God and Absurdity

[Satyr]

Satyr:
"Time/Space are not objects and they cannot be said to “exist”, because then we would have to establish a hypothetical for them to exist within."

If existence is infinite in scope and the quality which facillitates lesser, temporal existences, would we indeed have to speak of something for them to exist within? This is rather like saying that the bowl must have a bowl to be within, as the water needs the bowl.

That's a big IF.

I’m saying that time/space cannot be said to exist at all.

They are a way existence manifests itself or a way consciousness translates existence.

"They are the fabric of potential within which phenomena manifest as inter-relating – phenomena are said to exist when they have temporal/spatial dimensions. "

In so much as these two (or three things if you are wont to add "relation" like I am)

Are you obsessed with the symbolism of a triad?

things facillitate potentiality's expression as temporal/transient phenomena, I agree. However, by allowing such, you allow an absolute from whence these potentials arise, for in the absence of such "soil of potentiality", potentiality could not exist.

I don’t think so.
Potentiality is a relationship based on absence.
Multiple manifestations of potentiality coexist.
Their interactions determine reality.

If there were an absolute then it would limit potentiality or determine it. Therefore it would cease being free.

The ground you seek in Nothingness.

"Temporal/Spatial dimensions are how phenomena interact and establish boundaries and limits and potentials. "

Agreed.

"The arrow never occupies a point. It is forever in the process of reaching a point, even when it is perceived to be still.
This is why its distance from the target is infinitely divisible."

If it is reaching a point and not on a point every step of the way, where is it?

That's the point - excuse the pun - it is nowhere.

And moreover, suppose we took time and relation out of the equation, and took a "snap shot" of the arrow in flight. Would not it be occuping a distinct point in space?

A photo is a frozen moment. It is like a memory: a generalized frozen moment of space/time depicting a phenomenon in the process of becoming.
Its substantiality is determined by your limited perspective.
If you could take a quantum photo of it, it would be a nothing.

Reality has no frozen moments.
Your senses only perceive a generality and this gives you the illusion of substance.

"I don’t follow your reasoning.
You are supposing an absolute fixed fabric upon which reality manifests itself?"

Yes. Existence in the absolute, perfect sense. The somethingness which is the diametric (and dialectic to make the transient in part) absolute opposite of nothingness, which itself is an absolute.

If this were so then all existence would have ceased.
There would be no reason for movement or time/space.

Nothingness and Somethingness can be considered opposites because neither of them is ever completely so.
Ying/Yang. Something contains nothingness and Nothing contains somethingness which makes both unstable and so forever tumbling towards purity or absoluteness or chaos or completion.

The Big Bang had to have been produced by a flaw which resulted in the ‘explosion’ and fragmentation of space/time.
Similarly the Big Crunch will have to be incomplete or else the universe will settle into an inert state.

This seems to me the only way which we can consider potentiality, for if potentiality is to exist, it stands to reason it must come from something, and this something must either itself be reducible to something else, or it must be eternal. If eternal, it must vindicate itself as so, and by that, it must be impossible for it not to be so. I postulate that existence must be this for many reasons I have given elsewhere. If you wish for me to elaborate on that line, do tell me and I'd gladly tell you.

Okay.

"Motionless is a human prejudice determined by our speed of thought.
Our consciousness – the succession of thoughts – has a particular speed, it being also a part of universal flux trying to find the unmovable, the absolute the fixed, the inert.
As such it perceives hardness/softness or fixed/moving in relation to it."

I would agree that motionlessness amongst phenomena is hardly to be considered as real in an absolute sense. But if something is infinite - which I would claim existence is - then it stands to reason that that, surely, is indeed immobile, for mobility entails finitehood.

Inter-relations are infinite (if that).
This does not necessarily mean that the energies involved are infinite or that the universe is so.
Inter-relations produce possibilities.
How does mobility entail finitehood?

"All value judgments are a comparison of self with the other. "

Or of the value to other, at least.

"I feel still in relation to something else, even if we may both be constantly in flux.
Time and Space are the Flux interpreted by consciousness.
The Flux is the inter-relation of possibilities forever rearranging itself and affecting itself and causing itself. "

In so much as potentiality is a constant state of affairs, I agree.

"Time/Space being interpretations of this flux, this constant change offering potential stability but never reaching it, would cease when change ceased."

Yet would not a perfectly stable thing epitomize space? For space itself would be idealized by something that would never move position, no? Which would have perfect "spaceness"? And though time could not manifest directly on such an object, it stands to reason that it would not cease, either.

Space and Time are not objects. They do not exist as they possess no potential.
Space/Time are modes of comprehension.
It is how the mind interprets and understands flux/change.

Space time are not phenomena.
They are ways of perceiving and understanding phenomena.
They do not exist outside the mind.

Time, for example, is the interpretation of succession as the mind perceives it.
Space is the interpretation of accesibility.

Since the mind can only perceive and think of things in sequence this produces the before/after effect or temporality.
This sequence is unstable and so change is a part of it as the sequence produces discrepancies which the mind attempts to comprehend by using cause/effect or by generalizing patterns from the sequences.

The mind creates models by seeking patterns. It notices that one particular phenomenon is always followed by another. If this succession is persistent and can be used to make accurate predictions it calls this succession a rule or ‘logic’.
But the succession might be a human imprecise generalization.

The most we can say is that there are forces interacting and intermingling and establishing relationships. These relationships and interactions create matter, as the mind's translation of them in space/time.
What these forces are or how they manifest themselves is anyone’s guess.
All we can say about them is that they are unconscious and guided by chance.
life is an attempt to subtract chance from the equation and make the forces efficient.
Perhaps these forces are products of the flux itself.
The flux translated by awareness.

What sets this flux in motion?
What sets the universe in motion?
Spinoza's clockmaker God?
Unknown.
Does it need a prime mover?
If so, then at what point can we say that it doesn’t?

"The phenomenon would drop out of the temporal/spatial continuum and would simply BE.
It would have attained absoluteness or singularity or inertia or perfection or fulfillment.
There would be nothing to change into since it would have reached its full potential."

To simply be is not to simply not-be.

To Be is to lack all potential. It is an absolute state of inertia.
Therefore it would have no spatial or temporal existence.

It would drop out of what we call ‘reality’.

What would it Be then?
Something.
Nothing else can be said about it.

"Consciousness is a product of Need and it therefore is determined by need/suffering.
Consciousness is a tool of fulfilling need and alleviating suffering.
Completeness would make consciousness obsolete and unnecessary. "

I agree.

"I don’t know.
Absence IS.
All human negative concepts like: Death, Dark, Cold do not require effort. They simply are.
The universe is dark and cold and dead."

Would not absence ISN'T, as it were?

Isn't that a double-negative?

An absence implies also the incapacity to manifest, because were it manifest, it would cease to be an absence, and therefore, the absence itself would not manifest.

Therefore it must be a phenomenon trying to be something.
It is a process of becoming.
Since it is never fulfilled we cannot call it Something in the absolute sense but only call it something in the general human sense denoting a phenomenon which we can never completely perceive or comprehend.
It is never There, Here, Substance, Point, but always a fleeting phenomenon in between Nothingness and Somethingness.

A shadow.

"Life, Light and Heat require effort or something being consumed and rearranged.
Are you looking for a prime mover and certainty and final answers?
Talk to the imbecile lightgigantic.
I've only got hypothesis and skepticism and honesty. "

No prime mover, but yes, certainty and final answers, in so much as these are related to concepts which are necessary. However, on the temporal/transience of everything we will encounter directly - as oppose to exist within generally - I agree.

There can never be certainty or else one becomes a fanatic. Furthermore certainly implies omniscience and a ‘Truth’.

What there is, are approximations; less accurate or more accurate approximations.

"Religion often offers a further comforting notion where suffering and life end but consciousness continues or is passed on.
This is why the weak and the weak-minded are attracted to them. "

I think I shall make a thread on this.

"Therefore it would cease being temporal and spatial.
It would be timeless and spaceless."

In so much as it would be eternal, it woul dnot be impacted by time, no. But it would also be perfectly spatial, as it would never cease to be.

Time is another way of saying Space as Space is another way of saying Time.

"Non-existent, in accordance to our human understanding of existence. "

That's better. According to human standards, which define existence in terms of the temporal and transient for almost all things.

Whose standards would you propose using?

But also, what makes you think that human comprehension is completely false?

Our senses and our minds are products of this universe. They are made to exist and to be successful within it.
It follows to reason that our senses are not totally erroneous but only lacking in clarity and precision.

"Causality is the interplay of multiple manifestations inter-relating by each following its own need for completion."

Yet it is also deterministic, in that each relation produces but one end, in correspondence with the relational properties that arise.

It is deterministic in that it produces unities or creatures that contain their entire historical background within their patterns.
Each phenomenon is a projection of its entire becoming up to the moment of its Willing.
The Will is how consciousness focuses its energies upon potentials/possibilities and what interacts with other Wills and other unconscious manifestations creating a web of inter-relations we call reality.

Only the mind can break free from patterns or divert them, and then with much effort.
This is why when I listen to imbeciles describing how rational they are or how selfless or how just or free, all the while displaying the opposite, it always amuses me.

"All we can say is that they are expressing a lack by manifesting at all and that they are breaking apart and deteriorating in the attrition of the flux, tumbling the universe into entropy. "

Only if this universe is all there is this necessitated. It stands to reason that exterior to the universe - if it is expanding, which implies something beyond - that entropy might not be increasing.

You are assuming no less than the supernatural - might as well call this ‘outside’ god and be done with it.

The concept universe, for me, means all that IS – an enclosed system.
To imply an outside is to claim that you use the word universe to mean a part of a greater whole – UNIVERSE.

To speak of an outside is to speak about the non-existent, since to exist means to be within the universe and to posses potential and possibility and spatiality and temporality and, maybe, consciousness.
That which is in perpetual motion exists.

The inert cannot be said to exist.

"How could it not?"

