Something Instead of Nothing

Yes, there is irony, tainted with an unwitting cynicism, who deny the importance in absolutely valued judgements. Apart from this, the questionable value of depth analysis as a thrown away object is also doubted. However, the necessity of contraptions , intellectual or otherwise is absolutely tied in, and right or wrong, it has become seen as expandable, or irrelevant, and harbors grave dangers of abandoning.

Right or wrong, the death of the gods mean nothing to those who hold them dear.

Alanna Blackshaw in Philosophy Now

So, philosophically or otherwise, is there a way around this? How can the question of something rather than nothing not just leave our heads spinning?

Even in speaking of “square one” we are merely making something up for lack of anything better.

Then it comes back to the reason why each of us as individuals are either more or less intrigued and/or dumbfounded by it all.

Attempts are then made to bring it all down to earth:

The parts we can’t explain.

Then the part where it all basically becomes a word game…

And this explains what exactly?

But what else is there but in taking stabs at it?

I did want to elaborate this morning , running out of time I left that for later.

Before trying to reply to the recent issues You raised, I’d like to go back to the unfinished business.

Intentionality explains a lot as a way to try to overcome the cognitively based differences during and post critical dualism posed by Descartes, and tomorrow if I have the opportunity , show how Heidegger through Husserl transcends that by intentional approach to the object.

Yes it is an intellectual effort, but it can be readily understood when existence and phenomenology is the starting point , rather then the subjective point of view.

Ill post some references, tonight or tomorrow . after ill find them, and they do exemplify the approach taken post critical dualism toward how they deal with it. But preliminarily, the state of Dasein is handled differently as a pure subjective.

But you never do get around to replying to the issues I raise. At least not down on the ground where flesh and blood human beings interact in this particular something.

The “unfinished business” is now seen by me as this need on your part to embody pedantry. A pedant in the sense of one who “makes a show of knowledge”. It seems important to you that you appear to others here to be a “serious philosopher”.

Unless it’s all just an exercise in irony.

On the other hand, I may appear as inscrutable to you as you do to me.

The thing is, that the intentionality has developed since antiquity, and was part and parcel of Platonism, held in by by Aristetolian logic, which started to upend it.

It was coined from the Latin, ‘intendere’ and held in a reverential modality, having affinity to scholasticism, with religious overtones.

Dualism reached a crisis of confidence with Descartes, who reaffirmed the rational part of it, through sustaining causal relationship with the Church and God.

Another crisis, the coming with the monarchical vested values, (corresponding with Your conflicting values) where the world coming out of feudalism, entered the age of discovery.

Husserl/Heidegger returned the idea of transcendence, transcending the modus operans of the cogito, with that of perception.

Without going through all the gyrations /contraptions that intellectual formations went through, through innumerable volumes, it is possible to extract essential movements , even of those most intricately and it times contradictorily befitting ideas in the obtruce manner that signified their writings.

So here ill try to describe the manner in which it went, albeit with a very wide latitude.

The intention signified a subject drawing a line , to move forward toward an object, both of material and mind.

Such was the historical effort to minimise or even negate duality. Some of the objections were stopped by God, whose function and role as a causal agent would have been interpreted as a sin by the holy see.

By the time Husserl got hold of the idea, god, as he was interpreted previously, had become almost passe in philosophical circles, so they had to come up with a different interpretation, that of intentionality and Dasein.

How that worked was kind of like getting through the backdoor, with a subliminal idea based on contingent logic.

In the very beginning, the idea of thingness, part and parcel of consciousness, began a unified field consisting of both: the subject and the object. It was an anamolie which began the very long quest into the reinvention of intentionality, while contemporeously affirming the primacy of singular Preception.

This is needed after all, to assert that, after all, we are singular entities. However assigning some thing as elementary as substance, could no afford to differentiate from I
conscious counterpart, thereby foreshadowing the Collusive or suppressive nature of substance within its own idea of it.
This is akin to what Bertrand Russell has been charged with the fallaciousness of his idea of sense data.

