The Metaphysics of Language

reply to post by Itisnowagain

Admit to knowing you were playing a game all along?

Maybe we'll leave that for others to discern.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
reply to post by Itisnowagain

 

Admit to knowing you were playing a game all along?

Maybe we'll leave that for others to discern.

The game is seen very clearly here.

Well friends? Another fruitful discussion. Some showed their true colors, others handled themselves with their unique wit and grace, avoiding the animal urge to attack what speaks and not what's spoken, not allowing the language of another to become sovereign over their own.

I feel joy at every refutation of my words. With every objection, concern and repudiation, I learn. With each discourse, with each challenge we present to each other, our language grows lighter, our grasp of it tighter, and we grow stronger as creators alongside each other.

We are at all times talking about the same thing differently, no right, no wrong. It's beautiful.

"LesMiserables" exit.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
Well friends? Another fruitful discussion. Some showed their true colors, others handled themselves with their unique wit and grace, avoiding the animal urge to attack what speaks and not what's spoken, not allowing the language of another to become sovereign over their own.

I feel joy at every refutation of my words. With every objection, concern and repudiation, I learn. With each discourse, with each challenge we present to each other, our language grows lighter, our grasp of it tighter, and we grow stronger as creators alongside each other.

We are at all times talking about the same thing differently, no right, no wrong. It's beautiful.

"LesMiserables" exit.

Warmth is illuminating (showing up) on reading the above post - it could be named joy or bliss or 'warmth'.
Thank you so much, for so much more than mere words.
Words appear and play a tune in what I am as what I am. The music (the one verse) that has apparent existence is not just made of words, it is just continually playing and words appear to try to capture and separate the flow.

'Being' can play the wording game in order to hide from itself and it does.
One can be lost in thought, lost in time. One plays hide and seek.
It is an absolutely astounding game. Totally awe inspiring.

This is appearing in awareness.

reply to post by Bluesma


Kashai seems to have a hard time showing respect to the people he's speaking to. Perhaps a superiority complex? He must think he's the only person who reads science related subjects.

So- you agree, language is powerful in this reality. So my pointing out that twisting his meanings, attributing ideas to him that he has not expressed, even deforming his name, may not be meaningless and benign?

I hope you're not referring to me. I took his statement on the face of it: awareness doesn't exist. I challenged that claim without going off topic and attacking his sanity, as Kashai did (and shouldn't have done).

reply to post by LesMisanthrope

I am reading this with my eyes.

Isn't that reductionist? Your eyes are consciousless organs. They take in photons from the world and the brain - the seat of your conscious awareness - processes it to make it meaningful for you.

No offense, but this is the most ridiculous philosophical conversation I have ever been involved in.

Show me this glue. Can you?

So I take it you don't take experience as empirically valid?

Because all you can do is assert. You can only say it is there. Why should I believe you? You have offered nothing convincing at all.

It convinces most people. What I've written is usually regarded as "self evident". In science terms, you're in that vast minority of philosophers who hold to a highly unreasonable and unintuitive position. Probabilistically, the odds are against you. Doesn't that mean anything? To you, I imagine it doesn't.

Please, continue slandering me if it helps get your point across.

Where did I slander you? Kashai is the one slandering you. I've tried to keep this conversation civil. Thanks for not noticing (but how could you, not having awareness and all).

reply to post by LesMisanthrope


When I described your thinking as disjointed, it wasn't an attack on you, but your thinking - which has led to this absurdist philosophical interpretation.

There is something categorically nonsensical about using awareness - the awareness that makes use of language - and then denying the presence and existence of this awareness. Then insisting that what were really doing is "using the creativity of language" - denying that the verb "use" requires an actor: an actor with conscious awareness.

To go from "eyes" -> to language creation, is ABSURD. Call this slander if you like, but it IS absurd, it is plain and obvious to anyone with a working and functioning reason.

