Everything is Not a Thing

[Belinda]

Matter is an emergent property of energy. Energy is an emergent property of whatever lower.

Yes, but energy is also a thing albeit an exceedingly widespread thing. Energy emerges from experience. So, experience, not energy, is the ultimate existence.

How do you consider experience as the source of energy, is experience the source of the heat energy generated by the sun? You are treating the experience as a cause rather than a reaction. In a world of reactive organisms, as in reactive to the principle of evolutionary adaptation where the world is cause. Energy is not a thing. Things are biological reactions, a biological readout of the effects of energy on a subject's biology, a self-assimilation, which evoke meanings relative to one's biology.

I do indeed regard experience , not as "a" cause, but as cause of existence itself. Experience is the pancreator.

[popeye1945]

Yes, but energy is also a thing albeit an exceedingly widespread thing. Energy emerges from experience. So, experience, not energy, is the ultimate existence.

How do you consider experience as the source of energy, is experience the source of the heat energy generated by the sun? You are treating the experience as a cause rather than a reaction. In a world of reactive organisms, as in reactive to the principle of evolutionary adaptation where the world is cause. Energy is not a thing. Things are biological reactions, a biological readout of the effects of energy on a subject's biology, a self-assimilation, which evoke meanings relative to one's biology.

I do indeed regard experience, not as "a" cause, but as cause of existence itself. Experience is the pancreator.

Could you take me through your reasoning/logic for that statement?

[popeye1945]

Belinda,

You caught me up, I'll do a little more research and get back to you, and I'll do it through this post. I can't say I truly understand at present. I just got Spinoza's complete works, gift from my daughter, so you'll be hearing from me------ lol!!

if you persist in first reading Spinoza's complete works I'll never hear from you again.

LOL!! Indeed, much to ponder, you were the one that recommended Spinoza. So, if I let the world fall away it is your fault.

[Belinda]

How do you consider experience as the source of energy, is experience the source of the heat energy generated by the sun? You are treating the experience as a cause rather than a reaction. In a world of reactive organisms, as in reactive to the principle of evolutionary adaptation where the world is cause. Energy is not a thing. Things are biological reactions, a biological readout of the effects of energy on a subject's biology, a self-assimilation, which evoke meanings relative to one's biology.

I do indeed regard experience, not as "a" cause, but as cause of existence itself. Experience is the pancreator.

Could you take me through your reasoning/logic for that statement?

My reasoning I take from Bradley. " Consistently, his own view combined substance monism — the claim that reality is one, that there are no real separate things — with metaphysical idealism — the claim that reality consists solely of idea or experience. This vision of the world had a profound effect on the verse of T.S. Eliot, who studied philosophy at Harvard and wrote a Ph.D. thesis on Bradley."

[socrat44]

The knowledge that ''Everything is Not a Thing'' is a truth within knowing.

Just as ''Not a Thing is Everything''.

Just as the knower is inseparable from this knowing.

Every known 'thing' is an exact mirror image of the 'knower'.

Important to know is NO actual ''thing'' is ever SEEN, things are only known, in seeing, which can never be SEEN.




Is your EYE looking at you, or are you looking at your EYE?

Are your eyes looking things, or are you looking things through your eyes?
Who is "knowing": your eyes or 'you' ?

Who?

Is the one question to all our answers.

Who?
information received with the help of the senses enters the brain-computer,
the information is analyzed and a man somehow reacts . . .
conclusion - a man is robot zombie . . . because
the electro-mechanical--chemical brain-computer is an observer

[popeye1945]

Yes, but energy is also a thing albeit an exceedingly widespread thing. Energy emerges from experience. So, experience, not energy, is the ultimate existence.

How do you consider experience as the source of energy, is experience the source of the heat energy generated by the sun? You are treating the experience as a cause rather than a reaction. In a world of reactive organisms, as in reactive to the principle of evolutionary adaptation where the world is cause. Energy is not a thing. Things are biological reactions, a biological readout of the effects of energy on a subject's biology, a self-assimilation, which evoke meanings relative to one's biology.

I do indeed regard experience, not as "a" cause, but as cause of existence itself. Experience is the pancreator.

The above makes no sense, you state experience is not cause, then that it is the cause of all existence. Experience, it is true, is the sensing of our altered biology as the result of the effects of the physical world. Apparent reality is the emergent quality of subject and object which stand or fall together, neither independently gives us the subjective notion of apparent reality. As Spinoza stated, the physical world as an object or objects altering the state of our biology, our biological consciousness gives us apparent reality. My statement just takes it a bit further, stating that it is the energies altering the state of our biology/bodies that give us the notion of object/s or apparent reality. If we were to have direct access to ultimate reality it would be necessary to escape our subjectivity, for ultimate reality is not the product of the altered states of bodies/biology.

