This is Schopenhauer as well, "The more one increases one's knowledge the more one increases one's sorrows." The depth of understanding with many people I know is very limited even about the realities of nature, but they seem happy in their ignorance and in fact guard that ignorance.

Well, physics states that all is energy, only in our apparent reality is energy said to be manifest as object, so one need ask, how is object manifested, is it manifested only for conscious life forms but not in actuality? Does the conscious subject out of its own nature provide the actuality of forms/objects? Introbert---excellent!!

Real is considered the manifestation of energies into objects, the objects of the physical world and indeed the physical world itself.

It is a good indication that the materialist is not right in that things are not always just as they appear.
Why hello Banana!

Perhaps this needs clarification, subject and object stand or fall together, which means mutual dependence, take one away and the other ceases to be, SUBJECTIVELY. Subjectively is the only means we have of knowing a physical world whatsoever. Actually I do not know why this needs repeated, there is a good deal of clarity to the first post that is being challenged.

Certainly, there is no physical world in the absence of a conscious subject, for we can only know the world on a subjective level, take away the conscious subject and the world ceases to be, subjectively. It is true we cannot step outside of subjectivity to know a world independent of consciousness. Science may enable us in the future to answer this question, to me the statements of today, that state that all is energy is a hint that idealism is in fact the nature of our apparent reality. We do not doubt that the objects of apparent reality make themselves known to us by the alterations they affect in our biological consciousness/read body. It seems to me not a great stretch to assume that all is energy and our biological readout of those effects upon our biology may be the creation of objects. That would make our apparent reality biological reactions. My reasoning tells that all biological creatures are reactionary creatures, indeed reaction is what makes evolutionary development or adaptation possible. I further believe that reaction is consciousness and as strange as it seems biology is the measure and meaning of all things and I would venture to say we are energy forms creating the physical world of objects.

Agent,
I believe the differences are in the nature of adaptation, most organisms adapt to a particular niche and display appropriate structures and forms to do so. Man is the only organism that includes in his adaptation the ability to re-structure his environment, so the environment does some of the adapting.

The foundation of society itself I believe is compassion springing from self-interest, bear with me, compassion does not arise unless one identifies the self in others. It does have its imperfections, as where a society limits this identification to the members of its own group, letting the rest of humanity remain to it, largely objects. Society is largely a survival tactic in response to a harsh uncaring environment and the life of kinds huddles into to groups, the less similar one is the less identification with, thus the less compassion evoked, and one then is an outsider due to little compassion on the part of others.

Schopenhauer once said that the identification of the self in others is a metaphysical realization that can just hit you on a one-to-one level. This seems particularly applicable to instances where people risk their lives to save others risking sometimes almost certain death. This falls in line with another thread in which I stated that the essence of life is all the same, it is but structure and form which has adapted to environment context which makes essence look different, and also limits identification with and thus limits one's ability to feel compassion for. Another aspect of why we do good is that it is not self-less, if you have this identification going on with another self. We make the assurance of their well-being a goal of our will, and have a desire to fulfill our own will to reach its satisfaction.

The essence of all life is the same, indeed you are distantly related to every living thing on the planet. There is no difference of essence, but there is to the structures and forms essence has taken on relative to the context niche it has adapted to. Humanity despite it larger brain and developed technologies does not seem to be better for it, and seems to be calling down extinction upon the essence of all life, to be anti-life. I think Raymond and I are on the same page here.

I only have a rough idea of non-locality wherein physics everything is said to be connected --or entangled. This thing, this non-locality makes sense only if you consider life in general as being plastic relative to the physical world, then the world plastic relative to the greater cosmos--- which works for me. By your definition then, does non-locality infer all things of an evolutionary nature, follow in its development in the wake of a greater reality. Whether that be the slowly-changing earth or the ever changing cosmos? Indeed, if everything is connected, locality or non-locality makes little sense.

Struggling to wrap my head around this, how does non- locality figure into the processing of subject and object on an individual level? I understand that there is no separation between the world and consciousness, for to take away either, then the other ceases to be. Bare with me, perhaps I need read the thread more closely.

