Define "being"

@Aedes,

Aedes;19327 wrote:

So existence is dependent upon what humans think, not what humans are?

Where is the line between 'who we are' and 'what we think' (we are)?
I suggest they can certainly be one and the same.
Can our Perception of existence not be one and the same with the existence Perceived?
Mutually arising?

@Zetherin,

Zetherin wrote:

Our "being" is nothing more than our conscious perception of this reality.

That's fine for me, but I merely suspect consciousness in others so they might not have 'being'.

@nameless,

nameless wrote:

Where is the line between 'who we are' and 'what we think' (we are)?
I suggest they can certainly be one and the same.
Can our Perception of existence not be one and the same with the existence Perceived?
Mutually arising?

There are no lines in reality. What we are and what we think, and how we think are all together. Simply said; we are that we concieve of ourselves. We walk up right. We make tools; but what we mainly do is concieve. We are as much as we can form conceptions of the reality around us, and so abstract knowledge from reality; and we are remade, and recreated, and reproduced out of the knowledge of humanity. It is easy to say we are because we are conscious of being, but consciousness depends upon our ability to abstract our being from the background of reality.

@Fido,

Fido;20838 wrote:

but consciousness depends upon our ability to abstract our being from the background of reality.

I don't see this.
'Consciousness' simply is. Our 'existence' is within 'Consciousness' (the Ground of all Being), as Perspective (of Mind). 'Consciousness' does not depend on anything.
Perhaps you mean 'ego' is our abstracted 'self' from 'else'...

@nameless,

nameless wrote:

I don't see this.
'Consciousness' simply is. Our 'existence' is within 'Consciousness' (the Ground of all Being), as Perspective (of Mind). 'Consciousness' does not depend on anything.
Perhaps you mean 'ego' is our abstracted 'self' from 'else'...

You say it, now prove it. We presume consciousness of animals, but without the means to abstract the experience, and to put it into words, you don't know, and we don't know. So what is consciousness if we are not conscious of being conscious? We do have some evidence of a time when people really were not conscious. If they had an audio hallucination, they put its source outside of their minds, and their being. Their subconscious minds may have been trying to send a message of sorts into consciousness, and perhaps could only do so in dramatic fashion. And clearly there are many people hanging on to life with limited consciousness. How do you percieve people who are less conscious? How do you percieve people who are more conscious? I think knowledge is essential to consciousness because without it we are at a loss to tell one experience from the next, and one phenomenon from the next, or even one season from the next. What ever consciousness is in total, a large part of it is abstraction, because that is how we remember, know, and experience. Thanks

@Fido,

Ho hum! Consciousness is the formalised process of perception. After we have taken in sensory information provided by the perceptual apparatus of the body we translate it into another from of comprehension which occurs in the brain and hence the mind. You want you could say that bodily perception which we know as feelings are the consciousness of the body, while not instigating any form of split or mind body duality, the cognitive process which occurs in the brain and registers in the mind, that organ of though and language then takes over in relation to what is perceived, its a process of translation, feel first think second.

The body as a sensory organ perceives the world through sense perception eg touch sight(should I go on here) and then within the brain where the function of what we know as consciousness resides the mind, the ephemeral organ or constellation of process which engage with the information provided to it through the sensory process and its subsequent translation into thought, which is a linguistic process and it is within the brain which interprets the information that mind as the functional entity of consciousness emerges.

The function of consciousness is to make some sort of discernible comprehension of the world in which we live and enable us to engage with the world.

Or should we go backwards and engage in some form of Cartesian debate over the mind body split.

@Fido,

Fido;20888 wrote:

nameless wrote:

I don't see this.
'Consciousness' simply is. Our 'existence' is within 'Consciousness' (the Ground of all Being), as Perspective (of Mind). 'Consciousness' does not depend on anything.
Perhaps you mean 'ego' is our abstracted 'self' from 'else'...

You say it, now prove it.

Hahaha... quaint.
'Prove' that this is 'my/this' Perspective?
Unnecessary...

Quote:

We presume consciousness of animals, but without the means to abstract the experience, and to put it into words, you don't know, and we don't know.

We presume?
All Perspectives are 'Conscious'. That is what 'we' are, Conscious Perspective (= Soul). Any Perspective.
Perspective is/of Consciousness.

Quote:

So what is consciousness if we are not conscious of being conscious?

There is no ('objective') 'definition' of Consciousness. It is ineffable. It has no 'qualities', no 'nature', no 'context', no 'existence'. Existence exists within Consciousness (as Perspective).

Quote:

We do have some evidence of a time when people really were not conscious.

No we don't.

Quote:

If they had an audio hallucination, they put its source outside of their minds, and their being.

