of being is mediated through a veil by a hidden source, or, need I say, the extent of our ignorance of the self.

What this boils down to is we don't know if we are actually doing metaphysics, or just playing at it.

↪Punshhh Where did we see that?

It seems to me that it's implicit throughout the thread. I haven't read the whole thread though, so I don't know if it has been stated bluntly.

Sorry. Gods that exist in ways that don't make a difference don't exist according to my definition of existence. So all you are doing is trotting out the modern theistic formula which seeks to avoid the cold hard facts of science by pretending cold hard facts can be both true and yet not really matter.

No this is not what I'm doing, you assumed that I was going to talk about God, that I am a believer and that my line would be what you allude to here.

I'm not going to talk about God, it's you who brought it up. Perhaps you will respond now to what I did say which is and was in bold when I said it.

Which is why the only consistent position I could hold is that if God does in fact exist in ways that don't make a difference, then my metaphysics is holed below the waterline. No lame excuses.

Again incorrect, as I said the world including your metaphysics would be identical. Anyway I didn't say God doesn't make a difference, I said we can't determine what that difference would be.

If I don't accept lame excuses from theists, I can hardly accept them from myself.

I'm not interested in discussing the presence of God with you, its rather an irrelevance.

Remember the world of my cat, she is living a life which all makes purfect sense, all is known and understood. But she is unaware that there is a concealed layer of agency in her world which is veiled from her, as I pointed out;

impossibility for her to know this aspect of her world and the extent to which it is subtly controlling and manipulating her life and circumstances. She is securely veiled from participating in my intellectual world

Now as I said to begin with, like the cat we cannot know what is behind the veil. This means we cannot answer the philosophical questions about our existence. We cannot say that circles are universal, or that squircles don't exist.

As I said, earlier it depends on what conception of God one is considering, namely one provided by religion, or something more subtle. The more subtle analysis has to reconcile the world we find with the presence of this God, which we can't claim is not present. Or realise that this world is what we would find if such a God is present. Of course we can't determine this yay or nay philosophically. So what does it matter?

So we can't know what difference is or isn't made, we can't claim that circles are universal. But this Is not to conclude that squircles exist as well. It's apophatic in nature.

So if there is a God present, it is the God of semiosis. Although I agree you would be quite justified to ignore it as existing.

You guys are like a room full of puppys. It's quite simple. You see that Colin has had mental health issues, so he must be delusional. This does not follow.

It can't make that claim, that there is no God.

Yes I thought it was a joke. If gods exists nothing would change, or be any different. Apo's metaphysics would be equally valid, the only difference that there could be is that it would be evident that it's explanatory power would be limited to our kind of world. So what's new?

I'm going to the Rothko and Pollock show at the royal Academy next week, I can't wait. It's good art not like the s--t that's usually on offer at the Turner prize show, I stopped going over twenty years ago, when I found myself standing in front a pile of expletive and wondering what was artistic about it.

Presumably you haven't experienced God as Colin has, or you wouldn't be bothering to write this.

I'm happy for you Colin, if you're still reading the thread, although that might not be a good idea. Or perhaps actually it affirms your new discovery. I've been there I know how good it feels.

The cats not stupid, in a way, perhaps mostly subconsciously, she does know what's going on, I've clocked that. More so, as multicellular organisms, we are in a complex symbiotic relationship..., which allows perhaps for a little breathing space for my mind to have all its pie in the sky intellectual life, or the cat to have a daydream about mice, or that when I go off in my car, Im going of to catch giant mice, grind them into buiscits and bring them home.

She might be wrong, it might all be nonsense and I do something weird instead of catching giant mice. But she hasn't been fooled and it doesn't harm her and my continuing symbiotic relationship. No harm done.

Perhaps we all of us on this site are hopelessly wrong, I don't see a problem. We are probably making some progress and at the end of the day, what purpose is being right meant to achieve? If we knew the actual truth of it all, we might all shoot ourselves in the head, or go on strike(go off message).

Not necessarily, perhaps if by God we mean a bearded sky daddy( or conceptions normally provided by religion) but otherwise, for more sophisticated concepts, I cant see how it would be. Your kind of metaphysics might well be on message.

My cat, if she knew some of what I do and how much she is dependent on and under my control. Might run away thinking that I might put a bell collar on her. Or that I was free to give her unlimited treats ,fresh fish and meat, rather than her cat biscuits, she might go on hunger strike. Unless she is privy to my rationale(purpose) for my behaviour, she might find it all unintelligible, pie in the sky. She might not realise that my purpose is actually to give her food and shelter, freedom friendship and a privelidged(relatively) lifestyle and wouldn't dream of doing any less.