Astrophel,

Another way of describing your concept would be to look at it as an expanded concept of the self. Where there is no expanded concept, no identifying with others, compassion does not even arise. Schopenhauer would say it is a metaphysical realization that you and the other are one. Different examples of self-sacrifice in the process of saving a life can be said to underline this concept. Where there is no sign of this concept in the interpersonal lives of a young individual one might look for psychopathology. This even carries over to our relatives in the animal world, and an early sign of psychopathology is the torture and cruelty of animals. I personally do not believe that civilization would be possible without this underlying process of identification with others, and thus the arising of compassion. As to you expression of the wider range of being, I would just add that, subject and object cannot be separated, thus your brain/mind is only half encased within your cranium, the other half is the physical world as an object. Are you in the world, or is the world in you, or is there another possibility, what does an open system suggest to you?

One must remember that nothing in the world has meaning in and of itself, but only in relation to a conscious subject. Another way of clarifying might be to say that the physical world is utterly meaningless. It only gains meaning when biological consciousness bestows meaning upon it. So, your struggle is right on the money. Intrinsic value is necessarily a value to biological consciousness, it may well be a property of an object, but it can only have value if consciousness determines it so.

Mythology, religion, and storytelling all have something in common, they are all trying to be informative giving some sense of orientation. Mythology as a form of storytelling being mutable to time place succeeds with its orientation. Mythology, as religion written in stone and not relative to time and place is a failed attempt at orientation. You might say that all these forms were attempts at enlightenment but religion is a failed attempt at orientation to the physical world and its nature. I suppose one could say enlightenment is successful orientation of both the individual and the individual's societal context -- an ideal, similar to Plato's Republic. Remembering a fallen self, Carl Sagan, a candle in the dark.

The topic is, will versus intentionality. To me they are the same thing, like subject and object they cannot be separated. In order to move without, affecting the outer world, one must make intentionality one's will through reaction to outer stimulus. Intention is made the property of the will. via reaction to outer stimulus, so, there is an orderly process going on here. One might say that one can intend, but one cannot intend the intention. So, fate to you is what has happened, pastence, as in life was fated to die, so temporality is the same thing as fate to you.

You stated that the satelite hiting you was a random freak accident, YET FATED. Through what process, through what entity, does this fate come into being, is fate intended, your not getting biblical on me? Actually, after pondering this a little more I don't believe we are far apart on this. I stated somewhere that I didn't believe in free will nor fate but rather a bouncing around like a pin ball from one happenstance to another. It seems to me that is what you are describing, but it is inconsistent with there being free will at all. The other possibility is that chaos is so grand, that it is impossiable to find the order within.

Not necessarily orderly, free will even more not necessarily orderly, please expand on your profound insights, I am all ears Tobias.

Schopenhauer's will is blind, which fits comfortably with the fact that there is no such thing as free will. One should suspect something amiss with the concept of intentionality, which infers the autonomy of an agent. When one has no idea of what one's next thought is going to be, intention meaning full autonomy is more than a little suspect. When intention is talked about here, is it inferred that it must be by definition utterly conscious? Personally, I do not believe in free will, read intention, nor do I believe in fate. It all seems much less orderly to me.

The human condition is such that individuals are subject to various forms of poverty through the context of their environment. This is assuming the individual is constitutionally healthy at birth. These situations are burdens of ignorance as well as superstition, religion, and the supernatural. If the constitution is a healthy virgerous one then the context becomes all-important. Where one is free of the aforementioned it is at least free of the toxicity of environmental sacred ignorance.

The United States is presently an example of a regression back to the darkages, in the sense of its anti-intellectualism and anti-science, creating the environmental context that preceded the enlightenment. This again is an example of the fact that one cannot separate subject and object. We process the environment to create our apparent reality, thus, with a regression like this, the environment of the United States is an ever growing stiffling of an enlightened environment, which means a stiffling of the enlightenment of the population. Ignorace under said conditions is a generalized poverty. Different forms of poverty create ignorance.

The Enlightenment is a historic period, granted it is not enlightenment itself, but it gained its name from its opposite, dark ages. So, enlightenment is to be free of religious dogma, superstition and the supernatural. Any individual that has shrugged off this baggage can be said to be enlightened. Enlightenment is the freeing of the intellect in general, free from an authority of ignorance. Some people do more with this freedom than others, but even the common man freed from these burdens can be said to be enlightened.