A goal to annihilation could not arise from a goal for permenance if permenance would be attained. That is to say, permenance would be the direct opposite of annihilation.

It’s a desire to return to the source; back to the nothingness from whence you came from.
You do not, of course, admit this to yourself or to anyone else.
You mask it behind ideals and absolute notions which contain oxymoronic concepts.

Thing is life is a perpetual, repetitive, self-sustaining process.
Its only goal is to continue living.

It is only a mind freed from the burdens of living that can contemplate its condition and intuitively desire to cease.
Nihilism is the natural destination of any thinking mind.

Nietzsche advises us to avoid falling into Schopenhauer’s Buddhist trap of denial of life, judging this to be a cowards and weakling’s way out, nor does he advise to fall into the imbecile’s trap of remaining obtuse and hypocritical and stupid so as to escape reality’s woes. He advises to embrace it all and stare into the void.

Silenus, king of the Satyr’s, left us with his message to King Midas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silenus

Yet man must face the choice.
Life and all that it entails or oblivion.

http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Silenus.html

"The search for absolute identity.
A paradox."

It does not seem that we so much want an absolute identity, as simply enjoying the identity we have at present, and growing larger and larger, without cessation, in our identity.

Are you claiming to possess an absolute?
What you call your “identity” is simply a mantle to cover up the emptiness.

Peel away the layers of what you consider self, your status, job, sex, emotions and you have nothing at the core.

It is this nothing that offers you everything as potential.

"If absolutes are then the only thing that can be said about them is that they are not conducive to life or consciousness. "

Actually, I would argue that it is only in light of these absolutes that the temporal and transient have being. For how else could we explain the idea of something which has beginning and end without ascribing them as part of an infinite whole which does not ultimately? Indeed, the only reason I have ever found for such things, is that infinity demands such finitehood in order to be infinity and finitehood could not exist apart from infinity.

The temporal and transient are labels given to what has no being.
It is this not-being, this becoming which expresses temporality/spatiality and the universe in constant flux.

"Singular is another way of saying absolute. "

So then the mind is not a single guiding executive of multiple functions/entities?

The mind is, itself, a multiplicity.
The universe knows no singularities.

The superstring?
We shall see.

"No, a thought does not presuppose a thinker."

Then who, pray tell, is thinking the thought and perceiving the thought?

No one.
Why does thinking demand a thinker.
Thinking is all there is.
I explained how the myth of the thinker comes to be.
There is no thing-in-itself.
The universe is completely and utterly accessible and direct and open.
It is our misunderstandings and lack which misinterprets it.
There is nothing behind the mask.
The mask is all there is.
There is no pure self, or core, or identity.
All there is are clothing over an emptiness trying to become something.

It is this emptiness which implies freedom.

"Thinking is simply thinking. To presuppose an unmoving, behind the scenes entity is to project hopes and desires for an absolute where ignorance lies. "

Where ignorance lies? If the self is self, this would be the prime certainty, as one would -be- it.

Keep on reaching for a certainty.

Ignorance implies an absence of knowledge.
Nothing else can be said about it.

When I do not know I place there my deepest desires and insecurities.

"The thinking is all there is as one neuron sparks another and causes a cascade of flashes in a continuous process we call consciousness. "

A consciousness which primarily manifests to an internal eye, as it were.

An EYE period.
Internal is a myth.
Consciousness is the only phenomenon that can pretend and mask and redirect using the Will.
What it hides or denies it calls internal.

Even so these things do come forth in multiple ways, no matter how much effort is dedicated to masking them.
Psychology is the discipline that studies these methods.

Nevertheless the physical is a projection of the mental.
The physical is form and color and movement.
Physique and Character.
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=56944

"Consciousness separates a piece of it self and looks upon itself.
So a piece of thinking looks at the rest and this creates the dichotomy between Thinker/Thinking ort Body/Soul.
This piece can never look upon itself and so it calls itself by the mysterious Soul and projects there all its insecurities and ignorance and fears. "

Or does it not look on itself as a whole? Seeing that in all instances, there is a self behind it, in order for such things to be?

When we daydream, we do not perceive. Why? Because the self is absence from the perceptions.

The piece that is missing is the piece that is perceiving or looking or thinking.
The picture is only partial.
Know Thyself can only be so accurate.
Most rarely see themselves or admit what they are to themselves until they die.
They live and die in complete ignorance.

"Nothing in the process of becoming Something.
This is why everything is ephemeral. "

What aspect could nothing have which would allow it to become something? If it is truly nothing, it could never seek something, as even seeking would need something and not nothing.

Perhaps a particle of Something, a stain.
What would cause the Big Bang to manifest?
If before it all the forces were one and united what would tear them apart?
Unknown.

"Yes.
But in the east, as well, they’ve done away with the more childish conceptions of an anthropomorphic God – God as parent and emotion and authority – and have used the possibility of eternal recurrence to construct the possibility for eternal life by supposing a soul where the eye-that-cannot turn-on-itself is. "

The East has its fallacies, too, yes.

"Thinking and perceiving is all there is.
Descartes supposed a thinker where there was none."

Then what, pray tell, is a thought without a thinker? Without something to witness and understand said thought?

The thinking understands itself. That’s why it is self-consciousness.
There is no second or third party involved.
Thinking itself is a multiplicity producing itself.

That’s why not even sleep stops brain activity.
The flow is ceaseless until death, just at the beating heart beats until death.
What makes the heart beat?
A beater?

"Thinking is temporal as one thought replaces another. "

Thinking may indeed be temporal, but a thinker needn't see only something which is not temporal in order to know itself as the perceiver and thinker of the thoughts.

Huh?

"Thought is a spark of energy produced from a specific brain area which has stored information."

This only explains the physical processes, but does not explain the processes meaningfulness. That is to say, ther is nothing in a neuronal discharge that implies "thought".

"Meaningfulness"?
Meaning is a human construct trying to gain a purpose for its suffering; trying to make its life have value.

"Information is the ordering of reality – the freezing of time/space in memory where it can be abstracted and used to construct models and patterns. "

yet what is doing the abstraction and construction of models and patterns?

The thinking mind is constant motion and activity.

"Time is also a position.
Time is also arranged, by men, on a mental or technological grid."

Time is a position, but not one that can be found in space. Where is 10:30's address?

The context only changes.
You are using an imprecise abstraction to disprove an imprecise abstraction.
You are only offering a piece of the rid reference and asking for a position.

Ask: Where is 123 This or That Road is at 10:30 am?
You can say: Where is Bob’s position at this general point in time/space?

To use your thinking I will ask:
Where is 4 meters?


Einstein tells us that as you increase spatial participation in one dimension you decrease it in the others.
For instance, when approaching the speed of light the physical object gets stretched into a string. Its increase in temporal direction is accompanied by a decrease in spatial direction.
Or am I wrong?

 

[Prince_James]

Satyr:

"That's a big IF."

Consider, if you will, this simple argument I have devised:

If one can only have somethingness or nothingness, then it stands to reason that if somethingness were to have an end, that the only alternative would be somethingness beyond it (which would imply infinity) or nothingness beyond it, which is an impossibility, as nothingness cannot exist (lest it cease to be nothingness). Moreover, as this never could different, eternity is demanded.

"They are a way existence manifests itself or a way consciousness translates existence."

What reference would conscousness have to create space and time? Thought itself requires a sequence, which requires time.

"Are you obsessed with the symbolism of a triad?"

Beginning to become so, yes. It seems that the Hegelian dialectic wasn't too far off the mark, when it paired everything in threes. Practically everything comes not as a pair, but as a trinity.

"Potentiality is a relationship based on absence."

In what way can an absence produce relation? Or do you mean that such relation stems from the fact that currently, two things are not connected, but will have to be in order to manifest the possibility?

"Multiple manifestations of potentiality coexist.
Their interactions determine reality."

So you are claiming that it is the interaction of myriad possibilities that govern reality?

"If there were an absolute then it would limit potentiality or determine it. Therefore it would cease being free. "

Actually, I would argue that it would facillitate potentiality. For if there is no absolute foundation for pententiality - let us say, the stag eupon which the actors perform the play - then there is no way potentiality could possibly manifest. It'd be emerging out from a void with no content.

"That's the point - excuse the pun - it is nowhere. "

If it is nowhere, how does it get to somewhere?

"A photo is a frozen moment. It is like a memory: a generalized frozen moment of space/time depicting a phenomenon in the process of becoming.
Its substantiality is determined by your limited perspective.
If you could take a quantum photo of it, it would be a nothing. "

Actually, doesn't even the supposed "probablistic potentiality", if so "snap shotted", collapse into a single point?

"Reality has no frozen moments.
Your senses only perceive a generality and this gives you the illusion of substance. "

If reality has no frozen moments, how does time progress? How does motion exist?

"If this were so then all existence would have ceased.
There would be no reason for movement or time/space."

I disagree and I think I presented a (portion) of my metaphysic argument in the post beforehand. If not, I shall present it at the end of this.

"Nothingness and Somethingness can be considered opposites because neither of them is ever completely so.
Ying/Yang. Something contains nothingness and Nothing contains somethingness which makes both unstable and so forever tumbling towards purity or absoluteness or chaos or completion. "

I would view, actually, somethingness and nothingness as yang and yin respectively, and the mixture only occuring on the transient/temporal level, which can indeed be construed as "partially something, partially nothing" or having "mixed natures".

"Okay."

I gave an argument in the first paragraph above. A condensed version, but one which I think is quite effective. I also have a dialectical argument.

"Inter-relations are infinite (if that).
This does not necessarily mean that the energies involved are infinite or that the universe is so.
Inter-relations produce possibilities.
How does mobility entail finitehood?"

Well it stands to reason that an infinite amount of inter-relations could not be produced from a finite amount of parts. That is to say, a gigantic amount of interactions could exist, but not an infinite amount.

But mobility entails finitehood by virtue of the fact that an infinite object would have no place to move within. That is to say, if it were infinite, movement would imply that something was around it, and therefore, it would not -be- infinite at all. However, on the finite scale, finite things can clearly move and also, by virtue of being finite, have something around them. That they can do this implies then that movement is a special quality of finitehood, for it is possible on that level but not on the infinite.

