The metaphysics of objects

[Bernard]

Surely it can be the only sane conclusion that living things exclusively compose existence and have always, and will always do so. That Goddy-Woddy or Biggy-Wiggy-Bang-Wang created everything one day, at a comfortable distance in time away from us - even though they shouldn't have existed when only nothing existed - is little more than a trite bedtime story.

Get with it: life is what existence is about, and living beings are the only source of life.

You couldn't be more wrong!

You need to back up your statements at least if you have no way of countering mine. It hasn't occurred to you that what is most precious to us - life - is what is most precious anywhere?

If life isn't what existence is about, what is?... Nothing? That's so dumb.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Surely it can be the only sane conclusion that living things exclusively compose existence and have always, and will always do so. That Goddy-Woddy or Biggy-Wiggy-Bang-Wang created everything one day, at a comfortable distance in time away from us - even though they shouldn't have existed when only nothing existed - is little more than a trite bedtime story.

Get with it: life is what existence is about, and living beings are the only source of life.

You couldn't be more wrong!

You need to back up your statements at least if you have no way of countering mine. It hasn't occurred to you that what is most precious to us - life - is what is most precious anywhere?

If life isn't what existence is about, what is?... Nothing? That's so dumb.

Bernard, sometimes this old man gets tired, no necessary reflection on you, or the argument. Later, I'll be feeling my wheaties again, talk to you then. Now I really should be getting busy with some of my more pressing responsibilities.

Peace my friend!

[Bernard]

Cheers. I was already gone before thee. I feel embarrassed at getting so reactive.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Cheers. I was already gone before thee. I feel embarrassed at getting so reactive.

No worries mate, you're one of the ones I find more pleasantly interesting.
And you know I like pushing buttons!

You know how us guys are, wheres that damn remote control, oh there it is...

I AM THE REMOTE COMMANDER! Ha Ha Ha <-maniacal laughter

And then we wield it like a light saber!

Later, my friend!

[SpheresOfBalance]

Surely it can be the only sane conclusion that living things exclusively compose existence and have always, and will always do so. That Goddy-Woddy or Biggy-Wiggy-Bang-Wang created everything one day, at a comfortable distance in time away from us - even though they shouldn't have existed when only nothing existed - is little more than a trite bedtime story.

Get with it: life is what existence is about, and living beings are the only source of life.

You choose to believe only yourself, that is selfish, egotistical, elitist. Under these conditions it's easy to try and dictate your way. If you only answer to yourself then you can do anything you want, which is not always a good thing, as they say, absolute power, corrupts absolutely.

I, on the other hand, have faith in Science, as it is the most fair and just of understandings, it is the most correct language so as to speak of anything, though it is not completely delineated yet, it is on the one true course. It is all inclusive of everything that exists, not just animals, but that which gave way to animals. You seem to not believe in such things, I guess you believe that fossils are forged, and that carbon dating is also a sham, convenient, as you type on your science derived computer keyboard, remotely conversing with another doing the same, miles away.

You are one of those, that pick and choose, only that which serves your agenda of self. I bet that as you picked the nuts from banana-nut bread, that I baked and presented to you, you'd condemn my baking the bread.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Way of wavelength. What have hallucinogens to do with anything. Castaneda spent a 14 year apprenticeship with Don Juan, only the two first of which dealt with 'power plants' and only under very strict conditions. Carlos was the most sober man you could ever meet and I met him.


I would see every being a God, as my post obviously postulates.

"The Teachings of Don Juan - A Separate Reality - Tales of Power" by Carlos Castaneda.

This last sentence of yours is the problem with society today, everyone thinks themselves a god as they destroy, because they believe as gods they can get away with it, NOT TRUE! We are in fact of one origin, and as contrasted by the truth of the universe, that came long before the organism that eventually became man, could even understand the concept of "observer," is a puny, insignificant, foolish, barbaric, animal, that if your belief is any indication, has far outlived its place in the cosmos, with such absurd notions. God is the forces that created us more complex chemical machines, and came long before the chemical animal, for it to finally be so blind, as to think it is the god, that created itself. What a joke, some can spin. I actually took you seriously, once! No more my friend, can you say megalomaniac? So when are you going to erect your monument, that outdoes Ramses II? Or maybe you have already done so, in your minds eye, but I see that you're "third eye blind."

