Proceed with caution
Category: other
All posts that do not belong in the categories of buddhism or philosophy goes in here. Please check tags for more details about what the post is about.
Self and other unawareness
I call them things because at the first confrontation I don’t know what they are, simply that they are. Without interaction with things I do not know more of their qualities. First, I observe. Next, I engage.
Note, I do not know “I” either at this stage.
The first confrontation
There are things. At the first confrontation with things we are unaware of sensing, perceiving, and conceiving (together, let us call them “observing” or “observation”). I am also not aware of myself as an observing thing at this point. Simply, things are “there”; and they exist or “be”.
Revisiting philosophical projectionism
It is very easy to mistake the thing for the representation. So the projection is not upon the thing as such but the representation. This was the propositional mistake I made in the original post.
In the end we must first project upon the representation of the thing, not directly upon the thing. It is never possible to do so, even though it seems like that is what we are doing.
things
The world is the totality of facts, not of things. (Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)
I think Wittgenstein is wrong.
The world is the totality of things, not of facts.
To be sure, his assertion is a firm rejection of materialism. I firmly reassert it. What remains always are things, not facts, not souls. This is an inducted reason. Like a good philosophical citizen, I do not claim deduction.
Logic has its failings. It regards language as flawless a medium for expressing ideas. It is far from it. Philosophy must investigate language as well.
Today, everything exists to end up on the internet.
“That most logical of nineteenth-century aesthetes, Mallarmé, said that everything exists in the world in order to end in a book. Today, everything exists to end in a photograph.” (Susan Sontag, On Photography, p24, 1971)
In 2019, everything exists to end up on the internet.
Coma, time, idealism
Within a comatose state the body is without wakefulness and awareness of the eternal world. Is this a kind of idealist-rationalist bliss? If such a mind can survive without having to deal with the outside, would it remain in this state to do so?
It is interesting that coma patients when they recover do not know how much time has passed since they became comatose. Is this not evidence that time is only known observation of the change in the relationship of things. In other words, do we not have to be awake and aware of the environment to know time?
Philosophical projectionism
What is philosophical projectionism?
Projectionism is the theory (my theory) that perceived objects have not qualities as such but that qualities are projected onto them by the perceiver. This naturally means an object can have as many projections upon it as there are perceivers of it. The object does not “change” in any way, and it is not directly affected it by the perception of it. Objects remain the same whether perceived or not. Qualities therefore do not exist accept for within perception. Projections are concepts. They are conceptualised. The end of all conceptualisation is the end of the concept, but not the end of the object.
The dualism paradox
I do not subscribe to the dualist view of mind and body. And this is the reason why.
If indeed the mind and body are separate things then I will have to ask when the mind comes to this conclusion why not discard the body and just continue as a mind? Why not escape the body? I do not see many people die by willing their death. Dying is not as easy as changing trains, or underwear. These actions are easy. Leaving your body in some kind of out-of-body experience is near impossible and undocumented. Furthermore, all attempts of leaving the body entails destruction of the body.
Secondly, when there is a separation between the mind and body – that is, death – there is no evidence for the mind to be found anywhere. All that remains is the body.
Admittedly, I have only my experience and the observation of other people’s experience for evidence. Much is assumed. But I see no other alternative but to make assumptions. One cannot escape assumptions.
Emergent or projection?
Does the quality of something emerge from it or do we project into it the quality we want to see?
Are these appropriate metaphors for the way we experience the world?
Can we do away with metaphors?
I think how we approach the world as a sentient being determines how we engage with it.
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