I see world as...

Rational discussions on metaphysical and abstract topics.
Kenazis
Posts: 811
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2010 7:57 pm
Location: Satakunta - Limbo

I see world as...

Post by Kenazis »

Fra Nefastos mentioned in another topic that different people possibly see world being primarily made of thought, love (feelings), physics (body & its sensations), will (activity of centered dynamism) or just pure energy. Would be interesting to hear how people see the world (and some thoughts why they think that way if this can be explained at all)? Some ways mentioned above or somehow else?
"We live for the woods and the moon and the night"
User avatar
Insanus
Posts: 835
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2010 7:06 am
Location: Helsinki

Re: I see world as...

Post by Insanus »

What do you mean by seeing? A metaphysical stance, everyday lived experience, or a practiced way of looking (framing, understanding, like you can look at something with gentle appreciation or intense focus, intentionality and so on).
Jumalan synnit ovat kourallinen hiekkaa ihmisen valtameressä
User avatar
Nefastos
Posts: 3029
Joined: Mon May 24, 2010 10:05 am
Location: Helsinki

Re: I see world as...

Post by Nefastos »

Insanus wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 8:49 amWhat do you mean by seeing? A metaphysical stance, everyday lived experience, or a practiced way of looking (framing, understanding, like you can look at something with gentle appreciation or intense focus, intentionality and so on).

In the post Kenazis mentioned I meant one's long-term metaphysical and temperamental stance. The approach that feels, when found, the most intuitively right and striking way of seeing the universe and being. So, perhaps, all the things you listed, or something that tends to persist in their core. In the present culture, the world is explained ultimately with physical terms, but when other possibilities are found out one way or the other, such a view might – or might not – start to feel outdated, not quite hitting the spot.

Of course, in this discussion Kenazis can mean something else.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
Kenazis
Posts: 811
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2010 7:57 pm
Location: Satakunta - Limbo

Re: I see world as...

Post by Kenazis »

Insanus wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 8:49 am What do you mean by seeing? A metaphysical stance, everyday lived experience, or a practiced way of looking (framing, understanding, like you can look at something with gentle appreciation or intense focus, intentionality and so on).
This Nefastos' quote is pretty spot on "one's long-term metaphysical and temperamental stance. The approach that feels, when found, the most intuitively right and striking way of seeing the universe and being. "

With growing of knowledge, life experience and understanding this can change?

Reductionist materialism is something that is highly acceptable in our culture, even that is not as easily defended as more rational than some other views like many seem to think.

I think that what we feel/see/understand to be the "first substance" affects our whole life and how we live. Or does this sound some utter BS?
"We live for the woods and the moon and the night"
User avatar
Cancer
Posts: 258
Joined: Thu Dec 13, 2012 4:45 pm
Location: Helsinki

Re: I see world as...

Post by Cancer »

When I imagine "the fundamental structure of the world", my mind conjures up images from physics videos I watch on Youtube. So my first, reflexive answer to the thread's question would be a long, hazy explanation about quantum fields and quarks, the strong interaction and electromagnetism, etc. I really love it when physicists do popularized stuff like this, and am interested enough in it to sometimes have half-idly dreamed of starting to study math in earnest, so the more in-depth lectures and texts would be accessible to me. In another life, perhaps...

Philosophy of mind is another thing I think about when these questions come up. The best arguments I've heard against reductive materialism come from examining qualia in the mind - sensations, that is, experienced in the first person, so for example my sensation of the color blue as distinct from the physical processes in my nervous system that make it possible. I at least find it plausible that the experience of blue itself, that is directly and exclusively accessible to me - though corresponding to certain electrical impulses in the brain etc. is not one and the same as those impulses, and so is not itself physical. The experience of blueness - or of dryness, pain, a sweet taste, whatever - can also have many different physical correspondents (in the nervous systems of another person, another animal, an alien, a robot...) and still be such that we'd want to call it fundamentally the same experience, with the property of blueness shared across all instances. So there is something about blueness that cannot be explained in the language of physics, but that requires a first person experience.

(There is a very funny thought experiment about this, where "Lucy the super-scientist" has lived her entire life in a black-and-white room. Though she knows absolutely everything there is to know about wavelengths of light, functions of the eye and brain etc. it is argued that she still gains a kind of new knowledge when she steps out of the room and actually sees colors for the first time.)
Tiden läker inga sår.
User avatar
Insanus
Posts: 835
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2010 7:06 am
Location: Helsinki

Re: I see world as...

