What does it mean to be in the world?

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Tamminen
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What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Tamminen »

Heidegger analysed the basic ontological structures of the being of 'Dasein', "worldhood" and temporality, in his main work 'Being and Time'. The following fragments try to illuminate the human situation from a different point of view, and I hope they trigger some discussion on the topic although, and perhaps just because, they may look a bit provocative. To avoid some misunderstandings I must remark that the words and phrases like 'I' or 'my existence' do not denote an individual, empirical subject but the transcendental subject which is, of course, a controversial concept as such.

******

Some people think that first there was nature without consciousness, and then at some point consciousness appeared as a property of nature. However, this is a misleading picture of the relation between nature and consciousness, because it suggests that consciousness could also not have appeared, and that we can imagine nature without consciousness. But because I exist and cannot ”non-exist”, consciousness exists necessarily and needs nature and its evolution to realize my existence.

Consciousness cannot be explained by objects of consciousness.

I am in the world as a body. I see my body. If I could see my functioning brain, I would see what happens in my brain when I look at its functioning. I would see my seeing process as it appears to me in the world. But what I would see would not explain my seeing it.

Consciousness does not reside in any place or structure of the material world, not even in the brain.

My body is a material object that I meet in the world. My head is part of my body. My brain is an organ inside my head, and its physiology is connected to the way I experience the world.

There are no thoughts in my head. My brain does not think.

Because all being is related to consciousness, consciousness cannot be a property of matter or any other being.

We live in a material world, we explore it, and at some point we may think that it is all there is, and that by exploring the structure of matter we shall in the end also explain why we exist. However, the world is part of the structure of existence, and our existence explains the being of the world, not vice versa.

When I want to understand my existence. I start to explore what is already in front of me: the world I am living in. But I cannot understand existence or the world if I do not see the totality: my temporal being in the world that is the material condition of my existence.

Even if all the objects of our experience were material, matter itself would not be essential, but experiencing the material reality.

The structure of my existence is such that the objects I meet in the world are the natural objects of my sight. If I want to see the structure itself, I must look closer and near. But I do not see myself, and my existence is not an object that I can look at.

Existence must realize itself, and it can realize itself only in the form of its inner logic. Nature is one of the necessary forms of realizing existence. Nature in turn has its own inner logic, the expression of which are the necessary structures that we call laws of nature.

Laws of nature do not explain anything. Scientists find laws of nature and find that nature behaves according to these laws.

Even if we found all laws of nature, and everything happened according to these laws, it would still be a total mystery that things happen in the way they happen.

Science cannot explain why reality is such as it is. It only illuminates the landscape so that we can see the inner structure of phenomena, their connections to laws of nature.

When we see the structure of a phenomenon, we understand and master it better, and it does not bother us as much as before. We call this sometimes explaining, but it is not, of course, an explanation of the being of the phenomenon.

The explanation of a phenomenon is not in its structure or in other phenomena, but in our existence, to the realization of which it takes part.

The explanation of the phenomenon that the Sun rises every morning could be a figure of the solar system and the description of all laws of nature. When we see the totality to which a phenomenon belongs, we feel that we have explained it and that it now belongs to the phenomena that we understand. But if we want to know why the solar system exists, we must describe a larger totality and, in the end, the whole universe. And the explanation of the being of the universe is not in the universe but in us who try to explain the world and understand our existence.

The universe is a material organism that realizes all forms of consciousness as an endless flow of time. My body is an organic part of the universe, and it realizes the form of consciousness which expresses itself at present.

The universe realizes my eternal existence. That is why the Sun rises.


The world is one of the basic structures of my existence. It is because I exist.

It is an absurd idea that there would be a world, but I would not exist.

The world is more than I can perceive or understand, but it is nevertheless only for me.

There are events that are outside of all experience. But although they are outside of experience, they presuppose an experience outside of which they are.