I don't know WHAT you've read that led you down this bizarre philosophical path, but it is not in the least bit convincing. You are in the slim minority. I have never had a professor advance this argument. I have heard "consciousness doesn't exist", that it is merely an illusion of neurons, but you haven't framed your argument under any physical or materialist basis. The "eyes" don't make me conscious. They are utensils of the brain. A kitten denied vision in one eye (called monocular deprivation) during early development, will forever be blind in that eye after it pasts a point called the critical period. The eye may still be there, but the brain has "mapped over it" - neurons dedicated to that one eye have been recommissioned to other eye. So far, it's proven impossible to undo this mapping.

The brain is the seat of consciousness. But you didn't bother mentioning the brain. Instead, you don't seem to think there is anything going on in our heads, despite believing that we "create" world with our language.

Let me clarify: I DO believe that we create with language. But it's only possible because we have the awareness first. I do not think language actually CREATES what we call awareness. That is an achronological inference. Awareness is what makes my use of language feasible. Prior to language formation lies "awareness". But you of course will reply: how do I know it's awareness? Awareness is a word, granted. You seem to believe that language has an absolute creative capacity; that the things it describes only exist "in our heads". Question: does the grass exist? Is it existing beyond me, as an independent reality, or does my word "grass" give it creative existence? I think the grass exists. I think our saying "grass" is an abstraction FROM the reality of it's existence. So too with awareness. We experience awareness, and then we use our conceptual self awareness and say: awareness. It doesn't create that reality, but rather, is a shorthand abstraction of it's existence.

reply to post by Bluesma


What do you make of his "awareness doesn't exist", claim?

reply to post by LesMisanthrope


There is something supremely arrogant about this post.

At most, you gave two sentence replies to people who tried to engage you in conversation. But apparently you were never interested in any conversation: just a monologue between you and the automatons replying, thus "proving" to you the truth of your position.

You didn't learn anything from us. You just baited people into conversation without any real intention to engage them. I don't imagine you would do this in real life: not without getting everyone to hate you.

Originally posted by Astrocyte
reply to post by Bluesma

 

What do you make of his "awareness doesn't exist", claim?

I didn't see that claim before and going back to search didn't find it this time either. But then I got to the fifth page and got fed up- I need to make dinner.

Perhaps you can help me out and copy and paste his statement ?

Unless you are refering to his statements about awareness not being a thing- which I think he expressed very clearly. Awareness is not a thing, it is not an object. Even if you objectify it in your mind (make it a mental object that can be played with, described, analyzed, associated with other concepts) but it still doesn't exist. It is not a thing that exists.

I kinda would feel closer to the word being used as adjective- to describe someone or something as aware or not, to some degree or another, but an argument against that could probably be made too. This is the nature and beauty of language- it is the sculpture of mind.

reply to post by Bluesma


Lesmiserables said: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I also don't think there is a such thing as non-conceptual or conceptual awareness. I don't think there is a such thing as "awareness" either.

And unfortunately, he didn't mean it as you assumed he meant it. Just follow our conversation from that point onwards. His position is that consciousness essentially doesn't exist. All we know for certain is what we see, i.e. the hand that does the lifting, the eye that does the seeing. He doesn't trust (and he didn't even acknowledge the presence of) an actual first person subjective perspective.

I've heard this position before, but most philosophers regard it as extreme. Just because it is something that we can only know from our own subjective experience doesn't make it unverifiable. That everyone acknowledges having this perspective should suffice to prove the existence of a first person perspective.

What I take offense to is the way he conducted himself in this thread. He drew people into conversation without making an honest effort to actually explain what it is he believed. If you read over my conversation with him, he gives uncomfortably terse and curt replies to my inquiries. This makes me feel like I'm just some play-thing of his for him to "prove" - ala his final exit speech - the truth of his position. He might as well said, I'm not worth the effort (despite taking the time he took to write this piece up and stylize it with cursive, etc). This is simply not how you conduct conversations with people. It's arrogant, and, given the histrionic effect of his final post in this thread, it strikes one as a bit narcissistic. I know for certain that in real life, with real people, he'd be more careful to take their existence (and their feelings) into account.

but it still doesn't exist. It is not a thing that exists.

