Darkneos wrote: ↑Fri Aug 01, 2025 11:08 pm
popeye1945 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 01, 2025 10:01 am
Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 6:36 pm
Evolution means change . To evolve means to change. Technology ,and changing fashions, are cultural.
You misunderstood . I never confused culture and biology .
It does need clarification. Humans do not evolve culturally; humans make changes in culture. It is in keeping with the nature of technology that when humanity invents something to improve the quality of life for the average person, that person does not need to understand it to benefit from it. This is most often what is considered cultural evolution, but it is the culture or the culture's technology that has evolved, not humanity itself. Your statement to Darkneos says humans evolve mostly culturally, it's splitting hairs, I suppose. Human cultures are monstrosities relative to their culture's foundation, which is the natural world, so of necessity, as culture is once removed from the natural world, its inhabitants are also monstrosities relative to the natural world. This is evident by nature's present chaos, which might be seen as its attempt to cleanse itself. It is again a matter of what the proper foundation for a term is. In our discussions on morality, I stated that the proper foundation of a human system of morality is biology itself, humanity itself. Is there any human morality directed towards nature? Like subject and object, the two can never be separated. Most animals know not to shit in their own nest, but humanity does not.
Biology is not a foundation of morality, at all.
Subject and object are separated by definition, you keep saying they can’t when they clearly already are. You’re the one denying reality.
You also have a very naive view of nature and animals, and calling culture a monstrosity shows you don’t understand it. Hell even non human animals have culture. Culture is nature, in fact everything is, even computers.
Like I said, you have a very stupid and uninformed notion of nature.
The Inseparability of Subject and Object
1. Perception Is Always Filtered Through the Subject
Every experience of an object is mediated by the senses, cognition, and interpretation of the subject.
You never encounter “pure” objects—you encounter your version of them.
Example: A red apple is not “red” in itself. Redness is a perceptual quality created by your visual system interpreting wavelengths of light.
Conclusion: The object is never accessed independently of the subject. They are co-dependent in experience.
2. Quantum Physics Undermines Objectivity
In quantum mechanics, the observer effect shows that the act of observation alters the state of the system.
Particles exist in a superposition until measured—only then do they “collapse” into a definite state.
This implies that observation creates reality, not merely reveals it.
Conclusion: The subject (observer) plays an active role in shaping the object (observed phenomenon).
3. Language and Thought Construct Reality
We don’t perceive raw reality—we perceive conceptualized reality shaped by language and thought.
The word “tree” is not the tree itself. It’s a mental construct that organizes sensory data.
Different cultures and languages carve up reality differently. What one sees as “object,” another may see as “process” or “relationship.”
Conclusion: The object is not independent—it’s shaped by the subject’s cognitive and linguistic framework.
4. Phenomenological Evidence
Philosophers like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty argue that consciousness is always consciousness of something—there’s no pure subject without an object, and no object without a subject to perceive it.
Experience is relational, not dualistic.
Conclusion: Subject and object are two poles of a single experiential field.
5. Eastern Philosophy: Non-Dual Awareness
In Advaita Vedanta and Zen Buddhism, the separation of subject and object is seen as an illusion.
Meditation reveals that the boundary between “self” and “world” is fluid—awareness is not located in a subject, but is the field in which both subject and object arise.
Conclusion: The deepest level of consciousness reveals unity, not division.
To believe in a strict separation between subject and object is to assume that reality exists independently of experience. But every piece of evidence we have—scientific, philosophical, and introspective—suggests that reality is participatory. The subject and object are not two things—they are two aspects of one unfolding process.