The Nature of Consciousness

[tapaticmadness]

I am not an agent that creates thought.

Say it ain't so, tap!

If you aren't the thinker, then who or what is?

We live in a subject-predicate. That is to say that in this world particular things have properties. Consider green grass. A bare particular is (exemplifies) the form of Green and it is (exemplifies) the form of Grass. The particular is bare until it exemplifies some property. And so it is with thought. I am a bare particular that exemplifies a thought. That same thought can be exemplified by other bare particulars, just as can Green and Grass.

It is important to recognize that the bare particular doesn't create the form it exemplifies. Also, and this is important, it is only momentary. Bare particulars don't endure through time. At each instant, a different particular is there. In a substance-attribute world, it is that enduring substance that creates its properties. That is more or less Aristotle. Therefore, if the mind is an Aristotelian substance it creates its attributes which are thoughts. I don't believe in substance. I am an anti-substantialist.

Yes, I am the thinker who has or exemplifies thought, but I don't create thought and I am most certainly not some sort of container that contains thoughts.

[seeds]

Close your eyes and create the image of a basketball before the eye of your mind. Now create the image of a golf ball circling around it like a moon orbiting a planet.

There, you have just created thought.

So you believe that the mind is an agent that has the power of creation.

I am sensing an exercise in futility here but, no, I think that the human mind is a closed - “arena-like” - phenomenon in which a conscious agent to which the mind belongs...

(that which you call your “me”)

...has the power to create absolutely anything it wishes (anything imaginable) out of the living fabric of its own personal being.

However, whatever the agent does create (as described above), it only exists (only has form/context/and reality) within, again, the “closed arena” of the agent’s mind.

I think you have taken an idea and image from magic and mythology and tried to pawn it off as analysis.

Actually, I have simply taken something that is implicitly obvious to every child between the ages of, say, 2 and 7, and pointed it out to you.

Unfortunately, a child’s inward creativity (imagination) is something that gets repressed as they are forced to turn their attention outward in the process of the mandatory indoctrination into societal duties. And it is quite obvious (to me, anyway) that the depth and degree of the repression is much greater for some than it is for others.

Examine the word “create” and see if you can see anything there. I say, you can’t. "Create" is a word that means nothing.

Again, I am sensing futility here, but according to Dictionary.com:

Create
verb (used with object), cre•at•ed, cre•at•ing.

• 1. to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes.
  2. to evolve from one's own thought or imagination, as a work of art or an invention.

Apparently, in standard human usage, the word “create” does mean something after all.

And in regards to your support of the philosophy of direct realism, allow me to offer an excerpt from the book “QUANTUM REALITY: BEYOND THE NEW PHYSICS, by physicist Nick Herbert:

Though ghostly and transitory, Heisenberg’s shimmering ocean of potentia is the sole support for everything we see around us. The entire visible universe, what Bishop Berkeley called “the mighty frame of the world,” rests ultimately on a strange kind of being no more substantial than a promise.

What Herbert...

(and the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics)

...is suggesting is that what you refer to as being “reality” is, in truth, founded upon a nebulous and ethereal substance that is, as he put it:

“...no more substantial than a promise.”

The point is that reality may not be quite as “real” (whatever that’s supposed to mean) as you imagine it to be.
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[henry quirk]

Indeed. I ain't got the will to climb this mountain.

For example: tap sez he's a direct realist and a anti-substantialist. It hurts my head tryin' to figure how he reconciles what seem to be opposing positions.

And this I am the thinker who has or exemplifies thought, but I don't create thought... I can't make sense of either.

So: the glory is yours, if you can claim it.

[tapaticmadness]

Indeed. I ain't got the will to climb this mountain.

For example: tap sez he's a direct realist and a anti-substantialist. It hurts my head tryin' to figure how he reconciles what seem to be opposing positions.

And this I am the thinker who has or exemplifies thought, but I don't create thought... I can't make sense of either.

So: the glory is yours, if you can claim it.

I see no way to respond to that. I am presenting rather ordinary twentieth century analytic philosophy. Yes, I know that there are different strands within that tradition, but what I have presented is prominently there. Perhaps I have been walking along that path so long it now seems old hat. I think it is like the theory of relativity. If you think about it long enough, you can begin to imagine it and think along those lines.

[tapaticmadness]

I am sensing an exercise in futility here but, no, I think that the human mind is a closed - “arena-like” - phenomenon in which a conscious agent to which the mind belongs...

______

First, I would like to recommend this book - https://www.amazon.com/Something-Deeply ... 572&sr=8-1 I just finished it and I really liked it.

I think the difference between your ideas of the mind and creativity and mine is that we come out of different philosophical traditions. I will guess that your tradition goes back to Berlin and Kant. Mind is rooted in the revolt against all that by the New Realists of Cambridge, with Moore and Russell. Vienna is also a well-spring for me. Idealism vs. Realism. The fight between those two camps has been going on for quite some time and is still hot. I think almost everyone on this forum is from out of your tradition. My Realism has not found a welcoming ear. I have no objection to all that, but It does strike me as odd to be considered odd.