I hope not to involve You or presume on You that this historical anecdote is somewhat unfunctiobary, but it did, a while ago help me fill in the dots.

As it goes, Husserl’s Dasein is no longer an ego, it is a Being as it is, thrown into an already pre-structured world, subliminally colluded with .

So there is no primary, conscious idea of the self, or self consciousness , and this idea is easy to miss and caused a lot of intricate search for the truth.

So the idea of alienation from one’s self and inauthentic ideas of the self is basically based this misapprehension,
aided and abetted by a Church, which had a lot to loose along the way.

I will get to the points You are raising, in due time, sans the promised reference, since that may be superfluous in such a broad outline.

Please Ambiguous, rest assured that is not my intention , in far as I do not wish to appear as anything else but serious about philosophy. The distinction may be trite, as long as the effort is intentionally earnest.

Why? Well, there is a lot of unfinished business about me, the least of which is not what You may gather, worrying about keeping my promise to get down to earth and the bones and.guts of the issues You raised.

Would You, or, could You believe that since leaving school , my promise to my self was a down to earth all out effort to fill in the forgotten parts in my philosophic education, and now am doubling down on? It may appear differently, but that is where I am now, into this situation , where from I am writing.

The reason I could not answer Your issues at first , was because I had to refresh myself into the historical precedents that were handled by previous philosophers down through the ages, feeling insecure on a solo exploration into another person/object/Sign’s pre dicament.

That I’m with You on this, You may by now gather, since tried to express this pre viously.

I think we/I are getting somewhere ,even as belabored a road we are traveling.

Just out of curiosity, why [u]Y[/u]ou and not you?

A Sign’s predicment?

Seriously, not to worry. In part I pursue these exchanges in the context of waiting for godot. There’s all this time I have to fill before I die. So, here I am.

On the other hand, there really is the possibility I might bump into an argument [from you, from others] that startles me into taking “I” in an entirely new direction. That’s happened to me a number of times before. If not of late.

Anything is better than “I” here and now.

Not counting the distractions of course.

The I and the i differ in a logical difference as ultimately differing as the idea that trillions of pattern recognitions between an eternal cosmos and am equally corresponding quantum downside can produce.

Here between the two poles it brackets semblances of parity, and it is almost as if the universe stretches temporal space so thin. as to recreate a veritable stillness .

This stillness is what is destroyed by the skeptics who constantly need proof by referring to a difference that they have claimed to be an absolute.

This absolute is just as suspect, as its integrated mirror image, and it is based on the desire for an absolute identity. This absolute I is different in kind from the other i, for they absolutely deny a.transcendental continuum.

A big mistake, to think of the brain as different from the mind, for the same reason as the artificial separation of the Creator from his (His?) creations.

What is duality? The fear that all those creatures which may have signaled our beginnings are too horrid to even begin to think about, forgetting that time resonates faster and faster as the so called conscious manifestation evolves toward its absolute, thereby blocking conscious memory, phylogenetically.

Heaven may signify an end time when change of.progression or of progressive change can no longer be measured, very similar to Leibnitz’idea of indiscernible variables. .

It’s no wonder that mathematics became the measure between expectation and actualíty, between differentiation and integration. The same difference can be observed in the perception of lived life, in an individual or social setting.

These patterns are not strange in an .existance , as in a void lacking patterns, but are permeated within constant interfaces and continuous processess.

We can not hold on to the I, be cause it exists in an artificial stillness for which We strive for constant recreation. We work alongside the Creator, or Nature, in an effort to better focus on the wonder of His own mirrored reflection, the.consciousness
with which he can simulate an eternity of still, of rest.

That this simulation works is grounded in memory’s constant conflict to remember, but only remember in order to forget.

This actually proves Descartes’ cutting off the deeper memory of the sense of dread, the Evil Genius, who simulates, but only to frighten the created into the furor of god’ s ungracious duplicity with him.

But it is not to BE, because the simulated Being is still stronger then the supposed Real existing object that is separated in an exact and definitely remarked existential epoch.

Godot, waiting for that point in time, never reaches it, because his cogito will not allow it.