[Belinda]

How do you consider experience as the source of energy, is experience the source of the heat energy generated by the sun? You are treating the experience as a cause rather than a reaction. In a world of reactive organisms, as in reactive to the principle of evolutionary adaptation where the world is cause. Energy is not a thing. Things are biological reactions, a biological readout of the effects of energy on a subject's biology, a self-assimilation, which evoke meanings relative to one's biology.

I do indeed regard experience, not as "a" cause, but as cause of existence itself. Experience is the pancreator.

The above makes no sense, you state experience is not cause, then that it is the cause of all existence. Experience, it is true, is the sensing of our altered biology as the result of the effects of the physical world. Apparent reality is the emergent quality of subject and object which stand or fall together, neither independently gives us the subjective notion of apparent reality. As Spinoza stated, the physical world as an object or objects altering the state of our biology, our biological consciousness gives us apparent reality. My statement just takes it a bit further, stating that it is the energies altering the state of our biology/bodies that give us the notion of object/s or apparent reality. If we were to have direct access to ultimate reality it would be necessary to escape our subjectivity, for ultimate reality is not the product of the altered states of bodies/biology.

"our biological consciousness gives us apparent reality" is an idea too. Reality is created by ideas. All ideation including immediate sensations, your table lamp, and scientific reasoning, is experience.

[Dontaskme]

"our biological consciousness gives us apparent reality" is an idea too. Reality is created by ideas. All ideation including immediate sensations, your table lamp, and scientific reasoning, is experience.

“We don’t really know or come in contact with an object, called a mind, a body, or a world. All we know is the knowing of our experience. And this knowing is not known by a separate object – the knower — this knowing knows itself. […] In the seeing of a tree for instance, there is no seer and there is no seen. There is no inside ‘I’ that sees and there is no outside ‘tree’ that is seen. The ‘I’ and the ‘tree’ are concepts superimposed by thinking onto the reality of the experience, which in this case could simply be called ‘seeing’.”

[popeye1945]

I do indeed regard experience, not as "a" cause, but as cause of existence itself. Experience is the pancreator.

The above makes no sense, you state experience is not cause, then that it is the cause of all existence. Experience, it is true, is the sensing of our altered biology as the result of the effects of the physical world. Apparent reality is the emergent quality of subject and object which stand or fall together, neither independently gives us the subjective notion of apparent reality. As Spinoza stated, the physical world as an object or objects altering the state of our biology, our biological consciousness gives us apparent reality. My statement just takes it a bit further, stating that it is the energies altering the state of our biology/bodies that give us the notion of object/s or apparent reality. If we were to have direct access to ultimate reality it would be necessary to escape our subjectivity, for ultimate reality is not the product of the altered states of bodies/biology.

"our biological consciousness gives us apparent reality" is an idea too. Reality is created by ideas. All ideation including immediate sensations, your table lamp, and scientific reasoning, is experience.

You seem to forget something very basic, subject and object stand or fall together. Without an object, there is no consciousness, no experience, no meaning and no knowledge. As reactive organisms, the physical world is cause, and the energies that surround us only manifest as objects after being processed through a biological system; otherwise, they remain simply energy. Objects and conditions are meanings/ideas, yes. It is through the biological processes that we are presented with apparent reality. It is as if the physical world plays us like an instrument, and the melody it plays is apparent reality. It is a reality that is true only to the biology that is experiencing it, for apparent reality is what it seems to be, relative to the senses of the flesh, and the processes of understanding.

[popeye1945]

"our biological consciousness gives us apparent reality" is an idea too. Reality is created by ideas. All ideation including immediate sensations, your table lamp, and scientific reasoning, is experience.

“We don’t really know or come in contact with an object, called a mind, a body, or a world. All we know is the knowing of our experience. And this knowing is not known by a separate object – the knower — this knowing knows itself. […] In the seeing of a tree for instance, there is no seer and there is no seen. There is no inside ‘I’ that sees and there is no outside ‘tree’ that is seen. The ‘I’ and the ‘tree’ are concepts superimposed by thinking onto the reality of the experience, which in this case could simply be called ‘seeing’.”

