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Tmethyl
Smear in the shale


Registered: 07/16/12
Posts: 16,431
Loc: Florida
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There is no 'outside'
#24560152 - 08/17/17 10:59 AM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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Philosophy is best defined as the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. But I rarely see any philosopher focus on these things, they typically focus on thoughts, feelings and concepts. If philosophy is the study of reality, existence and knowledge, than I'd say we are looking in all the wrong places for all the wrong answers.
If we are to honestly study the nature of existence we should first clarify and understand exactly what is the most important or integral part of existing. Wouldn't this make the most possible sense and follow the most logical path towards knowledge of existence & reality?
So, what is the most important and integral part of existing and reality and knowledge? To answer this most basic of questions, we only have to observe our own experience objectively.
The title of this thread is There is no 'outside', this may not be your own knowledge right now, but it is your own experience right now. By explaining how this thread title is actually a logical fact, this should bring us to the answer we're looking for or at least bring us closer. It's simple enough.
If you look out at the room you are sitting in right now, all you know and experience of this room is the sight of the room. So where is the room? It would be a belief and an assumption that the room is outside of you, the room and the knowing of the room are taking place inside of you only as the experience of sight. This is not a spiritual exercise, this is an exercise in your own direct experience. It is the same for all your senses and perceptions, anything you see, feel, hear, taste or smell are inside experiences. You've never once come in contact with an 'outside' world. Your entire world takes place internally and your beliefs create a sort of projection that there is something happening outside of you. The sight and feel and smell of a tree does not indicate the existence of a tree it indicates the existence of an experience of a tree, inside you. If you were to reach out and touch an object in an attempt to confirm that there is in fact an 'outside' all you would know of this 'outside' is the experience of touch. Touching is an internal experience.
What is it that all experiences and thus reality itself are made of then? They are made of the awareness of them. The awareness of an experience or sense or perception is the root of any experience. How could you have an experience you were not aware of? Nobody has ever had one. Therefore if we are to seek knowledge of the fundamental nature of existence and reality, you should start with awareness/consciousness. Without awareness there is no world, there is no subject, there is no experiences. Perhaps we should focus on the most important fact of reality, instead of focusing upon happenings that appear inside awareness, focus on awareness itself.
-------------------- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Khancious
da Crow



Registered: 12/05/12
Posts: 628
Loc: Behind Everything
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: Tmethyl]
#24560170 - 08/17/17 11:08 AM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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Eating is such a chore. I could rest in this space but I keep following instincts and impulses.
Should I go into the forest to confront my attachment to amenities and ease of survival, or transcend the hunger?
-------------------- I am that, which is.
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DieCommie

Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: Tmethyl]
#24560186 - 08/17/17 11:12 AM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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Makes sense. But honestly, isnt this kind of basic stuff? I think this idea is taken for granted often in the forum. Im not sure about "real" philosophy, as in academia and the like.
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liquidlounge

Registered: 12/22/10
Posts: 9,256
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: DieCommie]
#24560188 - 08/17/17 11:13 AM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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Tmethyl, Khancious and DieCommie. Quality people.
-------------------- As far as I assume to know...
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Tmethyl
Smear in the shale


Registered: 07/16/12
Posts: 16,431
Loc: Florida
Last seen: 1 year, 4 months
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: DieCommie]
#24560204 - 08/17/17 11:18 AM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
DieCommie said: But honestly, isnt this kind of basic stuff?
Yes, the most basic, the most simple, the most foundational, yet overlooked in every experience, overlooked by nearly every philosopher. It's analogous to a studier of Christianity leaving Jesus or 'God' out of his studies. The presence of awareness is the most important thing there is when it comes to experience, knowledge, reality, and existence. I'm merely pointing out the absurdity of this lack of basic understanding.
-------------------- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Khancious
da Crow