What do you consider a 'hallucination'? 'Seeing' something that someone else doesn't?
Is the blind man feeling and describing the elephant that he 'sees' as a long snakelike creature hallucinating, according to the blind fellow feeling (seeing) the leg and declaring the elephant to be 'treelike'?

Quote:

Their subconscious minds

I have seen no evidence of anything that would be an analogy of a 'subconscious mind', in 'this' universe, this Perspective.

Quote:

And clearly there are many people hanging on to life with limited consciousness..

All Perspectives are necessarily 'limited/incomplete' to one extent or another. So, I'd say that we are all "people [living] with limited [POV]"

Quote:

How do you percieve people who are less conscious?

Some Perspectives are more 'limited in scope' than others. All Perspectives are necessary for a full and Complete 'picture' to Consciousness. The tiniest of Perspectives are, therefore, of as great an importance as the 'largest', for a complete 'awareness' of existence/Mind.

Quote:

How do you percieve people who are more conscious?

Your terminology, and my using it, confuses the issue. There is a whole continuum of 'Conscious Perspective', us. We are all on that continuum, in many different 'places'!

Quote:

I think knowledge is essential to consciousness because without it we are at a loss to tell one experience from the next, and one phenomenon from the next, or even one season from the next. What ever consciousness is in total, a large part of it is abstraction, because that is how we remember, know, and experience. Thanks

I see 'knowledge' as the sum total of ('believed') memory, at the moment.
Every moment has us 'new', with 'new' memory, new 'universe'. Arising with that is the perception/feeling of 'continuity'; that 'memory' is actually 'related' to anything other than itself.
Considering the terms and meanings that you use, I can see how you come to the understandings that you do (at the moment), 'your' Perspective.
Perhaps now you can understand, somewhat, 'this' Perspective, as well.
Peace

@nameless,

Good luck with this....you might want to read up on ontology from Kant to Schopenhauer to wittgenstein. There is such a thing as Formal Ontology now which concerns itself with thought mapping and categorization. It is a branch of information sciences. Essentially it is a systematic categorization of everything that can be represented informationally. General application would be in A.I. Interesting stuff.

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

. . . use of the term ACTION, the physical world is man's motivation to reaction, not ACTION . . .

Would it be excessive to suggest here that two things are going on, one being response as any organism responds to environment and the other being action, the first being passive, the second being intelligent choice?

@Fairbanks,

Fairbanks wrote:

Would it be excessive to suggest here that two things are going on, one being response as any organism responds to environment and the other being action, the first being passive, the second being intelligent choice?

The second, Intelligent choice is only a formalization of the first: Response. Which I would call simply, reaction. For human beings, our survival depends, and has always depended upon our ability to step back, and abstract our problems so we could deal with them in peace and anticipate them in advance. That is what being is to us. There are a lot of living beings which are not so complex, or able to abstract reality. When deer see a man they run, and if one should get caught in a fence it hops and flops like a fish in a net and tries to run until it breaks something, or until some one, or some other animal kills it. They don't have a method for dealing with problems logically, and for this reason people eat deer, and deer don't eat people. And dats da troof.

@Zetetic11235,

Zetetic11235 wrote:

Good luck with this....you might want to read up on ontology from Kant to Schopenhauer to wittgenstein. There is such a thing as Formal Ontology now which concerns itself with thought mapping and categorization. It is a branch of information sciences. Essentially it is a systematic categorization of everything that can be represented informationally. General application would be in A.I. Interesting stuff.

Smart Monkay! There is only one Ontology, and it is formal enough. I have tried to follow Kant through a whole process of achieving finite knowledge. I don't know how anyone could go about proving the steps Kant seems to think the mind goes through in learning. In any event, too many details ruins the narative. I see that we know by way of forms, and we also relate by way of forms. How the forms come into being does not interest me as much as how people test their forms against reality, which is a non stop process in itself. So, I never begin my story with creation or the tree of knowledge. I always pick up the thread where Adam and Eve, are evicted, and sitting on the curb, and Adam says: Geez, you're kind of cute; can I buy you a beer? And Eve shakes her head, and rolls her eyes, and thinks: Esshole!, But she says: Sure, why not? Am I leaving anything out?

@Fido,

I would say that logical form is explicit in everything, as the mind is physical and thus so are logic and conciousness. Therefore the physical universe has the property of being concious, as we are clearly of the physical universe and have this property.

Why is it not that a posteriori is in no way separate from a priori? They are of the same, they are part of the same, they are indeed the same! Logical form is implicit in what is the case, what is the case is an organizatonal prompt for the brain, which is an organizational organ in one mode of its function.

