How do I prove my existence?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Maxcady10001
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Maxcady10001 »

There's is still the problem of how to transcend experience with experience. Honestly, as I said, I have not read Hume, all of my philosophy is grounded in Nietzsche, as I find most philosophers to be very boring.
Maxcady10001
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Maxcady10001 »

Frost wrote:There is no awareness of anything


That does not seem very human, or like it exists. If one crosses over into an ultimate reality, why would you hold them to the same standard of existence as everything else you know to exist? This doesn't seem like a legit criticism, using mysticism, how come you correct me in any mistakes I make scientifically, yet will invoke dubious mystic accounts, that violate logic? That's so unfair.
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Frost
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Frost »

Maxcady10001 wrote: January 28th, 2018, 9:40 pm There's is still the problem of how to transcend experience with experience. Honestly, as I said, I have not read Hume, all of my philosophy is grounded in Nietzsche, as I find most philosophers to be very boring.
My opinion as to how this could occur is borrowed from Integrated Information Theory. The theory describes how even if all the cause-effect mechanisms of consciousness become quiet, the potential for the integrated information could possibly be experienced as a state of pure awareness. Entirely quiet cause-effect mechanisms, yet a subjective experience is generated. Perhaps if this state of the system can then slip into a pure quantum state, not an actualized state of the system, this would transcend experience itself. It's not a process, since nothing is done or used to "achieve" this, since experience would inhibit such a stateless state if it were applied to the physical system of the brain. It's not even an occurrence or process...it merely is not actualized and "slips" into a pure state...poetically it could be described as a result of grace.....
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Frost
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Frost »

Maxcady10001 wrote: January 28th, 2018, 9:45 pm That does not seem very human, or like it exists. If one crosses over into an ultimate reality, why would you hold them to the same standard of existence as everything else you know to exist? This doesn't seem like a legit criticism, using mysticism, how come you correct me in any mistakes I make scientifically, yet will invoke dubious mystic accounts, that violate logic? That's so unfair.
As far as I understand how the brain works, it seems rather neurobiological. I don't see how it violates logic...I think you are inappropriately applying logic. Remember, logic is a consequence of reasoning about reason; it is not the foundation of reality.
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Maxcady10001 »

Why would all of the cause and effect mechanisms of consciousness ever go quiet? This is not something that can be done from the surface level of experience.
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Maxcady10001 »

Frost wrote: Perhaps if this state of the system can then slip into a pure quantum state
And why would this happen?
Gertie
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Gertie »

Tam

Gertiewrote:↑
Today, 10:56 am
Back to the original question, our experiential states are their own proof, that's the nature of experience, it's self-evident. Tho there could be a question of whether an Experiencer (self) is required for the experiences to exist. Maybe all that exists are the experiential states themselves, floating about in nothingness.
“How do I prove my existence?” If put this way the question contains the answer. No proof is needed. My existence is already presupposed.
Is the existence of the Thinker self-evident, or only the existence of the Experiencing of thinking something?

Isn't the existence of a Subject entity which has to have the experiential states itself inference based on notions of how things work within the inferred model of an external world? Or even how language is structured to reflect the models of how stuff works 'out there' in the inferred external world? Dog (S) Bites (V) Man (O), must mean Thinker (S) Thinks (V) Thought (O)? Does experience itself have to follow those types of causal rules which are reflected in language? How can you know, when experience itself is the very clay the models and their rules are moulded from?


But I can ask if it is possible for me to exist or not to exist. In other words: am I some kind of a thing with properties, so that when those properties are removed I cease to exist? And if that “thing” did not exist, I did not exist.

Depends on your premises doesn't it?

For example, I think the problem with starting from premises based in 'mental' experience as fundamental and everything else is inference, then making your inferences based on self-reflection, examining the nature of that experience, is that anything is then possible, and bias can roam free. You can cherry pick what seems meaningful or feels right to you and build edifices of internally consistent hypotheses around that, but then I can choose a contradictory hypothesis and do the same thing. How do we then judge one against the other?

To get into the realm of 'objective'/shared reality, somewhere to test our contradictory hypotheses against each other, we have to agree there is an external world we both co-habit, and can (roughly/imperfectly) agree we know things about. And then, imo, we're in the empirical realm of neuroscience and evolution, and obliged to follow the evidence, rather than cherry pick based on what feels special or meaningful to us, or pick'n'mix. And where there are still mysteries, accept we don't know.

And significantly, that empirical realm is beginning to offer explanations of things like cognitive bias, why we are the way we are, think and feel the way we do, the very stuff we build our self-reflective hypotheses from.
And indeed, I as an individual subject with this body and these memories, will cease to exist, and it is easy to imagine that I with these properties were not born at all. This is what we call the empirical subject.


OK so your premise is that an external world exists, and you can know things about it. Including the fact that you're a physical embodied Subject within it, experiencing it, and capable of imagining the non-existence of your embodied self, eg by your body dying.
But instead of thinking of myself as a bundle of properties it is possible to think of myself as the subject of those properties, and that I could as well be the subject of other properties, being another individual.

What properties are you talking about here? A different embodied being in the same external world with an identical sense of self, identical thoughts, feelings, body, memory/history, etc? How would that work?

