Philosophy Now Forum

uwot wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 5:14 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 4:48 pmLight does not continue forever.

Well, it's got a pretty good shelf-life. We can see light that is nearly 14 billion years old.

are you suggesting that light travels on shelves? the ether will be shattered...



-Imp

uwot wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 3:28 pm

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 2:55 pmYou still have to exist to know you don't exist...

The point about not existing is that you wouldn't know it. All anyone knows with absolute certainty is that their current experiences exist. That's what Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am' boils down to. Everything else is theory-laden.

Thought is Sourced in what is always this Immediate Nondual Thoughtless Unknown Irrefutable Presence of Being.

There is an Immediate Awareness of the thought ('I think, therefore I am' ) causing an illusory duality upon what is already PRESENT prior to any thought arising. ''Thought'' is a secondary conceptual overlay placed upon what is always and ever Nondual. The conceptual overlay is then taken to be the real reality when in truth it's a fictional virtual world of imagination.

Nondual Awareness needs no thought to BE - but a 'thought' needs Awareness to be.. hence the illusion of (duality)

There is no discontinuity of being in this Immediate Presence of Pure Awareness. And yet as 'thought forms' arise they cause an illusory discontinuation within the perfect symmetry of life living itself all alone. But this phenomena is nothing more than the illusion of duality, it's all just appearance having no real effect on the Nondual nature of Awareness itself because the apparent split is an hallucinatory trick of the mind, it's the imaged virtual world appearing upon the imageless blank screen of Awareness.



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Except of course if what you you say is true then you couldn't know it is as what you say is just a thought. That is, Kant would then be right and any idea about what the Noumena is, Awareness, a Sim 'God', etc is just metaphysical wishful thinking. Unless of course I have got the wrong end of your stick and you are not proposing this 'Awareness' as an entity outside of us?

Arising_uk wrote: ↑Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:39 am Except of course if what you you say is true then you couldn't know it is as what you say is just a thought. That is, Kant would then be right and any idea about what the Noumena is, Awareness, a Sim 'God', etc is just metaphysical wishful thinking. Unless of course I have got the wrong end of your stick and you are not proposing this 'Awareness' as an entity outside of us?

Only 'thoughts' are known. There is no knowledge of the thinker of thought because the thinker too is a thought.

Thoughts arise and are known instantly they arise in the awareness that knows them - thoughts themselves have no exact location nor can they be seen, as is the awareness that is aware of them is also without exact location or can be seen, therefore seer and seen are always one in the exact same moment namely here now nowhere in no location. All locations ie: inside/outside are again just thoughts. Even the word entity is a thought. All words are thoughts.

Therefore all knowledge informs the illusory nature of reality.

All seen images and all known thoughts are empty at their core.


The statement made that there is an assumed 'Awareness' as an entity outside of us? makes absolutely no sense to me.

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Arising_uk wrote: ↑Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:39 am Except of course if what you you say is true then you couldn't know it is as what you say is just a thought. That is, Kant would then be right and any idea about what the Noumena is, Awareness, a Sim 'God', etc is just metaphysical wishful thinking. Unless of course I have got the wrong end of your stick and you are not proposing this 'Awareness' as an entity outside of us?

You ARE the Awareness..aka Consciousness. How would it be "outside" of us???

There is no knowledge of the thinker of thought because the thinker is a thought too

I can just about understand this as a concept [ it is very counter intuitive ] but I do not think it is how reality actually is
Everything cannot merely be an illusion arising out of nothing because then it would literally mean nothing truly existed

Existence is an eternal state and since existence cannot not exist then absolute nothing cannot exist too
A true state of absolute nothing in reality could never be sustained just because it would be too unstable

Ramu wrote:
You ARE the Awareness..aka Consciousness. How would it be "outside" of us???

I know I am a conscious awareness, I also know there is at least one other awareness conscious like me but DAM, and presumably you, appear to be claiming that there is only one Awareness in reality and in fact it and that is reality. As such I think it nonsense. But maybe I am misunderstanding what is being claimed?

Dontaskme wrote:...
The statement made that there is an assumed 'Awareness' as an entity outside of us? makes absolutely no sense to me.
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The fact you can use "me" should make you blush but maybe I have the wrong end of your schtick, so are you claiming that there is only this Awareness in reality and in fact reality is this Awareness and there is nothing else other than this Awareness? If so then I think it absolute nonsense as any 'Awareneas' needs an other to be aware of.
P.s.
Apologies to the OP as this all seems very off-topic.

Arising_uk wrote: ↑Tue Aug 06, 2019 3:41 pm

Ramu wrote:
You ARE the Awareness..aka Consciousness. How would it be "outside" of us???

I know I am a conscious awareness, I also know there is at least one other awareness conscious like me but DAM, and presumably you, appear to be claiming that there is only one Awareness in reality and in fact it and that is reality. As such I think it nonsense. But maybe I am misunderstanding what is being claimed?

There is only one Consciousness. Not two or more just One. Call it Awareness, Source, Being or God. This is not a Theological argument. I'm not by ANY means arguing for the Christian version of God...i.e.the man with the White beard in the clouds who is separate from us and judges us. I'm talking about Non duality. Source as formlessness. You are that Source. There is only One. It is infinite and eternal. It was not born nor will it die. It's not "out there somewhere". It's right here right now right in front of you. However those stuck in the materialist/physicalist paradigm will never get it.

