The Metaphysics of Language

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope


If it is not a thing, quit calling it one.

When did I call 'awareness' a thing?

reply to post by Itisnowagain

When did I call 'awareness' a thing?

Listen, I don't think it's a thing either, but every time you say "awareness", which is a noun, you imply that it is a person, place or thing. If it is not a noun, or it is not a thing, you should stop implying it is a thing.

The Metaphysics of Language. Every time you say "it" you imply something, not nothing. Every time you say "is" you assert something, not nothing. Every time you call something a noun, you imply something, not nothing. If "awareness" is not a thing, then there is not a thing to talk about.

When you say something, a noun, "is" nothing, you contradict yourself by talking about "it". If it is not a thing, if it is not an "it", if it cannot "is", then it is not a noun.

Non-conceptual awareness is itself a concept, which makes it conceptual awareness. If you can conceive of it, it is not non-conceptual in the slightest.

The reason we can talk about awareness is because it is a concept. That's all it is and ever will be unless it has something concrete we can relate it to. If it's a concept about nothing, then nothing is all you're ever talking about.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope


I consider that poster a troll at this point. It is a waste of time to discuss with him.
He wants to delve into the non-linear state of experience, and yet use language at the same time, and it is not possible, and it just goes in circles.

"I don't want to perceive anyone as existing, so I will go out and find others to say this to."

reply to post by LesMisanthrope

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.

hmmm. That's difficult to take in.

What I wrote above was a description of two very different - ontologically different - experience states. Do you deny that there is a difference between them? If so, why, and what are you reducing them to?

To put these two states into different terms: what psychologists call embodied self awareness (aka subjective emotional present) is living in the 'flow' of time. There is no awareness of conceptualizing in this state. You're immersed in a feeling state, and it is through this state that you act. The 'thinking' mind, or conceptual mind, doesn't bud in. Emotions flow in and out at their own will. Conceptual self awareness is the opposite of this state. This is the internal dialogue: thinking "about" this or that. It's about objectifying things, holding them in the minds awareness - suppressing the flow of unbridled emotion.

These two states produce very different types of experience - AND awareness.

As for awareness itself: can I not choose to become aware of anything at any particular moment? How can you possibly say that awareness doesn't exist when I can direct the spotlight of my attention anywhere: to the T.V - to space ships - to video games - ankles. I can choose any of these ideas, focus on them, and Walla! I'm exhibiting the existence of awareness in a controlled and empirical manner.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope


There is something incredibly unproductive about what you're doing. Deconstructing language for the sake of "proving" that nothing language speaks of actually exists is a tad bit ludicrous. "Logically", your linear thinking makes "sense". But the conclusion is so absurd, so contrary to experience, that it has to be vetoed.

I think this comes to prove - at a thought experiment level - the limits of logical linear thinking. There is a "whole" that cannot be reconciled to the parts which make it up. When I say "awareness", I am giving a name to something that objectively EXISTS. My language may be "arbitrary", in the phonetic sounds used to describe the reality, but the reality itself, the concept of "awareness", exists. If I were to follow your train of thought, the one you described above, awareness could be shown to be 'non-existent'; but that would fly in the face of a rudimentary experience.

Our sciences can describe parts of a system - it can call this "biology", "chemistry", "neuroscience", "quantum mechanics", but there is such a disjunction between each of these fields that it would be impossible to reconcile them within a logically coherent "theory of everything". YET, we acknowledge that the things described by each of these fields has scientific validity: they are dependable approximations of observable facts. So, our sciences are ABLE to describe processes at work within a particular field. But extending that logic to "describe everything" is logically impossible, constrained by waves-particles, classical-quantums, atomic processes-gravity. Theres such incredible complexity to the system that our itty bitty finite minds can never hope to understand the whole. But we CAN come to understand a big and ever greater chunk of it.

This parenthesis was for the purpose of demonstrating the limits of logic in "trying to understand" the whole. Terms like awareness, cognition, conceptualizing, are arbitrary creations; but they describe REAL things. To employ logic to it's "logical end" is worthless, because not even logic can understand everything. Intuition fills the picture: intuition, leads us to the "promised land".

Sometimes, the best logic can do is limit itself to what we know from experience. If our conclusion does not correlate with experience, that the "logic used" is a bad logic.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
reply to post by Itisnowagain

 

When did I call 'awareness' a thing?

Listen, I don't think it's a thing either, but every time you say "awareness", which is a noun, you imply that it is a person, place or thing.

I don't imply any thing.

