The self (this mind, this consciousness, this spirit, this soul, this ego) is a very good illusion. The others (those minds, those, consciousnesses, those spirits, those, souls, those egos) are also a very good illusion.
But there is nothing illusionary about this body, and those objects.
Whether an object is sentient or not, it is still an object. In fact, an object that was once sentient may become non-sentient, and vice versa.
In other words, sentience has nothing to do with the objective reality.
Sentience is a process (a property) of an object, and not an object-in-itself.
I do not need to know every detail of a car in order to utilize it. As long as I know it needs petrol, steering, acceleration, and braking controls, I can use it.
This applies to everything else, including the body I inhabit. It may well be a mistake (I tend to think it is) to say inhabit as though there are separate objects – a body and a mind. The mind may be a very good illusion.
What constitutes a property? Existence is not a property, but a fact of reality. All else are properties which rely upon things to be instances of properties.
In sum, there are things, and properties of things.
Thinking is never apart of the physical being that does the action. Thinking is therefore an action of a physical being.
I am a physical thinking being, therefore I am.
Religion, philosophy, and science are ways to express how we understand the world, the fundamental reality, and perhaps how we should live in the reality with this understanding.
All three are prone to dogmatism. once we decide upon the way we understand the world, we that point of view.
We are susceptible to relativism or perspectivism. And as such, we should be aware of this, and live with it, deal with it. We should acknowledge that this is fact is inescapable, and that to try to escape it may be what we suppose to do.
While it is possible to account for everything in reality at any one (synchronic) time, it is not feasible. As a thought experiment, it is worthwhile.
Since mass-energy in reality is finite and constant all particulars can be accounted for with a kind of synchronic snapshot. Let us say that some particulars while everything else unaccounted for are lumped into a category of “other”. In this way we still have a complete inventory of reality. This is important because it takes into consideration the context for which a particular belongs. Logic ignores context, that is, logic de-contextualizes the particulars.
But that is the nature of universals. To generalize is to remove context, to think of the concept without particulars. As such, universals are useful mental “objects” but literally useless as physical objects.
The mistake often is to forget that mental “objects” only “exists” as long as conceptualizing physical objects exist. And for this reason we should keep an inventory of particulars before we keep an inventory of universals.
No thing or being is outside of the time and place for which they exist. I am situated with preconditions beyond my control. And it is in these conditions that I am to live with and exist in.
Pay attention to the particulars. Because it is always the particulars which affect you, and not the universals.
A corpus is a snapshot of language frozen in time. A POC is also a snapshot of the ontologically existent things at a certain time.
An atom could be a part of this body but belong to another body years later. So it is important to specify when (the snapshot) we are talking about.
This is what I mean by keeping track of the particulars.
theoria 