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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 16th, 2019, 3:12 am
by Tamminen
BigBango wrote: May 15th, 2019, 8:35 pm What you have failed to do is uncover the objective metaphysics that makes your position both understandable in the objective world we share and is also "testable". I do not think your efforts are "science fiction" but that is too bad. At least a position that can be dismissed as "science fiction" is a position that can offer the possibility of testing. Your thinking must at least try to address the objective metaphysics that makes GSC out to be a valid hypothesis.
Metaphysical theories such as GSC are not testable in the strictly empirical sense of testability, but they can be tested against logical inconsistencies and their power in answering the crucial existential questions we meet as we live in this universe as a community of subjects. The two crucial questions I have tried to answer are the paradox of death and the paradox of foreign minds, and I think I have succeeded to solve both paradoxes with my theory. The theory is not complete of course, and it contains problematic issues, but I have not had to change the main points for a long time now. It seems to stand on a solid ground. I am very critical and doubt every possible detail I have thought before, but I have not met anything that would cause a revolution or paradigm change in my thinking. Which does not mean of course that there cannot be blind spots in it. Also what you mentioned, the consequences of the theory for the general structure of the objective world, or how the universe can be seen as transparent and logically consistent in the light of the basic insights of the theory, is still to be elaborated, i.e. how empirical scientific facts can be deduced from the theory. Big questions, an ambitious task, and something always remains to be thought over.

Another question is if there is any sense at all in thinking these things. A Finnish poet once asked: "Are we here to find out how things are?"

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 16th, 2019, 4:51 am
by Tamminen
BigBango wrote: May 15th, 2019, 8:35 pm I do not think your efforts are "science fiction" but that is too bad. At least a position that can be dismissed as "science fiction" is a position that can offer the possibility of testing.
The reason why I said your theory is more like science fiction than metaphysics is this: You speak about black hole centers, dark matter, dark energy, the fractal structure of reality etc. These are more or less empirical issues, only we have not found answers to them yet. To interpret them as belonging to the subject's adventures in physical spacetime does not say much to me, these hypotheses sort of float in the air without any intuitive power. It does not correspond to my idea of the subject at all. The subject is not a "thing" that tries to find its way through all the troubles it encounters. It is much simpler. In fact it has no structure, it is the ontological precondition of all structure. Metaphorically, it is "point-like", not "thing-like". Its essence is temporality. It is the present abstracted from its content. Therefore it needs the real objective world to be able to exist concretely and have concrete experiences. The world gives it its existential content.

But it is possible that my theories look just as strange and counterintuitive in the eyes of most people as your theories look in my eyes. Such is metaphysics.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 16th, 2019, 7:47 pm
by BigBango
Tamminen wrote: May 16th, 2019, 4:51 am
BigBango wrote: May 15th, 2019, 8:35 pm I do not think your efforts are "science fiction" but that is too bad. At least a position that can be dismissed as "science fiction" is a position that can offer the possibility of testing.
The reason why I said your theory is more like science fiction than metaphysics is this: You speak about black hole centers, dark matter, dark energy, the fractal structure of reality etc. These are more or less empirical issues, only we have not found answers to them yet. To interpret them as belonging to the subject's adventures in physical spacetime does not say much to me, these hypotheses sort of float in the air without any intuitive power. It does not correspond to my idea of the subject at all. The subject is not a "thing" that tries to find its way through all the troubles it encounters. It is much simpler. In fact it has no structure, it is the ontological precondition of all structure. Metaphorically, it is "point-like", not "thing-like". Its essence is temporality. It is the present abstracted from its content. Therefore it needs the real objective world to be able to exist concretely and have concrete experiences. The world gives it its existential content.

But it is possible that my theories look just as strange and counterintuitive in the eyes of most people as your theories look in my eyes. Such is metaphysics.
Please Tamminen, metaphysics are supposed to be about the nature of "objects". To just pursue what has "intuitive power" is to shirk metaphysics in favor of untestable epistemic theorizing. I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion about the ultimate metaphysical nature of the "subject" being "point-like". That has not been of much interest to me and I can only guess at that possibility. When I try to reconcile my thinking with yours I end up guessing that a complete fractal decomposition of the world may very well end up converging to point-like subjects that were at least their beginning if not the beginning of everything.

What I have been more interested in is uncovering the nature of objects in the first level of fractal decomposition of our familiar world. Sure "we have not found answers to them yet" (the origins of black holes, dark matter and dark energy , I might add the nature of our consciousness") but to just accept science's conclusion that they come from quantum fluctuations of nothingness is about as lame as your hasty jump to the conclusion that the subject is point-like without uncovering its full metaphysical evolution from what may have been point-like. When you "abstract all the present from its content" you may get to the structure less, point-like subject but you are completely losing much of the nature of that unexamined content.