Does no one here appreciate that beauty is the refinement of form and function, beauty is found to be so because it speaks to the order of being, the order of your own being. We are strongly affected by this concept of beauty even on a subconscious level. We know that the more attractive, the more beautiful one is, one is treated better than the less attractive individual. Uglyness does not lead to beauty, uglyness leads to monstrosities, and monstrosities lead to death, none existence. That is why I say that art is a celebration of being, all of life's being. With Form and function even the environment passes judgement here, in the form of natural seledtion, poor form leads to poor function and extinction through natural selection. Well it is true that there is more potental in chaos, chaos is not what we find beautiful we find order beautiful in being, it speaks to a world's content, that which is becoming and that which is receding away, the beauty of youth and that declining of beauty we call old age.

A pleasure Mr Smith!

We just bounce from one happenstance to another, ever play pinball. Neurology has pretty much eliminated the concept of a free well. This really fucks up the sin thing, and also plays havoc with what to do with those who break the rules. Of necessity some people will always need to be isolated from the general population--- so, no free will and no fate, its just not that orderly.

The beautiful I think is the perfection of form and function, the two must necessarily play off one another, the ugly is when the essence of creation has missed the mark in one way or another. We've all heard that there is no such thing as perfection, but the closer one comes to it the more pleasing the form and function of the subject. Art I believe is a celebration of being, something which emerges from the cosmos, but the farther away the subject is from the perfection of form and function the more it leans towards none existence. The beautiful is the quality of being, even in the mating game, there is an on going trading of qualities of being, qualities subconsciously involved in the process of fulfilling the will of the species, form, function, and health being the most obvious of commodities.

Yes I think that is the most mature and intelligent answer to life. The human condition, as well as the condition of all life, is quite wretched, but that's the way it is, accept it for what it is and get on with living fully aware of reality. What would the world look like if people trashed their fantasies, read religions and/or denial of reality on a most basic level? One might hope in the future humanity could live a truely rational life. For me, the awareness of the nature of identity and the essence of life is basic to the problem.

The answer is upon us, pandemic whether natural or created, is the only way a global population without a collective mind can save the world. So, if you died an early death as a result of the pandemic take some solace in knowing your part of the solution.

Intentionality infers free will, but one can intend to do something but one cannot intend the intention. All creatures are reactionary creatures, one can choose to react in a given way, but one cannot choose to not react, because the nature of the organism is reaction, the physical world's nature is to be cause. Intentionality is a rather shaky concept, considering one does not know what one's next thought is going to be. Free will is dulusional, intentionality just arrives unbidden upon which time we make it our own. To some degree, what one can do today depends upon what one has done in the past, can I intend to be a doctor today if unexperienced and illiterate? If I missing something here, I would appreciate a heads up.

Correct me if I am off the mark, but your inferring that life taken as a whole is rather grand and the suffering involved is more than worth the price. When we speak of life and its experiences, I at least am talking about life across the board, are we on the same page here? Life in general remains in existence through the killing and consumption of other forms of life, symbolically the Ouroboros, the snake consuming its own tail. When the first self-replicating cells ran out of materials in the primordial soup, this life lives on life began - big fish eats little fish.

My point is the essence which is life is the same through the eons of evolutionary development, the essence being relatively immortal. This is where my thought of the nature of identity is, that essence traveling through it's world of experience develops an I, an identity, this identity is somewhat morphed appearing different but its essence remains the same. What we think of as an individual is somewhat more and under the delusion of being individual life is a losing battle. Just as the grass one cuts on a Saturday morning, it just keeps coming-- Schopenhaure's blind will.

I don't believe most religions are powerhouses of wisdom, with a few acceptions. Joy through sorrow borders on sadism. We are getting pretty far off-topic here though my focus is the sameness of identity, outside of the differences of constitution's, vitality and certain inclinations, identity is formed through the constitution's journey through the context of the physical environment. This is where the journey becomes one's identity, the essence of the organism is predetermined to go through this process but who or what is said organism's true nature/essence, whatever that is, its the same across the board.