"Space time are not phenomena.
They are ways of perceiving and understanding phenomena.
They do not exist outside the mind."

Kant understand you here, Satyr. For from whence would mind gain the notions of time and space - and even do things mandating a reality of time - without their existence outside it?

"The mind creates models by seeking patterns. It notices that one particular phenomenon is always followed by another. If this succession is persistent and can be used to make accurate predictions it calls this succession a rule or ‘logic’.
But the succession might be a human imprecise generalization."

Actually, it would seem the rules of logic are more specifically found by reference to necessity. Things, that is, which manifest an impossibility to be otherwise than what they are, and with their opposites being plainly absurd.

"What sets this flux in motion?
What sets the universe in motion?
Spinoza's clockmaker God?
Unknown.
Does it need a prime mover?
If so, then at what point can we say that it doesn’t? "

Worthwhile questions to ponder. What are your answers?

"To Be is to lack all potential. It is an absolute state of inertia.
Therefore it would have no spatial or temporal existence."

Tell me: When a statue is carved out of marble, does it "drop out of existence" because the potentiality of the marble was made into actuality of the statue?

"Isn't that a double-negative?"

It describes well what an absence must truly be: THat which is not.

"Therefore it must be a phenomenon trying to be something.
It is a process of becoming.
Since it is never fulfilled we cannot call it Something in the absolute sense but only call it something in the general human sense denoting a phenomenon which we can never completely perceive or comprehend.
It is never There, Here, Substance, Point, but always a fleeting phenomenon in between Nothingness and Somethingness. "

One must ask: Even if objects pass away and come to be, does this imply an absence? No. For they are real when they are, and real in terms of the substance which they are created from which does not share in its cessation.

"There can never be certainty or else one becomes a fanatic. Furthermore certainly implies omniscience and a ‘Truth’. "

One needn't become a "fanatic" to know for certain. Moreover, truth is to be found quite easily on the necessary level. It is really on the practical, every-day level, which we have problems.

"Time is another way of saying Space as Space is another way of saying Time. "

Not at all. For how can time exist as space, if it facillitates movement within space? Whereas how can space exist as time, if space requires time to manifest motion and to give time a medium of expression?

"Whose standards would you propose using?"

Standards of universal applicability and highest-order necessity. That is to say, ontological somethingness and nothingness.

"But also, what makes you think that human comprehension is completely false?"

Not at all. Human preception is accurate and human reason is infallible.

"Our senses and our minds are products of this universe. They are made to exist and to be successful within it.
It follows to reason that our senses are not totally erroneous but only lacking in clarity and precision. "

I concur wholeheartedly.

"It is deterministic in that it produces unities or creatures that contain their entire historical background within their patterns.
Each phenomenon is a projection of its entire becoming up to the moment of its Willing.
The Will is how consciousness focuses its energies upon potentials/possibilities and what interacts with other Wills and other unconscious manifestations creating a web of inter-relations we call reality.

Only the mind can break free from patterns or divert them, and then with much effort.
This is why when I listen to imbeciles describing how rational they are or how selfless or how just or free, all the while displaying the opposite, it always amuses me. "

So you are claiming this will can transcend causality?

"You are assuming no less than the supernatural - might as well call this ‘outside’ god and be done with it. "

Not at all. I presume an utter naturalness, only an infinity to existence. Supernatural things would be ridiculous. See the first paragraph for why I presume that if this universe is not infinite, then existence itsel fis.

"The concept universe, for me, means all that IS – an enclosed system.
To imply an outside is to claim that you use the word universe to mean a part of a greater whole – UNIVERSE. "

All right. Well I was refering to the scientific usage of the word, which implies an expansion. An expansion necessitates a finitehood and something beyond. If by "universe" you mean "existence", then we can agree.

"It’s a desire to return to the source; back to the nothingness from whence you came from."

Nothingness is not permenance, it is not even temporality, it is nothingness. Why would the Will to Permenance manifest such a thing?

"You do not, of course, admit this to yourself or to anyone else.
You mask it behind ideals and absolute notions which contain oxymoronic concepts. "

I actually hold no possibility of attaining anything absolute. I am a temporal being, as are you, and as are all of us.

"Thing is life is a perpetual, repetitive, self-sustaining process.
Its only goal is to continue living."

I agree, in so much as this also includes "living well". Living beings, at least of a specific complexity, do not wish just for baseline survival.

"It is only a mind freed from the burdens of living that can contemplate its condition and intuitively desire to cease.
Nihilism is the natural destination of any thinking mind. "

It is a particular degeneracy of the higher lifeforms, yes.

"Nietzsche advises us to avoid falling into Schopenhauer’s Buddhist trap of denial of life, judging this to be a cowards and weakling’s way out, nor does he advise to fall into the imbecile’s trap of remaining obtuse and hypocritical and stupid so as to escape reality’s woes. He advises to embrace it all and stare into the void."

Nietzsche was brilliant when he was brilliant - such as in this case - but horrible elsewise. Thank God (though he is dead) for his brilliance.

"Yet man must face the choice.
Life and all that it entails or oblivion. "

A profoundly great quote.

"Are you claiming to possess an absolute?
What you call your “identity” is simply a mantle to cover up the emptiness."

No, only that our identity is non-absolute and simply a process of growing, of enhancing, of flowering, as it were.

"Peel away the layers of what you consider self, your status, job, sex, emotions and you have nothing at the core."

One still has the perceiver. Of course, take that away, and you do indeed have nothing.

"The temporal and transient are labels given to what has no being.
It is this not-being, this becoming which expresses temporality/spatiality and the universe in constant flux."

It has no absolute being, but it certainly has being so long as it is manifest, and exists as potential from eternity till its manifestation, and indeed, once it is shown to be able to manifest, can again manifest an infinite amount of times over in an infinite amount of time.

"The mind is, itself, a multiplicity.
The universe knows no singularities. "

How then does a mind happen to decide upon one course of action? To act unified?

"No one.
Why does thinking demand a thinker."

Why does thinking demand a thinker? For in an absence of the thinker, the thought would not come to be, and if there were no thinking to perceive the thought, the thought would not be known.

"Ignorance implies an absence of knowledge.
Nothing else can be said about it. "

Yet are we ignorant of the self when it seems that it must exist in order for us to exist as thinking beings? That is what I am challenging: The ignorance.

"An EYE period.
Internal is a myth."

Where does the perception of sight come int othe mind if not in the internal state?

"Nevertheless the physical is a projection of the mental.
The physical is form and color and movement.
Physique and Character.
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=56944"

I shall check that out shortly.

"The piece that is missing is the piece that is perceiving or looking or thinking."

If one is that piece, is one lacking it?

"The picture is only partial.
Know Thyself can only be so accurate.
Most rarely see themselves or admit what they are to themselves until they die.
They live and die in complete ignorance. "

Some people, yes, are those which we call self-deceptive in nature.

"Perhaps a particle of Something, a stain.
What would cause the Big Bang to manifest?
If before it all the forces were one and united what would tear them apart?
Unknown. "

It is indeed unknown in specifics, but we know indeed that it was a cause, and that the big-bang's constituent particles and forces were pre-existent.

"The thinking understands itself. That’s why it is self-consciousness.
There is no second or third party involved.
Thinking itself is a multiplicity producing itself."

Where is the capacity of understanding to be found in a thought itself?

"That’s why not even sleep stops brain activity.
The flow is ceaseless until death, just at the beating heart beats until death.
What makes the heart beat?
A beater?"

A heart does not need a thinker in order to be a coherent thing. A thought requires a thinker in order for it to satisfy thoughthood.

"Thinking may indeed be temporal, but a thinker needn't see only something which is not temporal in order to know itself as the perceiver and thinker of the thoughts.

Huh?"

Temporality of thought doesn't disprove a thinker.

""Meaningfulness"?
Meaning is a human construct trying to gain a purpose for its suffering; trying to make its life have value."

A thought is a packet of information. What is information without something there to make use and understand such information? This is its "meaningfulness". A neuron firing might well carry a thought upon it - although actually, I find such highly unlikely, although I point to the brain as the area which consciousness emerges relationally from - but if this neural-impulse's information does not have an "information perceiver", then its physical properties do not amount to anything but any other electric discharge, and its meaningfulness as a thought is non-existent.

"The thinking mind is constant motion and activity."

I agree, it is. The mind never ceases fully. In essence: We are on 24/7 until death. The thinker is always thinking.

"You can say: Where is Bob’s position at this general point in time/space?"

Yes indeed, but the position in space and the position in time are two distinct measurements of two distinct things. That one must clarify "at this time" implies this, for at other times, Bob would not be there, whereas the space would stay the same.

"Einstein tells us that as you increase spatial participation in one dimension you decrease it in the others.
For instance, when approaching the speed of light the physical object gets stretched into a string. Its increase in temporal direction is accompanied by a decrease in spatial direction.
Or am I wrong?"

I am not so sure that such is true, no. For one is not attaining so much a "temporal direction" by travelling at the speed of light, as one is simply taking on a spatial direction at extremely fast speeds.

 

[Satyr]

Satyr:

"That's a big IF."

Consider, if you will, this simple argument I have devised:

If one can only have somethingness or nothingness, then it stands to reason that if somethingness were to have an end, that the only alternative would be somethingness beyond it (which would imply infinity) or nothingness beyond it, which is an impossibility, as nothingness cannot exist (lest it cease to be nothingness). Moreover, as this never could different, eternity is demanded.

If Somethingness had an end then it would constitute a finite whole with a beginning and an end.

The universe we perceive is not nothingness. It is a vibrating field of Somethingness trying to return to its previous state by resisting the Nothingness from tearing it apart.
The universe was a singularity. We can call it Something but we cannot say that it existed since we define existing as that which manifests itself in Time/Space as phenomena.
Time/Space is how the mind interprets or perceives phenomena; a way of understanding them.

