The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Atla
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Atla »

Tamminen wrote: May 1st, 2018, 11:42 am But although the world is independent of my personal existence, its being depends on the being of subjectivity in general, so that there must be someone or something experiencing the world so that we can meaningfully speak of the world at all. So the basic subject-object relation is genuinely ontological, so that the being of the subject depends on the being of the world and the being of the world depends on the being of the subject. And by 'the subject' I mean subjectivity in general, so that there must be at least one experiencing subject in our universe.
Subjectivity in general IS the world, why do you talk about it like it was two "things", with a dependence between them?
(As such, there is no actual ontological subject-object relation, and the evolution of consciousness in this universe is no essence.)

Also, "individual" subjective time needs no beginning when spacetime is a closed loop, but such a hypothesis is untestable too.
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Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

Atla wrote: May 5th, 2019, 5:37 am Subjectivity in general IS the world, why do you talk about it like it was two "things", with a dependence between them?
I think the subject needs an object for its being, it gets its content from the object, but I also think that the essence of the object, as an other, is another subject that must be material in order to be an object. So objects are really subjects, but that does not remove objectivity and materiality from them.
...the evolution of consciousness in this universe is no essence.
I speak of 'essence' in a loose sense, something there must be in order to be anything at all.
Also, "individual" subjective time needs no beginning when spacetime is a closed loop, but such a hypothesis is untestable too.
A closed loop does not solve the logical problem of infinite subjective past. I have another hypothesis, which is untestable as well.
Atla
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Tamminen wrote: May 5th, 2019, 8:04 am I think the subject needs an object for its being, it gets its content from the object, but I also think that the essence of the object, as an other, is another subject that must be material in order to be an object. So objects are really subjects, but that does not remove objectivity and materiality from them.
There is no "another" subject.
Since subjects, objects and being are all one and the same, there is no essence, there are no dependencies. That's just a cognitive error.
I speak of 'essence' in a loose sense, something there must be in order to be anything at all.
That's what I meant too by essence, there's just being without a need for essence, without dependencies.
A closed loop does not solve the logical problem of infinite subjective past. I have another hypothesis, which is untestable as well.
It does solve it, in a finite closed loop there is no infinite subjective past.
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Atla
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Tamminen wrote: May 5th, 2019, 8:04 am A closed loop does not solve the logical problem of infinite subjective past. I have another hypothesis, which is untestable as well.
By closed loop I mean that it doesn't repeat itself, there is only one "cycle". So you take a point in time in your subjective past, say the idea of the Big Bang, and you take a point in time in your subjective future, say the idea of the Big Crunch, and you stitch them together because they are one and the same moment in time.

This view of time is a mind-bending idea at first, but makes perfect logical sense in every way, as far as I can tell. Too bad it's unprovable. (I think the idea of asymmetric time remains logically problematic.)
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Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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When I say that an event in my past and an event in my future are in fact one and the same event, I can only mean that I cannot tell the difference. But one of them takes place before the other, they cannot take place at the same time. This is the logic of time. And it does not matter if time is a closed loop or a linear series of events, the logic is the same, and it is exactly this logic of subjective time that causes the problem of infinite past. Unfortunately I cannot see how we can avoid this contradiction without introducing the concept of asymmetric time, in spite of its seeming strangeness.
Atla
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Tamminen wrote: May 5th, 2019, 11:40 am When I say that an event in my past and an event in my future are in fact one and the same event, I can only mean that I cannot tell the difference. But one of them takes place before the other, they cannot take place at the same time. This is the logic of time. And it does not matter if time is a closed loop or a linear series of events, the logic is the same, and it is exactly this logic of subjective time that causes the problem of infinite past. Unfortunately I cannot see how we can avoid this contradiction without introducing the concept of asymmetric time, in spite of its seeming strangeness.
Nope, they can also be one and the same event if time is a closed loop. Not necessarily a matter of not being able to tell the difference.
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Felix
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Atla: "Nope, they can also be one and the same event if time is a closed loop"

If they are the same event, it is not a loop, closed or otherwise, since a loop is comprised of a series of events - sequential change. Time is a subjective measurement of change. Where there is no change, or perception of change, there is no time.

Tamminen: "An infinite subjective past is logically problematic"

In what way? I suppose you mean that every subject must have a starting, but if there is only one eternal subject, it's temporal births (incarnations) are illusory, they are what one mystic called, "parentheses in eternity."
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
Atla
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Felix wrote: May 5th, 2019, 4:01 pm Atla: "Nope, they can also be one and the same event if time is a closed loop"

If they are the same event, it is not a loop, closed or otherwise, since a loop is comprised of a series of events - sequential change. Time is a subjective measurement of change. Where there is no change, or perception of change, there is no time.
Nope, the exception is when that series of events - of sequential "change" - forms a closed loop.
Hence giving the illusion of change from our perspective, but actually the entirety of spacetime already exists "timelessly" in the eternal now, if we could view it from an absolute perspective.

