Gee thanks, Karpel for the above post. Your responses to Promethean were nothing short of amazing—and informative.
To Promethean75:
Demonstrating something is causing one to experience something. Or one can demonstrate something to oneself by simply experiencing it firsthand. Reality is a ‘thing’ (thing=something that exists), and reality demonstrates through one experiencing something. Everything that is experienced during demonstration is reality. Reality is not an abstract ‘something’ separate from the things that are experienced, but constitutes everything that one experiences. If reality is everything someone experiences, reality does indeed demonstrate something—in the form of you demonstrating something to yourself or in the form of another person demonstrating something to you.
You can’t separate reality from what occurs within it, for the objects that make actions constitute reality. Reality is not some abstract ‘something’ separate from objects and actions, but are the objects and actions themselves. Thus ‘reality’ (the objects and actions and things that appear) ‘demonstrates’ through the experience of things, and the existence of experiencing itself.
It may be that the kitchen table doesn’t exist unless you are experiencing the table. You can’t experience a mind-independent table that is not made up of your subjective experience because…well…the table isn’t made up of subjective experience, and it isn’t made up of your subjective experience. In order for you to experience something, it must be made up of your subjective experience. Not anyone else’s…not something that is mind-independent (thus “you-independent”) that is something that is not your subjective experience (or something that is not anyone’s subjective experience)…
every
single
thing
that you perceive is made up of your subjective experience…and nothing else.
Everything you experience is not made up of something that is not your subjective experience, as that would make absolutely no sense. The kitchen table, using your objective example, only appears because you’re observing it, and disappears when you no longer observe it. There is really no need for a kitchen table to exist that is not made up of anyone’s subjective experience when you leave the room except as a response to disbelief that the only thing that exists, the only thing that has ever existed, is first-person subjective experience that has only ever existed in the form of a Person and persons within that Person.
Hell, this point is made in the ridiculous belief that the brain creates consciousness. Your brain is producing a your-subjective-experience composed kitchen table. Because no single instance of consciousness can exist unless the brain magically produces it, you can’t experience a kitchen table not created by your brain, and your brain only produces your-subjective-experience composed kitchen tables. The kitchen table that is not created by your brain, that is believed to continue to exist when you walk out the kitchen, is actually just an IDEA your brain created, and the idea is composed…shockingly…of your-subjective experience.
The mind-independent kitchen table outside your brain, if it existed, could have nothing to do with the your-subjective experience composed kitchen table that magically airbag deployed from your neurons, as the external mind-independent table never existed inside your brain to eject from the brain to begin with, and as the external table is quite larger and denser than the squishy, spongy brain itself, the external table cannot use itself to communicate to the brain that it is a table (so as to give the brain the idea to form a your-subjective experience copy of the table), as it cannot force itself through a person’s forehead and skull to reach the brain without causing mortal damage.
I like the way Karpel answered this, but existence is synonymous with the things that exist and indeed encompasses everything that exists. Like ‘reality’, existence is not an abstract, separate thing divorced from the things it encapsulates. Existence ‘appears’ in the sense that…well…an existing thing appears. Things, processes, or states of affairs that appear are easily what I meant by ‘existence’. How could you think otherwise?
Existence (err…things, processes, and states of affairs that exist) appears only in the form of a person’s first-person subjective experience of things, processes, and states of affair.
Does existence exist? Yes, in the form of things that exist: the only way things have ever been known to exist and have ever appeared is in the form of a person and that which the person experiences.
It (existence) has never (ever, ever, ever)…appeared in any other form. Hell, mind-independent things not composed of first-person subjective experience exist only as ideas made up of first-person subjective experience. It’s the only thing that can be experienced. I make the further induction that sensibly, first-person subjective experience may be the only thing that exists, and has ever existed, as we really don’t need mind-independence, as it is not subjective experience and thus cannot rationally have anything to do with the existence of subjective experience.
a star collapsing in galaxy x is actually, to us, just a concept. Even if we were to see the collapse of a star through a telescope…heck…even if one were somehow able to orbit near the star close enough to directly observe it collapsing…all this would only be part of an artificial reality or “matrix” world in which the star, the galaxy, and the collapse of the star are all made up of one’s first-person subjective experience: there does not need to exist a ‘real’ or mind-independent star collapsing in a mind-independent galaxy in a mind-independent universe.
In order for a thing to exist, it must be subjectively experienced by a person. If this is somehow false, that which exists that is not subjectively experienced by a person or is not made up of first-person subjective experience at all cannot rationally have anything to do with subjective experience, as it is not subjective experience. In order for that which is not subjective experience to have anything to do with the existence and appearance of subjective experience, one must invoke magic: the magicks of creation ex nihilo or existential transformativism (in the brain, as the brain is believed to be the only thing that can generate the existence of consciousness, creation ex nihilo occurs in neural incantationism, and existential transformativism occurs in neural transformativism).
Within my belief and inference that the only thing that exists is subjective experience, and that things can only exist in the form of persons, things only exist when they appear i.e. when they are subjectively experienced by a person. The things that appear and thus exist, moreover, are created within the person and are composed of that person’s subjective experience. They are not, and cannot, be composed of something that is not the person’s subjective experience (which, in my new and improved Judeo-Christianity is actually an offshoot of God-consciousness).
If, however, one wishes to ridiculously believe in something not made out of subjective experience and ridiculously believe that these non-experienced things are in the form of stars, galaxies, atoms, chairs, etc., that is the person’s prerogative. Perhaps I should have been clearer, but my statement that in order for things to exist they must appear is set within a model of reality in which only persons and first-person subjective experience exists.
Consciousness, understood to be first-person subjective experience qua first-person subjective experience independent of consideration of things observed during consciousness or states of consciousness, is indeed a thing. It is something that exists; a thing that exists. Joe is conscious, but Joe is an aspect or part of consciousness. Joe’s consciousness therefore, is itself a thing. Objects are things, but so are concepts, and so are encapsulating existences, like consciousness. It would be silly to say that only material objects are things.
And consciousness as a thing (something that exists, not just a material object) may be the only thing that exists. That’s not only not-non-sensible, but an easily observed probable fact.
No one needs to perceive God in order for God to exist, as God is an infinite person (there’s no one outside him to observe him or think of him). Berkeley stops at God, and God being the outer marker of esse es percipi is quite alright, actually. It’s a limit to the process or point at which the process begins and ends, and is just a way things happen to absurdly exist. All beliefs, godless or not, must arrive at a point where things must be taken for granted as just absurdly existing for no other reason than that is the way things exist. Limitations of beings and processes within these beliefs, therefore, are absurdly just “how the cookie crumbles”. Everyone in terms of their existence in Berkeley’s model, therefore, are grounded in God, not anyone else. The existence of any person, therefore, depends upon whether or not God is perceiving them. I extend this by asking the question of whether or not God is currently awake and thinking of us or is currently dreaming of us. I suspect, given the existence of evil, that God is not awake but is currently alternately lucidly and non-lucidly dreaming (non-lucid dreaming, which produces uncontrollable content, being the only state of God in which evil can exist).
You, the boat, the optical illusion of the oar being bent in the water, you reaching into the water to feel that the oar is indeed straight, and the thought that there are two oars or that there is only one oar…are all part of an artificial reality or “matrix” composed of your first-person subjective experience. There’s probably no such thing as a mind-independent oar that still exists when you or anyone else are not experiencing the oar.
Okey dokey.