A flaw, (Call it a Negation) caused the expansion and fracturing resulting in this Nothingness to be launched as a process.
Nothingness is what was added, if you will, to the Something so as to create reality.

Let us change terminology.
There was order or near perfect order.
Within this order a speck of disorder caused fracturing and entropic decay – a lack, an absence.
Why?
Unknown.
Perhaps the universe is a constant flow where some regions flow towards order and others towards disorder in an endless loop – a river of entropy if you will. We exist within only a piece of the flow and so perceive it as unidirectional.
Life could only exist in our region of entropic flow because its opposite would entail no ‘positive’ resistance to the ‘negative’ flow but a ‘negative’ resistance to the ‘positive’ flow. In this theoretical other region everything would be reversed.
Life is a positive resistance to a particular entropic flow, we call negative because it is detrimental to life.
The negative requires no effort, in our region, because it is part of the normal entropic flow whereas resistance, the positive, does because it goes against the entropic flow.
The Big bang is the focal point the turning of this entropic river just as the Big Crunch is the opposite turning point.

This flow from order towards disorder we call temporality and spatiality because it is how we measure and perceive it.
It corresponds to a flux, a constant turmoil of fragmenting and joining and struggling to stop and reverse entropy.
This created ephemeral force/energy unities trying to construct order in the growing disorder.
This is felt as Need by living creatures. Consciousness interprets it as suffering.

"They are a way existence manifests itself or a way consciousness translates existence."

What reference would conscousness have to create space and time? Thought itself requires a sequence, which requires time.

A reference?
It doesn’t ‘create’ space/time it is part of how consciousness functions.
But I concede that dimensions are references to something, since the brain doesn’t just imagine but, being a product of the universe, interprets.

The mind thinks in a general simplifying sequential flow and it projects potential, imprecise positions and/or destinations.
It perceives competing phenomena and barriers and difficulties who, like it project their own possibilities and who attempt to appropriate the forces necessary to achieve fulfillment or perfection.
This is reality.

"Are you obsessed with the symbolism of a triad?"

Beginning to become so, yes. It seems that the Hegelian dialectic wasn't too far off the mark, when it paired everything in threes. Practically everything comes not as a pair, but as a trinity.

Why do you suppose?
I always believed that symbolisms are connected to biological reasons.
For example, the emotional value of music is connected to some biological memory of the womb and is, in turn, connected to vibrating energies in what we call the universe.

"Potentiality is a relationship based on absence."

In what way can an absence produce relation? Or do you mean that such relation stems from the fact that currently, two things are not connected, but will have to be in order to manifest the possibility?

That and two things compete for the same potential.
This appropriation of energies towards possibility creates a conflict, cooperative relationship and eventually leads to unities such as animals.

"Multiple manifestations of potentiality coexist.
Their interactions determine reality."

So you are claiming that it is the interaction of myriad possibilities that govern reality?

Yes.

There is a finite amount of energy in the universe. We compete to appropriate and use it to complete ourselves or to resist entropic attrition.

"If there were an absolute then it would limit potentiality or determine it. Therefore it would cease being free. "

Actually, I would argue that it would facillitate potentiality. For if there is no absolute foundation for pententiality - let us say, the stag eupon which the actors perform the play - then there is no way potentiality could possibly manifest. It'd be emerging out from a void with no content.

Then you are a determinist?If there is a grand stage then we are only free enough to act upon it.

"That's the point - excuse the pun - it is nowhere. "

If it is nowhere, how does it get to somewhere?

It never does.
The point is a generalization with no meaning. It is, itself, infinitely divisible.
When you say “I will go there” you are referring to two generalities with no specificity.
“I’ and ‘There”.

When you get to “there” you do not mean anything specific. The there is a perspective generalization. If you could shrink infinitely you would find a nothing there.

You call “there” a general hypothetical point in the fixed past this { }.
The first bracket represents the beginning of your thought and the other the end of it.
The middle is non-existent and non-specific.

There is no Here because if there were it would drop out of space/time. You are never anywhere absolutely but always in motion.
Being still is a perspective fallacy and illusion. You are never still. You are always moving and acting.

"A photo is a frozen moment. It is like a memory: a generalized frozen moment of space/time depicting a phenomenon in the process of becoming.
Its substantiality is determined by your limited perspective.
If you could take a quantum photo of it, it would be a nothing. "

Actually, doesn't even the supposed "probablistic potentiality", if so "snap shotted", collapse into a single point?

A photo is a representation not the actual thing.
The photo itself is in decay the moment you create it.
The image is a representation.
Just like a statue is a representation, a symbol of a singularity, that is why art is so fascinating.
Art depicts a non-temporal image or form. Sometimes, as in music, it represents a non-physical form.
The art subtracts some of the dimensions through symbolism.

A statue of a woman isn’t the actual woman but a symbol of a woman, in stone which is in perpetual motion, frozen in time.

"Reality has no frozen moments.
Your senses only perceive a generality and this gives you the illusion of substance. "

If reality has no frozen moments, how does time progress? How does motion exist?

Motion is temporal/spatial flow.
Time/Space is the flux made manifest. Time/Space is how our mind simplifies the phenomenon of entropic decay.

"If this were so then all existence would have ceased.
There would be no reason for movement or time/space."

I disagree and I think I presented a (portion) of my metaphysic argument in the post beforehand. If not, I shall present it at the end of this.

"Nothingness and Somethingness can be considered opposites because neither of them is ever completely so.
Ying/Yang. Something contains nothingness and Nothing contains somethingness which makes both unstable and so forever tumbling towards purity or absoluteness or chaos or completion. "

I would view, actually, somethingness and nothingness as yang and yin respectively, and the mixture only occuring on the transient/temporal level, which can indeed be construed as "partially something, partially nothing" or having "mixed natures".

"Okay."

I gave an argument in the first paragraph above. A condensed version, but one which I think is quite effective. I also have a dialectical argument.

"Inter-relations are infinite (if that).
This does not necessarily mean that the energies involved are infinite or that the universe is so.
Inter-relations produce possibilities.
How does mobility entail finitehood?"

Well it stands to reason that an infinite amount of inter-relations could not be produced from a finite amount of parts. That is to say, a gigantic amount of interactions could exist, but not an infinite amount.

Then let us speak of finite relationhips and parts.

But mobility entails finitehood by virtue of the fact that an infinite object would have no place to move within. That is to say, if it were infinite, movement would imply that something was around it, and therefore, it would not -be- infinite at all. However, on the finite scale, finite things can clearly move and also, by virtue of being finite, have something around them. That they can do this implies then that movement is a special quality of finitehood, for it is possible on that level but not on the infinite.

Agreed.

"Space time are not phenomena.
They are ways of perceiving and understanding phenomena.
They do not exist outside the mind."

Kant understand you here, Satyr. For from whence would mind gain the notions of time and space - and even do things mandating a reality of time - without their existence outside it?

The mind evolves to facilitate survival. As such it simplifies and directs.
Its interpretation of time/space are simplified, yet effective ways of making sense of itself and the universe.

"The mind creates models by seeking patterns. It notices that one particular phenomenon is always followed by another. If this succession is persistent and can be used to make accurate predictions it calls this succession a rule or ‘logic’.
But the succession might be a human imprecise generalization."

Actually, it would seem the rules of logic are more specifically found by reference to necessity. Things, that is, which manifest an impossibility to be otherwise than what they are, and with their opposites being plainly absurd.

"What sets this flux in motion?
What sets the universe in motion?
Spinoza's clockmaker God?
Unknown.
Does it need a prime mover?
If so, then at what point can we say that it doesn’t? "

Worthwhile questions to ponder. What are your answers?

I have hypothesis not answers.
Why complicate things by arbitrarily adding a conscious, prime mover?

I believe what consciousness or godliness exists in the universe is in us.
We are the universe becoming conscious of its self.

"To Be is to lack all potential. It is an absolute state of inertia.
Therefore it would have no spatial or temporal existence."

Tell me: When a statue is carved out of marble, does it "drop out of existence" because the potentiality of the marble was made into actuality of the statue?

I dealt with this before.
The statue itself is not what it represents.
The human eye recognizes the form and the image it depicts.
The statue itself in marble, decaying and flowing, as you witness it representing a frozen form.

What makes marble appear hard is that it flows slower than us.
It’s hardness and seeming stability is a façade caused by our inability to perceive beyond a certain speed.
Marble is more resistant to entropic decay and so is more stable and lasting. This is interpreted, by the mind, as hardness.

"Isn't that a double-negative?"

It describes well what an absence must truly be: THat which is not.

"Therefore it must be a phenomenon trying to be something.
It is a process of becoming.
Since it is never fulfilled we cannot call it Something in the absolute sense but only call it something in the general human sense denoting a phenomenon which we can never completely perceive or comprehend.
It is never There, Here, Substance, Point, but always a fleeting phenomenon in between Nothingness and Somethingness. "

One must ask: Even if objects pass away and come to be, does this imply an absence? No. For they are real when they are, and real in terms of the substance which they are created from which does not share in its cessation.

In the universal region that we occupy there is no absolute nothing. Space is not in an absolute zero temperature state.
There is dissipating, background energy lingering as part of the expansion.
This is what we call the fabric of space/time.

Energies pool and appear as matter upon this fabric.

"There can never be certainty or else one becomes a fanatic. Furthermore certainly implies omniscience and a ‘Truth’. "

One needn't become a "fanatic" to know for certain. Moreover, truth is to be found quite easily on the necessary level. It is really on the practical, every-day level, which we have problems.

To be forever skeptical is the mark of a healthy, honest, courageous mind.

Certainty is the mark of the closed-minded, hypocritical, cowardly mind, wanting definite answers to questions it can never know for sure but only speculate about.
Once someone comes to the table of discussion seeking final answers he sets himself up to be prejudice and needy.

The universe is uncertain and truth is built on competing/cooperating elements, forever constructing the real.
The uncertain is the free.

