Not gonna lie, I’ve never made that much of an effort to really get to the bottom of VO because I’ve never come across a compelling reason to do so - no offense.
I’ll try to put the effort into having a peruse of your summary thread from your forum - it would be nice to be confronted with depths deeper than I’m used to.
I responded to your thread. Hope it clears a few things up, but I’m pretty sure we already danced this dance years ago.
Falsifiability is very high on my list, of course. The thing about Falsification though is that it applies to concepts and conceptual models - knowledge: discrete experiences. Continuous Experience isn’t knowledge, its unity defies knowledge due to what I was saying about “meaning” by definition being a bridge between a plural quantity of things. In the same way as existence, it’s pre-knowledge: knowledge has to exist first and foremost, before anything else.
You’ll find all the same difficulties in applying Falsification to “Existence” itself.
How do you falsify existence?
You can verify it simply in the attempt to verify or falsify it, as the action of doing so in itself is something that exists - so even a failure of Verification of Falisification of existence supports existence. “Therefore existence”.
The same applies to the concrete form of the abstract concept of existence that is “experience”. Trying to verify or falsify it is an experience in itself, so in the same way, either way: “therefore experience”.
But falsifying existence?
To falsify existence, the possibility of non-existence is required to signify that existence is false. However, the existence of non-existence is a logical contradiction. Do we therefore conclude that existence doesn’t exist because it’s not Falsifiable? Of course not, as existence not existing is too a logical contradiction.
The same too goes for experience. How do you experience non-experience so as to assess any potential falsity? The same logical contradiction makes experience “unavoidable” - as I was describing it before: pre-knowledge. Falsificationism requires knowledge (of discrete experiences), and so it’s necessary to consider the limits of Falsificationism as not a be-all and end-all of truth. After all, Falsificationism itself is infamously unfalsifiable! But nevertheless, it’s a requirement for all else, hence being so “high on my list”.
The same goes for definition: definition is knowledge and by derivation it presupposes bounds and limits. What are the limits of existence? What’s outside of existence to be on the other side of the bounds of existence? Nothing? Well then there is no boundary to existence and therefore no definition. Attempted definitions of existence are all tautologous, synonymous, or they comprise of things contained within existence. Definition cannot be in its own terms or in terms that are less than it: you can’t bound something with something that’s within its own bounds/less than itself. The same goes for Continuous Experience, which is just the concrete form of abstract existence. You don’t chuck it out just because it defies definition anymore than you do if it defies Falsificationism - so long as there’s a logical reason to keep it - as there necessarily is so for both existence and experience: they logically have to exist.
Me being grounded Yes, I’m on the fringe, philosophically, economically, musically, with regard to religion - everything really. You can’t push the boundaries if you’re not at the boundaries.
Question away & thanks for taking an interest.
Yes, the more correct question is whether you think the stick hitting you was an experience - and of course it was, just like everything else, necessarily.