I can accept that reality is non dual simply because everything is either directly or indirectly connected to everything else
I cannot accept that at the most fundamental level it arises out of absolute nothing as something must exist and always so

surreptitious57 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 06, 2019 3:28 pm
There is no knowledge of the thinker of thought because the thinker is a thought too

I can just about understand this as a concept [ it is very counter intuitive ] but I do not think it is how reality actually is
Everything cannot merely be an illusion arising out of nothing because then it would literally mean nothing truly existed

Existence is an eternal state and since existence cannot not exist then absolute nothing cannot exist too
A true state of absolute nothing in reality could never be sustained just because it would be too unstable

Don't confuse "nothing" with non existence. Nothing is No Thing. It's not non existence. The No Thing is so empty that it fills up with Everything. Two sides of the same coin that is Being.

I usually think of [ absolute ] nothing and non existence as being fundamentally the same
Now I have to accept that there is a difference between them - albeit a rather subtle one

I cannot accept No Thing as a part of reality but can understand it from a conceptual perspective
Because I think that I am too much of a materialist to also accept it as something that truly exists

Sculptor wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 4:44 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 11:40 am

Sculptor wrote: ↑Sun Aug 04, 2019 5:08 pm

What sort of proof is going to satisfy you? None.
Neural activity is consciousness.
Nothing is going to show "ACTUAL consciousness". All science is representation. War & Peace does not show actual War. A falling apple does not show actual gravity. Trump does not show actual thinking.

These analogies are Diversions and Obfuscations from the question. Gravity and War have nothing to do with what we are talking about. Specifically with regard to Conscious Experience: What is the Redness of Red? I reject your belief that Science cannot study this. When you say: Nothing is going to show "ACTUAL consciousness" you are professing to know something about Consciousness that you don't really know. There is nothing that rings more hollow than the statement: Neural Activity is Consciousness. There is a huge Explanatory Gap in that statement and it is mind boggling that you don't see it.

Perfect transference. I think a psychologist would have fun with you. My analogies are fine. It is you that is obfuscating. You can try to counter obfuscate but my points remain.
Yes of course science can study consciousness. What I said is that it cannot DIRECTLY "Show" it. It cannot show it anymore than it can show gravity. And obfuscate how ever much you like that is what science does; its a system of metaphors and representations.
Neural activity is consciousness. Please demonstrate a gap! I won't hold my breath.
Because acceleration towards a large mass is gravity is what science has given us, and it is perfectly consistent with my statement on neural activity.

I'll give you an analogy. Someone could ask about an image on a TV: There is Electronics inside the TV that makes this Image but how does the Electronics do that? Your answer would be to say: The Electronics IS the Image. I would say Big Explanatory Gap.

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:27 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 4:44 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 11:40 am These analogies are Diversions and Obfuscations from the question. Gravity and War have nothing to do with what we are talking about. Specifically with regard to Conscious Experience: What is the Redness of Red? I reject your belief that Science cannot study this. When you say: Nothing is going to show "ACTUAL consciousness" you are professing to know something about Consciousness that you don't really know. There is nothing that rings more hollow than the statement: Neural Activity is Consciousness. There is a huge Explanatory Gap in that statement and it is mind boggling that you don't see it.

Perfect transference. I think a psychologist would have fun with you. My analogies are fine. It is you that is obfuscating. You can try to counter obfuscate but my points remain.
Yes of course science can study consciousness. What I said is that it cannot DIRECTLY "Show" it. It cannot show it anymore than it can show gravity. And obfuscate how ever much you like that is what science does; its a system of metaphors and representations.
Neural activity is consciousness. Please demonstrate a gap! I won't hold my breath.
Because acceleration towards a large mass is gravity is what science has given us, and it is perfectly consistent with my statement on neural activity.

I'll give you an analogy. Someone could ask about an image on a TV: There is Electronics inside the TV that makes this Image but how does the Electronics do that? Your answer would be to say: The Electronics IS the Image. I would say Big Explanatory Gap.

It's a very poor analogy.
The TV image (as seen by spectators) is analogous to the speech and gestures of the human body, which are all generated by neural activity.

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:31 pm

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:27 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 4:44 pm

Perfect transference. I think a psychologist would have fun with you. My analogies are fine. It is you that is obfuscating. You can try to counter obfuscate but my points remain.
Yes of course science can study consciousness. What I said is that it cannot DIRECTLY "Show" it. It cannot show it anymore than it can show gravity. And obfuscate how ever much you like that is what science does; its a system of metaphors and representations.
Neural activity is consciousness. Please demonstrate a gap! I won't hold my breath.
Because acceleration towards a large mass is gravity is what science has given us, and it is perfectly consistent with my statement on neural activity.

I'll give you an analogy. Someone could ask about an image on a TV: There is Electronics inside the TV that makes this Image but how does the Electronics do that? Your answer would be to say: The Electronics IS the Image. I would say Big Explanatory Gap.

It's a very poor analogy.
The TV image (as seen by spectators) is analogous to the speech and gestures of the human body, which are all generated by neural activity.

So you really do think saying that the Electronics IS the Image is a good Explanation? Go try to fix a TV with that kind of understanding.