Provided she were to continue as she is now(her behaviour), in her ignorance, once she was privy to my world, I would happily give her that capacity(if it were in my control). But I know that without considerable tutoring, if atall possible(due to her evolutionary inheritance), she wouldn't, she would probably become uncontrollable, derranged. So I wouldn't do it if it were possible to do so.

So it is fortunate that she is veiled to those realities at this stage in her(and her species's) development.

Just draw the parallel with humans.

Hierarchy theory, non-linear dynamics, statistical mechanics, etc, are all mathematical enterprises. But to use the elephant analogy, that's still talking at the level of trunks, tails and legs. It is not yet a maths of pan-semiosis, a maths that captures the essential generative seed in fully abstract or universalising fashion.

And maybe, like all theories of everything, we can never get there. It's a mirage, an impossible dream. I'm perfectly willing to listen to and respond to rational arguments in that direction. But then in my own lifetime all I've seen is a rollercoaster of scientific thought heading in this direction.

But say we do come up with the theory of everything, do feel the whole elephant, all we're doing is describing the world we find ourselves in. Fine, it's a good start, but we will not be in the position to answer the philosophical questions about our existence, the mechanisms of our existence, the extent to which what we can come up with, or understand (this theory of everything) is perceiving, or tabulating the basis of our existence. Not to mention any of the purposes of an intelligent creator involved in this circus, or any of the things or beings behind the veil of our predicament.

We are still as blind as my cat is to what I think and talk about. My cat might be highly intelligent, she seems so at times, she might know every inch of the house, the garden and local area. She might know of every mouse, vole and bird, their habits etc to the nth degree. But she is still oblivious to the intellectual world I live in and always will be. It is an utter impossibility for her to know this aspect of her world and the extent to which it is subtly controlling and manipulating her life and circumstances. She is securely veiled from participating in my intellectual world.

Perhaps we will at some point start to pay some heed to what may be behind our veils and start to ponder the bigger picture.

I think the noumenon is poorly defined. As I see it the noumenon is the only actually existing substance(in our world). I agree it can be divided into the two categories you mention.

By introducing the idea of substance, for me, I am introducing a deep mystery, about the means by which an actual substance comes to exist and how the immaterial and the material(physical) is emergent from it.

Yes, spirit works for me, I prefer atman because it fits into a comprehensive philosophy and practice in Hinduism and my mysticism is primarily based around this*, with an important influence from both Christianity and Buddhism. The trinity works well for me, I use father mother son. The principle of the father, the principle of the mother, the principle of the son and draw correspondences thus;

Father = spirit = Will = transcendent = creator = | = 1 = monistic
Mother = body = Presence = immanent = noumenon = O = 2 = dualistic
Son = mind = Action = subject = being = + = 3 = triadic

This trinity can be extended into everything, so for me everything has three grammatical genders, or principles or number(the first, the second, the third, principles).

I would point out in relation to my mention of the body in knowing of the noumenon, by body I mean soul(or its equivalent), for me the physical body is little more than a clothing or sheath for the soul. So for the mystic it is primarily through the medium of the soul that the noumenon is known. The spirit being a more transcendent presence and is more of a source for both soul and noumenon.

Yes I know what you mean about Schopenhauer, when I heard of his "will", it reminded me of the sexual urge of Freud. A kind of brute angst.


* I'm referring to yoga, for example the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

So the mechanical is reality modelled in terms of just material and efficient cause. In other words, formal and final cause have to be supplied by an external creator, a transcendent mind. Then the organic is immanent by contrast as all four causes, including formal and final, arise internally through self-organising development.

So is there a ghost in the machine after all?

Nice Parmenides quote. It illustrates nicely the objection from the perspective of spirit and the broader view.

*stutters into the mike, adjusts collar* could you, um, comment on that?

Get ready for the dance of the seven veils;)

It's worse than that, time like space is a result of extension. Pondering the products of extension doesn't tell us anything about the nature of the origin of the extension. Chattering about notions like infinity in relation to extension, or what is beyond this extension(our world) is pie in the sky.

I agree with your point, but I would point out that within experience there is often a component in which the material (body) of the self undergoes modification (experience), which is chemically or spiritually independent of the experience of the selfconscious subject. So the experience is extended beyond the selfconscious subject which is referred to in your point. For example, one might experience an epiphany in which the body of the subject is altered in a real way, so questioning the beliefs, or opinions of the subject would not recognise or confirm this alteration.

