theoria

Experience is within time, whether we are talk about sense or mental experience. It is only in the mind that time is forgotten, ignored, when in reality the process of mental experience is time-based.

I do not think our epistemology is reason alone. Experience is both “external” sense experience and “internal” thought experience. Both are experiences based upon the body, the physical. Without the body we cannot understand the reality it inhabits. Our experience requires both sense and thought experience.

The partitioning of the internal world from the external world is no longer necessary. In the “external” world are internal worlds (other people’s minds). Yet others observe me and see my internality in their external world. In other words, the external encompasses all internal worlds.

The internal worlds are part of the external world, not apart from it, not mysterious and inaccessible as it was before when the paradigm came into “being”.

We have concepts (thoughts) in our heads. These concepts refer to concrete objects (objects that exist in reality) or conceptual objects (“objects” that “exist” as conceptualizations).

We must not confuse that which exist in reality (a physical entity), that which exist as conceptualization (a thought of a physical entity) and that which “exist” as conceptualization (a thought of a non-physical entity).

At some point I had decided that even if God is immanent or transcendental to this world the fact that he does not interact with us he may be removed from the equation. That is, the activities of this world have nothing to do with God.

From here, it was then logical and easy to remove one by one the unnecessary “things” that populate this reality. What was left was a reality populated with matter, space and time. Some of this matter was imbued with something called life, consciousness, or some other similar term. What matters is that it is just matter. Consciousness is just a particular quality of this object.

What worries some philosophers is that there seems to be no purpose to us. These philosophers seem lost without something to aim for. And I agree. But I do not think that our aim and purpose is a given, or is the same in any way. There is no moral compass, no identical “North” to which we point to.

In short, we choose our own purposes, make our own goals. Sometimes we pursue these purposes and goals individually and sometimes we do them collectively.

Reality is the entirety of matter, space and time. We must emphasize matter as reality is usually described as only space and time (cf. Kant). It is with matter that we have indirect knowledge of space and time. How we experience space and time relies on us being matter, not us being space and time.

Only particulars (matter) exist. Universals are names or labels for groups of (concrete or conceptual) objects with something perceived to be in common.

This is therefore both an ontological and linguistic problem since much time is spent making philosophical propositions or everyday utterances about what object (concrete or conceptual) belongs to what universal.

A friend of mine often says, “if you can’t a stick at it, it isn’t real”.

I agree. Only matter exists. Everything (you cannot escape the reifying language) else do not exist but are properties of matter.

But remember, the stick we use to poke at things is a thing in-itself.

We all love fair play. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in tennis are examples of fair players. They are gentlemen of the sport. They play within the rules, never trying to bend, go beyond or go outside them. Many fans recognize and admire them for this reason.

Philosophers who seek a(nother) reality transcending this one are wasting precious time. We only ever see the results in this reality so by staying within this reality, arguing from within it, is all important and ultimately logical. Why seek answers from “elsewhere” when in the end we have to (re)act in this reality. Act from within that which philosophy applies the most.

Every explanatory framework, including this one, is a paradigm. Even positions which argue theirs are beyond or above paradigms is in-itself a paradigm. By placing themselves “outside” the system, outside the reality, they create a workable framework so long as they ignore certain inconsistencies. But such frameworks are only hiding the inexplainable parts of their theory which amounts to cheating, bending the rules, or a double-standard.