The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

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Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

One more remark: The subject alone, in the world of objects, can be conscious of the world only, and the world remains a mystery. But when it finds itself in the world, it becomes conscious of itself and the world becomes transparent. This reminds of Hegel's metaphysics.
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Felix
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Felix »

Tamminen: "I think the Universe is, not a vision of the eternal subject, but the instrument of the eternal subject for its concrete existence, as I have written elsewhere."

This is not an either/or proposition, it can be both.

Tamminen: "We can say that non-separateness is the true essence of all this separateness, but I would not call our separate existence an illusion."

It was Atla, not I, who called it a cognitive illusion. If that's all it was, it would not be shared, as it appears to be, by all life forms on the planet. Even those who recognize it's non-separative nature must somehow account for it's existence.

Tamminen: "Although the being of the subject has no end, it must have had a beginning, for reasons I have presented elsewhere. It is possible that this necessity is reflected on the cosmological level as the singularity we know as the Big Bang."

This is where I don't follow you. You seem to be saying that the individual subject is dependant upon material reality for its existence, and for it's birth but not it's death. All material processes begin and end. Why is your individual subject exempt from this universal law, having a beginning but no end? If physical death is not his final curtain, why is physical birth his first act?

Tamminen: "But I think the subject has only the realizations of all the individual subjects in the world: it is the totality of them."

That would not account for the evolution of consciousness.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

Felix wrote: May 12th, 2019, 4:03 pm You seem to be saying that the individual subject is dependant upon material reality for its existence, and for it's birth but not it's death.
No, you did not read carefully what I wrote.

1. I am not speaking of the individual subject but the eternal subject. Therefore it is also consistent to make a hypothetical connection to the Universe and its beginning. As to the finite past of the eternal subject, if you look closely, you find that it must be so. Hard to convince, though.

2. An individual subject's existence surely is dependent on material reality. The material world is the eternal subject's instrument for its concrete existence, and it can exist concretely only as the community of individual subjects.
Felix wrote: May 12th, 2019, 4:03 pm Tamminen: "But I think the subject has only the realizations of all the individual subjects in the world: it is the totality of them."

That would not account for the evolution of consciousness.
Why can the evolution of consciousness not happen within the community of individual subjects?
Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

All this speculation, whether it leads to anything like truth or not, is based on these two existential questions:

1. How is it possible that in death existence becomes nonexistence? The answer must be: it is not possible.

2. How is it possible that experiences are anything else than my experiences? The answer must be: it is not possible.

To solve these existential paradoxes I have not found any other logically consistent metaphysical theory than the one I have presented here. I admit that it is somewhat strange and problematic even to myself, but I have nothing better to offer. I hope someone else has. But I expect concreteness. "All is one" is not a metaphysical theory.
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Felix
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Felix »

Tamminen: "Therefore it is also consistent to make a hypothetical connection to the Universe and its beginning. As to the finite past of the eternal subject, if you look closely, you find that it must be so."

Nothing "must be so," the universe is not obligated to conform to human logic. You assume the Universe had a beginning and is not eternal, that the universe we inhabit may not be one in an infinite series of universes and/or one particular dimensional form of many possible templates.

Tamminen: "An individual subject's existence surely is dependent on material reality. The material world is the eternal subject's instrument for its concrete existence, and it can exist concretely only as the community of individual subjects."

Again, you presume that our 3D reality is the only form of reality that may foster subjective awareness, this is short-sighted.

Tamminen: "Why can the evolution of consciousness not happen within the community of individual subjects?"

You said, "the subject has only the realizations of all the individual subjects in the world."

If this were so, how or why would he progress to a higher level of awareness, beyond that of the community's level of consciousness? If it is material reality that compels the subject to evolve, how is this situation any different than if his consciousness were simply an epiphenomenon of matter?

Tamminen: "1. How is it possible that in death existence becomes nonexistence? The answer must be: it is not possible."

This is a verbal puzzle only: existence does not become nonexistence any more than your waking state of consciousness becomes sleep, they are just different phases of awareness.