All organisms are reactive creatures whose behaviors are governed by three basics, pain, pleasure and desire. It sounds rather simplistic but that is deceiving when emotions, thoughts, life histories compounding the organisms future experiences in a multitude of varying environments. It is the variety the is creating the delusion of differences of essence and also the creation of the concept of other. Basically, we are the creation of the environment, for to reactionary creatures the environment is cause, so we are in one sense operated by the environment, even where we react to the detriment of the said environment and thus to our own detriment.

The individual's manner of dealing with the human condition really isn't the topic, it is the human condition, the nature of being and being in the world. You are talking about struggle but life has always been a struggle. The struggle is to this condition, to this psychology, necessity. Someone once said life is short and brutal. The question more clearly expressed I think is, is the candle worth its flame, if it is not, then it is morally unjustifiable to bring innocence into the world through procreation.

Consciousness I believe is life, such that life is consciousness. This means I believe that identity to is common to all consciousness, all life. This life is of such necessity that is consumes itself, symbolically a snake consuming it's own tail, My point is identity is how one fairs within this condition, this journey is identity for all organisms, quite a wretched state, according to Schopenhauer. The flipside that you suggest is involuntary, just as sexual attraction and sex itself is. You might consider it the will of the species, but it is far from a reasonable decision or intellectual choice.

Subject and object cannot be separated, the physical world is object and cause to all organisms, all organisms are reactive creatures. Truth is what your body tells you it is. Where there is a difference in biology in kind or in the state of health, there is a difference in that organism's apparent reality, read that organism's truth. That said, this processing of the natural world is not infallible, mainly because biology is not infallible. All experience is true to its biology, even where it disagrees with objective reality, and the judgment of that experience can be judged against objective reality, but, not with the same biology or biological state that made the judgment in the first place.The world appears to you the way it does because your biology is just so. change the biology, and you change the apparent world.

Humor like faith can be somewhat affective, but they are both a form of either delusion or escapism. So, reality makes you depressed, so suck it up, in philosophy the goal is supposed to be truth, wishful thinking or fantasy don't cut it here. Well, I don't know what Deleuze said, but other than a slight difference in constitutions coming into the world how different are you from your fellow man. It seems to me the constitution is either vital or it is not, and from there it is largely defined by it journey through the context of the world -- context defines. You might even think of it as a mutating process, the constitution being quite unrecognizable down the road a bit. Not to mention, you have no identity when you come into this world but slowly acquire one through your journey through the context of your life. It is true, consciousness is life and life is consciousness, and whether your comfortable with the realization or not sameness is the name of the game. What;s a Deleuze. what's a Tom. Dick or Harry, see what I mean?

Hi Jack,

Emotions I think determine the direction and color of any thought of an experience had. Only an exceptional mind can redirect thought away from the impulse of emotionally governed thought, and pehaps not only question one's thought, but the emotion governing it. As E.A Poe once said, the passions are the elements of life. Basic sounds once expressed the emotions felt about the experiences of the body. With the introduction of language I suspect not only did it mean refinement of both thought and emotion, but it acted as a cattalist for growth of the frontal lobes, until there was a give and take of thought influencing the emotions and the orginanal emotion generating thought. This is where the confusion and/or question comes about, are the mind and the brain identical. The brain I would guess is the hardware along with the rest which is the body, with mind being a bodily function. As it was the environment that produced the organism, its body, the body producing the brain, and thus the brain producing mind/thought and just as it is not possiable to separate subject and object, one cannot separate mind and body.

Bitter Crank,

I sometimes think that the root of this dumbing down and accepting theories without evidence is the natural outgrowth of the religiousity of America. Accepting the absurd and when practiced enough then spreading out to other areas. I got that directly from the mouth of the talking snake.

Most Americans buy into American exceptionalism, meaning we are the good guys, the problem with that is, that the world knows differently. It's been a hard lesson, the American empire has not been a kind master, supporting dictatorships and death squads in Latin America and around the world a nasty piece of work. It can be compared to a crime family on a global scale, but like the Nazis, they have overstretched even their resources. So to the rest of the world, if America self-destructs from within, the world will breathe a sigh of relief. Perhaps this is inevitable, but I fear horrific in fact.

Ignore,

The entire context of our physical environment is cause, so other people are part of that context and thus casual, which only means they affect you in some way, that you react to their existence. This is a process, the storyline of your life experience/ identity. The only way one can know the world is through one's body and the whole context of the outside world constitutes the materials of which you form the concept of your identity. So causual continuity is indeed the essence of identity, causual continuity is life experience which constitutes identity.