There is a difference between saying "it doesn't exist", and saying it doesn't exist as a thing. To say it doesn't exist despite our first person experience of it is nonsensical. It's like saying laughter doesn't exist because it isn't a thing. But it does exist AS AN EXPERIENCE.

There's no basis to deny the "existence" of something because the word existence has some objectifying effects. For the sake of clarity, we say "awareness exists". When we use the word awareness in conversation, we know exactly what were referring to. If you accidentally spilled the beer, you are thought to have acted absent mindedly - without awareness. If you spilled it with intent - if you were aware that the beer would spill - you acted with awareness.

I'm not in total disagreement with his view that awareness isn't a "thing". Awareness is far too basic a concept for it to be called a thing, perhaps. But again, one could counter: is water a thing? Water is a thing, in that it is different from land, from fire, from empty space. All these "things" can defined as having properties of some sort that can be differentiated from other "things". LesMiserables (who has triumphantly existed this conversation) would probably retort: but this is all the activity of language. So? Doesn't thinking precede the formation of language? And where does thinking occur, if not a self consciously aware mind? Self conscious awareness mediates the formation of language. LesMiserables would counter (ad infinitum, as there is no hope of convincing him otherwise) "what is this awareness". The fact that he is using it while he reads my words and reasons his reply is not enough of a proof for him. Experiences, like laughter, love, sadness, pain, suffering, these are in themselves beyond the scope of 'thingness'. So long as they are essentially felt, they can't be "pinned down" by the conceptual mind as things. But in terms of "existing" - the definition of which "The fact or state of living or having objective reality.", awareness has this quality. It therefore exists.

This is the nature and beauty of language- it is the sculpture of mind.

What possible argument could be mounted against consciousness? Take animals. They don't have language that "creates". If you throw a dog treat in front of a dog, will it not perk up, become aware of it, and go towards it? Or does the external perspective not suffice to prove the existence of an actual awareness? I think it is unproductive, useless, to bother with the casuistry of considering the possibility that perhaps animals don't possess awareness, and what we see is merely an automatic process (what other alternative to awareness could there possibly be to account for their behavior?!)

Originally posted by Astrocyte

There is a difference between saying "it doesn't exist", and saying it doesn't exist as a thing. To say it doesn't exist despite our first person experience of it is nonsensical. It's like saying laughter doesn't exist because it isn't a thing. But it does exist AS AN EXPERIENCE.

There's no basis to deny the "existence" of something because the word existence has some objectifying effects. For the sake of clarity, we say "awareness exists". When we use the word awareness in conversation, we know exactly what were referring to. If you accidentally spilled the beer, you are thought to have acted absent mindedly - without awareness. If you spilled it with intent - if you were aware that the beer would spill - you acted with awareness.

I experience, and yet I don't feel it accurate to say the experience "exists". I also am not into the claim that one can be sure of things existing because they have experienced them. Even down to the most simple of claim (this keyboard exists) I cannot be sure of. To be accurate, I'd have to say, I am having and experience of a keyboard. But that doesn't mean much. I have had experiences just as clear and defined as this one, of things that "do not exist", so .... *shrug. *

I don't delve into this as much as you and he would like to, I am aware. I guess I stop at an early point. I don't want to get dragged into that. It seems like a waste of time. Coming from a family of philosophers, I have certain predjudices... I think people can get too involved in those for their own good. I tend to have a reflex at certain points to back off and not focus too intently.

-But in your example of the spilling? You are refering to "intent" not "awareness", aren't you? Do you consider those as the same experience?

This is the nature and beauty of language- it is the sculpture of mind.


What possible argument could be mounted against consciousness?

Here's an example of twisting what I wrote. I wrote that an argument could be mounted against using "aware" only as an adjective.