Post by Insanus »

OK! Thank you Nefastos & Kenazis for the clarification.
Kenazis wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:33 pm
Insanus wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 8:49 am What do you mean by seeing? A metaphysical stance, everyday lived experience, or a practiced way of looking (framing, understanding, like you can look at something with gentle appreciation or intense focus, intentionality and so on).
This Nefastos' quote is pretty spot on "one's long-term metaphysical and temperamental stance. The approach that feels, when found, the most intuitively right and striking way of seeing the universe and being. "

With growing of knowledge, life experience and understanding this can change?

Reductionist materialism is something that is highly acceptable in our culture, even that is not as easily defended as more rational than some other views like many seem to think.

I think that what we feel/see/understand to be the "first substance" affects our whole life and how we live. Or does this sound some utter BS?
I do think that it definitely frames your experience and the could be considered even a personal daimon or some sort of core of one's being. A "current", a trauma, a "new name".

Personally I think the "fundamental reality" is nothing meaningful to our minds and senses in itself and our daily perceptions are hallucinations are rising from the attempt to make it something comprehensible. The subjective world takes shape depending on the species-specific ways of being affected by this "chaos" , the language we have and the individually wired senses (levels of sensitivity or vulnerability in all their modalities). I believe the mystical/traumatic impossible experience is closest to touching that incomprehensible in itself and this guides my mysticism as an attempt to increase capability of experiencing.
Jumalan synnit ovat kourallinen hiekkaa ihmisen valtameressä
Kenazis
Posts: 811
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2010 7:57 pm
Location: Satakunta - Limbo

Re: I see world as...

Post by Kenazis »

Cancer wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:26 pm The experience of blueness - or of dryness, pain, a sweet taste, whatever - can also have many different physical correspondents (in the nervous systems of another person, another animal, an alien, a robot...) and still be such that we'd want to call it fundamentally the same experience, with the property of blueness shared across all instances. So there is something about blueness that cannot be explained in the language of physics, but that requires a first person experience.
Is this so? I don’t think we can speak ”fundamentally the same experience” when speaking about humans, other animals, aliens and robots. I see that it is Human consciousness that ”makes the blueness to be blue” if we don’t accept the language of the pysics to be enough. Maybe this is just a question of shared existence vs. personal experience, and where to draw the line.
Insanus wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 9:19 pm Personally I think the "fundamental reality" is nothing meaningful to our minds and senses in itself and our daily perceptions are hallucinations are rising from the attempt to make it something comprehensible. The subjective world takes shape depending on the species-specific ways of being affected by this "chaos" , the language we have and the individually wired senses (levels of sensitivity or vulnerability in all their modalities).
Little bit off topic, but it is always interesting to see/hear/read different views of people where you (at least think you) understand other’s view and point (and might even agree fully), but would explain it using different words. And from here rises the next question. How much you really then understand and agree? Like I would use ”interpretations” instead ”hallucinations”. Of course this is much to do with the context, but these two words are so different by meaning.
Insanus wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 9:19 pm I believe the mystical/traumatic impossible experience is closest to touching that incomprehensible in itself and this guides my mysticism as an attempt to increase capability of experiencing.
Could/can you open this more? It sounds that by understanding you exorcise this mystical experience, for many mystical/traumatic impossible experiences ceases to be it in the light of greater understanding. I’m pretty sure you don’t mean it that way.
"We live for the woods and the moon and the night"
User avatar
Cancer
Posts: 258
Joined: Thu Dec 13, 2012 4:45 pm
Location: Helsinki

Re: I see world as...

Post by Cancer »

Kenazis wrote: Tue Feb 22, 2022 10:38 am
Cancer wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:26 pm The experience of blueness - or of dryness, pain, a sweet taste, whatever - can also have many different physical correspondents (in the nervous systems of another person, another animal, an alien, a robot...) and still be such that we'd want to call it fundamentally the same experience, with the property of blueness shared across all instances. So there is something about blueness that cannot be explained in the language of physics, but that requires a first person experience.
Is this so? I don’t think we can speak ”fundamentally the same experience” when speaking about humans, other animals, aliens and robots. I see that it is Human consciousness that ”makes the blueness to be blue” if we don’t accept the language of the pysics to be enough.
The claim isn't that the experience is entirely the same in e.g. different species, but that a feature of it can be shared. It is conceivable to us that a being with a vastly different nervous system can also see the color blue, so blueness cannot be exhaustively described as "whatever happens in my human brain when I see the color blue". There are many different arrangements of physical matter from which an experience of blueness can arise: in analytic nerd lingo, the experience of blueness supervenes on states of various physical systems.