No no no. There is nothing self or anthropo- centric in this.
Man is still the ego at the centre of everything ( and, yes, is therefore God above all) because he is special because he is more alive than anything else is or is likely to be. We are just one life form among endless life forms with no overseer. Every being is God because there is no God. I think you misunderstand.
No no no, your view is selfish and not all inclusive, nothing is more important than anything else, as a matter of fact the earth is ONE organism, of balance, humans have dubbed them ecosystems, but in fact it's much larger than that. When man is first born, he cannot see past his own nose, and that is the entirety of his world, then it's his crib, then the floor of his house, then the whole of his neighborhood, then his classroom, where he learns of his ecosystem, (his environment), yet only few travel into outer-space to see that it's his planet, and even fewer yet, can expand their minds, such that they can see, that the truth of their selves, is the all inclusiveness of the universe, as the one balanced organism, that it is, or at least it has to be, for man to live and think about of part of this, at all.

It would seen you have been stunted, and still can't see past your own nose. I'm sorry! Here, let me help you, my friend, you are simply laying in your crib.

[James Markham]

Objects are conceptual creations, and in this respect can include as much or as little as we need to include. So for instance we could say a pencil is an object, or a pencil case which is full of pencils, or we can go the whole hog and say the universe is an object.

All differentiation is subjective, so in terms of any reality which is independent of perception, there are no objects, only the potential of energy to be experienced as an event, so objects are formed by the mind in our interpretation and understanding of the metaphysical reality of experience and experienced.

Energy and consciousness are what we experience as reality, one is percieved, and one is perceiver, without either there can be no actual event.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Objects are conceptual creations, and in this respect can include as much or as little as we need to include. So for instance we could say a pencil is an object, or a pencil case which is full of pencils, or we can go the whole hog and say the universe is an object.

All differentiation is subjective, so in terms of any reality which is independent of perception, there are no objects, only the potential of energy to be experienced as an event, so objects are formed by the mind in our interpretation and understanding of the metaphysical reality of experience and experienced.

Energy and consciousness are what we experience as reality, one is percieved, and one is perceiver, without either there can be no actual event.

That's a fine fairytale, but incorrect.

I'm reminded of the thought experiment, similar to your last, above: If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? To some, would be, philosophers the answer is, "no," as no one is there to witness the event. However in truth the answer is, "yes," independent of observation. If it was asked if it made a "noise," then "no" would be correct, as noise is subjective. Sound however is not, by definition, subjective nor dependent upon witness, as evidenced by definition 2 found on Dictionary.com Unabridged. Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.

sound (1) [sound] noun
2. mechanical vibrations transmitted through an elastic medium, traveling in air at a speed of approximately 1087 feet (331 meters) per second at sea level.

Clearly the definition is a characterization, of a natural event on planet earth, which happens independent of human interaction, and has happened long before humans ever existed to characterize such naturally occurring events, whatever they may actually be, or what entity takes notice, and then reports such by whatever means, and in whatever way. Humans simply gave reference to a naturally occurring event that they happened to be capable of coming upon.

I continually worry about those of egocentricity (humancentricity) As these are the ones that usually make the biggest mistakes, relative to the truth of the universe, and thus our continuance in it.

[Ginkgo]

The key to this thought experiment depends on whether you want to talk about sounds as 'experienced' or 'non-experienced'.

Mary is a brilliant scientist. Her area of expertise is acoustics. She know everything there is knows about how sounds waves travel through various mediums. In fact there is nothing she doesn't know about the science of sound.There is only one problem. Mary is as deaf as a post. She was born deaf and has never heard a sound in her life.

This has been no handicap to Mary. She can recognize any sound made by any object provided she can see some type of graphical or digital representation of the sound. In other words she hears by looking.

One morning a miracle happens. Mary wakes up with her hearing restored. The first thing she hears is her husband rattling in the kitchen getting breakfast. Mary rushes in to tell him the news. Upon hearing Mary, the husband swings around only to knock a glass off the table. The glass shatters on the floor.

As always Mary immediately has a visual representation of the vibration patters associated with a shattering glass. The difference this time is that Mary also hears the glass smash. The question that becomes important in this thought experiment is whether or not Mary actually learns something new or additional about sound that she didn't know when she was deaf. In other words, does experiencing sound add something extra to her subjective state?

[SpheresOfBalance]

The key to this thought experiment depends on whether you want to talk about sounds as 'experienced' or 'non-experienced'.

Mary is a brilliant scientist. Her area of expertise is acoustics. She know everything there is knows about how sounds waves travel through various mediums. In fact there is nothing she doesn't know about the science of sound.There is only one problem. Mary is as deaf as a post. She was born deaf and has never heard a sound in her life.

This has been no handicap to Mary. She can recognize any sound made by any object provided she can see some type of graphical or digital representation of the sound. In other words she hears by looking.