Although probably nobody was in place to witness the birth of the Sun, it was still born in a way that can be described in principle. But this does not mean that the world does not presuppose consciousness, because even if the Sun was born outside consciousness, it was born to the world in which I exist, and it is not meaningful to say that it could have been born even if I did not exist.

An object can be even if it does not appear to me, but not independent of my existence.

I could think that if a hundred years ago something else had happened than what really happened, I would not be born and consequently I would not exist now. But even if I could imagine a world that is different from the one we live in, I cannot imagine a world in which I would not be some individual at present.

I could think that I exist only because there happened to evolve life on Earth. But it is of course vice versa: there ”happened” to evolve life on Earth because I exist.

I do not exist because my heart beats, but my heart beats because I exist.

If Earth would blow up tomorrow, this incident would define some details of my existence but would not destroy my existence and its endlessness.

The subject is not a being that can be or not be, but the condition of the being of all objects and phenomena. All that there is, is in relation to me.

If I did not exist, there would be nothing. Perhaps no one has yet understood this simple sentence and all its consequences.
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Lark_Truth
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Re: What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Lark_Truth »

What exactly is it you are asking? I am confused.
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Tamminen
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Re: What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Tamminen »

Lark_Truth wrote:What exactly is it you are asking? I am confused.
I am asking about the ontological status of subjectivity vs. the ontological status of the material world. Is consciousness a necessary or accidental "property" of nature? This question has been discussed in many topics, but no clarity has been achieved so far, so I thought a new and perhaps somewhat provocative introduction to the theme would trigger a more fruitful debate.
Fooloso4
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Re: What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Tamminen:
However, this is a misleading picture of the relation between nature and consciousness, because it suggests that consciousness could also not have appeared, and that we can imagine nature without consciousness.
Consciousness must exist in order for me to imagine nature without consciousness, but I do not think that the way things are is the only possible way for things to have been. Without consciousness we would not be considering existence, including the existence of consciousness, but this only shows that consciousness is necessary in order to think about existence, not that consciousness must necessarily exist.
But because I exist and cannot ”non-exist” …
Here I take it to mean that ‘I’ is the transcendental subject. We might accept the existence of the transcendental subject, but this does not mean that a transcendental subject must exist, only that a transcendental subject does exist and is a necessary condition for any discussion of consciousness and existence.
… consciousness exists necessarily and needs nature and its evolution to realize my existence.
It does not follow from the fact that the transcendental subject does exist that the transcendental subject must exist.
Consciousness cannot be explained by objects of consciousness.
The transcendental I is not an object of consciousness. An object of consciousness is something that the I has consciousness of. Can the conscious subject explain consciousness? We have not been able to do so, but someday we may. It remains an open question.
Consciousness does not reside in any place or structure of the material world, not even in the brain.
The notion of consciousness “residing” somewhere is suspect. I am conscious does not mean that consciousness resides in me. It also does not mean that consciousness exists independent of subjects who are conscious.
My body is a material object that I meet in the world.
This disjunction is contrary to conscious experience. You are not some conscious entity apart from your body. If your body is anesthetized you will have no consciousness of anything. If someone hurts you, it is you who hurts, not your body, as if it were an object external to you.
There are no thoughts in my head. My brain does not think.
Thoughts are not physical objects and so you will not find them in your head, but it does not follow that your brain does not think.
Because all being is related to consciousness, consciousness cannot be a property of matter or any other being.
You have not shown that all being is related to consciousness. You have not shown that consciousness exists anywhere except as a property of conscious physical beings.
However, the world is part of the structure of existence …
The “structure of existence” is the structure of existing things. Existence is not something that exists separate and apart from things that exist.
And the explanation of the being of the universe is not in the universe but in us who try to explain the world and understand our existence.
The transcendental ego of I am “in” the universe.
The universe realizes my eternal existence.
How is it that you know that your existence is eternal?
It is an absurd idea that there would be a world, but I would not exist.
It is, rather, because you exist that there is the idea of the absurd. A world without conscious subjects would not be absurd, for there would be no conscious subjects for which it would be absurd.
The world is more than I can perceive or understand, but it is nevertheless only for me.
If I did not exist my world would not exist, but my world is not the world. The world is not the object of a transcendental I that transcends the world. Kant's transcendental ego transcends experience in so far as it is the condition for experience. It does not mean that it transcends the world.
There are events that are outside of all experience. But although they are outside of experience, they presuppose an experience outside of which they are.
This says nothing more than that experience requires an I who experiences. It says nothing about existence being contingent on an experiencer.
But even if I could imagine a world that is different from the one we live in, I cannot imagine a world in which I would not be some individual at present.
Again, this means nothing more than that I must exist in order to imagine.
I could think that I exist only because there happened to evolve life on Earth. But it is of course vice versa: there ”happened” to evolve life on Earth because I exist.
“Of course”? I might say that I eat because food exists, but this does not mean that food exists because I eat. It may happen that there is no food to eat and so I do not eat.
I do not exist because my heart beats, but my heart beats because I exist.
If you did not exist your heart would not exist and so would not beat, but if your heart stopped beating and could not be started again, you would cease to exist.
If Earth would blow up tomorrow, this incident would define some details of my existence but would not destroy my existence and its endlessness.
That is a professional of belief. It has no logical or evidential basis.
If I did not exist, there would be nothing. Perhaps no one has yet understood this simple sentence and all its consequences.
If there were no ‘I’ there would be nothing for which there could be something, but that marks the absence of an awareness of existence, the absence of a conscious agent not an absence of existence.
Tamminen
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Re: What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Tamminen »