It won’t, and therefore it can’t. Non cogito ergo non sum. The evil genius wins, to sustain the illusion, only to find his victory grounded in defeat.

They are one and the same. Beyond good and evil, and the thingness captures the nothingness.

To me this conclusion is inescapable, for the same differential identity.

If You seen this another semantic manipulation, think of it as the difference between the dawn and the twilight of civilization; if value is attributed to civilized Man, then that It’self should serve as a mirror of equivocation between before and after civilization as a form of intentionality, a supposition which can be exercised from the idea of pattern interplay, indistinct from the idea of any agency polarizing around a halo of reductive consciousness of consciousness, within absolutely reducible patterns-although that is also within the realm of the possible.

The charge against this formulation of a Deity, implying a god split between spirit and matter, must show evil within the bounded temporally existential self deciding separation of the Deity from its temporally marked effect.

The Deity human anomalies suffer the god and the man toward their absolute godmen intentionality as supermen, as a transitional stage.

The early anthropomorphic gods showed vestiges of this idea on mostly subliminal levels.

I traveled back in time , to point out that Your answers to Surreptitious hazardly or intentionally circumvent his objections.

Maybe this is what You mean by an equity among is to misunderstand.

Very difficult conceptions are very easy to comprehend as those simple ones are the most difficult.

How about not taking stabs at it by either not thinking about it at all or having a theory but not one weighed down by absolute certainty
I have my own thoughts about it but they are there just to provide some basic foundation for my curiosity but nothing that is set in stone

Death is the only real certainty and for me that is enough [ even though I also think it is eternal and will carry on doing so unless evidence suggests otherwise ]
I am a pragmatist so do not think anything that directly contradicts reality and this is the only limitation I impose upon myself psychologically / philosophically
I have absolutely zero problem in not having all of the pieces or even knowing what to do with the ones that I do have but to just have some is enough for now

You seem absolutely desperate for answers whereas I accept whatever I am given regardless of whether or not it actually helps me while I am passing through
I find that the closer I get to death the less intense I need to be in seeking such answers as I have less time and ultimately they will be of no use to me anyway

Sure, any particular individual might choose to take one of these routes. Or many others besides. And that’s when I shift to the part about dasein. Why [given the assumption that autonomy is real in this particular somethingness] do “I” do one thing while others do something else? How is that embedded existentially in the lives that we live?

Or, instead, is there a way [using the tools of philosophy] to pin this down such that all men and women who wish to be thought of as rational humans beings are in fact obligated to think about in only one way? The right way. The way in sync with objective reality.

What you think about death is one thing, what you can demonstrate is in fact true about it something else.

Our birth, our life and our death seem to be ineffably [and perhaps inextricably] intertwined in all of those unknown unknowns that entangle “I” in an understanding of existence itself.

You have absolutely zero problem with this either because you could never have not had zero problems with it or [in an autonomous world] what you think about it now could well change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge.

I don’t often feel absolutely desperate. And I have plenty of distractions to take me away from it altogether. A lot of this however is actually embedded in the particular circumstances that “I” finds itself in. In any uniquely personal “here and now”. If things are going really, really well for someone out in the world they just sink down into that. But then circumstances can change and suddenly it becomes increasingly more difficult to think of anything else.

So, how close are you now to death? What actual options are still available to you…allowing you “for all practical purposes” to shrug death [and possibly oblivion] off?

And let’s not forget all of those embedded in sets of circumstances perceived as so dire they choose to die.

No because of two reasons : free will and the nature of morality

Free will [ inasmuch as it exists ] allows us to think for ourselves and this individuality of thought naturally creates differences of opinion. Morality has its roots
in evolutionary psychology though some attribute it to God instead and this fundamental of differences makes all subsequent discussion of it entirely subjective

Rather therefore than seek that which does not exist it is more practical to live the best life that you can according to your own moral philosophy / belief system

Though the irony here is that there is major consensus on the basic rules from across the philosophical / religious spectrum since nothing exists in a moral vacuum
The Golden Rule is the most obvious and famous example here given that it is found in all major religions and is not at all incompatible with atheism / agnosticism

I am simply more aware of death as I get older even though I have no fear of it anymore ever since I made my peace with it two years ago
I might be afraid of the manner of my passing when the time actually comes but that is dying rather than death and they are not the same

I basically agree. Only “I” here in my view is largely an existential contraption rooted subjectively/subjunctively in this: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

In other words, a fractured and fragmented sense of self that, in the is/ought world, revolves largely around this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

Others, of course, will construe this as only more or less applicable to them.