But even in the terms you've stated, your proposal contains an inherent contradiction. You say existence cannot become nonexistence but then you say the reverse must be true: nonexistence must become existence. That is, you say you cannot exist, cannot have subjective awareness, before you exist, i.e., before your physical birth when your subjective awareness began.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

On finite vs. infinite subjective past, one more time:

I am here now, and I have come here through a sequence of real experiences. I can understand this if I have come here through a finite series of experiences, from experience 1 to this experience N. But what is an infinite sequence of real experiences? It never started, so it can have no real existence. It is a pure abstraction, like an infinite set of real objects. And because we speak about subjective past, the situation is even worse than in the case of spatial objects. Therefore subjective time necessarily has a beginning, the first experience of the eternal subject.
Atla
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Atla »

Tamminen wrote: May 13th, 2019, 8:24 am 2. How is it possible that experiences are anything else than my experiences? The answer must be: it is not possible.
"You" too are an experience that just happens. No actual subject is possessing it, and "you" don't possess experiences either.
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Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

Felix wrote: May 13th, 2019, 4:09 pm Nothing "must be so," the universe is not obligated to conform to human logic. You assume the Universe had a beginning and is not eternal, that the universe we inhabit may not be one in an infinite series of universes and/or one particular dimensional form of many possible templates.
Yes, I am very conservative in my thinking and do not make wild hypotheses.
Felix wrote: May 13th, 2019, 4:09 pm You said, "the subject has only the realizations of all the individual subjects in the world."

If this were so, how or why would he progress to a higher level of awareness, beyond that of the community's level of consciousness?
The community's consciousness may reach unbelievable levels of awareness. Again I am conservative because I cannot see other levels of existence.
Felix wrote: May 13th, 2019, 4:09 pm ...existence does not become nonexistence any more than your waking state of consciousness becomes sleep, they are just different phases of awareness
The usual way of seeing this is that my death is the end of my existence.
Felix wrote: May 13th, 2019, 4:09 pm You say existence cannot become nonexistence but then you say the reverse must be true: nonexistence must become existence.
Yes - and this is my point - my past is fundamentally different than my future in this respect. See my latest attempt to clarify this. I know this sounds strange, but I think it is the only logical possibility.
Felix wrote: May 13th, 2019, 4:09 pm ...you say you cannot exist, cannot have subjective awareness, before you exist, i.e., before your physical birth when your subjective awareness began
As I have tried to say many times, I can have subjective awareness before my birth, but this sequence of experiences must have started from the first experience. I believe that reality is rational, and rationality demands this kind of strange structure of subjective time. How else can you understand the paradox of infinite past that I have presented e.g. in my latest post?
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Felix
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Felix »

Tamminen: "rationality demands this kind of strange structure of subjective time."

Human reason demands it because it is time bound, it sees beginnings and endings, the suprarational Subject does not.

"I am very conservative in my thinking and do not make wild hypotheses."

Asserting that the Universe and the Absolute Subject with it suddenly arose spontaneously out of nothingness is a far wilder hypothesis than to say that it is eternal. This is what you're saying, isn't it?

Also, why do say "the being of the subject has no end," if it started with the temporal birth of the Universe, it will end with it's demise, won't it?
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
BigBango
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by BigBango »

Tamminen, your thinking is quite profound and you have coincidently or not come very close to the theories of Whitehead and Leibniz, whom I also admire. Whitehead asserted the dominating role of the highest actual entity, the only entity that set the standards for all individuals below it. That is why Whitehead is falsely accused of creating a "Process Theology".

Leibniz was one of Whitehead's mentors and led the way with "monads" as physically indivisible and physical objects as infinitely divisible.

Your challenge now becomes translating your instinctual ideas about the world into assertions about the nature of the physical world that can guide science to new discoveries and at the same time support your theories.

Whitehead failed in that effort. He resorted to pan-psychism which asserted that all physical matter had characteristics that could be attributed to the behavior of actual entities of which that matter was composed. If those entities had "habits" about what they thought they were then the matter they dominated was consistent with Aristotle's types, otherwise they were agents of change.