Or if you're suggesting the experiential ingredients of individual self-ness exist independently of the recipe which creates each individual, why call the different recipes the same self, the same 'I'? Surely the term Subject/Self/I is there to differentiate between the individual who experiences a first-person pov, from those other individuals I can only experience as third-person Objects 'out there'. You seem to be using terms in an idiosyncratic way, so I think you need to define them.


This is the transcendental subject, or at least my version of it. I think it is transpersonal, point-like, with no internal properties, as I have tried to suggest in other posts on this forum.TopPost Reply


Can you spell that out more clearly? I'm imagining a sea of experiential states (seeing a red apple, feeling sad, an itchy toe, etc) existing independently, somehow becoming embodied in an individual material state in a sequential manner which forms the history of a self's existence, then when that individual's brain dies, becoming re-embodied in a different combination as another individual. Is that what you mean?
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Frost
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

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Maxcady10001 wrote: January 28th, 2018, 9:54 pm
Frost wrote: Perhaps if this state of the system can then slip into a pure quantum state
And why would this happen?
Perhaps the "observer" is gone which actualizes the quantum state of the system. But admittedly, getting down to this level is a lot of conjecture and I am not satisfied with my answer. I think experience is a result of successive actualizations of the quantum state of the system of the brain, and perhaps "in between" successive states the system simply remains in that pure state, meaning the next state of the system does not actualize and it remains in that pure state which is transcendentally experienced as ultimate reality; this is when "reality explodes."

While not put forth as serious corroboration, it would at least be consistent with people achieving this state being completely non-responsive and why it is described as dying. It is often claimed that this can be dangerous because many do not return from this state, and some have reportedly been in such a state for weeks and people provide food and water during this time to prevent death of the body, though they may eventually be roused back to ordinary consciousness.
Maxcady10001
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Maxcady10001 »

Wouldn't the next state just not be actualized? Why would you call that ultimate reality? And when you say reality explodes, what would happen if the next state were to not actualize, is it just death?
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Hereandnow
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Hereandnow »

Maxody10001:
Wouldn't the next state just not be actualized? Why would you call that ultimate reality? And when you say reality explodes, what would happen if the next state were to not actualize, is it just death?
Frost:
Perhaps the "observer" is gone which actualizes the quantum state of the system. But admittedly, getting down to this level is a lot of conjecture and I am not satisfied with my answer. I think experience is a result of successive actualizations of the quantum state of the system of the brain, and perhaps "in between" successive states the system simply remains in that pure state, meaning the next state of the system does not actualize and it remains in that pure state which is transcendentally experienced as ultimate reality; this is when "reality explodes."

While not put forth as serious corroboration, it would at least be consistent with people achieving this state being completely non-responsive and why it is described as dying. It is often claimed that this can be dangerous because many do not return from this state, and some have reportedly been in such a state for weeks and people provide food and water during this time to prevent death of the body, though they may eventually be roused back to ordinary consciousness.
You should by now suspect that you've cluttered the issue with theory, intruding ideas that insist on being worked out before you take a step toward affirmation. Why not take Husserl's "leap" and attend to only what presents itself to the things as they are. He calls this an epoche,a phenomenological reduction in which the present moment is delivered from such clutter and only allows for immediacy of apprehension of the world. It is not at all unlike what eastern philosophy encourages, which is detachment. Purity is when a mind escapes attachments and this should understood as not just explicit affections and appetites, but thought itself, which is always already a desire to think. Thought is not an abstraction, it is is dynamic and feeling-toned. Purity is not a difficult notion when considered like this. This is one of my favorites that sort of makes the point:
https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_ta ... of_insight
Maxcady10001
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Maxcady10001 »

Only Frost cluttered the issue right? I didn't use any theory, so why did you quote me? Also could you find any problems with the logical proof? Does the video explain how the mind would escape attachments?
Maxcady10001
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Maxcady10001 »

The newer one that I made not the old one

What exists is characterized by events
What is called the self is characterized by events
The self exists
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Frost
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Frost »

Maxcady10001 wrote: January 28th, 2018, 10:12 pm Wouldn't the next state just not be actualized? Why would you call that ultimate reality? And when you say reality explodes, what would happen if the next state were to not actualize, is it just death?
Yes, that sounds most plausible, that the next state just is not actualized. There is no "choice on the part of nature," which I could beautifully describe as the grace of God, which is, incidentally, exactly how that final transcendence is described.

I think it's ultimate reality because it gets to that which makes the universe and experience possible. And yeah, the reports are that people can die from achieving that state. But that sounds like a perfect death, anyway. One could only be so lucky!
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Frost
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Frost »

Maxcady10001 wrote: January 28th, 2018, 10:40 pm The newer one that I made not the old one

What exists is characterized by events
What is called the self is characterized by events
The self exists
Sorry not to jump in on the other conversation you're trying to have, but I just thought of something.

Experience could be characterized as "events" in the sense of "the choice on the part of nature" in the actualization of quantum states.....maybe? :) This is fun.
Maxcady10001
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Re: How do I prove my existence?

Post by Maxcady10001 »

So no problems?
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