Fooloso4 wrote:Consciousness must exist in order for me to imagine nature without consciousness, but I do not think that the way things are is the only possible way for things to have been. Without consciousness we would not be considering existence, including the existence of consciousness, but this only shows that consciousness is necessary in order to think about existence, not that consciousness must necessarily exist.
We have had a dispute on this with Consul, and I still say that the necessity of the subject-object relation applies also to the transcendent objects, not only objects of consciousness. Much of your criticism concerns this difference between our basic outlooks on the deep structure of reality.
Fooloso4 wrote:The transcendental I is not an object of consciousness. An object of consciousness is something that the I has consciousness of. Can the conscious subject explain consciousness? We have not been able to do so, but someday we may. It remains an open question.
By objects of consciousness I here mean objects of the material world, which is, of course, a misleading expression, but this is an old text and it was left there by accident.
Fooloso4 wrote:This disjunction is contrary to conscious experience. You are not some conscious entity apart from your body. If your body is anesthetized you will have no consciousness of anything. If someone hurts you, it is you who hurts, not your body, as if it were an object external to you.
It is true that the body and consciousness are connected, but the body is still a transcendent object for consciousness. I would say there is a one to one correlation between those two levels of being. I can see my body in the same way as I can see other material objects
Fooloso4 wrote:Thoughts are not physical objects and so you will not find them in your head, but it does not follow that your brain does not think.
I think, not my brain.
Fooloso4 wrote:The “structure of existence” is the structure of existing things. Existence is not something that exists separate and apart from things that exist.
Many great philosophers, e.g. Heidegger, Sartre and others, have analysed the basic structures of existence, the basic subject-object relation, temporality, the roles of consciousness and the world etc. That is also what I am trying to do here, in my small and humble fashion.
Fooloso4 wrote:The transcendental ego of I am “in” the universe.
I am in the universe as my body, which is a mirror of my consciousness. This may require clarification, but I postpone it for now.
Fooloso4 wrote:How is it that you know that your existence is eternal?
It is a hypothesis, but it has logical grounds. See my other texts on this forum.
Fooloso4 wrote:It is, rather, because you exist that there is the idea of the absurd. A world without conscious subjects would not be absurd, for there would be no conscious subjects for which it would be absurd.
The idea is absurd for us who try to think about it. It need not be absurd for the nonexistent inhabitants of the subjectless world, which has lost its logic anyway.
Fooloso4 wrote:“Of course”? I might say that I eat because food exists, but this does not mean that food exists because I eat. It may happen that there is no food to eat and so I do not eat.
You can erase the "of course", it is probably true only for me. The rest is OK. As I said in the introduction, my views are somewhat provocative.
Fooloso4 wrote:That is a professional of belief. It has no logical or evidential basis.
I hesitated to keep that sentence in the text, but then I thought that because I wrote it, it must contain a bit of truth in it. And maybe there is a point of view from which it is true, considering my other views of reality.