Dontaskme,

Excellent, I actually experienced this when I was very much younger, I spent some time in the Arctic, Baffin Island to be precise. About four days before being there I was in downtown Toronto; when suddenly as it seemed to me, I was in the majestic high Arctic. Culture shock doesn't quite cover it, AWESOME comes closer. As you might know, up there it stays daylight half the year, so, it really plays with your circadian rhythms. At any rate to make a long story short, I was working with a construction crew putting up a mining town called Nanisivik, not far from the northwest passage. I would come out of our bunkhouse every morning and just stand there trying to imprint the mind-blowing vista and had this experience for lack of a better word, for all intense and purposes my identity was consumed by the vista I was perceiving, I was part of it, or really I was it, that experience years ago I have never found adequate words for. It was, however, a fantastic feeling, which was repeated a number of times during my stay in the Arctic. I'd never heard anyone describe it before, until reading your post.

[Dontaskme]

"our biological consciousness gives us apparent reality" is an idea too. Reality is created by ideas. All ideation including immediate sensations, your table lamp, and scientific reasoning, is experience.

“We don’t really know or come in contact with an object, called a mind, a body, or a world. All we know is the knowing of our experience. And this knowing is not known by a separate object – the knower — this knowing knows itself. […] In the seeing of a tree for instance, there is no seer and there is no seen. There is no inside ‘I’ that sees and there is no outside ‘tree’ that is seen. The ‘I’ and the ‘tree’ are concepts superimposed by thinking onto the reality of the experience, which in this case could simply be called ‘seeing’.”

Dontaskme,

Excellent, I actually experienced this when I was very much younger, I spent some time in the Arctic, Baffin Island to be precise. About four days before being there I was in downtown Toronto; when suddenly as it seemed to me, I was in the majestic high Arctic. Culture shock doesn't quite cover it, AWESOME comes closer. As you might know, up there it stays daylight half the year, so, it really plays with your circadian rhythms. At any rate to make a long story short, I was working with a construction crew putting up a mining town called Nanisivik, not far from the northwest passage. I would come out of our bunkhouse every morning and just stand there trying to imprint the mind-blowing vista and had this experience for lack of a better word, for all intense and purposes my identity was consumed by the vista I was perceiving, I was part of it, or really I was it, that experience years ago I have never found adequate words for. It was, however, a fantastic feeling, which was repeated a number of times during my stay in the Arctic. I'd never heard anyone describe it before, until reading your post.

Thankyou popeye for sharing here your own personal direct experience of what [''Everything is Not a Thing''] means to you.

Yes, it's difficult to describe, to put into words, and in my opinion, such insights are impossible to communicate to a reader. All the reader can do is recognise what's being pointed to and recognise something that has been their own direct experience.

I mean, who could comprehend that when the observer becomes the observed. It is all indivisibly ONE - There is no observer and no observed...but from their own personal direct experience.

Yes, When the observer becomes the observed. It is all ONE
There is no observer and no observed. The subject and object stand and fall together.

[Eodnhoj7]

No it does not.
It depends on the definition of "Thing", and as I have shown in the above post, "thing" is inclusive. A Hobbit is a thing for example.

And yet the absence of reality in the thing determines the nature of the thing...so what is the definition of "real" and "reality"?

I seem to think that you started the thread, so that question might be better answered by yourself.

But as far as it goes, my point is clear enough; a thing need not be real. There are things that do not exists, such as fantasy characters.

But they are real as "fantasy characters".

[Sculptor]

And yet the absence of reality in the thing determines the nature of the thing...so what is the definition of "real" and "reality"?

I seem to think that you started the thread, so that question might be better answered by yourself.

But as far as it goes, my point is clear enough; a thing need not be real. There are things that do not exists, such as fantasy characters.

But they are real as "fantasy characters".

Yes and black is white; white is black.
Try not to get run over next time you use a "zebra Crossing".

abbey road.JPG

[Eodnhoj7]

I seem to think that you started the thread, so that question might be better answered by yourself.

But as far as it goes, my point is clear enough; a thing need not be real. There are things that do not exists, such as fantasy characters.

But they are real as "fantasy characters".

Yes and black is white; white is black.
Try not to get run over next time you use a "zebra Crossing".

abbey road.JPG

Fantasy characters exist as fantasy characters, as such they exist.

[Sculptor]

But they are real as "fantasy characters".

Yes and black is white; white is black.
Try not to get run over next time you use a "zebra Crossing".

abbey road.JPG

Fantasy characters exist as fantasy characters, as such they exist.

Okay if fantasy characters exist, then everything is a thing.