Tear my ideas apart if you must, but I'm gonna post a few

[matthewsquires]

First off:Big flaw of mine is that I'm lazy and inpatient.  Because of this I didn't take the time to look through everything posted once I realized I have a soapbox to express some ideas.  So if I'm posting this in the wrong place or I'm saying common sense bs, I will not be offended if people take this post down or tear me apart or point out how i'm wrong or point out how other people have already said this.  I'm just gonna post some philosophical things that have been on my chest.  I haven't been able to bring it into a conversation with friends without like forcing it into conversation, and hopefully it'll stimulate some conversation on here.  I'm going to just let it flow, so sorry if it jumps around a bit.  Some of it will be like fictional recounts of things that didn't happen in order to get the point across.

Two men stand opposite of each other in a field.  Between them is a tree.

One man says to the other, "This thing in front of us, it has a hole in it." 

The other man says, "I see no hole, in fact, I see a lack of hole" 

They begin to argue. The one does not understand, assuming that the both are looking at the same thing, how the other could see the complete opposite of what the one is seeing.  They stand there all day and all night, arguing. They continue into the next day and into the next night. 

"I see a hole" 

"I see a lack of hole"

And so it goes for days and days and days.  They are so focused on what the other is not seeing, that they think not of food or water. 

They die.

The tree keeps standing.

Such is the nature of truth and philosophy.
__________

I asked someone what essence was.  They said essence is purpose.  I reminded them that essence is defined by the fact that it is unchanging. They said they know what essence is. I asked that person what the purpose of a knife is.  They said a knife's purpose is to cut things.  I told that person to imagine a day in which they are feeling particularly vain.  They want to see their reflection.  They grab a knife and look into it.  What is it's purpose then?  They answered that it's purpose would be to reflect things.

Does this mean that essence isn't purpose?  Maybe.  I think the essence of a thing might be a purpose still, but that a lot of the purposes we assign to things are like socially constructed purposes.  I think that even though these socially-constructed essences change based on what the perciever is reading into the object that is being percieved, there is a deeper, more basic essence to all things.  I think that all things are essentially things-to-be-percieved. 

__________


The universe as we know it is made up by everything existing.  This means the material world (like a flute, or a dog, or a tree, or an atom, et cetera), and the immaterial world (ideas, music, words, et cetera).  All things in the existent universe are defined by the things they are not within the existent universe.  Like the color green is defined by the fact that it is not the colors yellow, blue, red, et al.  Furthermore, the color green is defined by the fact that it is not a pear or a horse.  This goes on infinitely.  I will call the sum of all the parts of the existent universe everything.  How do we define everything as a singular thing?  You can't say it's none of it's parts, because it clearly is.  The answer to what keeps the concept of Everything existing is the concept of Nothing.  What about the next step up, not the concept of everything, but everything itself?  What keeps the thing we will call Everything-in-it-of-itself, existing. One would dare to say, "It's defined by the fact that it is  not nothing-in-it-of-itself"  Then to truly understand Everything-in-it-of-itself, we must understand nothing-in-it-of-itself, as to know what it is not.  But that's the problem.  Once it is conceptualized then it becomes part of everything-in-it-of-itself. 









....those are a couple of thoughts I guess.  not very well articulated I will gladly admit, but i would love a conversation about this even if it's pointing out why I'm wrong.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Some interesting ideas, your first parable reminded me of the essay "Never Whistle While Your Pissing"

http://rawilson.com/whistlepiss.shtml

" I once overheard two botanists arguing over a Damned Thing that had blasphemously sprouted in a college yard. One claimed that the Damned Thing was a tree and the other claimed that it was a shrub. They each had good scholary arguments, and they were still debating when I left them. The world is forever spawning Damned Things- things that are neither tree nor shrub, fish nor fowl, black nor white- and the categorical thinker can only regard the spiky and buzzing world of sensory fact as a profound insult to his card-index system of classifications. Worst of all are the facts which violate "common sense", that dreary bog of sullen prejudice and muddy inertia. The whole history of science is the odyssey of a pixilated card- indexer perpetually sailing between such Damned Things and desperately juggling his classifications to fit them in, just as the history of politics is the futile epic of a long series of attempts to line up the Damned Things and cajole them to march in regiment.

[LMNO]

1) Reality Filters/Grids.  Or around these forums (for some of us), "The Black Iron Prison".

2) You're pre-supposing that something called "essence" exists, as opposed to the possibility it's a vague human concept that doesn't actually exist in the physical universe.