Take animals. They don't have language that "creates". If you throw a dog treat in front of a dog, will it not perk up, become aware of it, and go towards it? Or does the external perspective not suffice to prove the existence of an actual awareness? I think it is unproductive, useless, to bother with the casuistry of considering the possibility that perhaps animals don't possess awareness, and what we see is merely an automatic process (what other alternative to awareness could there possibly be to account for their behavior?!)

I can't grasp your point here, but that is probably because it is Four AM (I couldn't sleep) and my mind is groggy.
I cannot imagine animals or plants, for that matter, as not conscious at all, because they have movement and reaction to exterior. They have nervous systems. They are, therefore, conscious or aware.

Unless you are getting into different types of consciousness, such as self consciousness, or awareness- a conceptual separation between a self and non-self, which I think can be more or less experienced by entities.
I suspect plants do not at all, and only some animals do.

But I still don't feel like "possessing awareness" is accurate. But that's me, and my own perception, and I don't even know for sure that I or you or animals actually do exist- I can only claim an experience which suggests they do.

reply to post by Bluesma

I experience, and yet I don't feel it accurate to say the experience "exists". I also am not into the claim that one can be sure of things existing because they have experienced them.

Just so I'm understanding you correctly. You acknowledge the existence of awareness as a subjective phenomena, correct? After all, ethnology (which is what I think you're involved in), all the branches of psychology, are about analyzing features of conscious and unconscious awareness from the outside. So we DO, in practice, acknowledge the existence of awareness. Society simply couldn't function without making this jump.

What you seem to be challenging is the objective existence of awareness.

To be accurate, I'd have to say, I am having and experience of a keyboard. But that doesn't mean much. I have had experiences just as clear and defined as this one, of things that "do not exist", so .... *shrug. *

Do you suffer from a mental illness? No dream I have ever had has caused me to question the validity of my conscious awareness. Also, doesn't a dream "exist", to me? Isn't it stored in my brains memory? Hasn't it been integrated into my self - since it emerged as a reflection of some life experience?

I find it incredibly odd that someone could question the existence of awareness and yet use it every moment that he or she is awake.

-But in your example of the spilling? You are referring to "intent" not "awareness", aren't you? Do you consider those as the same experience?

No, obviously they are different. My point was, there is a mind present to the spilling water.

Awareness itself is a precursor to intent. Without awareness, there cannot be intent. And since were walking down logic road - without awareness, and without intent, there cannot be language creation. Awareness -> Intent -> Speech. Sometimes, as in a Freudian slip, awareness goes straight to speech. But in ALL cases, there is awareness.

LesMiserables was a little sloppy and brief in explaining his position. I know he would definitely challenge some of my assumptions here, but seeing he has absconded, I'm speaking about him to you for the sake of carrying on this conversation. hehehe.

I'm passionate when I speak - or write. But I'm also good natured, cheerful, and try not to take my philosophizing too too seriously. I keep enough of a buffer between my thinking mind - with my interests in science, philosophy, psychology - by playing sports, hanging out with friends and family etc. I'm only writing this so you get an idea of where I'm coming from where I write. This IS, indeed, a strange conversation to be having. I'm quite beyond it. I assume, just as well all assume, that the bodies we speak to day in and day out have conscious awareness. It wouldn't be possible if we didn't.

Here's an example of twisting what I wrote. I wrote that an argument could be mounted against using "aware" only as an adjective.

I misunderstood, sorry. I'm not trying to "twist" anything. I'm simply trying to understand.

Adjectives describe words. Does awareness describe reality? Doesn't an adjective need a subject? Whose doing the "describing" of reality? An "I" must have the awareness to describe the thing thought or spoken about. Even in our own heads, there is this three pronged process: the I that speaks, the words spoken, and the self which hears itself speak.

Earlier, I mentioned the bifurcation of the conscious mind by psychologists into conceptual self awareness and embodied self awareness. The fact that we can even agree on the same terminology, and a consistent definition, means that whats being described must actually exist, albeit, subjectively. Lesmiserables flat out said that these distinctions don't exist. He then went further and said awareness itself doesn't exist.