The tendency of man to organize is natural and of the physical. The physical has the property of conciousness unless man is supernatural, somthing which we have no grouds to believe and no means to prove, as all which is provable is relational, and we can only apply the physical when attempting to meter anything as all things which can be measured are physical.

Physical/relational form is a part of the brain, as the brain is of the same nature as all which is in the physical and subject to the same limits of form. We can only understand that which reveals itself through relation and interaction, which is everything that is the case. The relational form of somthing which can be assembled in the mind may or may not mirror somthing external to the mind, however it is the physical case not matter what as it occurs in the mind, which is physical. Logcial/relational mapping of space thus must be repeatitive and thus pattern based. Understanding in the sciences is entirely based on making explict the pattern of relation between physical phenomena in order to exploit it.

@Zetetic11235,

Zetetic11235 wrote:

I would say that logical form is explicit in everything, as the mind is physical and thus so are logic and conciousness. Therefore the physical universe has the property of being concious, as we are clearly of the physical universe and have this property.

Why is it not that a posteriori is in no way separate from a priori? They are of the same, they are part of the same, they are indeed the same! Logical form is implicit in what is the case, what is the case is an organizatonal prompt for the brain, which is an organizational organ in one mode of its function.

The tendency of man to organize is natural and of the physical. The physical has the property of conciousness unless man is supernatural, somthing which we have no grouds to believe and no means to prove, as all which is provable is relational, and we can only apply the physical when attempting to meter anything as all things which can be measured are physical.

Physical/relational form is a part of the brain, as the brain is of the same nature as all which is in the physical and subject to the same limits of form. We can only understand that which reveals itself through relation and interaction, which is everything that is the case. The relational form of somthing which can be assembled in the mind may or may not mirror somthing external to the mind, however it is the physical case not matter what as it occurs in the mind, which is physical. Logcial/relational mapping of space thus must be repeatitive and thus pattern based. Understanding in the sciences is entirely based on making explict the pattern of relation between physical phenomena in order to exploit it.

Well, I can't talk about everything because that is an infinite. It would appear there is a logic to nature, in that logically, life develops to it or dies. We are all trial and error. Sometimes kids are born with fur. Even if people do not care their genes might be prepared.

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

The second, Intelligent choice is only a formalization of the first: Response. Which I would call simply, reaction.

So far there appear to be two kinds of cause. One is mechanical and the other is intelligent. For the first if we know the position and momentum of every particle in the universe at one instant we would know all of it forever. For the second we cannot know what comes next, not even for ourselves. The first is totally determinate; the second is self-determined, which is indeterminate as far as anything else is concerned until the instant of the action.

@Fairbanks,

Fairbanks wrote:

So far there appear to be two kinds of cause. One is mechanical and the other is intelligent. For the first if we know the position and momentum of every particle in the universe at one instant we would know all of it forever. For the second we cannot know what comes next, not even for ourselves. The first is totally determinate; the second is self-determined, which is indeterminate as far as anything else is concerned until the instant of the action.

Are you a drunk guy in a bar bsin me because you're afraid to go home to your wife? Be brave. If you only get your **** kicked once by a woman you are way ahead of the pack. In a world of possibilities the only one that matters is our own.

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

bsin me

It is nothing more than Kant. He left plenty of room for further development, but not in this.

@saiboimushi,

Being = having definition

@Fairbanks,

Fairbanks wrote:

It is nothing more than Kant. He left plenty of room for further development, but not in this.

You know, I have some Kant; and I like him, and I have one good book on him; and that was the equal of the books by him. In any event, I didn't pick up on what you are saying from Kant. And, from my perspective, it is not so much how we go about reaching the point of knowing since we do a lot of knowing by rote before we reach the point of learning by reasoning. It is a more interesting question to me, of what we do with our knowledge once we think we have it, and of course some verification, but even there, since truth has such a social side, dealing with accepted social truths, moral realities, really, that, we always have the question of how do we negotiate social truth so we do not become its victims, and do not feel as though we must master it.

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

In any event, I didn't pick up on what you are saying from Kant.

Kant is different for each reader. This much is clear from what writers choose to mention about Kant. In Book I of Critique of Practical Reason he mentions causation in terms of determination where the chain of causation goes mechanically once it starts, but where it starts is indeterminate and is the domain of intelligence or choice. This is where the Moral Law, well-known, applies, independently of mechanical causation and empiricism.

@Fairbanks,

There is no such thing as moral law, though morality can be applied to just about everything. Every choice is a moral choice whether applied to a physical reality or not. But law itself, is either a species of justice, which is a moral reality, or it is not a species of justice, in which case it is neither moral, nor, properly speaking, Law.

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