If the "subject" were the "ontological precondition of all structure", which I see as a real possibility, you should not have it emerging from the objective world at some time after the beginning of everything as you have asserted in other posts, just a barb that has bothered me.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 16th, 2019, 10:57 pm
by Felix
Big Bango: "If the "subject" were the "ontological precondition of all structure", which I see as a real possibility, you should not have it emerging from the objective world at some time after the beginning of everything as you have asserted in other posts."

I agree. Tamminen claims he is not a materialist, and yet asserts that subjectivity is not possible without materiality (if that's a word). Practically speaking, that's not all that different from saying that mind is an epiphenomenon of matter.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 17th, 2019, 12:40 am
by BigBango
Felix wrote: May 16th, 2019, 10:57 pm Big Bango: "If the "subject" were the "ontological precondition of all structure", which I see as a real possibility, you should not have it emerging from the objective world at some time after the beginning of everything as you have asserted in other posts."

I agree. Tamminen claims he is not a materialist, and yet asserts that subjectivity is not possible without materiality (if that's a word). Practically speaking, that's not all that different from saying that mind is an epiphenomenon of matter.
Good observation Felix. Although we should not rush to judgment about his materialistic tendencies. I cannot think of anyone on this forum that gives more credence to the nature of the "subject" and its relation to the objective world. He just has not been entirely consistent about the "subjects" ontological primacy. I do not think he is a materialist and I do think that he is correct in saying that the subject's "I think therefore I am" is correctly expanded to "I think of myself as an object therefore I am". That qualifies him as, at least, a dualist. Tamminen's biggest problem is that he has accepted the role of an analytical philosopher as opposed to a continental philosopher. As an analytical philosopher he is happy just surrounding sciences findings with his own intuitive speculations leaving science to its own metaphysical claims.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 17th, 2019, 2:58 am
by Tamminen
Felix wrote: May 16th, 2019, 10:57 pm Tamminen claims he is not a materialist, and yet asserts that subjectivity is not possible without materiality (if that's a word). Practically speaking, that's not all that different from saying that mind is an epiphenomenon of matter.
This is where you miss my point completely. As I have suggested, the world as a totality is the instrument of the subject for its real existence, and therefore gets its reason of being from the being of the subject, which is causa sui as I said. The universe is an organism like our bodies are organisms for our subjective being. The universe has a teleology of its own that sort of prepares the subject's appearing into actuality. The situation is the same as in our own personal lives: we are not conscious from the beginning of our physiological development. Subjective time and physical spacetime do not necessarily go parallel. This is not materialism. This is not spiritualism. I have called it ontological idealism. But without matter there cannot be anything because matter is the precondition of real being, and matter without the subject is not a logically consistent idea if we have the courage and patience to think it through.

To BigBango: a point never becomes a ball, it is the center of the ball.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 17th, 2019, 4:36 am
by Tamminen
BigBango wrote: May 17th, 2019, 12:40 am Tamminen's biggest problem is that he has accepted the role of an analytical philosopher as opposed to a continental philosopher. As an analytical philosopher he is happy just surrounding sciences findings with his own intuitive speculations leaving science to its own metaphysical claims.
This I do not understand at all. What has this to do with the distinction between analytic and continental philosophy? How many analytic philosophers would accept my metaphysical speculations? And the whole point of my thinking is to criticise the metaphysical commitments of science.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 17th, 2019, 4:52 am
by Tamminen
BigBango wrote: May 16th, 2019, 7:47 pm If the "subject" were the "ontological precondition of all structure", which I see as a real possibility, you should not have it emerging from the objective world at some time after the beginning of everything as you have asserted in other posts, just a barb that has bothered me.
See my reply to Felix on this.
...I might add the nature of our consciousness
The appearing of subjectivity into its actual existence in physical spacetime is perhaps a scientific question, but the nature of consciousness is not. That is hard metaphysics.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 17th, 2019, 5:17 am
by Felix
Tamminen, When you say the subject is the cause if itself, what exactly do you mean? What are the implications of that statement?

"And the whole point of my thinking is to criticise the metaphysical commitments of science."