And while we are on the subject: How can you consistently respond to someone like lightgigantic with obvious mental deficiencies and psychological needs for certainty and moral high-grounds?
He’s set up a reality where the spiritual and the material are two different things: one evil and other good.
Then he references philosophy and uses terms like ‘epistemology’ or ‘ontology’, parroting them but never comprehending them, pretending he’s thought this out to this absolute end on his own and with honesty and courage.

He already knows what the destination is. All he wants to argue is how to get there.
That is the definition of prejudiced thinking.
The psychological reasons for this need for absolutes can be found in existence itself.

"Time is another way of saying Space as Space is another way of saying Time. "

Not at all. For how can time exist as space, if it facillitates movement within space? Whereas how can space exist as time, if space requires time to manifest motion and to give time a medium of expression?

They both represent potential.

"Whose standards would you propose using?"

Standards of universal applicability and highest-order necessity. That is to say, ontological somethingness and nothingness.

"But also, what makes you think that human comprehension is completely false?"

Not at all. Human preception is accurate and human reason is infallible.

Agreed.

"Our senses and our minds are products of this universe. They are made to exist and to be successful within it.
It follows to reason that our senses are not totally erroneous but only lacking in clarity and precision. "

I concur wholeheartedly.

"It is deterministic in that it produces unities or creatures that contain their entire historical background within their patterns.
Each phenomenon is a projection of its entire becoming up to the moment of its Willing.
The Will is how consciousness focuses its energies upon potentials/possibilities and what interacts with other Wills and other unconscious manifestations creating a web of inter-relations we call reality.

Only the mind can break free from patterns or divert them, and then with much effort.
This is why when I listen to imbeciles describing how rational they are or how selfless or how just or free, all the while displaying the opposite, it always amuses me. "

So you are claiming this will can transcend causality?

I don’t know about “transcending” because then this would imply that man can become god, an absolute.
Since I do think absolutes are possible then it is the pursuit that gives meaning and identity to the pursuer.
It is the voyage and not the destination.

But, yes, I believe only Will can become master of destiny.
Intelligence and consciousness are evolutionary steps towards controlling and directing energies.
If man wants to become more than just an animal, then just calling himself reasonable is not going to do it.
Man has to train himself and learn how to control his drives and emotions and instincts and reason, with his Will.

"You are assuming no less than the supernatural - might as well call this ‘outside’ god and be done with it. "

Not at all. I presume an utter naturalness, only an infinity to existence. Supernatural things would be ridiculous. See the first paragraph for why I presume that if this universe is not infinite, then existence itsel fis.

"The concept universe, for me, means all that IS – an enclosed system.
To imply an outside is to claim that you use the word universe to mean a part of a greater whole – UNIVERSE. "

All right. Well I was refering to the scientific usage of the word, which implies an expansion. An expansion necessitates a finitehood and something beyond. If by "universe" you mean "existence", then we can agree.

"It’s a desire to return to the source; back to the nothingness from whence you came from."

Nothingness is not permenance, it is not even temporality, it is nothingness. Why would the Will to Permenance manifest such a thing?

Obviously nothingness is not permanence or else it would be an absolute.

Why?
There is no answer to this.
Why not?

Why, is a human question trying to find a conscious reason behind the unconscious unreasonable.

[

I]"You do not, of course, admit this to yourself or to anyone else.
You mask it behind ideals and absolute notions which contain oxymoronic concepts. "[/I]

I actually hold no possibility of attaining anything absolute. I am a temporal being, as are you, and as are all of us.

"Thing is life is a perpetual, repetitive, self-sustaining process.
Its only goal is to continue living."

I agree, in so much as this also includes "living well". Living beings, at least of a specific complexity, do not wish just for baseline survival.

"It is only a mind freed from the burdens of living that can contemplate its condition and intuitively desire to cease.
Nihilism is the natural destination of any thinking mind. "

It is a particular degeneracy of the higher lifeforms, yes.

"Nietzsche advises us to avoid falling into Schopenhauer’s Buddhist trap of denial of life, judging this to be a cowards and weakling’s way out, nor does he advise to fall into the imbecile’s trap of remaining obtuse and hypocritical and stupid so as to escape reality’s woes. He advises to embrace it all and stare into the void."

Nietzsche was brilliant when he was brilliant - such as in this case - but horrible elsewise. Thank God (though he is dead) for his brilliance.

"Yet man must face the choice.
Life and all that it entails or oblivion. "

A profoundly great quote.

"Are you claiming to possess an absolute?
What you call your “identity” is simply a mantle to cover up the emptiness."

No, only that our identity is non-absolute and simply a process of growing, of enhancing, of flowering, as it were.

"Peel away the layers of what you consider self, your status, job, sex, emotions and you have nothing at the core."

One still has the perceiver. Of course, take that away, and you do indeed have nothing.

What makes man’s quest meaningful is the pursuit of this substance.

"The temporal and transient are labels given to what has no being.
It is this not-being, this becoming which expresses temporality/spatiality and the universe in constant flux."

It has no absolute being, but it certainly has being so long as it is manifest, and exists as potential from eternity till its manifestation, and indeed, once it is shown to be able to manifest, can again manifest an infinite amount of times over in an infinite amount of time.

"The mind is, itself, a multiplicity.
The universe knows no singularities. "

How then does a mind happen to decide upon one course of action? To act unified?

Simple.
The mind acts as arbitrator of Need.

Multiple needs compete for the mind’s attention.

Once one need is temporarily placated another takes its place.
How does the mind decide?
It reasons and judges the value or seriousness of the Need by its volume.
When my hunger reaches a certain proportion all else fails to occupy my mind.
My brain is preoccupied with fulfilling this need - if I do not the suffering increases, vying for my immediate attentions.
When I feed the lowering of my need for nutrition is felt as pleasure.
This only lasts for so long before a new need takes the front.
And so it goes on and on, in a continuous cycle.

"No one.
Why does thinking demand a thinker."

Why does thinking demand a thinker? For in an absence of the thinker, the thought would not come to be, and if there were no thinking to perceive the thought, the thought would not be known.

Knowing is absorbing.
The thinking incorporates the information into its thinking patterns. Then it is said to ‘know’.
It's like redirecting a river.

"Ignorance implies an absence of knowledge.
Nothing else can be said about it. "

Yet are we ignorant of the self when it seems that it must exist in order for us to exist as thinking beings? That is what I am challenging: The ignorance.

The first and only thing you can know for sure is the self.

"An EYE period.
Internal is a myth."

Where does the perception of sight come int othe mind if not in the internal state?

Internal simply indicates hidden from view.
Sight is the gathering of visual information and its integration within the thinking process, via the brain.

"Nevertheless the physical is a projection of the mental.
The physical is form and color and movement.
Physique and Character.
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=56944"

I shall check that out shortly.

"The piece that is missing is the piece that is perceiving or looking or thinking."

If one is that piece, is one lacking it?

You misunderstand.
I mean that because the piece that looks cannot be looked at it appears as if it is missing.
Men call this the soul.

"The picture is only partial.
Know Thyself can only be so accurate.
Most rarely see themselves or admit what they are to themselves until they die.
They live and die in complete ignorance. "

Some people, yes, are those which we call self-deceptive in nature.

"Perhaps a particle of Something, a stain.
What would cause the Big Bang to manifest?
If before it all the forces were one and united what would tear them apart?
Unknown. "

It is indeed unknown in specifics, but we know indeed that it was a cause, and that the big-bang's constituent particles and forces were pre-existent.

"The thinking understands itself. That’s why it is self-consciousness.
There is no second or third party involved.
Thinking itself is a multiplicity producing itself."

Where is the capacity of understanding to be found in a thought itself?

Understanding is incorporating knowledge into a pattern of thinking and then recognizing it when it is perceived again and again.

"That’s why not even sleep stops brain activity.
The flow is ceaseless until death, just at the beating heart beats until death.
What makes the heart beat?
A beater?"

A heart does not need a thinker in order to be a coherent thing. A thought requires a thinker in order for it to satisfy thoughthood.

Huh?
If a thought requires a thinker to think then a beting heart requires a beater to beat.

"Thinking may indeed be temporal, but a thinker needn't see only something which is not temporal in order to know itself as the perceiver and thinker of the thoughts.

Huh?"

Temporality of thought doesn't disprove a thinker.
""Meaningfulness"?
Meaning is a human construct trying to gain a purpose for its suffering; trying to make its life have value."

A thought is a packet of information. What is information without something there to make use and understand such information? This is its "meaningfulness". A neuron firing might well carry a thought upon it - although actually, I find such highly unlikely, although I point to the brain as the area which consciousness emerges relationally from - but if this neural-impulse's information does not have an "information perceiver", then its physical properties do not amount to anything but any other electric discharge, and its meaningfulness as a thought is non-existent.

"The thinking mind is constant motion and activity."

I agree, it is. The mind never ceases fully. In essence: We are on 24/7 until death. The thinker is always thinking.

"You can say: Where is Bob’s position at this general point in time/space?"

Yes indeed, but the position in space and the position in time are two distinct measurements of two distinct things. That one must clarify "at this time" implies this, for at other times, Bob would not be there, whereas the space would stay the same.

"Einstein tells us that as you increase spatial participation in one dimension you decrease it in the others.
For instance, when approaching the speed of light the physical object gets stretched into a string. Its increase in temporal direction is accompanied by a decrease in spatial direction.
Or am I wrong?"

I am not so sure that such is true, no. For one is not attaining so much a "temporal direction" by travelling at the speed of light, as one is simply taking on a spatial direction at extremely fast speeds.

No, I think I had it right.

 

[Prince_James]

Satyr:

"If Somethingness had an end then it would constitute a finite whole with a beginning and an end. "

Yet something must be beyond that and, should it not be somethingness, it would have to be nothing. Yet pray tell, where resides nothingness' capacity to exist as a "beyond" to anything?

"The universe we perceive is not nothingness. It is a vibrating field of Somethingness trying to return to its previous state by resisting the Nothingness from tearing it apart. "

I smell a contradiction? If it is trying to return to nothingness, how can it resist nothingness to do this?

