I am an experiential thing. But before I am an experiential thing, I am simply a thing. The initial “pure” experience is without awareness of self, which leads to the mistake of thinking of the experience as the self, when in fact the experiential thing is the self. I am not an experience, but I am an experiential thing.
Tag: ontology
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Reality is the entirety of things, inferred space and inferred time. Things, space, and time are consistent, and therefore predictable. Cause and effects are characteristics of reality, as are consequences. Our concerns should be of reality, of things, space, and time.
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Space is inferred from the relationship of things. Time is inferred from the change in the relationship of things in space. Our senses cannot perceive space and time. We can only infer space and time from objects and the relationships and the changes in the relationships of objects.
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There are things. Our initial experience of reality is of objects in the external world, not of something in the internal world. The phenomenon of our perception is not an immaterial self but of the material others. We are at this initial stage not aware of the experience but only aware of the objects of experience.
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Reality consists of particulars. The entirety of particulars is things. There is no larger object category than things. There is, however, the larger thought and symbolic categories of entities.
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Referent is what goes on in the physical world. Concept is what goes on in the head. Symbol is what goes on in language. Both concept and symbol go on in physical world as processes.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
theoria 