3) Some of us Discordians call this "Chaos".  From the Chao te Ching, Chapter 4:

This is Chaos; it is Everything, including itself.
All of Starbuck's Pebbles come from it.
It confuses order, it arranges disorder.
It multiplies its opposite, it positively negates.
Lying below life, lining the world.
The origin of all patterns.
It has existed before we observed it.

[chaoflux]

[matthewsquires]

1) Reality Filters/Grids.  Or around these forums (for some of us), "The Black Iron Prison".

2) You're pre-supposing that something called "essence" exists, as opposed to the possibility it's a vague human concept that doesn't actually exist in the physical universe.

3) Some of us Discordians call this "Chaos".  From the Chao te Ching, Chapter 4:

This is Chaos; it is Everything, including itself.
All of Starbuck's Pebbles come from it.
It confuses order, it arranges disorder.
It multiplies its opposite, it positively negates.
Lying below life, lining the world.
The origin of all patterns.
It has existed before we observed it.

with the essence thing, i just meant it is hard  not to think that it is an essential quality of all things within our capacity of understanding (this means the part of the universe that exists [material and immaterial alike]) that they have the possibility of being perceived, or at the very least conceived.  One might ask me to percieve a color that doesn't exist, and I can't truely perceive that, but I can conceptualize it by just thinking it is what every other color is not. so i'm just saying there is an essence to the universe, and that any essence of things in them of themselves is illusory I guess, though I'm sure I'm taking logical jumps here.  It's just hard to put it into words.

With the metaphysical thing, I guess i'll just rephrase it and if i'm just making a fool of myself let me know.  We have the ability to conceptualize or experience everything(not meaning at the same time)  But for everything to exist it has to be not nothing.  which means nothing exists.  .......oh shit.  maybe it's just that our perception of things is dependent upon knowing what things aren't, but everything can exist independently of our perception of it.  Am I making sense right now?

[East Coast Hustle]

no. smoke less pot before you try to explain metaphysical wankery.

we don't mind metaphysical wankery, if it's well-presented.

[LMNO]

If I may... The Discordian version (part a):


Two men stand opposite of each other in a field.  Between them is a tree.

One man says to the other, "This thing in front of us, it has a hole in it."  

The other man says, "I see no hole, in fact, I see a lack of hole"  

The first man says, "Oh yeah?  Let me come over there, and check it out.... Hey, you're right!  There is no hole on this side.  Huh.  Guess this tree is bigger than any one person can see.  Wanna go get a beer?"




The Discordian Version (part b):

Two men stand opposite of each other in a field.  Between them is a tree.

One man says to the other, "This thing in front of us, it has a hole in it."  

The other man says, "I see no hole, in fact, I see a lack of hole"  

The first man says, "What are you, a fucking idiot?" and proceeds to mock the second man until mercilessly.

[LMNO]

1) Reality Filters/Grids.  Or around these forums (for some of us), "The Black Iron Prison".

2) You're pre-supposing that something called "essence" exists, as opposed to the possibility it's a vague human concept that doesn't actually exist in the physical universe.

3) Some of us Discordians call this "Chaos".  From the Chao te Ching, Chapter 4:

This is Chaos; it is Everything, including itself.
All of Starbuck's Pebbles come from it.
It confuses order, it arranges disorder.
It multiplies its opposite, it positively negates.
Lying below life, lining the world.
The origin of all patterns.
It has existed before we observed it.

with the essence thing, i just meant it is hard  not to think that it is an essential quality of all things within our capacity of understanding (this means the part of the universe that exists [material and immaterial alike]) that they have the possibility of being perceived, or at the very least conceived.  One might ask me to percieve a color that doesn't exist, and I can't truely perceive that, but I can conceptualize it by just thinking it is what every other color is not. so i'm just saying there is an essence to the universe, and that any essence of things in them of themselves is illusory I guess, though I'm sure I'm taking logical jumps here.  It's just hard to put it into words.

With the metaphysical thing, I guess i'll just rephrase it and if i'm just making a fool of myself let me know.  We have the ability to conceptualize or experience everything(not meaning at the same time)  But for everything to exist it has to be not nothing.  which means nothing exists.  .......oh shit.  maybe it's just that our perception of things is dependent upon knowing what things aren't, but everything can exist independently of our perception of it.  Am I making sense right now?

The Barstool Experiment

[Iron Sulfide]

words =/= reality

words = symbols

also:

symbols =/= reality


that's the problem with metaphysics. constantly looking at the finger and not what it points to.

to confuse the conversation further, i once argued with someone that claimed black holes were metaphysical. That's the other problem with metaphysics- people don't understand words enough to use them properly, let alone to understand that words are mere symbols.

