theoria

Navigating the external world

April 21st, 2024

I argue that the external experience is prime over the internal one.

While I never have full access to the external world (I am always learning something more about it) what I have is enough information and knowledge to navigate it.

The interplay of beings navigating the world with indirect and incomplete perception is the richness and challenge of living in harmony.

If any internal subjective world is taken to be prime we have conflict, because we are not all trying to navigate the external world in a cooperative manner.

Even then we may not be successful but we try to make the world a better place for all that share the space, the external world.

It is the external world that we share, not the internal one. Even so, the internal world (as I see it) is part of the external world by virtue of being housed (located) in the body with a brain. This we namely call the mind. So it is not wrong to say we share the internal worlds as well, but only as external world objects or entities.
The observed subject

April 17th, 2024

Experience begins with the experience of objects. But such a first experience does not include the awareness of subject (the observer), only the awareness of objects (the observed).

It is only after the first experience that the observer becomes aware as an observer to begin to observe themselves reflexively, to become the observed subject.

It is at this point that duality falls away and one must decide is reality mind or matter.
Sense of self

April 17th, 2024

Imagine space to be without objects. Imagine that even you are not an object but somehow an experiencing mind or consciousness within such a reality. Whether you are moving or stationary you would not know. There would be no sense of space, and by extension no sense of time. In such an existence there would be no knowledge. You would not know even of your own non-physical existence.

Both space and time, as concepts, can only be understood with matter, their relationships, and their change in relationships.

We have a sense of self because of matter, inferred space and inferred time.
Doubt

April 15th, 2024

To doubt is to suspend judgment. It is to say not know something either to be true or not true. To seek that which is without doubt is almost impossible.

Descartes thought that he knew the thinker to be true. That the thinker is reflecting on his thinking cannot be doubted. This, I believe, is wrong. For it is not the thinker but the perceiver, observer. although in the first instance of experience, there are objects, but no subject (observer). It is only later that the observer notices itself as an observer.

Descartes made the mistake of assuming we notice ourselves from the beginning. A child does not know its own reflection in the mirror. A dog chases its tail mistakenly taking it as something else not belonging to its body.

This navigation to an awareness of self (subject) occurs only after awareness of others (object or external objects).

The epistemological sequence is of knowing, first, other, then self, not the other way around as Descartes had thought. This is what I mean by pronouncing “there are things”. Observation of others comes before observation (noticing) of self.
Ontology and epistemology

April 15th, 2024

When I talk about ontology is it about physical objects only. When I talk about epistemology it is about physical, conceptual and symbolic entities.

You cannot talk about objects without the use of words and concepts. We will always be talking about these things through our concepts of them. Yet objects are independent of the concepts and symbols that are about them.

My point is, we must be clear about what aspect are we talking about: the physical, conceptual or symbolic.
Objects and entities

April 15th, 2024

Objects are one kind of entities. The other entities are conceptual entities and symbolic entities. Of the three entities only objects exist.

This talk of entities is about physical (objects) and conceptual (concepts and words) entities.
A body with mind processes

April 14th, 2024

Interesting and insightful that Descartes leaves material as the last to be understood in his meditations.

Indeed, there is nothing a priori about experience. We have to go through it (experience it) to reach a conclusion about what thinking is or what does thinking. For Descartes he decided by the second meditation that it was the mind. I also had thought it was the mind. Jeffrey Kaplan thought we have inherited this belief from Descartes and have continued to run with it as common sense. But common sense it is not.

Some time later I have come to believe this is wrong, that I am not a mind, but a body with mind processes (thinking). The thinking thing is not the mind but the body.
Mental cause

April 14th, 2024

The body causes the mind.

Without the body there is no underlying mind action. The process of thinking is like any bodily process such as walking, sitting, sleeping.
Mind and matterspacetime

April 10th, 2024

There are two observations that inform us about the nature of reality.

One is that mind is always experienced within a body, an object of physical reality. If mind is experienced at any time outside of a body then mind can be said to be undoubtedly as another kind of substance. But since mind is always experienced within a body, mind must rely upon the body for it to be somehow emergent.

The other is that matter (objects) are always experienced together with space and time. Matter experienced without space and time would not be matter but something other than object.
People with opinions

April 3rd, 2024
There are so many opinions about what exists and what does not.

I am interested in two aspects of this statement. Firstly, I am in interested in the ontological question posed. But secondly, I am more interested in the way the structure of the above statement, a seemingly unmarked structure that is often used, hides a habit that influences the way we think.

What is the structure I am referring to? Consider the original and its more accurate variation:
1. There are so many opinions about what exists and what does not.
2. There are so many people with opinions about what exists and what does not.
In my view, the first brings into existence of an entity that does not exist by its structure, and the second correctly states the state of affair that physical beings are the objects which does the action of holding onto opinions. Careful analysis of speech will show that we do this often. Making statements like the first one influences not only one’s own opinions but also other people’s opinions as well.

The second structure is of course less efficient. But also it is more accurate. I will argue that we need to be in the habit of being more accurate about what we say and then ultimately more accurate about how we understand the world. Which comes to the back to the first point I was interested in — what exists and what does not.

To state it plainly, opinions do not exist as their own entities. People with opinion exist to perform the action of forming and holding onto opinions. furthermore, the language habit we have of turning opinions into objects (first by being a object, then by counting them) is the root of many of our problems. True, we cannot escape the need for linguistic efficiency, but also we need to be clear about what is real (ontology) and what is known to be true (epistemology).