"The universe was a singularity. We can call it Something but we cannot say that it existed since we define existing as that which manifests itself in Time/Space as phenomena.
Time/Space is how the mind interprets or perceives phenomena; a way of understanding them. "

A singularity is not timeless/dimensionaless. It is an infinitely small point.

"A flaw, (Call it a Negation) caused the expansion and fracturing resulting in this Nothingness to be launched as a process.
Nothingness is what was added, if you will, to the Something so as to create reality."

How would such a flaw of nothingness arise?

"Let us change terminology.
There was order or near perfect order.
Within this order a speck of disorder caused fracturing and entropic decay – a lack, an absence.
Why?
Unknown."

I would argue that disorder is illogical. For in order for disorder to exist, it must itself be disordered, and thus incapable of sustaining itself, yet if such were the case, then disorder could never act as disorder, and thus, cannot be. This argument also extends to chaos.

"This flow from order towards disorder we call temporality and spatiality because it is how we measure and perceive it."

Theoretically, a flow from any direction would be possible.

"A reference?
It doesn’t ‘create’ space/time it is part of how consciousness functions.
But I concede that dimensions are references to something, since the brain doesn’t just imagine but, being a product of the universe, interprets. "

So then the dimensions of space and the flow of time have at least some connection with a reality and are not a Kantian Category, as it were?

"Why do you suppose?
I always believed that symbolisms are connected to biological reasons.
For example, the emotional value of music is connected to some biological memory of the womb and is, in turn, connected to vibrating energies in what we call the universe. "

Were I to speculate, I'd link it back to the geometric principle that three points of support are necessary for stability wedded to the fact that a triad is the minimum number for a group where each member can interact with the other two, can be both a cause and effect, and the only arrangement where no part is divorced from the whole in that relation.

"That and two things compete for the same potential.
This appropriation of energies towards possibility creates a conflict, cooperative relationship and eventually leads to unities such as animals.

There is a finite amount of energy in the universe. We compete to appropriate and use it to complete ourselves or to resist entropic attrition."

So then we find the Will to Power as manifested as a struggle to use what little energy there ultimately is?

"Then you are a determinist?If there is a grand stage then we are only free enough to act upon it."

I am a determinist. But as AAF and I came to realize in our discussions in his mammoth God thread: In an existence with infinite possibilities and infinite time, though every interaction is deterministic and rigid, the capacity to predict the entire system is utterly lacking on the whole. Thus freedom, if one would care to call it such, is to be found in this overall lack of accountability for every interaction.

"It never does.
The point is a generalization with no meaning. It is, itself, infinitely divisible.
When you say “I will go there” you are referring to two generalities with no specificity.
“I’ and ‘There”. "

They may be generalized, but non-specific? Perhaps "ill-defined", but not non-specific. The notion of "there", though the depth of "therehood" is remarkably shallow, is nonetheless a designation of a specific point, which though one owuld be hard pressed to give exact aspects of, is indeed exact by its underlying identity as a place to be found.

"There is no Here because if there were it would drop out of space/time. You are never anywhere absolutely but always in motion."

Yet even if we never remain in one place for anything but the most minute fraction of time, all motion necessitates that an infinite series of these very precise positions be passed. That they are passed in such an ephemeral time period that we can hardly calculate them means nothing more than they are swiftly passing.

"A photo is a representation not the actual thing.
The photo itself is in decay the moment you create it.
The image is a representation.
Just like a statue is a representation, a symbol of a singularity, that is why art is so fascinating.
Art depicts a non-temporal image or form. Sometimes, as in music, it represents a non-physical form.
The art subtracts some of the dimensions through symbolism."

Even if only a representation of the past, and a representation of something physical and real apart from what is presented in the photograph, does not this snap-shot present to us a perfect example of the reality and necessity of those moment-points which we so pass both temporally and spatially?

"Motion is temporal/spatial flow.
Time/Space is the flux made manifest. Time/Space is how our mind simplifies the phenomenon of entropic decay. "

Yet even flux requires such shifting to have a foundation, if only for a true moment (that is, an infinitely small point of time), in something which is not in flux. That is, successive points are never themselves an experiencer of the overall motion.

"Then let us speak of finite relationhips and parts."

If you would prefer.

I shall post more later.

 

[Prince_James]

Satyr:

"The mind evolves to facilitate survival. As such it simplifies and directs.
Its interpretation of time/space are simplified, yet effective ways of making sense of itself and the universe. "

Does not the mind evolve increasingly accurate perceptions of reality? If space/time were not accurate enough at least to work with, however would the brain survive?

"I believe what consciousness or godliness exists in the universe is in us.
We are the universe becoming conscious of its self. "

I prefer to take a less poetic viewpoint, as it were. That consciousness is simply a phenomena, not so much that we are the universe becoming conscious of itself.

"I dealt with this before.
The statue itself is not what it represents.
The human eye recognizes the form and the image it depicts.
The statue itself in marble, decaying and flowing, as you witness it representing a frozen form.

What makes marble appear hard is that it flows slower than us.
It’s hardness and seeming stability is a façade caused by our inability to perceive beyond a certain speed.
Marble is more resistant to entropic decay and so is more stable and lasting. This is interpreted, by the mind, as hardness."

Yet does its "actualization" at various points, entail a "falling out of time and space"?

"In the universal region that we occupy there is no absolute nothing. Space is not in an absolute zero temperature state.
There is dissipating, background energy lingering as part of the expansion.
This is what we call the fabric of space/time.

Energies pool and appear as matter upon this fabric. "

I concur.

"To be forever skeptical is the mark of a healthy, honest, courageous mind."

On most things, yes. On things which would be absurd otherwise, no. To borrow from Avicenna:

Those who would deny the reality of the Law of Non-Contradiction, let them be flogged or burnt so they can understand that there is a difference betwixt being flogged and burnt and not being flogged or burned.

"Certainty is the mark of the closed-minded, hypocritical, cowardly mind, wanting definite answers to questions it can never know for sure but only speculate about.
Once someone comes to the table of discussion seeking final answers he sets himself up to be prejudice and needy.

The universe is uncertain and truth is built on competing/cooperating elements, forever constructing the real.
The uncertain is the free."

I would say this need only arise when one's certainty becomes an obstacle to the discovery of more complete truth. That is to say, if one closes one's mind utterly to things.

"And while we are on the subject: How can you consistently respond to someone like lightgigantic with obvious mental deficiencies and psychological needs for certainty and moral high-grounds?"

Masochism.

"They both represent potential."

They also seem to have an absolute part. But yes, most of the time they are manifesting as possible things.

"But, yes, I believe only Will can become master of destiny.
Intelligence and consciousness are evolutionary steps towards controlling and directing energies.
If man wants to become more than just an animal, then just calling himself reasonable is not going to do it.
Man has to train himself and learn how to control his drives and emotions and instincts and reason, with his Will. "

And following this, he can truly transcend all aspects of causality that impinge upon his person, you claim?

"Obviously nothingness is not permanence or else it would be an absolute."

I would actually argue that nothingness is an absolute, specifically in that nothingness has no degrees, variety, and must be nothingness ad eterniam, as it were (although to say that nothingness is nothingness implies an existence as nothingness but it has no existence, it is simply nothingness).

"Why?
There is no answer to this.
Why not?

Why, is a human question trying to find a conscious reason behind the unconscious unreasonable."

The idea of permenance being a result of or causing nothingness seems to conflict with what we know about nothingness, which has no permenance. Permenance could only seek after permenance, could it not?

"What makes man’s quest meaningful is the pursuit of this substance. "

What do you mean by this?

"Simple.
The mind acts as arbitrator of Need.

Multiple needs compete for the mind’s attention."

So you claim all the entities of mind being unitd in this?

"Knowing is absorbing.
The thinking incorporates the information into its thinking patterns. Then it is said to ‘know’.
It's like redirecting a river."

If the thinking incorporates the information, how are the thoughts remembered? For there is no notion of memory in any thought, is there?

"The first and only thing you can know for sure is the self."

I wouldn't say only, but definitely the first.

"Internal simply indicates hidden from view.
Sight is the gathering of visual information and its integration within the thinking process, via the brain. "

Indeed, but what about the qualia of sight? When we see, we do not see neural firings, but real images. Where is this perceiver of sight?

"You misunderstand.
I mean that because the piece that looks cannot be looked at it appears as if it is missing.
Men call this the soul."

So you claim that this mind/soul is simply a thought turned upon its comrades and thought to be lacking?

"Understanding is incorporating knowledge into a pattern of thinking and then recognizing it when it is perceived again and again. "

Yet none of these are found in thoughts, which just contain information.

"Huh?
If a thought requires a thinker to think then a beting heart requires a beater to beat."

A heart beating is a physical process triggered by electrical stimulus in the twitching cardio muscle fibre. There is no sensation necessary of "heart beat". On the other hand, thoughts require manifestation within a Cartesian theatre. If none are in the theatre, then the thought can be said to rightfully not exist.

"No, I think I had it right."

I'll go check it out.

 

[Satyr]

Prince_James

Yet something must be beyond that and, should it not be somethingness, it would have to be nothing. Yet pray tell, where resides nothingness' capacity to exist as a "beyond" to anything?

It doesn’t in any absolute way, that’s the point.

Nothing is never absolute as Something is never absolute.
I quote:

"Willing Nothing" does not in the least mean willing the mere absence of everything real; rather it means precisely willing the real, yet willing that latter always and everywhere as a nullity and, through this, willing only annihilation. In such willing, power always further secures to itself the possibility of command and the ability-to-be-master.” – Heidegger {The Word of Nietzsche}

To Will something is to will the end of willing.
To Will nothing is to will your own willing.

To will your self to Be is to will yourself out of existing, as we interpret it.
Existing means forever being incomplete and imprecise and emptiness seeking fulfillment.
This emptiness constitutes the essence of freedom as possibility.
What is nothing can then be anything.
What is something is bound by what it is.
What IS becomes inert.
This inertia is incomprehensible to a mind which is born within movement and chaos (temporality/spatiality).
Here Something is different from something.
The capitalization denotes a completeness that is inconceivable and therefore can only be imagined.