Registered: 12/05/12
Posts: 628
Loc: Behind Everything
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Quote:
liquidlounge said: Tmethyl, Khancious and DieCommie. Quality people. 
We love you too. As far as I assume to know
-------------------- I am that, which is.
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: Khancious]
#24560312 - 08/17/17 12:03 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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It's a pretty good point. The difficult thing is reconciling what principles awareness/consciousness falls into, or what (if any) sort of platform of objects it deals with, after it is clarified in terms of what it is not, or what it is often mistaken for. A difficult premise...
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,528
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: Tmethyl]
#24560428 - 08/17/17 01:00 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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my window is open and I hear so many things going on outside of my room. I do not need to see them or touch them.
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pur3bind
Not all who wander are frost-y


Registered: 07/16/16
Posts: 748
Loc: Plan, Plant, Planet
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Quote:
Philosophy is best defined as the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. But I rarely see any philosopher focus on these things, they typically focus on thoughts, feelings and concepts. If philosophy is the study of reality, existence and knowledge, than I'd say we are looking in all the wrong places for all the wrong answers.
Philosophy may be different in definition to everyone. Every being that exists and only knows existence or awareness and objects including itself, knows only knowing. Knowledge can play as the knowing yet it is not, so we created a word called the self or the ego. It's function is to identify with the body/mind and time, from which is always and can always be observed. Right there, human instinct is debunked. If our awareness is trivialized and constricted towards the body, it is unreliable to report from.
Awareness is awareness, such as the ego is not the ego. We call it 'ego'. The sky is not blue, because it's blue. It simply is. We are that, which is. Our name is . Don't look for the blank because nothing is neither something nor nothing. Like something is neither nothing or something. They are both as vast as time itself, and yet in all experience the one thing that has never left you is the most fundemental to what human or being is. It is here, before human. Or any beings. How could it be so hard to see? What see's?
Anything that you can perceive is an object to all seeing and perceiving.
If you were to say, "I am here, new." As if you were saying you are somewhere you've never been before. How could you say that? You have always been 'here'. That simply means you have always been aware of your experience, even in deep sleep you are not aware of your body, yet you are aware, not 'dead' from experience, awareness or consciousness. And consciousness in the waking state and dream/sleep state is easily diluted, perturbed by itself. Simply the pattern of syntax; like from the syntax challenge thread which has a funny narrative to reality Tmethyl wrote, "I keep digging in the sand, and all I keep finding is more sand." Anyway, as I was stating in the sentence before the last, Consciousness is best defined (for the purposes of what I am attempting to explain about the inexplicable) as the direct experience of memory of awareness, which means it is always fluid and can be refined in every moment.
With that being said, you as awareness is always the same. No one has consciousness, because it is not something you can possess. It has you. I could never see any valid logical argument against what Terence McKenna said when he went, “The mushroom said to me once, for one human being to seek enlightenment from another is like a grain of sand on the beach seeking enlightenment from another.” Everyone has so called "different/autonomous/unique experiences" but from an experienceless experience and it's point of view, we all share the same experience.
-------------------- "There are times— and this would be a great study for somebody to do—there have been periods in English when there were emotions that don't exist anymore, because the words have been lost. There are colors that don't exist anymore because the words have been lost." — Terence McKenna (The Archaic Revival: 1991)
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,528
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: pur3bind]
#24560595 - 08/17/17 02:24 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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interestingly, you can hear a car, it is "grrshhhhhhhh..." in the rain, out the window. if you do not see the car, someone may argue that it could have been a truck or a bus. Perception or Reality?
but you really really did hear a car from the very sound, but what if a car appeared silently right inside the room?
would you look at it with some surprise and maybe question if it is really a car - though it does look shiny - it makes no "grrshhhhhhhh..." at all.
being in the room might not help at all?
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remake


Registered: 01/05/16
Posts: 4,178
Loc: South Africa
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"All this time, I was trying to be inside everybody, when everybody was in fact already inside me"
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,818
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: Tmethyl]
#24560633 - 08/17/17 02:40 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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I agree that awareness is the fundamental nature of our experience. But is it not possible that there could be a meaningful sense of being associated with the objective world? You have addressed the subjective world, but when subject and object unite into one awareness, does not the objective, in itself, have some being as well? I, for one, believe the universe has a reality independent of my personal experience.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Tmethyl
Smear in the shale