I say this because during a mystical experience aspects of the self which one is not aware of, but which are nethertheless a part of the living self, have the experience too, or are altered by the experience. Such aspects might be entirely unknown to humanity, including for example, the noumenon.

I may appear to be attempting to reduce the noumenon to a conceptual space, but this conceptual space is a tool of apprehension in a sense, used in contemplation to develop a living awareness of myself as a living being, in communion with the noumenon. You see it is through the development of communion(prayer) that one knows absent intellectualisation.

I do understand what you say about transcendence, but this is not what I am doing, as I have said, I am content here and now. This exercise in knowing is a practice, a lifestyle, a hobby, a pastime.

The way I think of it is this: "our particular kind of processing system" is phemomemal--a conceptualization, a mental construct--based on certain phenomena which are grounded in the noumenon/ And the noumenon also is a mental construct, one inferred from phenomenal experience as a realist hypothesis to explain the source or ground of phenomenal experience.

Well yes this can work as a rationalisation, but to relegate the noumenon to a "mental construct" is to ignore its possible existence external to the human mind. Or are you simply adding a further layer of phenomena between us and the noumenon and calling it a ground?

Also you may be correct in saying that we can't rationalise the noumenon, but this does not mean that it cannot be explorered and known by other means.

Well, I think we cannot say much if anything meaningful about what the noumenon "is" in any sense other than that it is what we interact with via our particular evolved capabilities, and this interaction produces our particular creature experiences, by which we megotiate our way in the world.

Yes, via the philosophical rational route perhaps, but there are other ways to know the noumenon, to reconcile ourselves with our predicament and look to ourselves.

Ok, thanks. I am not likely to read Schopenhauer any time soon as my lifestyle is to busy to do much reading at the moment. It does sound like a nod in the direction of the spiritual, which is also my direction.

You raise some interesting points, firstly, to account for the objectification of an atemporal monistic will. I see this as an issue from every perspective(apart from those that ignore it), as I see it the issue is in our capacity, or conceptual language to account for it sufficiently. In reality I suspect that we are ill equipped to grasp such areas of the existent, that it is of a different form of existence to what we are equipped to deal with and may be veiled to us for various reasons, the obvious reason being that it is as a mechanism by which our very presence is engineered, hence can't be conceived by that which it produces, by analogy a telescope is not designed to see its own workings, but rather some view in the far distance.

Having said this, it is something which I contemplate and for me the solution is in the form of a transcendent process, in which it is realised that dimensional differences and the spatiotemporal extension we find ourselves in, are from the stand point of the atemporal a construct, one in which there is, from the view point of the atemporal, a revealing, or illumination through processes or emanation,or percolation. This necessarily presumes an eternity which is a mediator between us and the monistic source and that the technology of that eternity is sufficient to perform the construct.

Regarding the "first organism", I see it more as a step change from an eternal organism through a budding process.

The issue of eternity is implicit in these explanations, but need not be problematic, if one realises that it need not necessarily involve infinity, which is a human invention. Also the omni's suffer from the same issues of regression. But aside from this, I don't see it as a requirement for us to grasp by analogy the lens of the telescope, when we are explaining the trees on the horizon, but rather to accept that there is a telescope, which is seeing, and look to the bigger picture and realise our predicament for what it is.

Regarding the platonic forms, well eternity crops up again, in that what appears universal to us, is in eternity, an individual notion.

Yes, I'm inclined to agree with this, but I am an insatiable explorer of ideas, a magpie perhaps. Also I have come across some rarefied ideas and it's nice to share them.

I understand what you say here, it's interesting, but quite different to my perspective. So are you saying that it is the will which is directing the form of the representation, in its striving towards its goals?
Is the representation the experience of the being, or is that something else?

I haven't read Kant yet, so will take your word for it for now. I do think that the noumenon is knowable, but not because of the findings of a philosophical mindset specifically, but rather that it is natural for it to be so. Actually I do think that the noumenon can be known through knowledge of the empirical, wherein it is considered that the body is our medium of understanding, in concert with the mind, rather than the mind on its own as a purely rational entity. I say this because I doubt the human intellect can get there through reason alone, due to a lack of capacity and lack of appropriate orientation. This is why in mysticism and some religious practices a directed process of living and contemplation is practiced.

This is not to say that it could not be known through intellect alone, but not in this case.