[henry quirk]

"I see no way to respond to that."

No need...I was just agreein' with seeds.

#

"I am presenting rather ordinary twentieth century analytic philosophy."

Well, I'm not a philosopher, so pairing direct realism (the world is real and is pretty much as I perceive it) with anti-substantialism (either there is no substance or properties are distinct from substance) doesn't make sense to me, and, as I say, I don't have the will to climb that mountain.

Also: the notion I don't think doesn't jibe with my self-experience.

Anyway: you're lookin' for debate or conversation with philosophers, and since I'm not one of those, I leave you to it.

[tapaticmadness]

"I see no way to respond to that."

No need...I was just agreein' with seeds.

#

"I am presenting rather ordinary twentieth century analytic philosophy."

Well, I'm not a philosopher, so pairing direct realism (the world is real and is pretty much as I perceive it) with anti-substantialism (either there is no substance or properties are distinct from substance) doesn't make sense to me, and, as I say, I don't have the will to climb that mountain.

Also: the notion I don't think doesn't jibe with my self-experience.

Anyway: you're lookin' for debate or conversation with philosophers, and since I'm not one of those, I leave you to it.

Fair enough. Why are you on a philosophy forum?

[henry quirk]

Cuz thinkin' deeply is for everyone, not just philosophers.

[tapaticmadness]

Cuz thinkin' deeply is for everyone, not just philosophers.

What are you interested in? Maybe I have a thing or two to say about it.

Speaking of climbing mountains, here in Kathmandu, Nepal, Trekking company guys are always asking me if I am interested in trekking with their group. I tell them that I only trek downhill, because uphill is much too difficult.

I am here studying Hinduism, especially Hindu shamanism, if you're interested in that. I am a theist and I do think Hindu gods exist, but I don't meditate. I don't believe in enlightenment.

[henry quirk]

Cuz thinkin' deeply is for everyone, not just philosophers.

What are you interested in? Maybe I have a thing or two to say about it.

The usual suspects: libertarian free will, minarchism, common sense (naive) realism, natural rights, deism, guns, gold, girls, coffee, cigarettes, etc.

[tapaticmadness]

[
The usual suspects: libertarian free will, minarchism, common sense (naive) realism, natural rights, deism, guns, gold, girls, coffee, cigarettes, etc.

I see that you are interested in politics. I do have something to say about that. Here in Nepal corruption is rampant, just as it is in every third-world country. The interesting thing is that the potential for corruption, oppression of the poor, is much greater than it actually is. There is something hold it somewhat in check. I know what that is. I have at times used it myself. It works fine.

The two main religions here are Hinduism and Buddhism, neither of which have any similarity with their appearance in the West. Both are heavy into magic and shamanism. Especially is the villages and among the young who come to the city for work. The gods prowl around every street corner.

The wealthy and the educated of course will tell you that they don’t believe in any of that. They will tell you that they have science. There’s a lot of money in this town so that’s a big segment of the population.

Now here’s the fun part. What keeps that upper crust from ripping off the poor even more than they do is that they really do secretly believe in all that woo woo spiritualism, magic, tantra mantra. And they are secretly more than afraid of it; they are terrified. The poor know that and use it perfectly to their advantage. If you go against village magic, then … well, things happen.

I as a “rich” American am a possible target for being ripped off. So I immediately let them know that I am a student of shamanistic magic and they instantly back off.

The upper classes have science and reason. The lower classes have magic. Magic is the more powerful.

[henry quirk]

Here is south Louisiana there's a rich tradition of folk magic, hexes and whatnot. Salt, in odd places, as ward; burn the hair caught up in brushes and combs to avoid it bein' used in a casting, that kinda thing.

I think the folk magic here plays a similar role as to what you describe in Nepal.

[Impenitent]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI_JFcrTooM

got my mojo workin'

-Imp

[tapaticmadness]

[

And in regards to your support of the philosophy of direct realism, allow me to offer an excerpt from the book “QUANTUM REALITY: BEYOND THE NEW PHYSICS, by physicist Nick Herbert:

Though ghostly and transitory, Heisenberg’s shimmering ocean of potentia is the sole support for everything we see around us. The entire visible universe, what Bishop Berkeley called “the mighty frame of the world,” rests ultimately on a strange kind of being no more substantial than a promise.

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I don’t see how your Nick Herbert quote is relevant to the truth of Direct Realism. Let’s suppose that the world is an ocean of potential. A Direct Realist would simply assert that we know or perceive that ocean directly, not through a mental concept. There are many potential in the world and I directly know them. Sure, why not?

[henry quirk]

"A Direct Realist would simply assert that we know or perceive that ocean directly, not through a mental concept."

That's my position.