It could of course be said that there is still some physical trait which all of these systems share and which can thus be identified with the experience of blueness. Even if we were to imagine an alien whose equivalent of a nervous system were based in an element other than carbon (and would thus differ from ours down to the atomic level), there could still be some structural similarity which would explain that alien's experience of blueness (or equivalent thereof). There could be like a minimun requirement of light of a certain wavelength interacting with matter which reacts to it in a certain way... - Or maybe the alien would experience some other wavelength of light as "blue", or sense electromagnetic radiation in a way we wouldn't conceptualize as sight, or...

As you can see, this becomes kind of silly and complicated very fast. One of the most crucial questions seems to be whether it makes sense at all to assume that we can imagine what it is like to be something else than we are, like a non-human. And if we cannot, can I imagine what it would be like to be you? Is there an uncrossable gap in possible relatability only between species, or between different members of the same species as well? It seems that if some relatability is not assumed, the result is solipsism (which is fine by itself - a position being unintuitive doesn't mean it isn't true - but it does leave the question of how it is that I am the only being in the universe who is not a "philosophical zombie" without internal experience).

So yeah, basically this:
Kenazis wrote: Tue Feb 22, 2022 10:38 am Maybe this is just a question of shared existence vs. personal experience, and where to draw the line.
Ps. Here's a related, famous paper for those interested. I recall Nefastos doing commentary of some book by the author, Thomas Nagel.
Last edited by Cancer on Tue Feb 22, 2022 1:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Tiden läker inga sår.
User avatar
Insanus
Posts: 835
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2010 7:06 am
Location: Helsinki

Re: I see world as...

Post by Insanus »

Kenazis wrote: Tue Feb 22, 2022 10:38 am
Insanus wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 9:19 pm I believe the mystical/traumatic impossible experience is closest to touching that incomprehensible in itself and this guides my mysticism as an attempt to increase capability of experiencing.
Could/can you open this more? It sounds that by understanding you exorcise this mystical experience, for many mystical/traumatic impossible experiences ceases to be it in the light of greater understanding. I’m pretty sure you don’t mean it that way.
I do mean it like that. The impossible is impossible only in a certain set of rules and if I have to find a way to tolerate it, my own logic and way of experiencing have to change making it "lose it's status" as impossible. I can keep my rules and let "it" be impossible or question the rules and dive in a crisis. If I (or my subconscious or whatever it is that does the job) manage to reorganize myself properly, I'm born again to some extent and the (way I see the) world is as well. I think this is initiation.
The standard way of seeing the world may of course become more enchanted, more clear or mystical or something after such an ordeal, but is it "more true" in any sense of the word? Calling understanding "greater" instead of "truer" makes sense to me here. Then the understanding could be seen as a humanization of something inhuman, integration of the shadow, growing as a human being.
Jumalan synnit ovat kourallinen hiekkaa ihmisen valtameressä
Kavi
Posts: 473
Joined: Mon May 09, 2016 4:52 pm

Re: I see world as...

Post by Kavi »

Kenazis wrote: Fri Feb 18, 2022 5:48 pm Fra Nefastos mentioned in another topic that different people possibly see world being primarily made of thought, love (feelings), physics (body & its sensations), will (activity of centered dynamism) or just pure energy. Would be interesting to hear how people see the world (and some thoughts why they think that way if this can be explained at all)? Some ways mentioned above or somehow else?
I see the world... old (old)
I see the world... dead (dead)


Just kidding.
My perception is rhizomatic - it extends within and outside. We are more than we are.
Bodies extending and affects and emotions having effects on us, perceptions affecting us. We are trying to have an effect on others, on things and so on.
Maybe this is psychotic way to express it but sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint where world and I begin and end. Maybe in schizophrenia the opposite is true?

I don't know how to argue and I am not gonna get into apologetic, but it's somehow I have experienced or felt life and worlds.
It's a bit shy nod for subjective thinking and relativism(?) but I feel there are different experiences and therefore worlds.

Small comment:
it extends within and outside.
Yet I think it's also a problem because if we view world as extension of our self and don't understand how it might have it's own will and self-perception, we'll get quite in trouble. It's complicated topic. I have to think about this more.
Locked