As for “free will”, has an argument been made that establishes this beyond all doubt? Perhaps. But I haven’t come across it. Or, in fact, I have but was unable to grasp it.

But all I can do is to react to the world around me from my own subjective point of view. I am either able to demonstrate to others what I believe is true or I’m not.

Just like you and everyone else here.

What consensus regarding what rules in relationship to what human interactions in what set of circumstances?

That’s always my point, isn’t it?

And even the Golden Rule becomes increasingly more problematic for others: philosophynow.org/issues/125/Th … olden_Rule

Okay, given the aggregation of particular experiences, relationships and access to ideas that you had, you have come “here and now” to think this about it.

And, sure, that need be as far as it goes. This frame of mind [however it was derived] works for you and allows you to approach your own death in ways that many, many others are not able to. Their loss, your gain.

It’s no less an existential conrtraption to me but I’m not the one who matters here. Only you do. Instead, my point revolves more around the suggestion that it is not likely that philosophers will ever come up with the optimal point of view. A way in which rational men and women are obligated to think about death. The “best” way to think about it.

Each of us either finds something that works or we don’t. Most find that God reflects [by far] the best of all possible worlds here. If you can figure out a way to believe in Him.

On the other hand, does anyone really know how to distinguish one from the other?

You can go around the globe and bump into any number of cultural narratives:

[b]Sue Bryant

November 2nd is the Dia de las Muertos in Mexico: the Day of the Dead. Rather than a day of mourning death, this is a time of celebration. Altars are built in homes to deceased family members, graves decorated and vigils held, in the belief that the departed are returning to visit. It’s also a day of colorful parades all over Mexico – and a day where nobody does much work.

Death is marked in so many ways around the world that an understanding of different rituals can be helpful, particularly in a cross cultural environment. It’s not death, as such, which is a universal experience, but the expression of grief that differs so much between cultures.

In Korea, where cremation is becoming commonplace nowadays, there is a trend to have the ashes of a loved one refined and turned into colorful beads. While these are not worn, if you visit a Korean home and see these beads on display, they’re likely to be the ashes of a loved one of the homeowner.

White is the color of mourning in China, not black, as in the west, and as such, is regarded as unlucky; this is why giving white flowers to a Chinese person is inappropriate. Funeral rituals vary according to the age and status of the deceased but the official mourning period for a Buddhist may go on for 100 days. These rituals are elaborate and may even include hiring professional wailers, in the belief that the young in China no longer know how to show emotion appropriately. These mourners learn facts about the deceased and then start the process of expressing grief at the funeral, sobbing and wailing, opening the doors for any family mourners who feel embarrassed about public displays of emotion.

Japan is the opposite. Death is seen as liberation and acceptance is more important than expressing oneself. People bring condolence money to wakes in white envelopes tied with black and white ribbon. Bodies are cremated but the ashes then separated from the bones, these remains sometimes being divided up between the temple, the family and even the employer of the departed. The dead are remembered during a three-day holiday in August, Obon, when the spirits of ancestors are believed to return to the family home, graves are cleaned and fires lit. This celebration of the dead is common in cultures where ancestor worship is practiced. In these cultures, life is seen as cyclical rather than linear and the dead are believed to have powers over the living, such as the ability to bless or curse.

Ghana is another example of this belief in an afterlife, with a relatively new tradition of elaborate coffins, which will illustrate the interests, profession or status of the departed but also see them off into the next life in style. A coffin may take the form of an aeroplane, or a Porsche, or a Coca Cola bottle, an animal or even, in dubious taste, a giant cigarette packet. Coffin makers are highly sought after and are regarded as important artists. Funerals are enormous affairs, often costing more than weddings, and advertised on huge billboards so that nobody in the community misses out.

