What does it mean "to Exist"?

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Obvious Leo
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Dalek Prime wrote:Open question... Which is more important in your view. The observer, or the observed? Can you explain why? (I don't think this is off topic, as it relates directly to existence, but am willing to move it to its own thread, should it be an issue.)
It's a pretty sharp question, Dalek, because in the absence of an observer that which is observed has no meaning. A dog is only a dog because that's the way in which we as observers have inter-subjectively agreed to codify a particular class of observations about the matter and energy which encode for the dog. The same principle applies to every physical entity in the universe, including the objects of physics. A quark is only a quark because that's the way a small group of geeks have decided to codify a particular class of observations according to the specific way in which they have previously chosen to interrogate a sub-atomic system. There simply is no such thing as a right way or a wrong way of doing this so the quark is exclusively a construct devised by the consciousness of the observer which has no ontological status whatsoever.

When it comes to matters of what's real and what isn't real the role of the observer can never be ignored because an observation is first and foremost an act of cognition. "Collapsing a wave function" is just a fancy phrase for "taking a look" but an observation does not spring into a human mind from the void of a conceptual vacuum. Therefore collapsing a wave function doesn't merely mean making an observation but rather it means interpreting an observation and such an interpretation can only be made within the context of a predefined narrative, or paradigm, a principle which was well understood by the great man himself. This is the inherently tautologous nature of physics.

"it is the THEORY which determines what the observer will observe".....Albert Einstein.
Dalek Prime
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Dalek Prime »

Obvious Leo wrote:
Dalek Prime wrote:Open question... Which is more important in your view. The observer, or the observed? Can you explain why? (I don't think this is off topic, as it relates directly to existence, but am willing to move it to its own thread, should it be an issue.)
It's a pretty sharp question, Dalek, because in the absence of an observer that which is observed has no meaning. A dog is only a dog because that's the way in which we as observers have inter-subjectively agreed to codify a particular class of observations about the matter and energy which encode for the dog. The same principle applies to every physical entity in the universe, including the objects of physics. A quark is only a quark because that's the way a small group of geeks have decided to codify a particular class of observations according to the specific way in which they have previously chosen to interrogate a sub-atomic system. There simply is no such thing as a right way or a wrong way of doing this so the quark is exclusively a construct devised by the consciousness of the observer which has no ontological status whatsoever.

When it comes to matters of what's real and what isn't real the role of the observer can never be ignored because an observation is first and foremost an act of cognition. "Collapsing a wave function" is just a fancy phrase for "taking a look" but an observation does not spring into a human mind from the void of a conceptual vacuum. Therefore collapsing a wave function doesn't merely mean making an observation but rather it means interpreting an observation and such an interpretation can only be made within the context of a predefined narrative, or paradigm, a principle which was well understood by the great man himself. This is the inherently tautologous nature of physics.

"it is the THEORY which determines what the observer will observe".....Albert Einstein.
Thanks Leo. I added a bit more to the post, but you've done a good job of filling in those blanks, and covered it well. Any thoughts on the rest of the edited post would be welcome, should you wish.

It's this issue that I wanted to get across to JSS, but he was having none of it. He strikes me firmly on the side of analytic philosophy, though he says he wants to bridge the two. But he'll never put consciousness as paramount, let alone equal to, the external, as far as I can judge, and will never do it, as a result.