As someone who spends his days working in the field of neuroscience and psychology, this is a tad bit preposterous. I don't know what Lesmiserables may have actually meant, since he left without clarifying his position. But if he did mean it as he said it, It's hard not to sympathize with the poster who called him insane.

It is one thing to challenge the objective existence of something - for instance, to acknowledge the "illusory" nature of it, and quite another to doubt it's existence - presence, manifestation, detection - altogether.

I cannot imagine animals or plants, for that matter, as not conscious at all, because they have movement and reaction to exterior. They have nervous systems. They are, therefore, conscious or aware.

Yeah, you must have misunderstood. No problem, it's late where you are.

I definitely acknowledge the presence of consciousness in animals. Plants? That's more debatable, though I am open to the suggestion that plants might possess a "consciousness", not in a sentient way, but in a extremely rarefied sense. Some philosophers (who I think might be on the right track) conjecture that consciousness might be an essential aspect of nature. Meaning, not only do humans, animals, and plants have some type of consciousness, but even the very particles they are made of - atoms, etc - must have some mental component as well. Thomas Nagel calls this reductive monism.

and only some animals do.

When I read on the porch, as I did today, I let my dog Maggie sit outside with me. She always goes to the very edge of it (she's 4, so still very curious) and starts sniffing. She knows I wont let get go off without my permission. It's been beaten (metaphorically) into her. But you know what she does? She surreptitiously moves closer, step by step, hoping I wont notice, until she's at the very bottom. I'm angry, of course, because she's being disobedient. But my pleasure in watching her engage in such a human-like act of deception makes me forget all about it.

Originally posted by Astrocyte


Just so I'm understanding you correctly. You acknowledge the existence of awareness as a subjective phenomena, correct?

Yes, I guess so.

After all, ethnology (which is what I think you're involved in), all the branches of psychology, are about analyzing features of conscious and unconscious awareness from the outside. So we DO, in practice, acknowledge the existence of awareness. Society simply couldn't function without making this jump.

I seem to have interest in that particular area, yes, I hope I have not mislead anyone into thinking I am a professional of any type though. I tend to analyze MY psychology- my own inner life. For others, I tend to analyze their behaviors.
What "we" do, I am not concerned about. I am speaking for myself only here- this is my personal viewpoint.

Do you suffer from a mental illness? No dream I have ever had has caused me to question the validity of my conscious awareness. Also, doesn't a dream "exist", to me? Isn't it stored in my brains memory? Hasn't it been integrated into my self - since it emerged as a reflection of some life experience?

I find it incredibly odd that someone could question the existence of awareness and yet use it every moment that he or she is awake.

I do not know if I suffer mental illness. I have had experiences that you may call a dream if you like, but they were not of the same type of sensual experience as most dreams- they were as any normal everyday experience, except with elements that "we" claim do not exist. So I assumed I must be mentally ill and went to TWO mental health professionals, who both could not find any mental illness. So. "We" must not have all the answers- because either the things don't exist and I am sick, or I am not sick and they do exist. In either case, the traditionally accepted concepts are not working there, either in physics or psychology.

So I have decided to no longer worry about the question. It doesn't matter. I may be mentally ill, but I am not hurting anyone and lead a successful and productive life, or there are things that exist that the majority of academia do not acknowledge. Who cares.

No, obviously they are different. My point was, there is a mind present to the spilling water.

Awareness itself is a precursor to intent. Without awareness, there cannot be intent. And since were walking down logic road - without awareness, and without intent, there cannot be language creation. Awareness -> Intent -> Speech. Sometimes, as in a Freudian slip, awareness goes straight to speech. But in ALL cases, there is awareness.

Awareness is.... but is it "there"? Here? Now? Or a second ago?

Adjectives describe words. Does awareness describe reality? Doesn't an adjective need a subject? Whose doing the "describing" of reality? An "I" must have the awareness to describe the thing thought or spoken about. Even in our own heads, there is this three pronged process: the I that speaks, the words spoken, and the self which hears itself speak.