That solves all logical problems all at once, I just can't figure out why people never consider of this?
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Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Atla wrote: May 5th, 2019, 11:45 am Nope, they can also be one and the same event if time is a closed loop. Not necessarily a matter of not being able to tell the difference.
I try to understand this. You say there is no infinite past in your closed loop. In that case there must be the first event. And in the future there is this same event, so that no one can tell the difference. But now the “same event” happens the second time, not the first time, and then the third time and so on. So even if the events of the loop are experienced as identical during each round, or experienced as happening the first time, they are not the same events in time. Remember that we are not talking about the phenomenology of experiencing but the phenomenology of time. There is a difference. Time has a logic of its own. You say that the cycle does not repeat itself, but in terms of time it does: there is the first round, then the second round and so on. If you accept this, then we think almost in the same way, except that I do not see the idea of the loop.
Felix wrote: May 5th, 2019, 4:01 pm In what way? I suppose you mean that every subject must have a starting, but if there is only one eternal subject, it's temporal births (incarnations) are illusory, they are what one mystic called, "parentheses in eternity."
Even the eternal present has its past and future. But if there is an event before each event, I cannot be here now. Therefore there must be the first event. But if there were the last event, there would be nothingness, which is self-contradictory.
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Felix
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Atla: "Hence giving the illusion of change from our perspective, but actually the entirety of spacetime already exists "timelessly" in the eternal now, if we could view it from an absolute perspective."


Well sure, if you could step outside temporal reality and take a "Gods eye view" of it, an infinite chain of events could be seen in an instant, but that does not make those events any less real to the temporal entities that experience them.
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Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Felix wrote: May 6th, 2019, 4:02 am Well sure, if you could step outside temporal reality and take a "Gods eye view" of it, an infinite chain of events could be seen in an instant, but that does not make those events any less real to the temporal entities that experience them.
Right. The eternal now is not timeless. We cannot step outside of time to "see" everything at once. The present, though eternal, is constant change, and even if it is not experienced as changing, it moves from moment to moment in time. Time itself separates two successive moments from each other even if they cannot be separated as contents of experience. In this sense time is asymmetric in two ways: it has one direction and it has a start but no end. A parallel of this on the cosmological level is the Big Bang and the cosmic evolution.
Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

Atla wrote: May 5th, 2019, 9:13 am There is no "another" subject.
Yes there is, because you are not me in my present existence. Here we come to the concept of generic subjective continuity, which is a very deep idea, and somewhat problematic too if we think, like Felix and I, that there is only one eternal subject whose individual manifestations we all are. Here language fails.
Atla
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Tamminen wrote: May 6th, 2019, 2:52 am I try to understand this. You say there is no infinite past in your closed loop. In that case there must be the first event. And in the future there is this same event, so that no one can tell the difference. But now the “same event” happens the second time, not the first time, and then the third time and so on. So even if the events of the loop are experienced as identical during each round, or experienced as happening the first time, they are not the same events in time. Remember that we are not talking about the phenomenology of experiencing but the phenomenology of time. There is a difference. Time has a logic of its own. You say that the cycle does not repeat itself, but in terms of time it does: there is the first round, then the second round and so on. If you accept this, then we think almost in the same way, except that I do not see the idea of the loop.
There is no starting point on a loop, so there is no such thing as a first event.
There are also no rounds on a loop, an awkward way to put it would be that there is only one finite "round", only one finite "cycle" with no beginning or end.

You talk about the logic of linear time with a direction from past towards future, but I'm talking about another logic that's actually directionless.
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Atla
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Felix wrote: May 6th, 2019, 4:02 am
Atla: "Hence giving the illusion of change from our perspective, but actually the entirety of spacetime already exists "timelessly" in the eternal now, if we could view it from an absolute perspective."


Well sure, if you could step outside temporal reality and take a "Gods eye view" of it, an infinite chain of events could be seen in an instant, but that does not make those events any less real to the temporal entities that experience them.
Yeah sure, I'm talking about a finite chain of events though (and the chain is circular).
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Atla
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Atla »

Tamminen wrote: May 6th, 2019, 10:39 am
Atla wrote: May 5th, 2019, 9:13 am There is no "another" subject.
Yes there is, because you are not me in my present existence. Here we come to the concept of generic subjective continuity, which is a very deep idea, and somewhat problematic too if we think, like Felix and I, that there is only one eternal subject whose individual manifestations we all are. Here language fails.
What you say would require that a "you" exists distinct from the rest of the world and from "me", which is of course nonsense.
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