To sum it up, I suppose I'm trying to say that consciousness should never be the footnote of philosophy, as it's writing the book on it. Does that make sense?
Obvious Leo
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Dalek. I'd rather not venture beyond my own domain of expertise by commenting on your more general statement about the nature of an observation but my entire philosophy is an essay in applied metaphysics which seeks to maintain the distinction between an epistemology and the ontology which underpins it, because this is something which physics simply does not do. Physics conflates the map with the territory by ontologising its toolkit, so when the physicist makes the statement that the universe can only be understood in the language of mathematics he forgets that mathematics cannot possibly model the real world but only the physicist's interpretation of this world. As Ptolemy showed for 1400 years this is a methodology which can't possibly fail unless the models thus derived describe a universe which makes no fucking sense, in which case we can then know with certainty that the physicist's interpretation of his observation is bullshit. QED.
Obvious Leo
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Dalek Prime wrote:To sum it up, I suppose I'm trying to say that consciousness should never be the footnote of philosophy, as it's writing the book on it. Does that make sense?
In the case of physics this has been known for over a century. The problem of physics was ALWAYS the problem of the observer and this was well understood by ALL of the pioneers of early 20th century physics. They even convened a special Solvay conference in 1927 to confront this problem head on and sort it out once and for all. Unfortunately they never succeeded in sorting it out but they did come out with a good compromise which was later expressed in the phrase "shut up and calculate".

If only they fucking would.
Dalek Prime
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Dalek Prime »

Obvious Leo wrote:Dalek. I'd rather not venture beyond my own domain of expertise by commenting on your more general statement about the nature of an observation but my entire philosophy is an essay in applied metaphysics which seeks to maintain the distinction between an epistemology and the ontology which underpins it, because this is something which physics simply does not do. Physics conflates the map with the territory by ontologising its toolkit, so when the physicist makes the statement that the universe can only be understood in the language of mathematics he forgets that mathematics cannot possibly model the real world but only the physicist's interpretation of this world. As Ptolemy showed for 1400 years this is a methodology which can't possibly fail unless the models thus derived describe a universe which makes no fucking sense, in which case we can then know with certainty that the physicist's interpretation of his observation is bullshit. QED.
Your comments are helpful as they stand, Leo, and highly appreciated. As I communicate my ideas, I'm also attempting to learn and clarify them for myself, and see where that takes me on my journey through philosophy. The journey is always a work in progress, as long as I do progress rationally, and stay open to it. :)
Dalek Prime
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Dalek Prime »

Obvious Leo wrote:Dalek. I'd rather not venture beyond my own domain of expertise by commenting on your more general statement about the nature of an observation but my entire philosophy is an essay in applied metaphysics which seeks to maintain the distinction between an epistemology and the ontology which underpins it, because this is something which physics simply does not do. Physics conflates the map with the territory by ontologising its toolkit, so when the physicist makes the statement that the universe can only be understood in the language of mathematics he forgets that mathematics cannot possibly model the real world but only the physicist's interpretation of this world. As Ptolemy showed for 1400 years this is a methodology which can't possibly fail unless the models thus derived describe a universe which makes no fucking sense, in which case we can then know with certainty that the physicist's interpretation of his observation is bullshit. QED.
I hear you, Leo. And how can we ever expect to model that (mind and consciousness, aside from its biological container) when it's doing all the modelling? Hence my prioritisation of consciousness at the top of the philosophical heirarchy. (I'm partly writing this as a note of clarity for myself. No need to answer.)
Obvious Leo
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Dalek. Our entire life's journey is always a work in progress but great minds have travelled these roads before us and left many beacons to light the way. The philosophy of the bloody obvious has been well named because nothing of what I'm saying is in the least bit original. All I'm trying to do is interpret the teachings of millennia of philosophy of both east and west in the context of our current state of knowledge about the physical world and it comes as no surprise to me that the physicist treats the philosopher as if he were the bloke that farted in the elevator. This priesthood has become so blindly entrenched in the hubris of its certainties that it simply cannot see the wood for the trees. Amongst a host of others the pre-Socratics, the Persians, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant and Mach were right and Newton was WRONG and that's the beginning, middle and end of the entire problem of physics. The Cartesian space is a mathematical object and not a physical one and that's all there is to it.
Dalek Prime
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Dalek Prime »

It's for us to recover buried treasures of knowledge Leo, ensuring they are not lost to the light.
JSS
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by JSS »

You should get a job running about linking all of the forums together. 8)
Walker
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Walker »

Obvious Leo wrote:
JSS wrote:"State of Being" tells you nothing more than you already knew with "to Exist".
Not exactly, which is why the tense of the verb is important. There is a temporal context to this definition which mustn't be overlooked. It is not true to say that Leo exists yesterday or that Leo exists tomorrow because in fact Leo only exists right bloody NOW and even this is only approximately true. By the time I become aware of the fact that I am currently in a state of existence I am no longer in the the particular state of existence that I've become aware of. Existence is only definable in the language of change so a state of Being is actually a state of Becoming.