The last sentence is the core of my philosophical thinking. If it is not true, everything else collapses with it. For me it is as self-evident as the 'I am', which for Descartes was the only thing beyond doubt. But perhaps Descartes was not dubious enough :)
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Felix
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Re: What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Felix »

Tamminen: My body is a material object that I meet in the world.
Fooloso4: This disjunction is contrary to conscious experience. You are not some conscious entity apart from your body. If your body is anesthetized you will have no consciousness of anything. If someone hurts you, it is you who hurts, not your body, as if it were an object external to you.
That "disjunction" is not contrary to everyone's experience: some have reported being conscious while their body was unconscious, and the ability to voluntarily control the body's sensory reactions is well documented.
Tamminen: If Earth would blow up tomorrow, this incident would define some details of my existence but would not destroy my existence and its endlessness.
Yes, some minor details of your existence would change, e.g., no more ice cream for you. :lol:
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
Tamminen
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Re: What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Tamminen »

Felix wrote:Yes, some minor details of your existence would change, e.g., no more ice cream for you. :lol:
No more ice cream for me, but a lot for the other who is born, whoever or whatever that may be. My view is a kind of sophisticated combination of solipsism and transmigration theory, both regarded as mortal sins among philosophers, but in this combination they become more plausible. If you want to get acquainted with my views, I suggest you read some of my longer texts on this forum, for example these on Epistemology and Metaphysics:

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Sy Borg
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Re: What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Sy Borg »

Tamminem, what are your thoughts about the universe before biological life?

It seems to me that physical reality chugs along just fine without consciousness, or it did once, but how physical things are perceived is defined individually by consciousness.
Tamminen
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Re: What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Tamminen »

Greta wrote:Tamminem, what are your thoughts about the universe before biological life?

It seems to me that physical reality chugs along just fine without consciousness, or it did once, but how physical things are perceived is defined individually by consciousness.
Of course there was no consciousness before life, but what I am arguing is that there cannot be a universe with no subjects at all, any time, any place, from the point of view of which the world is experienced, wondered about and given meaning to, and that subjectivity is the precondition of any universe whatsoever, the primus motor for the very existence of a universe. Reality is not blind. We are there already.
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Felix
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Re: What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Felix »

Greta: Tamminem, what are your thoughts about the universe before biological life?
The Universe may be eternal and have always had biological life - it just comes and goes.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Lark_Truth
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Re: What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Lark_Truth »

The universe before biological life?

Boring.
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Tamminen
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Re: What does it mean to be in the world?

Post by Tamminen »

Felix wrote:The Universe may be eternal and have always had biological life - it just comes and goes.
Although there was no consciousness in the universe early in its development, it may all the time have been in the process of creating it, which seems to be a big process and makes us almost crazy as we are looking at it. It must be noticed that there may also be so called formal causes for things, to remember the classifications of Aristotle, though they are not very popular among modern philosophers and especially scientists. It may be the case that causal relations are only subordinate to the formal causes when we think of the universe as a whole. What I think would be the "form" or idea, in the platonic sense, could be, for example, self-consciousness in the Hegelian sense, reality which would be transparent to itself. But for example Sartre wrote that Hegel was too optimistic in his scenarios.
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