Gee thanks, Karpel for the above post. Your responses to Promethean were nothing short of amazing---and informative.
To Promethean75:but does reality demonstrate anything? what do you mean by 'demonstrate'?
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.
in neither of these cases is the 'being' of the person or machine in question; the thing exists prior to the action, the demonstration it gives. now i'd doubt you'd say that 'reality' could demonstrate anything... but even if you insisted on putting it that way, you'd have to deduce from the meaning of the word 'demonstrate' that, like the above cases, the actual thing's existence, the reality's being, would not be something demonstrated unless it were an action. but what reality is, and what happens 'in' reality are not the same thing. sure, you could say 'reality demonstrated that x and y happened', and we'd know what you meant (although even this is a bit of a pathetic fallacy; attributing to 'reality' the capacity to 'do' things like objects), but you would ever say 'reality demonstrated that it existed'. this would make no sense.
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.
yeah sure, but to deny the existence of something that isn't immediately experienced is pretty fuckin' radical, man. you don't really think your kitchen table doesn't exist unless you're there looking at it, do you?
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.
same kind of thing. he's not using the word 'existence' as a noun in an ordinary, non-specialized way. he's using it philosophically and deriving super-empirical truths from this misuse. look at a random dictionary definition:
existence: the fact or state of living or having objective reality.
notice that the fact or state is treated as a quality or a predicate, not a subject. so existence couldn't 'appear' as a thing, process, event or state of affairs could appear. rather the word is used to indicate the fact or state of something existing, not the existence itself. if this were not true, we could ask 'does existence exist', which would be senseless.
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.
now if he meant to say 'things only appear in the form of subjective experience, he would be right, but not because things don't exist unless they appear, see. we'd not say that the collapse of a star in galaxy x 'appeared' to us if we weren't able to see it... but we'd never say stars don't collapse in galaxy x unless they appear to us. 'ahhh', says karp.
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.
he futher implies with his logic that unless existence appears (which doesn't make sense for the reasons above... but let's pretend it does), it would have no 'reason' to exist. this means he's saying that experiencing something gives that something a reason to exist. but observing something is not the cause of the thing observed, existing. if this were so, it would mean that something would have to 'appear' before it could exist... and not only that, but before the thing appeared, it was already preparing to appear because the person who would later observe it was somehow the cause/reason for its appearance... and before it even appeared!
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.
he says 'consciousness is the only thing, etc.' is consciousness a thing? do we observe it, or do we observe things we we describe as 'conscious' depending on how it behaves? if i say 'joe is conscious', i don't mean that there is joe, and then there is another property joe has called 'consciousness', like he has a foot or brown hair. i mean that joe is behaving in a way that is how and what we describe as 'conscious' with our language.
now it makes little sense to speak of consciousness as if it were a thing, or as descartes called a 'second substance'... but it would make even less sense to say that consciousness is the only thing that exists, even if it were a thing.
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.
and here is where berkeley gets mated; to avoid the dilemma of joe ceasing to exist if john is not perceiving him, he posits 'god' as being the perceiver that makes it possible for joe to continue existing when john isn't looking at him. but who is perceiving god? esse is percipi, right? well then, who the fuck is looking at god?
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).
another problem. you are sitting in a boat and experiencing the optical illusion of the oar being bent in the water. according to these subjectivists, the oar is indeed bent, because it is exactly, and only, what it is observed to be. but what happens when you reach into the water and feel the oar with your hand? it certainly feels straight. but since the oar can't be both bent and straight, there must be two oars... one that you see and one that you feel.
do you, karpel tunnel, state for the record that there are indeed two oars here?
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.
just kidding. anyway, so this was somewhat of a wittgensteinian style (hey you axed for it) examination of a few typical philosophical statements. what is being done here is presenting words and meanings of words in other ways and uses which when compared to the usage in question, raise considerable difficulties in understanding the meaning of the statement in which they are used. the purpose isn't to sabotage philosophy, but to clean it up, to remove the befuddlement that lies concealed inside it. a lot of the time, philosophers are trying, and are serious, and do mean something, but can't articulate what they want to say with what they say. us wittgensteinians job is to act as a liaison to the seeker of troof. we tell you what can be said clearly, and what cannot. the rest must be passed by in silence.
Okey dokey.