The pre-Socratics understood this notion of existence perfectly. That which is physically real is that which is continuously Becoming. Spacetime physics is utterly unable to model physical reality in this way, which is why it makes no sense.
Obvious Leo wrote:By the time I become aware of the fact that I am currently in a state of existence I am no longer in the the particular state of existence that I've become aware of.
There’s another way of looking at this, and that is the distinction between awareness, and awareness of.
Who you really are is awareness.
Awareness does not change.
Awareness of, changes.
Of is the variable.
Awareness is the constant.
Awareness is the motionless constant upon which moving change appears. Awareness is the canvas; of is the tableau.
Awareness is actually the only state of existence, and the constant. The phenomena “of” appears within awareness, as in aware … of the fact.

More into the distinction between awareness, and awareness of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turiya
Dalek Prime
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Dalek Prime »

Walker wrote:
Obvious Leo wrote:
JSS wrote:"State of Being" tells you nothing more than you already knew with "to Exist".
Not exactly, which is why the tense of the verb is important. There is a temporal context to this definition which mustn't be overlooked. It is not true to say that Leo exists yesterday or that Leo exists tomorrow because in fact Leo only exists right bloody NOW and even this is only approximately true. By the time I become aware of the fact that I am currently in a state of existence I am no longer in the the particular state of existence that I've become aware of. Existence is only definable in the language of change so a state of Being is actually a state of Becoming.

The pre-Socratics understood this notion of existence perfectly. That which is physically real is that which is continuously Becoming. Spacetime physics is utterly unable to model physical reality in this way, which is why it makes no sense.
Obvious Leo wrote:By the time I become aware of the fact that I am currently in a state of existence I am no longer in the the particular state of existence that I've become aware of.
There’s another way of looking at this, and that is the distinction between awareness, and awareness of.
Who you really are is awareness.
Awareness does not change.
Awareness of, changes.
Of is the variable.
Awareness is the constant.
Awareness is the motionless constant upon which moving change appears. Awareness is the canvas; of is the tableau.
Awareness is actually the only state of existence, and the constant. The phenomena “of” appears within awareness, as in aware … of the fact.

More into the distinction between awareness, and awareness of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turiya
Walker, I tend to agree with you, but for the safety of my awareness, I must accept the car driving towards me as persistently existent.

I should mention again that I have a hierarchy, with self-awareness at the top of the consciousness scale, being part of the larger set of consciousness, which in turn is a part of the even larger set of existence.
Obvious Leo
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Obvious Leo »

You raise an important point, Walker, because awareness and consciousness are often conflated as if they were the same thing. I prefer to use the more technical term of congnition to refer to the process of consciousness and the term awareness to refer to the observation of this process. Thus cognition refers specifically to the mind as an information processing network of staggering complexity, but only the tiniest fraction of this cognitive activity ever affects the higher-order brain structures where it them becomes a part of our conscious awareness, which we could loosely describe as our inner mental life. The "self" can then be defined fundamentally as an effect of consciousness rather than the cause of it, but since the self is thereby defined as an emergent construct it has emergent properties which are greater than the sum of its parts. This allows it to be both ACTOR and ACTED UPON in the ongoing electro-chemical computation which is all cognition is.

When asking the question "What does it mean to exist?" it's useful to make a distinction between what it means to exist in a fundamental sense and what it means to exist in an emergent sense. To exist in a fundamental sense an entity merely needs to be composed of matter and energy, and we even know that matter itself is not fundamental, so "to exist" merely means that an entity is composed of quanta of energy which have been configured in a particular way. However it is the way in which these energy quanta are configured which defines them as an "object" with certain definable properties. However these properties have no meaning in and of themselves in the absence of a mind to define them. An object is purely an epistemic notion and not an ontological one for this very reason.