We call something that which is perceivable within time/space. Our word relates to an object, which is nothing more than a constant becoming with no real substance.
If it had substance, in an absolute way, it would be incomprehensible.

Here both the concepts of Nothing and Something are similarly ambiguous and not the same as nothing something in our human existential sense.

We use these words to express the incomprehensible and to describe a movement from one state to another.
We label Nothing that which describes our before and Something that which describes our after.
Neither of these are absolutes. Otherwise the universe would cease and both states would merge in an inert singularity.
They are both, forever incomplete; one flowing into the other.
Nothing expresses an imagined absolute lack which is never totally absolute and so it produces a process towards a Something.
Something expresses an imagined absolute fulfillment which is never absolute and so it tumbles forever towards Nothing.
In between these two polarities existence takes place.

I smell a contradiction? If it is trying to return to nothingness, how can it resist nothingness to do this?

I see all forms of ordering, (all incomplete and lacking) as drives towards the Something which disintegrates forever into nothing, producing a temporal flow.
Entropy increases, decay increases, attrition is symbolized by time flow.
An organism represents a resistance to this. Self-contained pocket attempting to become timeless and return to the state of Something which is itself incomplete but seeks its own completeness.

A singularity is not timeless/dimensionaless. It is an infinitely small point.

A theoretical singularity should not be complete. If it were it would drop out of space/time and it is inaccessible.
Perhaps infinite is the description of this inaccessibility.

For me a singularity, a black hole, is never totally out of space/time but only relatively less so.
It has approached completion, approached Somethingness, without ever realizing it because no absolutes are possible.
If they were they would cause a cascade into non-existence.

All physical matter is an incomplete approach towards Somethingness.
The denser the matter the closer it has come.

How would such a flaw of nothingness arise?

Good question.
It does not necessarily “arise” but has always been.
You are seeking a finality a prime mover again, a resolution a completion to the puzzle.

To answer that question is to approach an absolute.

You are seeking a cause because your mind thinks is sequential referencing towards a particular temporal/spatial direction.
But entropy, theoretically, flows in both directions simultaneously. We can only perceive one direction because memory is defined by ordering what is disordering not by disordering what is ordering.

The flaw represents the point at which the entropic direction begins flowing the other way.
To our mind this appears as a point out of which things come to be. A Big Bang.

For instance if we were sitting in a spaceship watching the Earth just at the North Pole a ship coming up over the horizon would appear as if it were coming out of nothing.
It would just suddenly appear.

Stop thinking of nothingness as an absolute.

There are no absolutes, remember.
We use nothing to express a concept which is unknown or shrouded in darkness.

I would argue that disorder is illogical. For in order for disorder to exist, it must itself be disordered, and thus incapable of sustaining itself, yet if such were the case, then disorder could never act as disorder, and thus, cannot be. This argument also extends to chaos.

All value judgments are comparisons.
We call disordered what is less ordered than us or our brain; what is incomprehensible to us.
That there are no absolutes means that order and disorder are relative terms with no fixed meaning. They are generalizations.

Theoretically, a flow from any direction would be possible.

Yes.
Direction here is not necessarily spatial. Space is how the mind makes things comprehensible and simplifies.
Unfortunately we can only use imprecise language.

So then the dimensions of space and the flow of time have at least some connection with a reality and are not a Kantian Category, as it were?

I believe Kant considered space and time a priori concept which the mind adds to sensual information to make sense of unknowable thing-in-itself phenomena.

Were I to speculate, I'd link it back to the geometric principle that three points of support are necessary for stability wedded to the fact that a triad is the minimum number for a group where each member can interact with the other two, can be both a cause and effect, and the only arrangement where no part is divorced from the whole in that relation.

You should add a fourth.
The destabilizing factor – Time, Change, Flux.

So then we find the Will to Power as manifested as a struggle to use what little energy there ultimately is?

Why would there be conflict if energy were infinite?

I am a determinist. But as AAF and I came to realize in our discussions in his mammoth God thread: In an existence with infinite possibilities and infinite time, though every interaction is deterministic and rigid, the capacity to predict the entire system is utterly lacking on the whole. Thus freedom, if one would care to call it such, is to be found in this overall lack of accountability for every interaction.

So, you see ‘freedom’ as a lack of responsibility for self.

If everything is pre-determined, you reason that this absolves you of all liability.

This is exactly what is attractive about absolutism, even for religious minds.
When one can claim that their actions were predetermined by something or someone else then they feel free. But it is a freedom from responsibility they sense not absolute freedom – they feel unburdened by self.
Absolute freedom would entail the opposite: complete self-responsibility.

They may be generalized, but non-specific? Perhaps "ill-defined", but not non-specific. The notion of "there", though the depth of "therehood" is remarkably shallow, is nonetheless a designation of a specific point, which though one owuld be hard pressed to give exact aspects of, is indeed exact by its underlying identity as a place to be found.

It is “exact” only in the sense that it points to a general position, derived from a shared perspective horizon.
A bacterium’s ‘there’ would be different than a whales, yet both would lack any precise meaning, since both positions would be infinitely divisible.

Infinitely means ceaselessly because there is no point there, really.
The point is nothing awaiting completion as part of a physical body (earth)

Yet even if we never remain in one place for anything but the most minute fraction of time, all motion necessitates that an infinite series of these very precise positions be passed. That they are passed in such an ephemeral time period that we can hardly calculate them means nothing more than they are swiftly passing.

Infinite means here that you can divide a point forever without reaching a finality.

This hides the fact that you are really insinuating that there is no actual point.
There are no infinite points.
These are human inventions which freeze a phenomenon in space/time by abstracting or symbolizing it.
There is only wave, flow.

Even if only a representation of the past, and a representation of something physical and real apart from what is presented in the photograph, does not this snap-shot present to us a perfect example of the reality and necessity of those moment-points which we so pass both temporally and spatially?

Physical is not fixed.
Matter is, itself, a process of becoming.
Something appears hard or substantial in relation to the observer and in relation to how their nearness to order, to being something, compares with one another.

A photo subtracts time from the equation. It also subtracts a spatial dimension and represents a flow, frozen in space/time.

Yet even flux requires such shifting to have a foundation, if only for a true moment (that is, an infinitely small point of time), in something which is not in flux. That is, successive points are never themselves an experiencer of the overall motion.

You are attracted, like any religious mind, to the notion of absolutes.
This attraction is no different than a religious mind believing in God.
It is an attraction attributable to many psychological human factors and prejudices.

Perhaps Quantum Physics hints at our human frailties.

 

[Satyr]

Prince_James

Does not the mind evolve increasingly accurate perceptions of reality? If space/time were not accurate enough at least to work with, however would the brain survive?

And there lies the magnificence of the brain.
The brain produces thoughts in enough adjustable speed to adapt and correct any detrimental imprecision.
Its generalizations and simplifications are precise enough (that is they approach the phenomenon’s state of becoming) to be successful and it perceives patterns which repeat themselves, because the universe is in a perpetual striving to order itself.
This ephemeral ordering is what patterns are.

Yet does its "actualization" at various points, entail a "falling out of time and space"?

No, because if it did the marble would have to be absolute (hard/dense).

On most things, yes. On things which would be absurd otherwise, no. To borrow from Avicenna:

Those who would deny the reality of the Law of Non-Contradiction, let them be flogged or burnt so they can understand that there is a difference betwixt being flogged and burnt and not being flogged or burned.

I would say this need only arise when one's certainty becomes an obstacle to the discovery of more complete truth. That is to say, if one closes one's mind utterly to things.

Here we must also consider common, social ‘truths’ which become harder to confront because each member sharing in it becomes the other’s support.
They share a reality and their beliefs, even if flawed or stupid, become all the more ‘absolutist’.

Masochism.

It’s a hobby, I guess.

And following this, he can truly transcend all aspects of causality that impinge upon his person, you claim?

Perhaps not all, because then we would be talking about godliness.
But most.

I would actually argue that nothingness is an absolute, specifically in that nothingness has no degrees, variety, and must be nothingness ad eterniam, as it were (although to say that nothingness is nothingness implies an existence as nothingness but it has no existence, it is simply nothingness).

Then you would be speaking about what is outside the universe or reality.

The idea of permenance being a result of or causing nothingness seems to conflict with what we know about nothingness, which has no permenance. Permenance could only seek after permenance, could it not?

I think I’ve talked about this previously.
In a universe of no absolutes Nothingness would not be absolute either.

What do you mean by this?

I mean it is man’s pursuit of the absolute, through ideals, and religions and politics and philosophy and science, which constitutes his character.
‘I am what I desire to be’ even when I fail at it.

If I want to be God’s puppet, pleading for his mercies, sacrificing on His behalf, hoping for His good favors, fearing Him as the unknown, then this characterizes me.
This is my spirit of Becoming.

The ancient Greeks had a different notion about deities and this is expressed in their art and in their philosophies and in their scientific pursuits. It represents their spirit and their legacy to us.
The Hellenes worshiped fallible, approachable gods and this enabled them to challenge them through science.
It wasn’t until the decline when Hebrew elements joined with Hellenic thought (Platonism primarily) when Christianity diverted the western spirit and made it a groveling, sniveling, shameful representation of man’s hatred for life and for himself and for what is superior.
It was the exaltation of weakness and the positing on meekness as a new virtue.
From there we get romantic love, the idealization of empathy and equality and the decline of man into femininity.

So you claim all the entities of mind being unitd in this?

Life, like I’ve said, is a self-restricting, unification of multiplicity.

If the thinking incorporates the information, how are the thoughts remembered? For there is no notion of memory in any thought, is there?

One remembers by abstracting sensual information into patterns and then storing them in a general simplified form ‘as paths of least resistance’ - as I call them.
Behavior is built on repetition which creates neuron pathways.
The more often you use them the more easily they are energized. They become familiar and easy through usage and the usage strengthens and enhances them.