My thesis explores what could possibly be the physical nature of the entities that are responsible for the differences in their "identity", which focuses on the nature of our separateness.
Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

Felix wrote: May 13th, 2019, 4:09 pm Nothing "must be so," the universe is not obligated to conform to human logic. You assume the Universe had a beginning and is not eternal, that the universe we inhabit may not be one in an infinite series of universes and/or one particular dimensional form of many possible templates.
That subjective past must be finite is independent of how many universes we have. It is a claim about the logical structure of subjective time. But the standard theory of physical spacetime is in line with this claim.
Felix wrote: May 13th, 2019, 4:09 pm If it is material reality that compels the subject to evolve, how is this situation any different than if his consciousness were simply an epiphenomenon of matter?
If you read what I wrote about what matter is, you find that I am not a materialist, and my view is that matter is just the subject's relationship with itself.
Felix wrote: May 13th, 2019, 6:25 pm Tamminen: "rationality demands this kind of strange structure of subjective time."

Human reason demands it because it is time bound, it sees beginnings and endings, the suprarational Subject does not.
I do not believe in any suprarational Subject. I think reality is here and now, immanent and concrete.
Felix wrote: May 13th, 2019, 6:25 pm Asserting that the Universe and the Absolute Subject with it suddenly arose spontaneously out of nothingness is a far wilder hypothesis than to say that it is eternal. This is what you're saying, isn't it?
I am just saying that the absolute subject appeared from nothingness, i.e. it had its first experience, but will never have its last experience. This is its logical structure as subjective temporality. How physical spacetime corresponds to this structure is another question.
Felix wrote: May 13th, 2019, 6:25 pm Also, why do say "the being of the subject has no end," if it started with the temporal birth of the Universe, it will end with it's demise, won't it?
Its end would be self-contradictory because it would mean the subject's nonexistence. Does this mean that the universe has no end either, I do not know. The relationship between subjective time and physical spacetime is an interesting question, but I have not much to say about it.
BigBango wrote: May 13th, 2019, 11:10 pm Tamminen, your thinking is quite profound and you have coincidently or not come very close to the theories of Whitehead and Leibniz, whom I also admire. Whitehead asserted the dominating role of the highest actual entity, the only entity that set the standards for all individuals below it. That is why Whitehead is falsely accused of creating a "Process Theology".

Leibniz was one of Whitehead's mentors and led the way with "monads" as physically indivisible and physical objects as infinitely divisible.

Your challenge now becomes translating your instinctual ideas about the world into assertions about the nature of the physical world that can guide science to new discoveries and at the same time support your theories.

Whitehead failed in that effort. He resorted to pan-psychism which asserted that all physical matter had characteristics that could be attributed to the behavior of actual entities of which that matter was composed. If those entities had "habits" about what they thought they were then the matter they dominated was consistent with Aristotle's types, otherwise they were agents of change.

My thesis explores what could possibly be the physical nature of the entities that are responsible for the differences in their "identity", which focuses on the nature of our separateness.
I wrote a paper on Whitehead about 50 years ago in the University of Turku, Finland. I do not know what subconscious effects this journey into "Process and Reality" has had in my thinking, but I must admit that I do not remember much of it.
Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

Atla wrote: May 13th, 2019, 4:31 pm "You" too are an experience that just happens. No actual subject is possessing it, and "you" don't possess experiences either.
There is some critique of this floating in the air.
Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

BigBango
I think your speculations are a mixture of empirical and metaphysical untestable hypotheses of reality, whereas I try to make a purely metaphysical, phenomenological interpretation of the structure of reality as it appears to us. There is a big difference. I think you go beyond philosophy, into the realm of science fiction. But I may be wrong of course.
Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

When analysing being in general, i.e. in fundamental ontology, there are two impossibilities: subjective past with no beginning and the world without subjects.
Tamminen
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Re: The Implications Of Generic Subjective Continuity

Post by Tamminen »

Let us describe subjective time with these symbols:

'x' = 'the present'
'<' = 'before/after'
'...' = 'ad infinitum'.

Now the only rational sequence of subjective events is

x<x<x...

All the other sequences

x<x<x
...x<x<x
...x<x<x...

are irrational and thus impossible in the real world.
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