Adjectives are words, words can be used to describe experience... we use them to vehicle parts of experience from a "self" to an "other".

Yet- take away language, and you can have experience merging of these two separate entities, or of self and non-self, which invalidates that distinction. So the subject (I) is perhaps formed through the usage of language.
But all I disagree with is the language which talks of awareness as a thing which can be had or possessed, rather than a state of experiencing, or being.

But I don't claim to speak for Misanthrope, and your disagreement with him is not anything I can help you with.
I didn't feel the same sort of disregard and disrespect you did. But I saw people re-wording what he said, (as was done to me) and then arguing with their own wording, which is sometimes just silly, but sometimes ends up making readers think that is what he said.
I have it happen to me, where someone did that, and EVEN once we straighten it back out, and even if the person acknowledges they made a mistake or misunderstood, you get readers for pages thinking I did say it and they want to argue it. So I have a learned reflex to object when the (accidental or not) twisting starts to happen in threads.
I have also learned that others also, saw how this works and have used it with intent, in cases where they wish to influence negatively the impressions others have of someone.

Originally posted by Bluesma

Awareness is.... but is it "there"? Here? Now? Or a second ago?

Awareness is constantly present - it is timeless. It is never not here.
Here (whatever that is) appears in awareness. These words on the screen are appearing in awareness.

Here and now is where the appearance appears so awareness is always here and now - present.

Seeing and hearing, touching and tasting are all happening now - they cannot be happening any other time.

You (awareness) cannot ever be away from the present - you (awareness) can imagine another time but the imagining always happens now.

reply to post by Itisnowagain


That is exactly my point. The idea that one can possess it, and that it exists in the past or future, over there, is all speaking in a way that doesn't feel accurate.

But I won't say anything further with you, because you are the perfect example of how word games can go in endless circles....

I do "get" what you are refering to, but I think putting it in words invalidates it. So I prefer not to try.
It is a perversion. I'll stick to describing the illusion, because language is made for and part of that illusion.

Originally posted by Bluesma
reply to post by Itisnowagain

 

That is exactly my point. The idea that one can possess it, and that it exists in the past or future, over there, is all speaking in a way that doesn't feel accurate.

Awareness cannot be possessed and I have never implied it can. I have never said it exists in the past or future or over there.

Originally posted by Itisnowagain


Awareness cannot be possessed and I have never implied it can. I have never said it exists in the past or future or over there.

I didn't say you did. I had been posting to someone else, who was arguing the choice to use vocabulary which uses the term "awareness" as if it was an object- a thing. He uses words like "Possess awareness" or "pointing out where awareness might be or not be.
You came in on that, and I even pointed out -you and I are saying exactly the same thing.

This is MY problem with you-
We basically agree, you and I. I can and do experience what you are always trying to put into words and provoke others to experience.

Not only do I think they cannot do that if they are using language at the same time, (which defeats your purpose )

But that no matter where I place myself you claim to be on the other side. You act as if we are not agreeing, we are opposing each other! You avoid sincere communication as an individual with another individual, at all costs.
We have gone in circles upon circles that way before.


Ill tell you what- When people systematically choose to oppose and differenciate from others, it is ego. It is the part that desires to not merge with the world. It often does so out of fear- fear of intimacy, fear of getting hurt.

Sometimes peoples search for spiritual enlightenment is simply that motive- to avoid and run from the possibility of discomfort. It can be reached- but the price is that you have to do this damned running from sincere exchange with the exterior all the time. You have to continually make sure that no one likes you.

I am sure you will now tell me there is no individual behind the thoughts and words that carried them, in the posts attributed to "Itisnowagain". They happened of their own accord, and there is no self.
Hide behind the couch. Go ahead. But don't think nobody knows your there, and that you are scared of being a real boy, because real boys can get hurt.


But they can also have friends and be cared about and experience joy.

Originally posted by Bluesma
reply to post by Itisnowagain

 

But I won't say anything further with you,

Ok.