We like to delude ourselves that it is the objects of our observation which are specifying for our cognition of them but this is to put des Cartes before des horse. It is our cognition which defines our objects and not the other way around.
Dalek Prime
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Dalek Prime »

Hehe.... "Descartes before des horse". Nice one.
Dubious
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Re: What does it mean "to Exist"?

Post by Dubious »

Dubious wrote:physicts prefer that philosophers mind their own back yard
Obvious Leo wrote:Philosophers of science are inclined to hold a similar opinion of physicists, as indeed are some physicists themselves, to their credit.
Physicists can only hope that's true but philosophers still can't help playing by their own rules even in disciplines that no-longer concern them. A philosopher of science who's also a physicist is not usually one who wants to cohabit with a philosopher of science who's only an academic.
Obvious Leo wrote:They have no authority to make metaphysical statements and should therefore refrain from doing so unless they're willing to allow them to be subjected to metaphysical scrutiny.
I don't know of any theories that make metaphysical statements but if they do how does it become metaphysical? Science usually goes wherever the data takes it. True there can be a number of ridiculous assumptions made in trying to decipher the info. Physicists even lampoon other physicists when they take the art of interpretation too far. Is this what you qualify as metaphysics? Also, what means metaphysical scrutiny, which rightly considered amounts to an oxymoron? Can an absurdity, examine another of its kind for validity? Whether in philosophy or science, if its bullshit just donate it to the nearest mushroom farmer but that's one thing philosophy is incapable of, taking out its own garbage. All of it is still archived for future study in the hallowed halls of academia.
Dubious wrote: If you were introduced to two people without ever having met them before would you be able to tell who the philosopher and who the physicist?
Obvious Leo wrote:In a heartbeat.
Really? If you never met them and just doing small talk how could you possibly know!
Dubious wrote: For any current theory there had to be at least some reason for that theory to be acknowledged.
Obvious Leo wrote:For a theory to be held as true in physics all it has to to is yield predictions which can be confirmed.
It's only YOU who's saying this not physicists because this wouldn't even make sense in physics. It's not always easy determining to what extent a theory may be right or wrong. Part of it may adapt to known data but not everything in the theory adjusts so easily. If a theory consistently produces positive results according to observations and experiments that would give it a very high probability of being correct meaning it models the reality almost perfectly but it cannot be the REALITY because the model is derived from it which, I'm sure is understood by physicists at least as much as by philosophers.
Dubious wrote:For any current theory there had to be at least some reason for that theory to be acknowledged.
Obvious Leo wrote:This means the Ptolemy's geocentric cosmology is just as true today as it's ever been.
A statement like this is TOTALLY incongruous coming from anyone who claims to have solved the problems of physics. A half intelligent 5th grader would realize there's something not right about this! Does it really have to be pointed out that what qualified as a “theory” two thousand years ago has absolutely no relation to the modern concept of one. It wasn't even a theory but a mathematical fix to describe the cyclical motion of the planets against a background of fixed stars...the so-called Celestial Sphere. Ptolemy was very ingenious in "designing" a predictive and refined mechanical model of the solar system but simply being predictive of naked eye observations does not require a supporting theory to uphold it.

Your analogue to Ptolemy's system in order to lampoon modern theories shows once again why science needs and must exclude most of philosophy and philosophers from its domain...they have nothing to contribute, the only problem being philosophers can't keep away from parties they were never invited to. At least on philosophy forums everyone is free to create their own editions of a universe.
Obvious Leo wrote:In fact no theory can be proven true but any dodgy theory can always be falsified. Spacetime physics has been falsified by quantum entanglement.
Who said its been falsified? There must be some reference to that if space-time were proven false or is this simply another assertion? According to the last confirmed prediction of GR, the rippling of space-time is mentioned EVERY time in the context of gravitational waves. Never once, even in the newest edition of articles, have I ever read that space-time is dead! How can it be dead if we have NOTHING to replace it with and now even more established within the context of GR.
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