I don't believe science makes metaphysical commitments, it can only describe material operations, not explain them - their reason for being.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 17th, 2019, 7:57 am
by Tamminen
Felix wrote: May 17th, 2019, 5:17 am Tamminen, When you say the subject is the cause if itself, what exactly do you mean? What are the implications of that statement?
I mean that the non-being of the subject is self-contradictory so that its essence implies its necessity of existing. My second point is that all being is connected to the being of the subject so that the universe without subjects is impossible in principle. There are many possible worlds, but a world without subjects is not one of them if we think of the world as a spatiotemporal totality.
I don't believe science makes metaphysical commitments, it can only describe material operations, not explain them - their reason for being.
I hope science does not make metaphysical commitments, but nearly all physicists, for instance, see consciousness as an emergent property of matter, and fail to see the implicit role of consciousness even in physical events. They sort of put consciousness into brackets and think it is not a phenomenon sui generis. Usually this is not a problem in doing physics, but when physicists start speculating with consciousness, they usually get lost in their implicit commitment to materialism.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 17th, 2019, 9:55 pm
by BigBango
Tamminen wrote: May 16th, 2019, 4:51 am
BigBango wrote: May 15th, 2019, 8:35 pm I do not think your efforts are "science fiction" but that is too bad. At least a position that can be dismissed as "science fiction" is a position that can offer the possibility of testing.
The reason why I said your theory is more like science fiction than metaphysics is this: You speak about black hole centers, dark matter, dark energy, the fractal structure of reality etc. These are more or less empirical issues, only we have not found answers to them yet.
To find answers to them you need to do the metaphysical speculations that can then be tested. The worst approach is to just dismiss those speculations as "science fiction". Pasteur's theory of microbiology was science fiction until they tested it and discovered it was responsible for the transmission of disease. When a new radical theory is presented of course everyone thinks it is untestable until new instruments are developed and put to the task.
Tamminen wrote:To interpret them as belonging to the subject's adventures in physical spacetime does not say much to me, these hypotheses sort of float in the air without any intuitive power. It does not correspond to my idea of the subject at all. The subject is not a "thing" that tries to find its way through all the troubles it encounters. It is much simpler. In fact it has no structure, it is the ontological precondition of all structure. Metaphorically, it is "point-like", not "thing-like". Its essence is temporality. It is the present abstracted from its content. Therefore it needs the real objective world to be able to exist concretely and have concrete experiences. The world gives it its existential content.
Well it is too bad that the "subjects adventures in space time does not say much to you" but to me and philosophers like Joseph Campbell it is everything.
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 18th, 2019, 2:59 am
by Tamminen
BigBango wrote: May 17th, 2019, 9:55 pm Well it is too bad that the "subjects adventures in space time does not say much to you" but to me and philosophers like Joseph Campbell it is everything.
I wrote that to interpret the mysteries of black holes, dark matter, Big Bang/Big Crunch etc. as belonging to the subject's adventures in physical spacetime does not say much to me. I am interested in metaphysical speculation, not scientific. The existential journey itself of course is very interesting, as also Campbell's theory of myths.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 18th, 2019, 4:33 am
by BigBango
Tamminen, let us say that before the BC/BB you were a civilization that was very close to your galactic center. Would you not try to save your ecological systems that support you. Would your civilization just accept its cosmological demise as inevitable or would it employ its technology to get the hell out of dodge city. Of course our technology would be completely ineffectual to do that. However a civilization's technology near the end of its collapsing universe might be billions of years ahead of us.

This collapsing universe before the BC/BB gave rise to the "separation" of civilizations that had the technology to flee the collapse and those that could not avoid extinction.

This story is about the world that collapsed. Its ratio of the mass of galactic centers to the mass of stars and planets is the ratio we find between visible matter and dark matter, 10% to 90%.

Escaping destruction by being subsumed by a black hole is a real theat. We must learn from our fractal forerunners that technology is our only savior.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 18th, 2019, 5:04 pm
by Felix
Until we have some evidence to support your hypothesis, Big Bango (we have none), it does indeed qualify as science fiction. Transpersonal psychology has given us a greater understanding of subjective awareness than traditional science has, so it would make more sense to speculate on its findings than on those of the logical modes of investigation to which you and Tamminen are partial. You are trying to use logic to comprehend that which transcends logic, a futile endeavor.

If a technology was developed to transcend a material apocolypse, it would by definition be of a transmaterial, transmundane nature, something like Sri Aurobindo's supramental intelligence which has mastered physical reality.

Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Posted: May 18th, 2019, 7:55 pm
by BigBango
Felix wrote: May 18th, 2019, 5:04 pm Until we have some evidence to support your hypothesis, Big Bango (we have none), it does indeed qualify as science fiction. Transpersonal psychology has given us a greater understanding of subjective awareness than traditional science has, so it would make more sense to speculate on its findings than on those of the logical modes of investigation to which you and Tamminen are partial. You are trying to use logic to comprehend that which transcends logic, a futile endeavor.

If a technology was developed to transcend a material apocolypse, it would by definition be of a transmaterial, transmundane nature, something like Sri Aurobindo's supramental intelligence which has mastered physical reality.
I hear you Felix. First of all scientists need to have enough faith in the possibility of my thesis being true before they will commit to testing it. I say that the nature of our world, supported by science, is evidence that it must have come from the shattered parts of a previous world of galaxies that collapsed. I can map the collapse of that pre BB world into the physical world we are living in. The galactic centers of that universe crashing into each other and becoming our "visible" atoms after the plasma cooled. Dark matter escaped that collapse. It is the civilizations in that dark matter that have embedded themselves in our physical world in order to continue their adventure in, to them, the remnants of their old world.

I also see your point about eastern philosophy. That is a valid position to take and it surely will lead to the simple acceptance of whatever we are transformed into by cosmic forces. Just accept the world's cosmic forces and the ultimate fate that we and the ecological life that supports us will suffer. To me we are no more profound than the animals, trees and flowers. We are the shepherds of what we value. We are the flowers of the universe and it cannot be wrong to have "attachments" to our specific form of being.