A fascist dream of bible Trumpers and the rest of the dumbed-down population, read Republicans.

YOU IN MISSISSIPPI NOW BOY!!!!

THE END OF THE EMPIRE?

Truth is what your whole body tells you it is, for one can only know the world through the body, so truth is the body's truth and operates upon the principles of pain, pleasure, and desire. Alter the bodily organism and you alter its apparent reality. We cannot, at presently know what ultimate reality is, we can only know what our biology is capable of sensing, that range or spectrum is adequate for the exitential well-being of the body but is not infallible mainly because the body is fallible to altered states. This is basically why morality should be based upon our common biology, it produces common truths.

The brain is a secondary organ in service to the body, the body produced the brain, the brain did not produce the body. That said, the physical environment produced the organism/life, and life interprets the physical world through its effects upon the body. We can only know the world through the body. It is the nature of the organism's body that determines its apparent reality, If one is to be at one with one's the context/physical world, one needs to be sensitive to it in ways that sures continued existence/survival.

Consciousness is knowing the world relative to the state of the body. Where there is a somewhat different biological body, there is a different apparent reality, a different consciousness. I personally do not believe that consciousness belongs to the brain/mind as a duality. I believe it is a mistake to think of the organism as anything but a functional organ of the physical world. Consciousness is reaction, cognitive processing is reaction, the understanding is the sum of reactions that form a meaningful concept for the bodily response, where reaction is response to the physical world, part to part, part to the whole and the whole to each of it's parts. In this sense the physical world for the organism is cause and reaction is effect, is consciousness.

Emotions are more primordial than thought but their essence is reaction to the effect of the physical world upon the nature of the body, again producing a response reaction to the bodies changed state. I think it might be helpful to think in terms of compound reaction as consciousness, always with the physical world as cause.

Ucarr,

First, the conclusion, Darwin's theory of evolution is neither upwardly or downwardly evolving design. Evolution is plastic, in the sense that, it is not set to any direction or goal, if it were it would not be able to adapt to an ever-changing world. It is error and/or mutation which governs evolutionary development. This is so much the case that error and/or mutation is about 99.9 percent fatal to the organism essentially spelling death. So, error, mutation, natural selection by the environment and death are evolution's main elements. Evolution is biology linked to both earth and the cosmos, and apparently according to science, nothing is separate from anything else. Life in the here and now is ever linked to the precondition of the earth while it changes incrementally leading all forms of life in its wake.

You seem to be inferring the existence of free will, more and more the scientific evidence points to free will as a highly functional delusion. This plays hell with the concept of sin as well as the legal system. As it turns out, free will seems nothing more than a manifestation of self-centered ego. Perhaps this realization will lead humanity into greater compassion and a greater humanity.

If one could know the ultimate context, read the cosmos and that of the earth in its place in the cosmos one I think would have a proper starting point. This not being possible, the mere realization of context defines might be of great service. Ucarr, sorry for the long delay, life has a way of interrupting one's intentions.

You are correct about the avoidance of gods. Particularly, one involving an anthropomorphic identity. I otherwise would like to think, successful or not, within the paradigm of an organism rather then the clockwork metaphor of the past. Teleology no, that again is a little anthropomorphic.Your desire to use the said term design does necessarily infer the mechanical approach. In the past indeed, organisms were said to be machines, but the new paradigm is an attempt to leave that concept behind, it can no longer serve us going forward.

Specific aggregations just means there are more possibilities in chaos, in the unmanifested than in what is manifest. Perhaps I am being a little hardline, perhaps it is best to keep all the possible tools at hand. The machine metapor might serve yet, after all, everything that is, is natural, and something we must try to understand backward. The god metaphor by definition is not, not occupying time and space, there for not part of the natural world.

You'll have to excuse me sometimes I think I am just blowing smoke. If one is thinking in terms of general systems theory, all systems are open systems if they are to survive very long, whether that applies to the universe is anyones guess, what would be outside a closed universe, infinitely of nothingness? You are obviously more well read than I, but I'll try to hang in there and see if I can follow your speculations. Interesting!!!