Memories dissipate, a re forgotten, when they – the pathways they are represented as - are never energized.

Indeed, but what about the qualia of sight? When we see, we do not see neural firings, but real images. Where is this perceiver of sight?

Neural firings stimulate stored abstractions in the mind or they are interpreted as imagery and then stored s neural pathways.
The ‘perceiver’ is this flow of energy through the neurons, waking them and being directed through their inter-connections.
When I see I recognize what I’ve already perceived before and stored as neural pathways.
Then I notice differences and adjust the representation, storing it as a new sight.

So you claim that this mind/soul is simply a thought turned upon its comrades and thought to be lacking?

Thought is turned upon thinking and lacks the piece which is turning.
This mysterious unseen piece we call soul, or me or God or whatever.
The smaller the piece the more you know your.
The larger the unknown piece the less you do so and the more space you have to place your superstitions in.
The unknown is always where God and myth and superstition take root.

If you cannot comprehend the motives behind your actions, for example, you attribute them to Satan or God or Selflessness or Love.
All imprecise concepts often mystified into spiritual forces when they are all, simply, survival, techniques.

Haven’t you noticed this on this Forum?

The desired concept in blown into extraordinary, mysterious, comforting proportions and the mind resists enlightenment.

Yet none of these are found in thoughts, which just contain information.

Thoughts, themselves, are conglomerations of information combining and coming forth in sequential unison.

A heart beating is a physical process triggered by electrical stimulus in the twitching cardio muscle fibre.

And thinking is similarly so.

There is no sensation necessary of "heart beat". On the other hand, thoughts require manifestation within a Cartesian theatre. If none are in the theatre, then the thought can be said to rightfully not exist.

The heartbeat is stimulated by an electric impulse from the brain.
Thought is stimulated by an electronic impulse produced in our sense organs by external phenomena.

 

[Cyperium]

Satyr:

You say that if something is perfect, it has no need?

But if you were perfect, and you had people you love that weren't perfect, do you not have a need to help them to overcome their weakness?

We aren't perfect, if God loves us, don't you think He would want what is best for us? If we were perfect from the start, would it really be the same people? Maybe 'you' in essence need to start from a imperfect state in order to simply be you.

Never thought about that?

 

[Satyr]

Satyr:

You say that if something is perfect, it has no need?

But if you were perfect, and you had people you love that weren't perfect, do you not have a need to help them to overcome their weakness?

We aren't perfect, if God loves us, don't you think He would want what is best for us? If we were perfect from the start, would it really be the same people? Maybe 'you' in essence need to start from a imperfect state in order to simply be you.

Never thought about that?

Any need is an imperfection. A lack.

Please do not soil this thread with this crap.
If you do not understand believe what you like and move on.

 

[Cyperium]

Any need is an imperfection. A lack.

Please do not soil this thread with this crap.
If you do not understand believe what you like and move on.

Sorry, but you are wrong. To be perfect, is not to be a circle, or a pi, or a 1,61. To be perfect is beyond your understanding. Maybe you need some soil.

 

[Satyr]

Funny thing about brains like yours is that I do not even have to do or say anything.
You show your quality on your own.

Carry on, little one.
God will take care of you.

 

[Ophiolite]

Outsmarted again, then. Don't be too discouraged.

 

[Satyr]

Being outsmarted and called on it, sucks.

 

[Cyperium]

Ok, then...

A synoptic rough draft. {2nd draft}

-Time\Space:
The concept of change and potential.

But no change doesn't mean to not exist.

The concept of an absolute presupposes a state of completeness, stability and perfection.

It doesn't presuppose anything but stability.

I don't see why something absolute has to be perfect and complete.

You could say that it has to have evolved to that state somehow (like a systems need to stabilise itself), that doesn't mean that all absolutes must behave that way (even though I'm fairly certain some do).

The perfect has no need and, therefore, no interest and no potential - it is timeless and therefore spaceless.

And here we were...

I give you that which is perfect has no need, in that it needs something. Though from that doesn't come "no interest" and certainly not "no potential".

The number {1}, like the concept of {here} and {now}, is a non-specific generality of a theoretical singularity (absolute); it is like any other absolute, a reference to a theoretical concept of non-existence – inertia.

Why would it be a reference to a theoretical concept of non-existance?

Number {1} has meaning in that which we use it to give meaning to. Like one apple. one hand. one head. How is that a reference to a theoretical concept of non-existance? Have I missed something??

The mind conceptualizes in this way so as to become efficient and so as to make sense of what it can never completely fathom.
Reality is a hypothetical, general simplification. Its validity and success is determined by the particular mind’s ability to absorb and incorporate information into viable models.
This is why every mind has a different ability to conceptualize.

Good enough.

Existence supposes a lack - expressed as temporality/spatiality (potential). This lack is interpreted, by the mind, as need. When made conscious it is interpreted as suffering.

I don't see why existance supposes a lack. Potential is not the same as lack, even though I agree to some sense that need supposes lack, but if you have a lack, I could have a need to help you, even though I have no lack in that particular area.

Do you understand how I mean??

A phenomenon never IS but is in the process of becoming a Being.
To 'Be' is another way of expressing the same absolute singularity, mentioned before, just like 'self' is.
A singularity (Be) - if it is possible - drops out of space/time because it has achieved completion (its infinite possibilities have been absorbed into oneness) – it ceases to possess dimensions, as its potential becoming.

Well, it doesn't explain self fully...but I can see the idea, kind of.

To exist is to be in flux or projected within time/space.
To be unchanging it is to be non-existent.

Not necessarily so. Existance in itself never seem to change.

Potential is a projection of possibility in Time/Space.
To be timeless/spaceless is to be without possibility – to be without possibility is to be 'impossible'.

Time and space may not be all there is.

To be above time, and to be above space doesn't imply timeless and spaceless.

-Consciousness is a tool dedicated to becoming. It is a mechanisms which streamlines a unity's efforts and energies towards its own perfection.

To be conscious is to be, to become, is on the way to be, you say that "to be" is a wide focus? Where we haven't yet "been" fully? But been to a part.

However that is still to 'be', just not to 'be perfect'? ( )

Thinking is always in reference to the past.
When you say ‘I’, ‘Here’, ‘Now’, ‘You’ or whatever, you are referring to a sensual abstraction or simplification of an event or a phenomenon that has already past, as possibility, and is now fact as already has-been.
The past speaks about what we are because it is a running documentation narration of everything that has affected us or of our every decision and choice.
Our free-will would be a will unconcerned and unaffected by its history (no shame, no duty, no interest, no hope, no fear).

The words I have to think with, are words that I have found in the past. However I think of them 'now' where 'now' means the time that I am aware of what I think. Even if that time pass infinitly fast, there was a 'now' to me, even if that wasn't the absolute 'now' of time and space that I thought it (still, it was the 'now' for me, as I became aware of it).

We are always discovering the world, and our selves within it, in the past where it can no longer be changed.

Correct. Better do something before it is too late (some processess can stretch over periods of time, so that it can be changed before it has settled).

We cannot change the past – it is unchanging in that it has ceased possessing potential.
This past affects our future and determines it.

You say *this past* I say not.

Only 'now' (and perhaps some quantum leaps back and forward in time) have any known effect inside space-time.

The struggle for freedom – another absolute – is the struggle to disentangle ourselves from our past which determines and limits us.
It is a cutting-loose – an indifference to it.

Or to enable that past to give us more abilities and options, hence more freedom.

The past CAN be seen as a map to options, options of what you can and can't do. This gives us freedom in that it enables us to see what we can do without dangering ourselves and others.

-There is no ‘here’ or ‘now’ or ‘I’ because these are processes of coming-to-be (becoming) and not of absolute being.

Here is absolute, now is absolute, and I is absolute. It is absolute to the observer.

(Everything is infinitely divisible because everything is in reference to a possibility which is unknown and therefore assumed to be infinite and boundless)

And?

These concepts are really incomplete and therefore referring to a nothing trying to be something.

I don't agree that the concepts are incomplete (at least I don't see how they can be).

A conscious god, is therefore an absurdity.

Do you agree?

No..

 

[Satyr]

Foiled again in my self-aggrandizement.

Ophiolite, was right.
He waited and waited for someone to put me in my place and there you are.
A worthy adversary.

You are right. I am wrong.
Your challenges cannot be answered by me.
You bettered me.
There is a God, after all.

Now carry on...move along...nothing to see here.
I think Ophiolite wants to discuss something profoundly interesting with you….you meet on the same level, somehow.

 

[Megan]

Satyr,

God is not a psychological necessity.
Are you a serial killer?
So many words.. You must understand how hard it is for anyone to get your point when they can't help but start skimming over such palaver.

 

[Satyr]

Satyr,

God is not a psychological necessity.
Are you a serial killer?
So many words.. You must understand how hard it is for anyone to get your point when they can't help but start skimming over such palaver.

Then do not read it.
I cannot give you an MTV generation, ADD version.

Here is what I said in a nutshell:

Stupid …gooood.
Thinking……baaaaaad.

 

[Megan]

You don't have to be mean. I wasn't trying to offend you. "Then don't read it." was a rather lame response. I think you can do better. =D

 

[Satyr]

You don't have to be mean. I wasn't trying to offend you. "Then don't read it." was a rather lame response. I think you can do better. =D

What, exactly, do you want me to say?

I cannot condense everything for you into a short blurb.
Condensing ideas is what is wrong with this society which cannot focus on anything for longer than 2 minutes.

Nothing is gone into deep enough and it is skimmed over laconically into T.V clips.

If you cannot read it, do not read it.
Also do not comment on it.

Move on.

 

[Megan]

The only trouble I have reading all of your babble is all of the assumptions you make. And I'm sorry for misquoting you. It was "Then do not read it." not "Then don't read it."
It is not necessary for you to tell me to move on. I'll move on when I'm good and ready. =D Oh, and I will comment when it pleases me to do so.