In other parts of Africa, funeral rituals have evolved from the blending of Christian, Islam and traditional practices. In southern Africa, like Ghana, funerals are enormous affairs involving entire communities. The death is usually announced on the local radio station and mourners will gather over the coming days, coming from surrounding villages and further afield to pray and sing. As numbers swell, catering becomes more complex, with animals slaughtered to feed the crowd. If you are an employer in, say, Botswana or Namibia, you need to allow time off for funerals and if you employ several workers from the same community, you may well lose all of them for days at a time in the event of a death.

In the Hindu faith, it is preferable to die at home, surrounded by family. The soul is believed to go on, according to one’s karma. Bodies are cremated quickly, usually within 24 hours, in order to liberate the soul quickly. Mourners wear white, not black, and people do not bring food to the wake, but to a ceremony 13 days after the cremation, at which the soul is liberated and the mourning period considered over. Ashes are scattered over water, the most desirable place being the holy Ganges and a lot of Hindu families living outside India will make the pilgrimage to do this.

Muslims bury their dead, rather than cremate them, in the belief that there will be a physical resurrection on the Day of Judgment. The dead are buried facing Mecca and graves raised above the ground, or marked by stones, so nobody walks on them. Because the death of a Muslim is regarded as a loss to the Muslim community overall, it is not uncommon for people who did not even know the deceased to attend funerals. Crying is expected at burials but a loss of control, wailing and shrieking, is seen as inappropriate. A mourning period of up to 40 days follows a burial.[/b]

But the bottom line remains that [to the best of my knowledge] no one really knows for sure what the hell happens to us when one becomes the other.

The I that is you is not set in stone but is an eternally changing one over your entire lifetime
So you adapt according to that eternal morality rather than seek a position which is absolute

We are generally quite afraid of death because we do not like to talk about it so we avoid it as much as possible
Yet the only way to overcome or at least reduce our irrational fear of it is by talking about it as much as possible

I couldn’t agree more.

Well, if in fact it’s true. So, how would one go about demonstrating it? In no way, shape or form am I suggesting that I can. It’s just another existential contraption to me.

What “eternal morality”? Cite some examples of this from your own life, from your own interactions with others.

What “for all practical purposes” is the difference between “eternal morality” and a “position which is absolute”? Existentially, down to earth.

Again, this post comes in the form of an assertion. You aver that this fear of death is irrational and that talking about death makes it go away.

And yet there are any number of others [like me] who react to this dumbfounded. How can anyone actually manage to think themselves into believing it?!

Yet look at all of the things over the years that I have managed to think myself into believing. Things that still dumbfound me.

Instead, what “works” for me is distractions.

It’s not necessarily irrational to fear death. If you love life and are embedded in any number experiences that give you considerable pleasure, satisfaction and fulfilment, death obliterates them forever. “I” itself is obliterated

Or, rather, is if this is what you believe.

From my frame of mind your frame of mind – an existential contraption – is one that you have managed to think yourself into believing.

Good for you. You may even manage to take it all the way to the grave.

After that, well, who the fuck really knows?

Right?

An eternal morality is one that changes over time with the acquisition of new knowledge and experience

When I was a young man I was always right and everyone else was always wrong and everything was just black and white
Now I am an old man and I am not interested in right and wrong or black and white because everything is shades of grey
I look into the abyss and I do not like what I see but I have no choice but to look at it because what I am looking at is me

We are all afraid of different things : I am afraid of worms and heights and dentists but I am not afraid of death
I have nothing to lose by dying which may be why I am not afraid of it but whatever the reason I am perfectly calm about it so have no anxiety
I cannot make you any less afraid of death than you already are no more than you can make me any less afraid of worms or heights or dentists

You want to overcome a fear of anything then only you can do that because only you have that fear so the responsibility is yours
Of course others might have the same fear as you but their fear only affects them as yours only affects you so it is all subjective