You said that to contemplate 'being' is to just think about a word - is that all 'being' is to you, just a word?

reply to post by Astrocyte


Why is this conclusion absurd? All you can do is make claims that it exists but are an able to produce or provide anything called awareness. You've done nothing but asserted that there is this awareness and that it objectively exists, while not being able to provide any reason to believe it does. So until that time, your conclusion is not only absurd, but is both linearly and non linearly unintelligable.

If it objectively exists, you should be able to describe what, how, and where this thing or substance exists. But I have heard people only ever describe themselves when defining awarenes. Most of my threads end up with folks asserting awareness as fundamental, but it only ever exists in their words, and no where besides.

Maybe you can outdo your fellow advocates and show me this awareness?

reply to post by LesMisanthrope

Awareness is awake right now. It is always and already present. Awareness is prior to anything you think about yourself or life or even about the awareness itself.
kiloby.com...

I googled "The Metaphysics of Language" and found this.

"My dear friend, never succumb to the temptation of wanting to take conceptual possession of this 'brahman' or 'sat', to concretize and stratify it, to conceive of it as an 'Id' or as the 'collective unconscious' and to give it a structure by means of abstractions of pictorial images and ordering powers. All these are definitions from the restricted viewpoint of an intellect that fragments reality, calculates it and objectives it. Only for such an intellect is the ultimate reality of man something assembled from disparate individuals or psyches, something collective and something of which it, the intellect, can know nothing and can not be conscious. It is, however, more in accord with the facts to speak, not of a 'collective unconscious' but, rather, of an undivided, all-inclusive knowledge. But let us drop all this pinning of labels, and let us follow the far greater and wiser course exemplified so often by India's best spirits. Let us master ourselves to the point of, for once, not wanting to take possession of anything. Let us, rather, allow 'brahman' simply to occur, in the pristineness of its mystery, and let us adopt the course of enduring it as such and of keeping ourselves open to it. The whole game is lost from the outset if we seek to manipulate 'brahman' by means of our concepts. To be sure, something has to happen, not with it, however, but with us. We have to open up our selves and allow our being to become clear-visioned. We must do this to such an extent that our spiritual constitution becomes truly worthy of the 'brahman' nature and is in accord with it. Then it is 'brahman' or 'sat, for its part, that addresses and grants us the truth of its entire reality, without our having to do anything further about it. For this reason the Indian thinkers have never tried to work out qualitative definitions of 'brahman' or 'sat'. They have always stressed that at the very most our thoughts should circle about it on the 'neti-neti path', i.e. by the negation of its substantiality and qualitativeness, by saying: 'It is not that, not this and not that other thing.' www.hermes-press.com...

reply to post by Itisnowagain


It seems to me that the OP would have us think that language is the end of the road. Nothing to see here, move along.

But it's about going off-road. Going liminal. It's about the transition from conceptual to supra-conceptual. Only a contemplative can make that transition.

Of course I would expect anyone well versed in metaphysics and mysticism to know that. Which is why I'm not surprised to see this thread from this OP.

reply to post by BlueMule


I am a little confused - what do you mean when you use the term 'supra-conceptual'? Do you mean what is termed 'the ego'? Or do you mean 'non conceptual'?

reply to post by BlueMule


I googled 'supra conceptual awareness' and it makes sense now - google is my friend.
www.speakingtree.in...
It is very interesting.

reply to post by BlueMule

It seems you misread. But I wouldn't expect anyone of mystical persuasion to understand anything but what pleases their own hopes and desires. It's sort of interesting that one of such mystical sensibilities, those who also claim esp and promote psy, is nonetheless incapable of conjuring a single arrgument besides their knee jerk reaction.

That says a lot.

reply to post by Itisnowagain


I seem to recall you saying thoughts are also present. Do they happen at another time? Tell me what precedes the present?

reply to post by LesMisanthrope


If you are not aware right now, what are you?

The reason you cant say awareness is a thing, is because it requires multiple things and it is a constant movement,process and event?

Does a moving car exist? Is a moving car a thing? Is moving a thing? would you deny the existence of movement?

Air is a thing right? Is wind a thing?

In all sincerity LM it sounds like you are trying to rationalize and obsession.

reply to post by ImaFungi


No where did I say I wasn't aware.

reply to post by Kashai


I would say the same of you. Sincerely.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope


Let me get this strait you feel I am obsessed because I think things are things??????

You say that language proves otherwise and that should make sense to me????

That is a bunch of baloney.

Any thoughts?