One morning a miracle happens. Mary wakes up with her hearing restored. The first thing she hears is her husband rattling in the kitchen getting breakfast. Mary rushes in to tell him the news. Upon hearing Mary, the husband swings around only to knock a glass off the table. The glass shatters on the floor.

As always Mary immediately has a visual representation of the vibration patters associated with a shattering glass. The difference this time is that Mary also hears the glass smash. The question that becomes important in this thought experiment is whether or not Mary actually learns something new or additional about sound that she didn't know when she was deaf. In other words, does experiencing sound add something extra to her subjective state?

Of course it does, but an event of sound has always happened whether she just saw what caused it or heard it and saw what caused it. Her not hearing sound does not stop the event from happening, just her knowledge of it.

He said:

Energy and consciousness are what we experience as reality, one is percieved, and one is perceiver, without either there can be no actual event.

If he had said that: "there can be no knowledge of the actual event" then he wold have been correct.

[Ginkgo]

He said:

Energy and consciousness are what we experience as reality, one is percieved, and one is perceiver, without either there can be no actual event.

If he had said that: "there can be no knowledge of the actual event" then he wold have been correct.

I think I get it now. He seems to be grappling with what has become know as Orch-OR.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestra ... -reduction

The difference here seems to be that James is arguing that we need a conscious observer in order for the wave function to collapse.

[Ginkgo]

Yes the whole thing is very interesting. I think the reason for the rejection of ORCH-OR is because Penrose teamed up with a guy called Steward Hameroff. It was a group of Australian scientists that were at the forefront in trying to debunk Hameroff. The main reason being the ani-physicalist implication of Hameroff and Penrose. Main stream science is very suspicious about theories of quantum consciousness.

[James Markham]

Objects are conceptual creations, and in this respect can include as much or as little as we need to include. So for instance we could say a pencil is an object, or a pencil case which is full of pencils, or we can go the whole hog and say the universe is an object.

All differentiation is subjective, so in terms of any reality which is independent of perception, there are no objects, only the potential of energy to be experienced as an event, so objects are formed by the mind in our interpretation and understanding of the metaphysical reality of experience and experienced.

Energy and consciousness are what we experience as reality, one is percieved, and one is perceiver, without either there can be no actual event.

That's a fine fairytale, but incorrect.

I'm reminded of the thought experiment, similar to your last, above: If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? To some, would be, philosophers the answer is, "no," as no one is there to witness the event. However in truth the answer is, "yes," independent of observation. If it was asked if it made a "noise," then "no" would be correct, as noise is subjective. Sound however is not, by definition, subjective nor dependent upon witness, as evidenced by definition 2 found on Dictionary.com Unabridged. Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.

sound (1) [sound] noun
2. mechanical vibrations transmitted through an elastic medium, traveling in air at a speed of approximately 1087 feet (331 meters) per second at sea level.

Clearly the definition is a characterization, of a natural event on planet earth, which happens independent of human interaction, and has happened long before humans ever existed to characterize such naturally occurring events, whatever they may actually be, or what entity takes notice, and then reports such by whatever means, and in whatever way. Humans simply gave reference to a naturally occurring event that they happened to be capable of coming upon.

I continually worry about those of egocentricity (humancentricity) As these are the ones that usually make the biggest mistakes, relative to the truth of the universe, and thus our continuance in it.

Your statement is simply an assumption, based on your sensory knowledge of the universe. All the subjective concepts you use to differentiate reality, are absent if there is no conscious acknowledgement of events.

What is the substance of the universe when there is no conscious evaluation taking place?

You can't answer this question without using concepts created by our conscious assessment of reality, and the reason you can't answer without applying conceptual definitions is because objective independence is metaphysical, and can only be thought of as elusive energy, which has no independent differentiating qualitative aspect without the quantifying effect of evaluation. 

If you think events take place when there is no conscious quantification, then begin by telling me what substance exhibits this independent behaviour, and what differentiates one part from the next?

[Ginkgo]

There was an interesting discussion with Graham Smetham on this topic, not that long ago. The discussion followed an article by Smetham published in Philosophy Now May/June issue. It was called, 'Known-To-Be-False Materialist Philosophies Of Mind.

Might be of interest

[James Markham]

There was an interesting discussion with Graham Smetham on this topic, not that long ago. The discussion followed an article by Smetham published in Philosophy Now May/June issue. It was called, 'Known-To-Be-False Materialist Philosophies Of Mind.

Might be of interest

I would be interested in reading that, is there some way I can read it on this web site?