Registered: 07/16/12
Posts: 16,431
Loc: Florida
Last seen: 1 year, 4 months
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Quote:
DividedQuantum said: I, for one, believe the universe has a reality independent of my personal experience.
Very true, it does. The world has existence independent of your personal experience. However even the person is seen by awareness, the root of the person is awareness. The person rises and falls inside awareness in the same way the sight rises in falls in the person when you blink your eyes. To awareness there is no independent reality because reality comes out of awareness like water comes out of a fountain.
-------------------- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,818
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: Tmethyl]
#24560654 - 08/17/17 02:46 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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I agree with that.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Tmethyl
Smear in the shale


Registered: 07/16/12
Posts: 16,431
Loc: Florida
Last seen: 1 year, 4 months
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In order for awareness to experience a 'world' it must first create an organism to experience it through. The body/mind is that organism, this is also why when you dream you will tend to be inside a body(sometimes not your usual body) and you will experience the 'dream world' through the 'dream body/mind'.
-------------------- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,528
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: Tmethyl]
#24560699 - 08/17/17 03:02 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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I think you are trying to force purpose into awareness
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sudly
Darwin's stagger


Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: Tmethyl]
#24561586 - 08/17/17 10:03 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
What we consciously see depends on the brains best guess of what's out there. Our experience of the world comes from the inside out, not just the outside in.
 The rubber hand illusion shows that this applies to our experiences of what is and what is not our body, and these self related predictions depend critically on sensory signals coming from deep inside the body.
Finally, experiences of being an embodied self are more about control and regulation than figuring out what's there. Perception of the internal state of the body isn't about figuring out what's there it's about control and regulation, keeping the physiological variables within the tight bounds of the compactable with survival.
 Experiences of having a body are deeply grounded in perceiving our bodies from within. Experiences of the inside are different from experiences of the body and the world outside.
Our experiences of the world around us and ourselves within it are a kind of controlled hallucinations that have been shaped over millions of years of evolution to keep us alive in worlds full of danger and opportunity, we predict ourselves into existence.
Just as we can mispercieve the world we can mispercieve our selves when the mechanisms of prediction go wrong. This opens opportunities in psychology and neurology because we can finally get at the mechanisms rather than just treating the symptoms in conditions like depression and schizophrenia.
- Anil Seth
Personally to me this thread raises a similar question to the one of, 'If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?'
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: sudly]
#24561667 - 08/17/17 10:56 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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Is that a good question to you or just rhetorical?
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sudly
Darwin's stagger


Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: Kurt]
#24561689 - 08/17/17 11:12 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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It's more like an answer to this 'no outside' thing.
Inside experiences of outside phenomena, what's so hard about that idea?
The existence of the experience of a tree is only a viable experience because there is a tree to be experienced, it doesn't appear only when it is seen.
And the answer is that it doesn't matter whether you can or can't see it the tree will exist and fall as it does independent of the human observer, and a sound will be made when this happens.
Without awareness there is a world, there are objects and there are physical things happening that could be called experiences, I mean I don't think a worm would have the same kind of awareness we as humans do though even a worm seems to be able to experience what we call a sensation when poked. I also agree with Tmethyl in a sense in that we should focus on the most important facts of reality.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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Jaegar
Formless One



Registered: 05/04/09
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Re: There is no 'outside' [Re: Tmethyl]
#24561807 - 08/18/17 01:05 AM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
Tmethyl said: In order for awareness to experience a 'world' it must first create an organism to experience it through. The body/mind is that organism, this is also why when you dream you will tend to be inside a body(sometimes not your usual body) and you will experience the 'dream world' through the 'dream body/mind'.
Awareness would be as diverse in its qualities and constitution as the many biological processes and mechanisms gave rise to it. A complex construct of mundane biological interplay.
My beef would be people assigning spiritual significance and dogma to a natural process. If you want a deeper understanding of awareness read up on neuroscience and people suffering from brain damage. Meditation and incense can only get you so far. Science the frontier of a subject philosophers may dress over but the empirical methodology is creating volumes of data and discoveries.
I think the philosophical and religious approach with fall by the wayside on the subject of awareness. Croaking from the sidelines with as much integrity as gurus pushing quantum magic.
Anosognosia is a interesting word to start off with.
Edited by Jaegar (08/18/17 01:27 AM)
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