Literary, but not Literal. Hope that helps.

[LMNO]

In short, the Menu is not the Meal, the Map is not the Territory, etc etc.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

In short, the Menu is not the Meal, the Map is not the Territory, etc etc.

OH OH!! LMNO hits the big button!

This is a really important Discordian concept if you haven't been exposed to it already.

The Menu is not the meal, as LMNO said... If you think about it,  its a representation that tells us something about the meal. However, it rarely tastes good with ketchup.

A Map may tell us something useful about the territory, but it can never tell us precisely about the territory. Most of the time a map looks nothing like the territory, unless you live in an area where your roads are all weird colors and your towns are small circular blobs of ink. 

Some Discordians (a lot of us around here), tend to see these metaphors as similar to our semantic models of reality, our perceived perceptions about reality and reality itself.

The road you walk upon is not the road you talk about

[matthewsquires]

wasn't high, just trying to follow a train of thought.

i get what you guys are saying with the menu and all that jazz.  kinda liberating really.  makes me see little point in words.  made me think about how words and concepts' sole purpose is to arbitrarily set boundaries in the infinite.


i was popped up on concerta earlier and am now tired of thinking metaphysically.  i enjoy this forum quite a lot.`

[East Coast Hustle]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm glad to have a noob who likes to discuss these sorts of concepts. Usually we don't just get to point to the barstool. usually we have to beat someone with it.

so yeah, welcome to the forums! and don't mind my being acerbic earlier ITT. It's nothing personal, I just like to bust balls.

[Honey]

Hi there & welcome matthewsquires!   

words =/= reality

words = symbols

also:

symbols =/= reality


that's the problem with metaphysics. constantly looking at the finger and not what it points to.

to confuse the conversation further, i once argued with someone that claimed black holes were metaphysical. That's the other problem with metaphysics- people don't understand words enough to use them properly, let alone to understand that words are mere symbols.

Literary, but not Literal. Hope that helps.

Philly who?  Be still my beating heart.

& chaoflux?  I am liking that.  Be stiller evener (if that is even frikkin' possible?)

& ECH?

   

[Golden Applesauce]

The universe as we know it is made up by everything existing.  This means the material world (like a flute, or a dog, or a tree, or an atom, et cetera), and the immaterial world (ideas, music, words, et cetera).  All things in the existent universe are defined by the things they are not within the existent universe.  Like the color green is defined by the fact that it is not the colors yellow, blue, red, et al.  Furthermore, the color green is defined by the fact that it is not a pear or a horse.  This goes on infinitely.  I will call the sum of all the parts of the existent universe everything.  How do we define everything as a singular thing?  You can't say it's none of it's parts, because it clearly is.  The answer to what keeps the concept of Everything existing is the concept of Nothing.  What about the next step up, not the concept of everything, but everything itself?  What keeps the thing we will call Everything-in-it-of-itself, existing. One would dare to say, "It's defined by the fact that it is  not nothing-in-it-of-itself"  Then to truly understand Everything-in-it-of-itself, we must understand nothing-in-it-of-itself, as to know what it is not.  But that's the problem.  Once it is conceptualized then it becomes part of everything-in-it-of-itself.

I feel like tearing into this a little bit ~

1.) Do you really define everything by what it is not?  Really?

Are you sure that you don't define the color green by a range of wavelengths, or which pigments it activates in some of your neurons?  Are you sure you don't define it by the range of coloured things your parents pointed at and said, "What's this color?  Greeeen!  aren't you such a smart little boy~"

I have a feeling that if I asked you to define "even numbers" you'd reply that they are defined by not being odd (among not being other things), and say that odd numbers are partially defined by not being even numbers (among not being other things.)  Ask a mathematician and he'll tell you that even numbers are integers (which is defined) for which there exists (defined, in the mathematical sense) an integer n such 2n is equal to the first integer.  (Multiplication, equality, and 2 are all defined in the mathematical sense.)  No mention of what it is not, and no need to.

2.) You say to understand something, you need to understand what it is not.  As you say, green is not a horse.  Then, are you saying that in order to understand the color green, you need to understand horses?  It seems to me that someone living on a jungle island where there are no such things as horses should have just as good odds of understanding what the color green means as someone on an island with a horse.

3.) Is Something the set of things which it is Not?  Because if it isn't (that is to say, "Green" is not equal to {"Red", "Blue," "Pear", "Horse", ... etc}) then the set of things Something is Not is itself a thing that the Something in question is Not, and that set must therefore contain itself.  Things get recursive pretty rapidly if you start playing around with this, and I have sneaking suspicion that somewhere in here you can generate a nasty paradox.